“Wanted: Some Black Long Distance [Writers]”: Blackboard Flava-Flavin and other AfroDigital experiences in the classroom

This essay examines how students of African descent at a predominantly black college on the East Coast digitally perform their ethnic identities and rhetorics in a freshman composition course. The essay begins by showing how multiple uses of signifying frame students’ Blackboard discussions where they use a type of trickster motif to enact their agreements, disagreements, challenges, and questions, very much akin to Flava Flav's initial cultural role as part of the Rap/activist group, Public Enemy. Students’ online writing groups are then examined by focusing on one particular group, the “Black Long Distance Writers,” whose title signifies and signals the work of the African American writer and activist, John Oliver Killens, most notably, his seminal 1973 essay, “Wanted: Some Black Long Distance Runners.” The understandings of these “Black Long Distance Writers” bear the most powerful definition of literacy and computer-based writing instruction because their framework is not contingent upon making digitally divided minorities more technologically advanced and better at one type of English, its culture of power, or its academic discourses. Instead, these students experience rhetoric and writing as a way to alter the ways that knowledge is constructed for them and about them, “revocabularizing” the academy and its technologies. Such freshman writers are re-envisioned in this kind of cyberspace as constructors of and co-participants in black intellectual and rhetorical traditions … now AfroDigitized.     

Why Teachers Must Learn: Student Innovation as a Driving Factor in the Future of the Web

User innovation is the key to the development and vitality of technology. As Huatong Sun wrote, “expanding the scope of localization practices and linking user localization efforts” to design cycles—including pedagogical design—will help bridge the gap between what teachers/designers create and what skills users/students need and want. This article theorizes the role of modern composition students and teachers as co-constructors of productive spaces for learning critical inquiry based on students’ statuses as digital natives. It focuses on a class of first-year composition students who reshaped an assignment to fit their own needs within the physical classroom and also enacted a shift to a virtual classroom. While doing so, they provided ways for each class member to individualize space within that digital environment, and they focused their project on examining the ways in which social networking forums colonize their daily lives. This article argues that by letting student innovation drive pedagogical practice—just as social media creators let user innovation drive the digital structures they produce—composition teachers can be assured of having a text for critique that blurs the lines between “private” student underlife and “public” classroom practice and legitimizes the creation of student-produced learning spaces. Using critical and cyberfeminist theories as lenses, this article draws conclusions about the future of computer usage in composition pedagogy based on students’ abilities to re-appropriate physical and digital classroom space.     

WritingResearchWriting: The Semantic Web and the Future of the Research Project

In this essay, I explore one advancement in particular—the Semantic Web—and discuss ways in which it stands to change students’ interaction with information in digital spaces, and how new forms of interaction could impact the teaching of writing. I go back to the earliest days of the Web in order to remind readers how information retrieval has evolved in the digital age. I also provide a general discussion of the vision, current state, and possible futures of the Semantic Web, and I focus on how the Semantic Web might alter the research process and, more importantly, the research-writing relationship. I also offer suggestions for teaching composition in advance of and for the Semantic Web. Although the Semantic Web is still several years off, I contend that research and writing will merge into a single process, thus presenting new opportunities for the teaching of writing then and, perhaps more importantly, now. These opportunities include helping students to identify the challenges of information retrieval and overload, to see research as more about establishing links and connections between information sources and less about finding the “right” sources, and to write for the Semantic Web—and, in doing so, teach students that researching and writing are inseparable.     

Pragmatism,connectionism and the internet: A mind’s perfect storm

This paper explores that natural relationships between Pragmatic theory of knowing, the dynamic structuring of the mind and thinking suggested by connectionist theory, and the way information is distributed and organized through the world wide web (www). We suggest that these three “innovations” can be brought together to offer a better understanding of the way the human mind works. The internet and the information revolution may finally offer the opportunity to use and develop inductive learning practices and information based social inquiry in ways Pragmatic philosophers envisioned a hundred years ago, while the recent rise of connectionist and cognitive architecture works provides a concrete context for such developments. This confluence of process represents the type of synergy that only history can offer. The information revolution – exemplified by both the rise of connectionism and the internet – is the apotheosis of the Pragmatic revolution – bringing together radical empiricism and democratization of information in community practice. We offer three important realizations in our understanding of how information is organized and thinking progresses made possible by burgeoning virtual communities on the internet – open source thinking, scale-free networks, and interrelationships in the development of blogs to illustrate our thesis.     

