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Black Box Micro-Engagements

Technology as a site of entanglement​

In Research to Story (RTS), inquiry does not end when you find ideas. It moves into your hands, your tools, your friction, your improvisations. Methods are not disembodied instructions; they are practices carried out in time, requiring effort, judgment, and skill. Editing audio is not the same as running a statistical regression, but both are methodological acts that generate knowledge. Here, making and meaning are part of the same journey. Calling the cluster of technologies surrounding research communication “just tools” is one of those facts that is as uninteresting as it is meaningless. Putting software in students’ hands is not the same as integration. But tools don’t integrate themselves. They require redesign, practice, support, time.

Every act of using technology involves a worlded-knot of relations: the software’s interface, the tacit skills of the user, the expectations of an audience, the material constraints of time, space, and equipment. A podcast episode or an audio essay is both anchored in this world and emerges from this entanglement within it. To describe technology as “just a tool” overlooks this dense interplay. The entanglement is where meaning is made. So some core messages for the learner “baked into” RTS include:

  • You are building the habits that make inquiry livable, sustainable, and shareable.
  • This is about realizing there is no black box.
  • Every tool you use, from search engines to editing software to AI models , is made of choices you can learn to see, question, and work with.
  • Understanding how tools operate is part of the creative process itself, opening new ways to shape, adapt, and refine your work with greater intention and agency.

How BBMEs Fit Into RTS​

Black Box Micro-Engagements can appear throughout multiple RTS Movements.

Each BBME is a stand-alone activity, but also part of a cumulative system:

  • Submissions and metadata are stored in Supabase (bbme_submissions, bbme_ai_synthesis)
  • Prompts are dynamically assigned by movement or course (bbme_prompts, bbme_course_availability)
  • AI-powered syntheses can optionally be generated for reflection, feedback, and long-term tracking.

Building with Others

  • All makers encounter friction.
  • Friction is part of the story.
  • All thinkers draw on networks.  
  • Relation is part of the story.
  • Your solutions are part of your story.
  • Problem-solving is part of the story.
  • Honor the voices and resources that helped you move forward.

Summary Definition​

Within each RTS Movement, Black Box Micro-Engagements are small, low-stakes encounters that invite students to experience technology as more than “just tools.” Each task introduces friction, improvisation, reflection, and relational acknowledgment, while surfacing digital organization as a scholarly practice. These micro-engagements function as laboratories of entanglement and disclosure: students come to see that research communication emerges from an ecosystem of tools, habits, and relations, and that every technical choice both reveals and conceals possibilities. By framing production as a way of thinking-through, BBMEs reinforce that making is inquiry. An outcome can be an earned technical confidence but also the cultivation of lived methods that constitute pedagogical, relational, and methodological practices that carry into larger projects, larger relations.

Philosophy​

Black Box Micro-Engagements rest on the conviction that technology is never “just a tool.” Each encounter with media is a way of thinking-through, a disclosure of possibilities, a pedagogy in action, and a lived method.

  • Thinking-through: Making is one way we deliver our ideas and a continuation of them. Editing, layering, and remixing are intellectual acts that reshape understanding.
  • Entanglement: Every task unfolds within a knot of relations of interfaces, tacit skills, audiences, infrastructures, and constraints. Students learn to notice these relations rather than imagine tools as neutral carriers.
  • Disclosure: Tools reveal certain dimensions of the world and hide others. Seeing what tools disclose, and conceal, becomes part of inquiry.
  • Pedagogy in action: BBMEs are not framed as a way to prepare for learning; they are learning. Each micro-assignment enacts pedagogy through practice, showing that the lesson is not behind the tool but through it.
  • Lived method: Technical acts like saving files, citing sources, acknowledging help, organizing assets are more than side skills. They are the lived methods of research storytelling, embodied and situated.

Purpose and Outcomes​

By completing these cumulative micro-engagements, students will:

  • Experience technology as a medium of thought, where making reshapes research questions and insights.
  • Recognize each tool as part of an entangled system of people, infrastructures, and practices, and learn to navigate that system reflectively.
  • Develop sensitivity to the ways technologies disclose and obscure aspects of meaning, and practice articulating those dynamics.
  • Participate in pedagogy through action, where small production tasks themselves become sites of inquiry and discovery.
  • Build habits of lived method, including technical resilience, relational acknowledgment, digital stewardship, and ethical citation practices.
  • Normalize friction and improvisation as integral to learning, rather than as distractions or failures.
  • Prepare themselves to carry these relational, methodological habits into larger research communication projects, sustaining inquiry as a social, situated, and material process.

