| Beth Kolko |
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Beth Kolko, Associate Professor Courses Taught:TC 319 Human-Computer Interaction Education:Ph.D., English, The University of Texas at Austin, May 1994 Professional Interests:ICT and development; computer-mediated communication and virtual environments; rhetorical theory; interface design; cross-cultural patterns of technology adoption and adaptation Current Research Projects:Information and Communication Technologies in Central Asia Digital Games Selected Grants and Funded Projects:PI. National Science Foundation, Medium Information Technology Research grant, "The Effect of the Internet on Society: Incorporating Central Asia into the Global Perspective." 09/03-08/08. $1.23 million. PI. National Science Foundation, Information Technology Research grant, 'Cross-cultural Patterns of Information Technology Adoption and Adaptation.' 09/-2-08/03. $100,000. Co-PI with Co-PIs David Silver and Kirsten Foot. 'Expanding Disciplinary Representation in Digital Media Scholarship.' Pending. Submitted April 2003. Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington. $4920. 09/01/03-07/01/03. PI. 'Usability Baseline Study.' Microsoft, $68,000, 4/15/03-6/15/03. PI. Marc Lindenberg Center for Humanitarian Action, International Development and Global Citizenship Mobility Grants. University of Washington. $2800. Co-PI. "Circle of Friends." Study of SMS and youth social networks. October 2002-June 2003. Co-PI. "Usability Testing of Users with Disabilities." September 2001-August 2002. PI. "Content Management and Electronic Dissemination Strategies for Multiple Types of Traveler Information." TransNow. $60,110. 09/01/01-12/15/02. Also: "Content Management and Electronic Dissemination Strategies for Multiple Types of Traveler Information. Washington State Transportation Center. $100,021. 07/15/01-2/15/02. Co-PI. 'Testing Users,' Information Retrieval Strategies: Analysis of the WsDOT Traveler Information Portal. Washington State Transportation Center. $65,000. 07/15/01-05/31/02. Fulbright Award to Uzbekistan, 2000-2001 Professional Affiliations:Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Research:Beth Kolko is an Associate Professor in the Department of Technical Communication at the University of Washington. She was previously a professor of English at the University of Wyoming and the University of Texas at Arlington. Her work in the early 1990s focused on rhetorical theory and cultural studies with an emphasis on writing as a social act. Studying writers in informal educational settings, both offline and online, sparked her interest in the Internet (which was then text-based) as a writing environment which provided users the ability to put into practice post-structural modes of engagement. At the same time, she began teaching in computer classrooms, and the move from LANs to WANs allowed her to incorporate Internet resources into her pedagogy. As development of Internet technologies affected the range of content online, her research shifted from considering texts to multimedia. Her work on virtual communities at that point began to include visual representations of users in online environments and issues related to community fragmentation online. That work was tied to her long-term interests in how identity and diversity impact people's use of technology. Her chapter "Erasing @race: Going White in the (Inter)Face" in her co-edited volume Race and Cyberspace framed the argument about diversity and technology in terms of interface design and assumptions about users. Other work in the area has included establishing a virtual world, MOOscape, which was the first of its kind to incorporate race as an element of online identity. Her current research further develops the idea of diversity and technology by focusing on Internet development in Central Asia. Currently funded by the National Science Foundation, the Central Asian Information and Communications Technology project (http://depts.washington.edu/caict) applies theory-based analyses of culture and technology in order to concretely investigate how technology is being used in diverse communities and how such technologies change the cultures in which they adopted. The current phase of the project includes qualitative and quantitative longitudinal studies in the five Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan). See the project website for more information. In addition to her work on ICT and development, Kolko also leads a research group on digital games. This group is currently working in two areas: (1) cross-cultural investigations of multiplayer games, and (2) research on gender and educational games. For more information, see the project website. Selected Publications:Books Virtual Publics: Policy and Community in an Electronic Age. Ed. Beth Kolko. Columbia University Press. 