Paying attention to adult learners online: The pedagogy and politics of community

Our article profiles the evolution of a fully online writing course designed for adult learners in our university's Prior Learning Assessment Program. Based on our own observations and experiences teaching adult learners online, we question if the virtual learning environment presents different challenges and prospects for the adult learner versus the traditional student learner, along with an extension and complication of the more social metaphors of “virtual community.” Moreover, because of the changing demographic from traditional to adult students, we argue that this change also fosters a change in the relationship between teachers and students. In chronicling this relationship, we note problems when the labor of adult education becomes invisible to those supervising online instructors. Because of these “invisible” labor issues, we argue that successful online instruction must include a range of interactions between students and instructors that extend the more public concept of community to better acknowledge the importance of personal, private interaction. Thus, we conclude with a call to rethink our online writing pedagogies to be more flexible to adult learner needs and learning styles, simultaneously recognizing the impact of adult online education on faculty workload.     

awaywithwords: On the possibilities in unavailable designs

Constraints in our use of communication materials are often socially and historically produced; to ask after the constraints as we teach or compose can help us understand how material choices in producing communications articulate to social practices we may not otherwise wish to reproduce. In this writing, I consider the constraints Gunther Kress often applied to “word” and “image,” questioning their temporal and spatial structures.     

What is Humanistic about Computers and Writing? Historical Patterns and Contemporary Possibilities for the Field

Given the status of Ellen W. Nold's “Fear and Trembling: The Humanist Approaches the Computer” (1975) as one of the first articles published in computers and writing, it may be said that the relationship between computers and the humanities has organized the field since its inception. In this article, I trace ways in which scholars have described that relationship in answering the implicit question of “what is humanistic about computers and writing?” from 1975 to present. The rhetorical positioning of the field vis-à-vis the question has evolved as shifts toward postmodern and social epistemologies in English studies, coupled with social and cultural trends catalyzed by new technologies, have challenged traditional humanities parameters. The resulting new spaces for humanistic argument have emboldened scholars in computers and writing to claim a more significant role in an emerging production-driven model of the humanities. This model is organized around an emphasis on electronic literacy, which has (1) disrupted the printed book's status as the central object of inquiry within the academy and, (2) importantly and concurrently, gained social and economic currency outside of it. In combination, these changes in social and academic contexts offer computers and writing an opportunity to embrace a more central role in the humanities than at any time in its history.     

Prompting authentic blogging practice in an online graduate course

Blogging is characterized by an individual exploration of ideas of personal interest through frequent online posts, documenting ideas as they emerge over time. Community emerges as bloggers read and link across blogs, based on shared interests. Blogs have gained acceptance in higher education for a variety of instructional activities, among which, reflective journal writing is popular. In this study, we examine a project in which blogs were implemented within an online graduate course in order to create opportunities for students to reflect on their academic, professional and personal interests, with the goal of establishing consistent blogging that exhibits the timely, frequent and interest-driven practices of blogging practices outside educational contexts. Students enrolled in an online graduate course maintained individual blogs in which they were prompted to write about their interests and experiences as graduate students. Through an analysis of the patterns of prompt use and blog content, as well as data from a post-course survey and an online discussion, we explore how to support student engagement with blogging practice within an educational setting. Findings suggest that frequency of writing, topic resonance with the students own interests, and the timeliness of entries were key factors in scaffolding writing that aligns with blogging practice. By focusing on writing as characterized by authentic blogging practice, this study contributes to an understanding of how to harness the unique communicative elements of the blog in post-secondary settings.     

