In the Loop: The HDO Blog
Architect Your Future: Self-Scripting
December 14, 2020
Michelle Jack, MA
HDO Alumna (Class of 2018)
We believe the past is the past, the present is the present and the future is unknown. What if we think of these concepts as a constant loop? How you can use what you know about the past and present to architect the future? Experiencing the unknowns of the future allows you to adjust and prepare for that future.
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Writing for Access
November 13, 2020
Dr. Casey Boyle
Director of the Digital Writing & Research Lab and Associate Professor in the Department of Rhetoric & Writing at UT Austin
As we communicate more through digital platforms, we have an opportunity to ensure that everybody, and every body, can access that communication. We typically think about access as availability, but access also includes providing the means by which people with disabilities may read/hear/see a communication.
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A Picture is Worth 125 Characters
October 27, 2020
Dr. Casey Boyle
Director of the Digital Writing & Research Lab and Associate Professor in the Department of Rhetoric & Writing at UT Austin
Communication is something that all of us encounter every day of our lives when interacting with someone else, working with a team, or communicating to the public. What does it mean to make communication accessible? Why must we make communication, especially digital media, accessible?
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HDO: The Human Experience
October 26, 2020
Miles Husid
Marketing Coordinator, HDO
Not only are HDO’s Master’s degree courses led by top faculty at UT Austin, they also feature some of the best and brightest students on The Forty Acres. Year after year, we continue to be grateful for how much we learn from our incredible students. Seven years in, I guess we should no longer be surprised.
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Reimagining the Humanities for the 21st Century
October 21, 2020
Steven Mintz, Ph.D.
Professor of History at UT Austin
As humanists grow ever more desperate for students, funding and public recognition, these scholars have attached the “humanities” label to an ever-expanding list of popular subjects — not just such old mainstays such as the legal humanities, the medical humanities or the public humanities, but to a host of less familiar areas of study, including the environmental humanities or the urban humanities and, of course, the digital humanities and the global humanities, each supported by a network of scholarly journals, book series and conferences.
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So, You Want to Change the World?
September 25, 2020
Dr. S. Scott Graham
Assistant Professor in the Department of Rhetoric & Writing at UT Austin
Think about the last time you changed a lightbulb. What did you do first? I hope it was turn off the switch. Maybe you’re super safety-minded and even turned off the breaker. Safety is the key here, after all. You obviously don’t want to get electrocuted. But let’s take a minute to think about the thought process behind flipping the switch.
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My HDO Experience: Michelle Jack | Class of 2018
July 17, 2020
Lewis Miller, Assistant Director, HDO
Michelle Jack is an alumna of the HDO Master’s Degree program. In the video below, she chats with Dr. Art Markman, a Professor of Psychology and HDO’s Founding Director, about how she used her HDO Master’s education, particularly Dr. Markman’s course on behavior change, to successfully lead a major change initiative for her previous employer.
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What’s Wrong with My Emails?
July 17, 2020
Dr. Clay Spinuzzi
Why do my colleagues ask me questions that I’ve already covered in my email? How come they missed my most important point? And why can’t they write clear emails that I can understand? Why do we end up having phone calls to cover what we already wrote?
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Is Working at Home Hard?
June 10, 2020
Dr. Clay Spinuzzi
Professor for HDO and Rhetoric & Writing at UT Austin
On March 13, the day before spring break was to begin, the University of Texas announced that it was canceling class. By March 17, UT had announced that all remaining spring classes would transition online. Students—and faculty—were shocked, and we had to do a lot of work to figure out how to gracefully transition these classes. Some classes were easier than others—I imagine my writing classes were much easier to teach online than, say, dance classes or pottery classes. But that doesn’t mean the transition was easy.
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Don’t Panic! Leading Through Crisis
June 1, 2020
Dr. Ken Wisian
Don’t Panic! These words, from the science fiction classic, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” are a good starting point for thinking through a crisis. The world is in the midst of a once-in-a-century cataclysm that threatens public health and undermines governmental and economic stability. People at all levels of society have suddenly found themselves on unfamiliar ground and scrambling to chart a course from day to day and moment to moment.
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