Disciplinary Expert Tour : Whitney Zahnd, Academic Researcher

Multimodal digital literacies allow researchers to collect, collaborate, and communicate knowledge to global communities. By researching trends in data, researchers can explore social discrepancies and promote systematic change. The socio-technological practices of Dr. Whitney Zahnd highlight how multimodal literacies enable researchers to gather, evaluate, and share digital information to create impactful and meaningful change.

Whitney is currently an assistant professor in Health Management and Policy for the University of Iowa’s College of Public Health. With her background in microbiology and community health (epidemiology), she focuses her research on rural health and cancer disparities. As a faculty member at a research-intensive university, she teaches one course and centers the rest of her time on public health research. For the expert tour, Whitney met via Zoom to share the technology tools she uses to analyze data and create meaning.

Technology enables Whitney to communicate ideas and tell a story about the data through written language, charts, graphs, and interactive maps and visuals. For example, Whitney uses ArcGIS Pro for statistical analysis and geoprocessing to create maps which visually represent the data. She demonstrated how rural communities lack access to health care (Figure 1). Green indicated no access in the area, purple meant only access to care via technology (virtual visit, phone call, etc.), pink represented only access to oncology, and orange meant the community had access to both resources.

Figure 1:

Once created, she could also use the software developed by Esri to analyze clusters and find other trends about the data as it related to rural communities and marginalized populations (See Figure 2).

Figure 2:

The software could also interconnect with other platforms to create a network analysis layer (See Figure 3). This layer adds further details to the map by revealing the distances to care and can help public health care workers develop services and bus routes to improve health care access to the areas in need.

Figure 3:

These maps can be exported and included in presentations and public health publications. One of Whitney’s upcoming projects is to develop a story map using these maps and other images collected throughout her career in public health research. One example she provided was the United States Census Bureau’s story map of “Rural America” (See Figure 4). This interactive tool tells the story of the data using text, visuals, and web-based maps. She explained many of the dashboards we have seen with COVID have also used these types of platforms to visually represent data about public health to the global community.

Figure 4:

The use of a story map allows the researcher to tell a story in a way not previously possible with a traditional academic paper. For example, the Rural America webpage integrated a timeline to show how the definition of “rural” has changed over time (See Figure 5). Using similar methods, she can use the maps developed through her statistical analysis combined with images of communities which lack access to health care to visually communicate the story to a larger audience. By sharing the information with more individuals, she can advocate for systematic changes for access to health care.

Figure 5:

In addition to story maps and ArcGIS Pro, she also uses a variety of statistical programs to import data files and assess findings of significance. SAS allows her to access her drive and library of linked data files to manage data, make graphs, and generate statistical analysis (See Figure 6). She can code and recode the data to create or collapse groups or define different ways of describing the areas. The final products can be exported to tools such as Excel or MSWord for further analysis and description.

Figure 6:

Another tool, Whitney uses in analyzing data is the Joinpoint Regression Program (See Figure 7). With this tool, she can find significant trends with the data and between sets of data. For example, she can analyze the significant changes with colon cancer trends in both rural and urban areas on the same chart (squares are rural, and circles are urban). The software also allows for the data to be collected in charts and forms as seen in Figure 8.

Figure 7:

Figure 8:

After analyzing the data, Whitney can then publish the research findings to share with the wider public health field. She has submitted numerous academic publications about the disparities of access to care and health resources. Additionally, she also presents at conferences both virtually and in person. For the virtual meetings, they often record the presentation ahead of time and then use Zoom or Webex to share the edited video with conference attendees. The lead researchers and co-authors are then available to chat with participants and address any questions about the information.

When developing presentations, Whitney often communicates through email, such as Outlook, and publishes using tools from the Microsoft Suite. When there are multiple authors on a paper or presentation, they can share the documents through OneDrive. Through OneDrive she can keep some of the files private or make them public to share with her co-authors (see Figure 9).

Figure 9:

By using a tool such as OneDrive, which can sync the work of all collaborators, each researcher can add information to the presentation and the details will be automatically updated for the other participants. For example, on one of her projects, Whitney worked with co-presenters who were based in Indiana and South Carolina while she was in Iowa (See Figure 10). While there are faculty, staff, and students she works with in the office, she is also able to communicate and collaborate nationally to share the knowledge and ideas they have found through their shared research.

