R e s e a r c h

Laura's scholarship reflects her interest in eLearning, digital media, computers and writing, and issues of faculty development and support. An Incentive Funding for Scholarship Award from Kennesaw State's Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning enabled her to conduct site visits in the fall of 2007 to three new media research communities. In the spring of 2008, Laura plans to begin to disseminate her findings and seek contributors for a book on new media research communities in the humanities.

Having completed a study that extended research begun during a three-day faculty workshop, Laura plans to write up her findings with her co-researcher. This study examined the efficacy of the in-house faculty development workshop as a way to prepare teachers to use technology in pedagogically effective ways and to engage students in the analysis and composition of multimodal texts. She is also working on an article about a semester-long study of two writing courses, one at a public university and the other at a private, historically black women's college, connected through MySpace.

She recently completed a chapter for "Digital Practice, Digital Divergence: A Professional Communicator's Guide to New Media" (forthcoming, Baywood) and an article that discusses the results of her national and local surveys of online writing instructors (Computers and Composition Online, Spring 2008).

Want to collaborate? lmcgrat2@kennesaw.edu