The WIDE Research Center creates new knowledge about digital communication and promotes the transfer of this knowledge to school, workplace, and community contexts to promote learning, knowledge work, and citizenship.
WIDE pursues answers to basic, powerful questions regarding digital communication in a way that is flexible, collaborative, and entrepreneurial. WIDE pursues interdisciplinary grant funded research, consults with organizations, creates market opportunities from its own intellectual property, contributes significantly to scholarly literature in various fields,and supports undergraduate and graduate student research.
Accordingly, WIDE
- Creates research opportunities and new knowledge about digital communication
- Promotes the transfer of discoveries about digital communication in a way that has impact in the world
- Helps prepare a new generation of researchers and leaders.
How can WIDE Work with You?
Communications Consulting
- Assess your organization’s writing practices and goals and recommend improvements in training, technology use, and meeting customer and client needs.
- Offer workshops, training materials, and technology roadmaps tailored to your organization’s communication needs.
Research Partnerships
- Collaborate with academic units and community organizations to carry out projects that advance knowledge about digital writing and that have real world impact.
- Participate in projects that demand expertise in text analysis, qualitative organizational studies, community and participatory design, usability, and information modeling.
- Designing and developing tools that support writing and knowledge making.
Teaching with Innovative Writing Technologies
- Provide workshops and consulting for faculty who want to intergrate cutting-edge writing technologies into their classrooms.
- Provide support for piloting innovative pedagogies using cutting-edge writing tools, allowing you to develop proof-of-concept materials.
Chief Research Questions
- What are the processes of digital composing?
- What are the practices for writing with digital technologies and for digital environments?
- How do we enable the capacity for communities, organizations, and individuals to write/communicate more effectively in digital environments?
- What is the relationship of writing and communication to knowledge work and to the knowledge economy? How can writing/communication practices aid economic development, particularly in an information economy?
WIDE’s Research Goals
- To help establish MSU at the forefront of digital writing innovation and as a leader in preparing students for the knowledge economy.
- To support MSU faculty doing interdisciplinary research on digital information, knowledge work, community & culture.
- To partner with business, industry, government, education, and community organizations to help them design and distribute information for clients, customers, students, and the public and by helping them design writing tools to assist that work.
Research Interests
- Digital Literacy Infrastructure – making/designing tools to help people write/work
- Writing as Knowledge Work – understanding the role of writing in the digital information economy
- Outreach Computing – designing digital spaces to help community organizations and to promote citizenship
- International/Global Composing – understanding digital composing and designing writing tools to support composing, across/between cultures and countries
WIDE Center Directors
The WIDE Research Center directors are Jeff Grabill, PhD and William Hart-Davidson, PhD. In addition to serving as co-directors of WIDE, theyalso hold teaching appointments in Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures.
Employment Opportunities
Any students who are interested in working at the research center or being involved in research center projects should contact Bill Hart-Davidson. The WIDE Research Center often employs graduate and undergraduate MSU students for hourly contract work. These students help with specific projects for a limited period of time.
Sponsorship
The WIDE Research Center is funded and co-sponsored by the MSU Foundation and the College of Arts & Letters.
