Over the past decade, infographics have become a ubiquitous genre—circulated in mass media, posted on walls in public spaces, shared on social media sites; and more recently, assigned as reading and writing assignments in academic classes. Their ubiquity and appeal as a visual representation of processes and data make them a promising genre for delivering instructional content and assessing student learning. However, few studies have explored the extent to which infographics are being used in disciplinary contexts and what conventions around this emergent genre are being enacted by those who interact with them. For these reasons, this dissertation was designed to include two concurrent studies—a questionnaire, surveying 80 upper-division undergraduate students, and a discourse-based interview study with seven doctoral, postdoctoral, and professional participants—in order to understand participants’ familiarity with infographic texts and whether infographics are mediated by particular features and/or types of knowledge indicative of a literacy of infographics. Qualitative coding and descriptive statistical analysis revealed general familiarity with infographics. Participants in both studies confirmed their common presence in various contexts, including academic ones, where interview participants tended to recognize infographics for their pedagogical affordances. However, undergraduates indicated low confidence in their ability to read/comprehend or create infographics and reported difficulty with particular elements of questionnaire exhibits. These results suggest that the literacy demands of infographic texts might be greater than other types of visual texts, challenging those of us in higher education to be more considerate of students’ literacy needs in our evaluation, selection, and uses of pedagogical materials, and more deliberate in the types of experimentation we do with infographic genres.

The results from 80 questionnaire respondents and 7 interviews reinforce findings from other studies of data visualization literacy, suggesting that, despite their reported prevalence in participants’ informational, social, and academic lives, infographic texts are not straightforward texts that anyone can read or easily create with an infographic generator. The study’s findings also suggest a theoretical extension to Lave and Wenger’s (1991) Community of Practice theory and the boundary objects (Wenger, 1998) and corollary genres (Yates & Orlikowski, 2007) embedded within them. That is, the experimentation with infographics as boundary objects between disciplines and public or learning audiences, as well as their treatment as corollary genres in certain academic contexts, revealed a tension between pedagogical intensions, effective communication, and the traditional processes and practices in disciplines. Finally, this study serves as a case for those of us in higher education to evaluate rhetorical situations carefully and to consider infographic texts as presenting an opportunity to teach disciplinary processes and practices.

This dissertation investigates the experiences of undergraduates who publish in university-sponsored venues classroom papers written within lower-division courses. Dating back to the early 1900s, the publication of classroom work in student anthologies has become an extended practice in U.S. writing programs (Loomis, 2006). More recently, the expansion of the undergraduate research movement has enabled undergraduate students to participate in research journal publications.Even though it is frequently considered a signature practice of student-centered writing pedagogy, the undergraduate publication has had little research value for the field, and student voices were the least explored dimension. Undergraduate publications have been predominantly explored through the lens of instructors and administrators. Although this information has been central to understanding the phenomena, particularly in terms of the benefits and challenges of carrying out such an initiative, there is limited information about the meaning of this experience for the students themselves and how it impacts their writing development. This qualitative study takes a closer look at the phenomena and examines the experiences of undergraduate students who publish in university-sponsored venues. It has been designed drawing on phenomenology and narrative analysis methods to explore the publication of classroom work in two university-sponsored venues. It focuses on students who published work written within lower-division courses, to capture the initial relationship that students establish with publication and to understand the extent that this opportunity aids their engagement and social position within the university community. Additionally, it contrasts the experience of students from two different institutional contexts, a writing program’s anthology of student writing and a national undergraduate research journal. In line with the growing research that centers on student development from an emic perspective, I seek to lift the voices of undergraduate students, the underrepresented group in the currently available literature. Therefore, the central question that guides this study is: what meaning do undergraduates who published a paper written within their first two years of college ascribe to university publication? The findings of this study provide evidence about the value of undergraduate publication for the student participants, their role as authors as well as the networks and resources that support their engagement in the process. This is relevant information for writing researchers interested in the circulation of student texts and student authorship, but also for faculty and program administrators who seek to assess and/or improve the learning experiences of undergraduate students and their disciplinary development.