Conference Schedule “At A Glance” Breakfasts and poster sessions are in the Atrium of the English building; workshops and presentations are on the 3rd Floor. The “Computers and Writing Video Storybooth” is in Room 202. The GRN is in the Education Building, across the Courtyard, in Room 01. Lunches will be served in the Courtyard. Transportation from hotels begins at 7 AM every day and is available throughout the day. Shuttle hotline: (806) 742-2500 x285. Day 1: Thursday (May 25, 2006) 7:30 - 9:00 Continental Breakfast and Registration (Atrium) 9:00 - 3:15 GRN and Job Market Round Table (Education 01) 9:00 - 11:45 Morning Workshops 12:00 - 12:30 Box Lunch (Courtyard) 12:30 - 3:15 Afternoon Workshops 2:45 - 3:30 Coffee/Tea (201) 5:00 - 6:30 Opening Reception and @get info (01) 7:00 - 9:00 C&W Goes to the Movies: “The Wholphin DVD” (01) Day 2: Friday (May 26, 2006) 7:30 - 8:00 Continental Breakfast and Mentoring “Hook-Up” (Atrium) 8:00 - 9:30 Townhall I (01) 9:45 - 11:00 Session A 10:45 - 11:30 Coffee/Tea (201) 11:15 - 12:30 Session B 12:45 - 2:00 Chuckwagon Lunch with Locke Carter (01 then Courtyard) 2:15 - 3:30 Session C 3:15 - 4:00 Coffee/Tea (201) 3:45 - 5:00 Session D 5:00 - 6:30 Ranching Heritage Center excursion 6:30 - 10:00 Banquet with Mark Follman from Salon.com (Museum) Day 3: Saturday (May 27, 2006) 7:30 - 8:15 Continental Breakfast (Atrium) 8:15 - 9:45 Session E 9:30 - 10:15 Coffee/Tea (201) 10:00 - 11:30 Session F 11:45 - 1:15 Lunch with Kelli Cargile Cook (01 then Courtyard) 1:30 - 3:00 Session G 2:45 - 3:30 Coffee/Tea (201) 3:15 - 4:30 Session H 5:00 - 10:00 Dinner with Clay Spinuzzi (Cagle’s Steakhouse) 10:00 - late Cosmic Bowling (Brunswick South Plains Bowl) Day 4: Sunday (May 28, 2006) 7:30 - 8:15 Continental Breakfast (Atrium) 8:15 - 9:45 Townhall II (01) 10:00 - 11:30 Session I 11:45 - 1:00 7C’s Meeting (352) 1:00 - 4:00 [Choose-Your-Own] Excursion 5:00 - late BBQ at Locke and Becky’s 1 | Computers & Writing 2006 Introduction and Welcome from the 2006 Conference Chair and Assistant Chair On behalf of Texas Tech University, the TTU College of Arts and Sciences, the TTU Department of English, and the TTU Technical Communication and Rhetoric faculty and students, we welcome you to the 22nd, annual Computers & Writing Conference. We are pleased to host C&W2006 in our academic home. The conference setting reflects our hope that by coming together in the GRN, @get info, workshops, Townhalls, conference sessions, keynotes, and informal discussions, each of us will enrich our own practice and scholarship. The conference theme, “Still on the Frontier(s),” prompts us to ask many questions about our technological tools past, present, and future. What have we learned about writing and writing instruction? How are we preparing others to teach in light of what we’ve learned? How are we disseminating our research results? How are interface and interactive design important to computers and writing? Where are wide-scale teaching and assessment tools taking us? Consider ePortfolios, database delivery systems, social network tools, integration with publisher companion Web site resources, online warehouses, powerful search engines, and specialized search routines. Where and what knowledge is being created, and how is it being recognized? Consider issues such as copyright/copyleft, intellectual property, online education, and promotion and tenure. How are research techniques to study newly technologized contexts being adapted/created? How are we resisting/embracing applications/ideologies from other disciplines? For instance, how are we operating in the “corporate” (or corporatized) university? How are we making room in our disciplines for new ideas and new voices? What is (or should be) the relationship between technical communication and composition? Which technological tools have we adopted out of necessity, and what are our current choices? How has the use of technology in writing centers contributed to knowledge making in writing instruction? What are some of the new frontiers we’re exploring, and what are we learning from them? These questions and more strike at the heart of the work we do, whether that work is in composition, technical communication, writing centers, writing program administration, publishing, or some other area. While each year brings new research questions to the field, scholars and instructors still wrestle with enduring issues. In addition to our quest to understand more about writing, writing instruction, and training new writing instructors, we wish to examine the use of datagogy in our field, continue the search for valid Still on the Frontier(s) | 2 and reliable visual and socially-networked writing environment assessment methodologies, explore communication through wireless and mobile technologies, develop and integrate open-source tools with system-wide electronic performance support system services, and examine the influence of technical communication on