Research Agenda

Dan Steward
March 2017

My current research agenda connects my teaching and service with my interests in the scholarship of teaching and learning, science and technology studies, and the sociology of knowledge. These literatures inform the several research projects summarized here, and form the core of my larger research agenda: exploring the diffusion and transformative potential of technological and pedagogical innovations by mapping the public discourse of such innovations. I am compiling and curating many scores of thousands of texts from both popular and scholarly sources, and will be subjecting all of them to analysis through machine learning techniques (e.g., topic modeling) and some of them to human coding and interpretation. The larger mapping project is a long-term endeavor, but in the near- to mid-term range I have been studying specific innovations both historically and through action research.

Since my arrival at UIUC, I have focused more on the latter, and my publications have been primarily local. Through such forums as the LAS Teaching Academy and the Faculty Summer Institute, I have shared ideas, techniques, and materials with other faculty and graduate students here. (As indicated on my CV, I have also shared my expertise through service to the university on various committees and in pedagogical initiatives.) More recently, however, I have begun (particularly through the Social Science History Association) to reach out to a global audience to share my research and reflections. As the descriptions of concrete projects below indicate, I hope to continue diffusing my research (both pedagogical and social-historical) both locally and globally.

Online Discussion Forums: Due to the proliferation of online courses at the University of Illinois as well as many other institutions there is a need to explore student and faculty experiences with the use of discussion forums in the online context. What is the value in the use of online discussion forums for students and faculty? Do students form stronger links between the information they are learning in an online format vs. face to face conversations (or vice versa)? What learning outcomes motivate faculty to use online discussion forums, and to structure them in the ways that they do? With Professor Phyllis Baker, and expert survey researchers from CITL (Maryalice Wu and Dawn Owens), I am collaborating in a study of such questions. We have completed a first round of surveys and are preparing for faculty interviews this Spring (and beyond), which will be followed by another survey. The results of our research should prove helpful on campus as well as in the wider university community. I expect that we will be presenting them in local settings (e.g., the LAS Teaching Academy, the Faculty Summer Institute) over the course of the next year. Beyond this, I expect that we will be presenting our work in regional or national meetings, and publishing (perhaps in one of the online peer-reviewed journals) our results during 2018.

Writing and Publication Practices: Sociology has a rich history of research and reflection on our curriculum and pedagogy. (Teaching Sociology, our journal dedicated to the scholarship of teaching and learning, is now in its fifth decade.) This scholarship is skewed towards the undergraduate experience, but there is growing demand for resources, research, and recommendations regarding the education of graduate students. In the current climate, writing across the curriculum (and professional lifecourse) should include not only old-fashioned professionalization seminars and publication practicums, but also new-fangled training in grant-writing (both public and private), blogging, social media presence, online collaboration, and hypermedia literacy. With Professor Cynthia Buckley, whose writing and publication courses already reflect such innovation, I am collaborating on an article (most likely for Teaching Sociology) that contributes to these developments in graduate education. An online (and ongoing) collaborative resource base (probably through some combination of Trails and Zotero) will supplement our own publication.

INFEWS-ER: The INFEWS-ER, or "Innovation at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems—Educational Resources", is a virtual resource center and learning space. I am collaborating with the principle investigators on this project, which brings together research and teaching as well as trans-disciplinary initiatives. Professor Anna Marshall and Professor Luis Rodriguez are my primary campus collaborators, but the project includes multiple universities. With funding from the NSF and USDA, we are developing the infrastructure for online graduate training across Food, Energy, and Water disciplines, not only to foster cross-disciplinary dialogue, understanding, and research, but also to infuse these researchers with skills in the use of "Big Data" and appreciation for the social implications of various agricultural practices and technologies.

"A Century of Higher Learning: Re-Connecting with Veblen's Curiosity and Critique": Thorstein Veblen published The Higher Learning in America in 1918. Anticipating its centennial, this paper celebrates Veblen's foresight as well as our hindsight. Tracing the network of popular and scholarly texts influenced by Veblen's work, and representing this network using topic modeling and similar tools, this paper outlines issues and debates that continue to shape academic experience after a century: the tensions between "idle curiosity" and "worldly wisdom"; the internal contradictions among research, teaching, and service; the lure and peril of scientific management; the (disciplinary and union) organizations of faculty as countervailing powers to the "captains of erudition," &tc. This paper will be presented at the 2017 annual meeting of the Social Science History Association, where I have previously presented papers on closely-related subjects (e.g., my 2016 presentation on "Modeling Academic Freedom"). The presentation in Fall 2017 will launch a year-long blog and website deploying Veblen's text as a lens and foil for contemporary debates.

"Introducing Sociology: A Gloss on the Glossaries": Which key words unlock the sociological imagination? In the absence of any clear paradigm, sociologists argue perennially about core concepts and methods. Such arguments reflect the internal politics of the discipline, as well as the genuine complexity of the field. Simplifying this field for newcomers is a challenge taken up by authors of introductory textbooks. This article summarizes a content analysis of the glossaries in various introductory sociology textbooks. Traditional methods of content analysis reveal significant variation in the choices of concepts that are included in textbook glossaries. Topic modeling of the definitions in this corpus of glossaries, however, may help us to identify which concepts are more central in the sociological discourse. Future research should extend such analyses to compare the introductory textbooks of the discipline with textbooks used in more advanced courses as well as a sample of research texts representing the discipline. I will be presenting this paper at a departmental colloquium in Fall 2017, and submitting it for publication shortly thereafter (probably in Teaching Sociology).

The relative priorities of these projects shift with the interests of collaborators and audiences, but they are each important and ongoing. Each of these may lead to further research initiatives, and there are a number of other short- to mid-term projects that will advance the long-term agenda, but this sampler indicates what will be on the front burners for the next few years.