about


Stephen J. Quigley is an artist, writer, and a 2023-2024 David Mascaro Faculty Lecturer in Sustainability. In addition to craft theory and design, his research interests include digital rhetoric and basic coding. He earned his PhD in Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design from Clemson University and teaches in the Digital Narrative and Interactive Design (DNID) Program at the University of Pittsburgh. His courses include technical communications, digital composing, integrating writing and design, digital narrative and interactive design, project-based design courses, and usability studies. He designed Open Fuego web tools to help educators and students integrate code into their classroom activities. His tools and pedagogy feature prominently in a 2023 National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer Science for All (CSforALL) Grant. He is a Pitt Cyber affiliate scholar and serves on the Senate Computing Committee.







digital projects





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Open Fuego

Coding Tools
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My Nature Study

Multimodal Nature Study Tool
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basic coding

Article in Kairos 26.2 2022


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[Un]disciplining Environmental Education

Multimodal Installation / Film Project
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Observing Rhetoric in Resilient Stagnant Ecologies

Dissertation Design Project: 360 Degree Film
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Clemson Geopaths Rhetor in Residence

NSF funded project facilitating experiential learning opportunities for non-geoscience majors.


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Grad 360 Digital Literacy Project

Digital literacy curriculum designer
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GIS in the Composition Classroom

Computers and Composition Online
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Welcome to the Letters of Anna Calhoun

Kairos, 22.2


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The Electrate Grandmother

Designing Rituals: Making as Therapy
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The Better Clemson App

First-year Composition Multimodal Project
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The Legacies of Fort Hill

Film Project








teaching


I am fortunate to work with students in a creative environment where we learn new things and design cool stuff. I find students at the University of Pittsburgh particularly interesting and I am ever amazed by their interests, intelligence, passion, and willingness to learn new things. If I can create a learning environment that encourages students to leverage what we do in class towards their own ends, then I can guarantee positive learning outcomes.

In my technical communications classes we focus on technical writing, writing architectures, project management, digital tool learning, and design strategies that my students employ while working with others to create deliverables. In my digital design-centered courses, I draw on post-structural invention methods to encourage creativity, UX methods and design thinking to ground our work in method, and a studio environment where students work together to learn tools, techniques, and revise their work. I've also taught a range of other courses including first-year writing, professional communication, usability testing, courses housed in the school of education, independent research projects, and graduate independent readings exploring critical making methods/pedagogy.







craft



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As a designer and woodworker with some twenty years of experience, I can’t help but see the teaching of writing as craft. To learn a craft, one must first learn the feel of their tools, in my case the edge of the blade in relation to the stock. Of equal importance is reading the stock and how it wants to be worked, so as not to tear away at it, and the idea behind the design. Tools needs to be tested. And in so doing a student begins to assemble the appropriate knowledge of knowing-making, which results in skill. This Aristotelian concept is not a linear one. Knowledge does not always inform making or doing. In fact, sometimes it is the other way around. That is, through practice, we begin to form theory, which in turn informs subsequent practice. The teaching of craft always involves scaffolding. After a student learns one tool those skills are transferred to the next, and new theories are formed and tested for each process so as to effect a consistent product. Inevitably, the student learns that there are many ways of accomplishing an intended outcome. A skilled craftsperson, however, understands when to apply a given tool to achieve a specific outcome in particular situation.





knowing making doing