Dr. Olin Bjork
Dr. Olin Bjork
Associate Professor of Technical Communication - BTSC Degree & Internship CoordinatorEnglishBiography
Olin Bjork is an Associate Professor of Technical Communication in the Department of English at the University of Houston-Downtown, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the BSTC and MSTC programs respectively. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. in English from the University of California at Los Angeles. He began teaching at UHD in 2013 after completing a three-year lectureship at Santa Clara University and prior to that a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Bjork's research investigates and evaluates interface designs and multimedia supplements for digital educational resources and electronic editions of literary works and textbooks. While completing his dissertation, he worked as technical editor for electronic "audiotext" editions of John Milton's Paradise Lost and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. His scholarly work also explores the history of information technology, the writings of John Milton, and the present and potential intersections between the fields of digital humanities, technical communication, and rhetoric and composition, both in theory and in pedagogy.
Degrees Earned
Ph.D., English (concentration in Computers and English), University of Texas at Austin,
2008
M.A., English, University of Texas at Austin, 2000
B.A., English, University of California Los Angeles, 1993
Courses Taught
TCOM 3302 Business and Technical Writing
TCOM 3326 Proposal Writing
ENG/TCOM 3327 Visual Rhetoric and Literacy
TCOM 3330 Desktop Publishing
TCOM 3334 Writing for Presentation
TCOM 3335 Publishing for the Web
TCOM 3338 Introduction to Usability
ENG 3347 Early Modern British Literature and Culture
ENG/TCOM 3349 Rhetoric of Technology
TCOM 4308 Plain Language in Government, Medical, and Business Writing
ENG/TCOM 4339 Video Game Story Writing
TCOM 5330 Visual Design Theory
TCOM 6322 Instructional Design
TCOM 6323 Communications and Technology
TCOM 6328 Hypermedia Theory and Design
Experience Qualifications
Dr. Bjork has a Ph.D. in English with a concentration in Computers and English, an M.A. in English, and a Certificate in Elements of Computing, all from UT-Austin. His dissertation was on the print and digital editing of an early modern poem: John Milton's Paradise Lost. He has worked as a developer and technical editor of digital editions of Paradise Lost and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, which were funded by instructional technology grants for which he co-wrote the proposals. Dr. Bjork has published articles and chapters on Paradise Lost, digital media development, and teaching with technology. He has graduate coursework in early modern literature, media studies, theories of technology, and computers and writing. As a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech, he attended a weekly seminar on technical communication. Prior to coming to UHD, he taught courses on digital media and professional/technical writing at Georgia Tech and at Santa Clara University. While at UHD, he has received an ORCA grant for his research on verbal redundancy in online audiotext lectures. With the help of UHD faculty development grants, he has completed week-long courses on "Accessibility and Digital Environments" and "The Frontend: Modern JavaScript & CSS Development" at the University of Victoria's Digital Humanities Summer Institute.
More Information
Publications
"Selfridge's Milton: The Legacy of Pand(a)emonium in Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence." Journal of Literature and Science 11.2 (December 2018): 1-19, www.literatureandscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/BJORK-FINAL.pdf
"The Heresy of Argument: Milton's Essential Paradise Lost." Milton Quarterly 52.2 (May 2018): 95-112.
[with John Rumrich] "'Is there a Class in this Audiotext?': Paradise Lost and the Multimodal Social Edition." Digital Milton, edited by David Currell and Islam Issa, Palgrave, 2018, pp. 47-76.
"Digital Humanities and the First-Year Writing Course." Digital Humanities Pedagogy: Practices, Principles and Politics, edited by Brett Hirsch, Open Book Publishers, 2012, pp. 97-119. www.openbookpublishers.com/product/161.
"Reinventing the Classroom Edition: Paradise Lost Book IX Flash Audiotext." Digital Humanities Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 3, Summer 2009, www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/3/3/000056.html.
[with John Pedro Schwartz] "Writing in the Wild: A Paradigm for Mobile Composition." Going Wireless: A Critical Exploration of Wireless and Mobile Technologies for Composition Teachers and Researchers, edited by Amy C. Kimme Hea, Hampton Press, 2009, pp. 223-237.
[Located illustrations] William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon, editors. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton. Modern Library, 2007.
"Commentary on 'Visual Literacy.'" Romantic Pedagogy Commons, Dec. 2004.
"MOO Bots." Computer Writing and Research Lab White Papers Series, 5 May 2004, https://www.dwrl.utexas.edu/old/content/moo-bots.html.
"'Hell wasn't built in a day': Taking the Long View on Multimedia Development." Currents in Electronic Literacy, vol. 6, Spring 2002, currents.dwrl.utexas.edu/spring02/bjork.html.