composition studies. We hope you will find opportunities to explore one or more of these pressing issues. The Townhalls examine the impact of Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat on our field, and how the values of software development are still deeply engrained in the pedagogical and administrative decisions we make. The Graduate Research Network, the Job Forum, and the Mentoring Program are designed to facilitate the entry of graduate students and new faculty into the profession, our community, and this conference, in part by foregrounding the professional issues that the emergence of communication technologies has raised. Brief descriptions of conference presentations are printed here, and full abstracts and links to authors’ homepages and other materials are available through http://computersandwriting.org/cw2006. We wish for you expanded frontier(s) and an enriching conference experience. Acknowledgements For the success of C&W 2006, we are indebted to a host of people at Texas Tech University as well as many in the community. Such an undertaking depends on the cooperation and contributions of many. For each contribution, we are grateful. First, we thank the Texas Tech community at large, and particularly the Department of English, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Continuing Education, for their support. Thanks to the Department of English Chair, Sam Dragga, for his willingness to welcome some 300 conference attendees to our building, and to the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Jane Winer, for her support. With the Department of Continuing Education, in particular, we’d like to thank Birget Green, Michele Moskos, Dalana Williams, and Pat Wright for their help with registration and promotion. For their help with the program we’d like to thank Amy Koerber, Angela Eaton, Kevin Garrison, Lyle Hayes, Tony Atkins, Keisha McKenzie, Erika Silvas-Guerrero, Betsy Strosser, Quentin Vieregge, Katherine Walker, and Sarah Wills. Bedford/St. Martin’s sponsored the printing of this program. Bedford/St. Martin’s, Hampton Press, Houghton Mifflin, Pearson Education, Thomson/Wadsworth, and McGraw- Hill have supported us with publisher tables. Thomson/Wadsworth hosted the usability testing lab open house and offered iPod Shuffle drawings. McGraw-Hill supported the development of the Web site and @get info. United Supermarkets provided coffee throughout the conference. Thank you! The Chronicle of Higher Education sent along the excellent grading machine graphic for our T-Shirts. For help reviewing abstracts and offering participants helpful feedback we thank Dan Anderson, Corinne Arráez, Tony Atkins, Cheryl Ball, Craig Baehr, Kris Blair, Tommy Barker, Jennifer Bowie, 3 | Computers & Writing 2006 Rick Branscomb, Michael Day, Locke Carter, Dánielle DeVoss, Keith Dorwick, Sam Dragga, Angela Eaton, Doug Eyman, Kathy Gillis, Morgan Gresham, Dene Grigar, Jim Kalmbach, Fred Kemp, Miles Kimball, Amber Lancaster, Susan Lang, Karen Lunsford, Mike Palmquist, Mike Salvo, Kirk St. Amant, Cindy Selfe, Dickie Selfe, Joyce Walker, Carl Whithaus, and Sean Zdenek. Bob Whipple and Creighton University hosted the Wednesday evening get together. Dene Grigar, with Dickie Selfe and John Barber, created the first ever @get info. For the mentoring program we’d like to thank Michael Day, Janice Walker, and others. Thanks to Janice Walker, Becky Rickly, and Susan Lang for setting up the GRN. We appreciate the help of Cheryl Ball and Janice Walker with the Job Market Roundtable, Kirk St. Amant with sponsorship, Carolyn Cook with breakfasts and coffee/tea, Susan Lang with the banquet, Susan Lang and many others who helped with awards, Becky Rickly with featured speakers and music, Hugh Burns and Corinne Arráez with Townhalls, Tommy Barker’s “The Prophets of Rockabilly,” Christopher Jordon’s violin, the Nifty-50’s cars (see http://nifty50s.org), and Ken Baake for excursion planning. Thanks to Laura Palmer for designing the conference logos; and Shelley Assister of Tiger-Ts (whose children are entering TTU in the Fall), Fred Kemp, and Becky Norman for help with T-Shirt and poster promotions. We also wish to acknowledge Michael Likhinin and the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center at TTU for their help with printing and other technologies, and for sponsoring copies of the Wholphin DVD. Thanks to Brent Hoff of the Wholphin project. Thanks to Mike Schoeneke for door prize donations. Thanks to Courtney Burkholder and TTU Press for support. Karen Keck, Mialisa Hubbard, Kelly Jones, Sally Henschel, Katherine Walker, and Daphne Ervin helped with streaming video. And for their invaluable help day to day over the past year, thanks go to Carolyn Cook, DarylLynn Davalos, Quita Melcher, Juanita Ramirez, and student assistants Raymond Babza, W.H. Harris, and Abby Hinojosa. Hosting the C&W has made us intensely aware of the strengths and cooperative nature of this community.