Figure 10:

When asked about how she collects the data to analyze, Whitney explained many of the files can be obtained through the National Cancer Institute or through websites housing federal government reports. Most of the files are available as data reports which can be downloaded and imported into the software, such as Joinpoint, for analysis. For journal articles, she primarily uses PubMed. However, she also keeps current with articles published in academic public health journals. She also uses Google Scholar and library websites to initially find articles about an area of research.

She then uses Mendeley Desktop and Mendeley Web as a reference manager (See Figure 11). She can save bibliographic information, pdf files of research articles, and websites she needs to reference for the future. Mendeley also provides her with a plug-in to use with MSWord where she can use the cursor to insert the citation depending on the format or insert a reference at the end of the paper. There is also a Google Chrome extension which she can use to save the references from the browser as she discovers them. While there are other platforms for curating references, such as Endnote and Zotero, she found her colleagues were using Mendeley at the time, so it was beneficial to be using the same platform for her research.

Figure 11:

In addition to following research trends in public health journals, she also keeps up to date with publications and information via Twitter. She can share publications, reach a broader audience, and highlight her students who have received awards. In this way, she can keep up with the literature by following journal accounts, professional organizations, and stay abreast of conferences to see what people are currently doing. She also listens to a variety of podcasts on rural health and academia using the Apple podcast app.

In the classroom with her students, she uses the platform ICON, a Canvas based program developed by the University of Iowa, to provide a virtual space for her students (See Figure 12). She is considering ways in which she can integrate technology both synchronously and asynchronously as she wants to encourage students to participate and find their voice within the classroom.

Figure 12:

For in-person instruction, she has access to overhead projectors and monitors and the typical devices found in an academic setting. In her office, she prefers to have two desktop monitors for analyzing the data. One for the data and literature, and one monitor to use for writing and creation. While working remotely, she has a laptop which requires using Alt + Tab to move between screens. However, other aspects of remote work have worked well as they have used Zoom for virtual meetings.

The use of technology to continue to assist in collaboration has been helpful as she works with faculty, staff, and students. She is also able to continue partnering with the expert work group at the Rural Health Research Center which includes experts from academic hospital settings and other rural health care capacities outside of academia. She has also been able to join the board of the Iowa Rural Health Association to work with hospitals, consultants, and state public health care workers. By using technology to stay connected and involved with these and other organizations such as the National Health Institute, she can partner with a global audience to share her research and work towards better health care access for all communities.

In observing, Whitney’s socio-technological practices in the field of research, one can see how new digital literacies are multimodal. She continuously interweaves data, visuals, images, and text to analyze and create meaning. As described in Roblyer’s Chapter 9 “Teaching and Learning with Technology in English and Language Arts,” educators need to consider these multiple literacies in order to help students become successful navigators of information and critical thinkers. Educators should consider the implications of visual and interactive tools to assist with communicating ideas. Additionally, students should be given opportunities to collaborate on research and present their ideas with authentic audiences. By honing these research skills, students will be able to critically examine information and promote social change.

The implications for teaching based on the Whitney’s socio-technological practices are that students need to understand “digital literacies” and need to learn to use multiple forms of media to communicate information in a variety of ways. For example, students should be able to communication ideas visually to tell a story. They could do this by creating a story map which could include “text, videos, images, sounds, animations, and interactive elements” as discussed in Roblyer’s Chapter 9 (p. 261). Additionally, students need to be able to “seek meaning across a range of media” as Whitney does through the creation of story maps, graphs, charts, and written texts. Furthermore, they need to be able to create meaning from the data to visualize trends and communicate those needs to communities.

As educators, we need to prepare students to be able to communicate and share their ideas with individuals and authentic audiences just as Whitney collaborates on projects, publications, and presents at in-person and virtual conferences. This collaborate piece is an important element for students to develop as they learn to work and relate with one another to co-author and create. In creating and collaborating, students will also need to develop “critical thinking skills to determine the accuracy, reliability, and bias of the information sources” (p. 265).

By working with content area teachers, librarians can provide instruction which goes beyond the “one-shot” library session and work to help students use technology to process the information and think about it in new ways (p. 265). Students can engage with technology to see trends, influence the way in which individuals think about a topic, and evaluate discrepancies and significant change. By enabling students to communicate, collaborate, and think about information in new ways, the new digital literacies will allow students to become analytical researchers who can effectively evaluate information. By integrating lessons to support the development of these socio-technological practices used in the disciplinary field, students can become “knowledge-able.”