Life in Academe
Events and experiences that remind me that I’m a professor and I love working in higher education.
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Unplugged
Over the holiday break, many Christmas festivities ensued, a new year began, and “university professor” was named the least stressful job of 2013. (Notably, this last bit of news has added more than a little stress to the lives of my colleagues around the nation). My present to myself this holiday was something you might…
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You are what you tweet
“We did this to make people realize that what they tweet is public information and can be seen by anyone.” First-year students Nick Simonetti and Jeremy Swick created a project called You Are What You Tweet for their freshman seminar course in digital literacy at Queens University of Charlotte. The premise was simple: ask students to wear one of…
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Digital Cities: Urban community development through information design
I was privileged to present a paper – “Digital Cities: Urban community development through information design” – at the annual conference of the National Communication Association in Orlando, Florida. The paper is an extension of my work on space, technology, and user-experience. The theoretical argument sits at the intersection of information design, city planning, and…
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Nonverbal Communication and Disney Animation at #NCA12
To kick off the panel, Darlene Hadrika presented a beautiful animated short film created by students at the University of Central Florida that showcases nonverbal communication in eye contact, body posture, and music. Lon Smart, a head character artist at Walt Disney Parks, showcased some of his work (which includes the Lion King’s hyenas and…
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Intersections in Nonverbal and Health Communication at #NCA12
At the 2012 National Communication Association annual convention, researchers from around the country shared their work in a panel titled “Intersections in Nonverbal and Health Communication.” I was drawn to the panel because most of the papers incorporated some kind of communication technology either in the research design or the methodology. Here’s a quick recap of the…
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Navigating the campus with new eyes
Students in my communication seminar on proxemics in the Knight School conducted a wheelchair accessibility audit of campus. The audit helped students to better understand how people different from themselves understand and use built space. The following story was featured on the Queens University of Charlotte website about the project: Navigating the campus with new eyes…
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Mapping Innovation: a discussion with digital entrepreneur Nick Such
When was the last time you got lost? Self-proclaimed “indoor map nerd” Nick Such wants to come to the rescue. “People getting lost in buildings is a problem we can solve,” says Such, CEO of BuildingLayer and founder of Awesome Inc. As CEO of BuildingLayer, much of his current work focuses on indoor mapping of built spaces.…
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I took my graduate students to Walmart. Don’t judge.
Everytime I write an paper about user-experience design, I try to illuminate the main concept by comparing Ikea and Walmart. So, it made sense to me that instead of talking about this comparison in my graduate course in “Space, Technology & User Experience,” I would utilize the actual spaces to make the comparison for me. My…
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Proxemics for Blogs: Using digital space to your advantage
I’ve spent the past few days assessing blog sites full of observations about spaces. A blog is a digital space worthy of analysis in the context of proxemics. The objects placed into a blog post all have individual attributes (size, color, location) that impact their perceived use of space on a page. The trick for bloggers is…
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Digital Democracy, through the eyes of Twitter
Ceasar McDowell, professor of practice of community development at MIT, spoke at Queens University of Charlotte’s Knight School of Communication tonight on the relationships between democracy and a digital society. Here’s the buzz on Twitter from the event: Dr. Ceasar McDowell speaks at Knight School Dr. Ceasar McDowell speaks at Knight School September 18, 2012…
J.A.McArthur 