⠀ Design Principles​

  • Start with thinking-through: Early tasks show how even simple acts (recording a short clip) shape ideas and perspectives. Making is framed as a continuation of research thinking.
  • Build relational awareness: Each task draws attention to the knot of relations (interface, body, audience, infrastructure) so students reflect on technology as embedded practice.
  • Surface disclosure: Prompts invite students to ask what a tool makes visible, what it hides, and how those limits shape their work.
  • Enact pedagogy in action: Micro-engagements are themselves lessons. Reflection and help-seeking are as central as output. Success is measured in awareness, not too focused on polish.
  • Normalize lived methods: Archiving files, acknowledging help, and citing sources are treated as core scholarly habits practiced in miniature.
  • Layer complexity gradually: Begin with single-step recordings, then add remixing, layering, or external sources. Complexity grows alongside reflective depth.
  • Value friction as generative: Tasks are designed to spark moments of surprise, frustration, and improvisation, treating these as sites of real learning.
  • Honor relation as story: Students record how they reached beyond themselves—friends, tutorials, staff—and recognize inquiry as fundamentally social.

Structure of Each Micro-Engagement​

Each micro-engagement includes:

Action Step​

A small hands-on audio task (e.g., record a 30-second summary, layer two audio sources together, edit a basic transition).

Personal Reflection​

A brief reflection on:

  • What tools were used,
  • What frustrations or surprises emerged,
  • How problems were approached, solved, or reframed.

Relational Reflection​

An acknowledgment of:

  • What outside resource(s) or person(s) the student turned to (e.g., YouTube tutorial, TikTok video, roommate, library staff member),
  • How that external help shaped their approach or solution.

Source Documentation​

A brief citation, description, or link for any external resources or human help — reinforcing scholarly ethics and the relational nature of inquiry.

Suggested Prompts for Instructors​

Here are a few ways instructors have adapted BBMEs for course-specific learning:

  • Intro to Podcasting: Record a 30-second voice intro using phone mic. Reflect on setup friction and environment.
  • Critical Making: Combine a sound clip from class with one from TikTok. Reflect on format constraints and remix ethics.
  • Media & Society: Edit two audio files together and reflect on what editing choices were intuitive vs. difficult.

Each prompt includes space for documenting tools used, help received, and decisions made.

Why "Relational Reflection" Matters​

Each Black Box Micro-Engagement in RTS includes a Relational Reflection field, inviting students to document not only what they created, but how they reached beyond themselves to solve problems, find guidance, or learn new techniques.

This practice serves several interconnected pedagogical purposes:

  • It demystifies "originality", emphasizing that scholarly and creative work is fundamentally relational, collaborative, and situated within networks of influence and support.
  • It normalizes help-seeking as a critical skill of inquiry, not a weakness.
  • It prepares students for scholarly ethics by gently introducing the practice of acknowledgment and informal citation, even for everyday acts of learning and making.
  • It reinforces the RTS philosophy that inquiry is about reframing questions as much as it is about finding answers and that so-called "tools" are just another way to engage with the world through asking, searching, listening, adapting.

In the Black Box Micro-Engagements, documenting outside influences becomes part of the story of inquiry itself and helps students see that every act of making is also an act of relation.

Digital Organization and Archiving Practices​

In addition to demystifying tools, Black Box Micro-Engagements also provide early, low-stakes opportunities for students to practice the habits of personal digital archiving and organization that are essential for sustainable creative research.

In research storytelling, whether podcasts, video essays, or multimodal scholarly projects. students must:

  • Source materials ethically,
  • Save and organize assets reliably,
  • Attribute sources clearly,
  • Retrieve media elements for editing and remixing across platforms.

These practices are often invisible but crucial. Without these habits, inquiry risks collapsing into lost files, rushed production, or broken citations. RTS provides a prompt-based surface for learners to recognize, reflect on, and iterate these invisible literacies over time.

Black Box Micro-Engagements invite students to begin building rhetorical and technical habits of:

  • Saving files intentionally,
  • Tracking source information immediately,
  • Documenting creative decisions along the way,
  • Acknowledging and participating in the relational and infrastructural nature of media creation.

By normalizing digital organization at the micro level, RTS prepares students to work more skillfully, ethically, and relationally at the macro level when their full research stories come together.

Progression Across Movements:​

Tasks gradually increase in complexity, from solo voice recordings, to mixing found audio, to creating small audio maps and synthetic remix artifacts, always reinforcing process, relation, and stewardship.

Technical Note:​

Micro-engagement outputs and reflections are saved relationally and can be used to scaffold synthesis checkpoints and a final synthesis or visualize the evolution of technical and rhetorical growth.

Longer-Term Vision​

By the completion of all RTS Movements, students will have accumulated a layered archive of:

  • Technical skill encounters,
  • Friction and improvisation experiences,
  • Help-seeking and relational documentation practices,
  • Personal digital stewardship and media management strategies.

🤔💭 ## More Reflection Prompts

Additional Prompts
  • How might some friction actually generate new creative ideas?
  • What would it mean to approach technical difficulty as part of your story-building, not a detour from it?
  • What myths or fantasies about technology are you carrying into production?
  • How might learning the tools imperfectly still empower your final work?
  • What kinds of labor go into making a tool “usable” and who performs that labor?
  • Are there people or communities whose voices are excluded by certain systems?
  • What do tools make visible and what do they hide?
  • How might you “read” a tool the same way you’d analyze a text?
  • If you could redesign one tool you’ve used, what would you change?

#rts/docs/blackbox updated 9/5/25