2003. Race in Cyberspace. Ed. Beth Kolko. Lisa Nakamura and Gilbert B. Rodman. Routledge: New York. 2000. Writing in an Electronic World. With Alison Regan and Susan Romano. Addison Wesley Longman: New York. 2001. Writing in an Electronic World, Instructor Manual. With Alison Regan and Susan Romano. Addison Wesley Longman. 2001. Refereed Articles and Proceedings Kolko, B, Wei, C., and J.H. Spyridakis. 'Internet Use in Uzbekistan: Developing a Methodology for Tracking IT Implementation Success', Information Technologies and International Development 1:2. pp. 1-20. (2003). Taylor, T.L., Kolko, B.E. "Boundary Spaces: Majestic and the Uncertain Status of Knowledge, Community and Self in a Digital Age." Information, Communication & Society.6:4. pp.497-522, (2003) Haselkorn, M., Sauer, G., Turns, J., Illman, D., Tsutsui, M., Plumb, C., Williams, T., Kolko, B. & Spyridakis, J. 'Expanding the Scope of Technical Communication: Examples from the Department of Technical Communication at the University of Washington.' Technical Communication 50:2.174-191. (2003). Spyridakis, J.H., Wei, C., and B.E. Kolko. The Relationship of Culture and Information-Seeking Behaviour: A Case Study in Central Asia. Proceedings of HCI International 2003. Kim, S., Kolko, B., Greer, T. (2002.) 'Problem-Solving in Web-based Problem-Based Learning: Third-Year Medical Students' Participation in End-of-Life Care Virtual Clinic,' Computers in Human Behavior. 2002:18. 605-625 (2002). B. Kolko. 'International IT Implementation Projects: Policy and Cultural Considerations.' Proceedings from the annual IEEE IPCC Conference, Portland, OR, September 2002. pp. 352-359. B. Kolko and L. Whang. "Assessing Reliability and Credibility for Online Engineering Resources." American Society for Engineering Educators Annual Conference Proceedings, 2002. 7 pp; session 1520. 'Representing Bodies in Virtual Space: The Rhetoric of Avatar Design.' The Information Society 15:3, 177-186 (1999). 'Intellectual Property in Synchronous and Collaborative Virtual Space.' Computers and Composition 15:2, 163-183 (1998). 'Mapping Real Success for Virtual Worlds: The Rhetoric of Space and Interactivity.' SIGGRAPH Conference Abstracts and Applications. ACM: New York, 1998. pp. 194. 'Collaborative Virtual Space: Pedagogy and the Presence of Others in MOOs.' Proceedings of ED-Media/ED-Telecom 98: World Conference on Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia and World Conference on Educational Telecommunications, edited by Thomas Ottmn and Ivan Tomek. AACE: Charlottesville, VA, 1998. pp. 1903. "Hypertext Reflections: Exploring the Rhetoric, Poetics, and Pragmatics of Hypertext." Mike Palmquist, Will Hochman, Beth Kolko, Emily Golson, Jonathan Alexander, Luann Barnes, Kate Kiefer. Kairos: A Journal for Teachers of Writing in Webbed Environments 2.2. Fall 1997. Available at http://english.ttu.edu/kairos/2.2/features/reflections/bridge.html. "Building a World With Words: The Narrative Reality of Virtual Communities." Works and Days 25/26, 105-126 (Summer/Fall 1995). "Using InterChange Transcripts Recursively in the Writing Classroom." Wings 1.1:4 Spring 1993. "Teaching Argumentation in Hypertext: Mentoring Arguments with ArguMentor" with David Ericson. Proceedings from the Ninth Conference on Computers and Writing. Ann Arbor, MI, May 1993. Book Chapters 'Introduction.' Virtual Publics: Policy and Community in an Electronic Age. Ed. Beth Kolko. Columbia University Press. 2003. pp.1-7. "Cultural Studies In/And the Networked Writing Classroom." The Online Writing Classroom. Ed. Michael Day, Susanmarie Harrington, and Rebecca Rickly. Hampton Press: Cresskill, NJ. 2000. pp. 29-43. 'MOOs, Cyberspace, Anarchitexture: Towards a New Threshold,' with Cynthia Haynes, Jan Rune Holmevik, and Victor Vitanza. The Emerging CyberCulture: Literacy, Paradigm, and Paradox. Ed. Stephanie Gibson and Ollie Oviedo. Hampton Press: Cresskill, NJ. 2000. pp.229-262. 'Erasing @race: Going White in the (Inter)Face.' In Race in Cyberspace. Ed. Beth Kolko, Lisa Nakamura and Gilbert B. Rodman. Routledge: New York. 2000. pp. 213-232. 'Introduction,' with Lisa Nakamura and Gilbert B. Rodman. In Race in Cyberspace. Ed. Beth Kolko, Lisa Nakamura and Gil Rodman. Routledge: New York. 2000. pp.1-13. 'Dissolution and Fragmentation: Problems in Online Communities.' With Elizabeth Reid Steere. Cybersociety 2.0, Ed. Steven Jones. Sage Press: Thousand Oaks. 1998. pp. 212-229. "Bodies in Place: Real Politics, Real Pedagogy, and Virtual Space." High Wired: On the Design, Use, and Theory of Educational MOOs. Ed. Cynthia Haynes and Jan Rune Holmevik. University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor. 1998. pp. 253-265. "We Are Not Just (Electronic) Words: Learning the Literacies of Culture, Body, and Politics." Literacy Theory in the Age of the Internet. Ed. Irene Ward and Todd Taylor. Columbia UP: New York. 1998. pp. 61-78. "Written Argumentation." HyperCard application. Design team member. Intellimation Library for the Macintosh. Santa Barbara, CA: Spring 1993.
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