Uses of a private “virtual margin” on public threaded discussions: An exploratory lab-based study

Threaded discussion environments are commonly used to support educational dialogue; however their interfaces do not directly support the private work that students do to interpret and prepare responses to public postings. We examine the use of a private “virtual margin” added to an existing threaded discussion environment via a proxy server architecture. This margin area provided users with their own private writing space adjacent to the public space, allowing persistent annotations both on individual posts and indexes to posts. Unprompted uses of the system were examined in an exploratory lab-based study. Four graduate students completed an assignment designed to be authentic to typical course work, in which they reviewed a set of posts made by other students and developed at least one new post that would contribute to the group’s understanding of the course material. We discuss the unprompted uses made of the virtual margin during participants’ completion of this task, and discuss what these uses suggest about the potential for private marginalia to contribute to students’ learning via public threaded discussions.     

Public Writing in Gaming Spaces

Although recent composition scholarship has focused on public writing and civic participation, classroom practices do not (yet) seem to match the theory. This trend should not indicate, though, that public writing is not being done—rather that we may have to look beyond the classroom to see our students participating in it. “Public Writing in Gaming Spaces” argues that the writing computer gamers do in and for their online communities is not only directed to clearly definable audiences and with specific purposes, but also has the potential to institute real, measurable change within gaming communities and the larger gaming industry. What is more, unlike conventional academic spaces and workspaces, the playspace in which gamers write is comprised of textual exchange that is self-motivated; the writers themselves collaboratively construct them. “Gamer-authors” ultimately discover that they are agents who have the power, through writing, to shape the electronic worlds—games and other online spaces—they regularly inhabit, putting into sharp relief how writing does, in fact, matter. It can institute change.     

Constructing essentialism: Computers and Composition and the “‘risk’ of essence”

Feminist authors in Computers and Composition have generally favored social constructionist approaches to identity, yet a subtle reliance on essentialist assumptions about women (sometimes tied directly to the body) still exists. In order to explore this phenomenon, I rely on the theories of Diana Fuss and Elizabeth Grosz to unpack the essentialist/constructionist binary. Then, relying on Laura Brady's explication of “strategic” and “tactical” deployments of essentialism in composition studies, I discuss two previous articles in Computers and Composition that successfully negotiated issues of women's identity partly through essentialist assumptions. The ways in which the articles under discussion here essentialized teenage girls become stepping stones toward a reconstruction of girls’ identities. Thus, although essentialism can be problematic, feminists interested in writing and technology can still take what Diana Fuss calls a “‘risk’ of essence” to further feminist goals.     

Contending with Terms: “Multimodal” and “Multimedia” in the Academic and Public Spheres

Scholars have begun naming and defining terms that describe the multifaceted kinds of composing practices occurring in their classrooms and scholarship. This paper analyzes the terms “multimedia” and “multimodal,” examining how each term has been defined and presenting examples of documents, surveys, web sites and others to show when and how each term is used in both academic and non-academic/industry contexts. This paper shows that rather than the use of these terms being driven by any difference in their definitions, their use is more contingent upon the context and the audience to whom a particular discussion is being directed. While “multimedia” is used more frequently in public/industry contexts, “multimodal” is preferred in the field of composition and rhetoric. This preference for terms can be best explained by understanding the differences in how texts are valued and evaluated in these contexts. “Multimodal” is a term valued by instructors because of its emphasis on design and process, whereas “multimedia” is valued in the public sphere because of its emphasis on the production of a deliverable text. Ultimately, instructors need to continue using both terms in their teaching and scholarship because although “multimodal” is a term that is more theoretically accurate to describe the cognitive and socially situated choices students are making in their compositions, “multimedia” works as a gateway term for instructors and scholars to interface with those outside of academia in familiar and important ways.     

The effect of an information ethics course on the information ethics values of students - A Chinese guanxi culture perspective

The development of information technology has a significant influence on social structure and norms, and also impacts upon human behavior. In order to achieve stability and social harmony, people need to respect various norms, and have their rights protected. Students’ information ethics values are of critical and radical importance in achieving this goal. Using qualitative approach, the present study utilizes Kohlberg’s CMD model to measure improvement in students’ “information ethics values” through “technology mediated learning (TML)” models, and to assess the extent to which it is influenced by gender and Chinese guanxi culture. We find that while e-learning improves female students’ “respect rules,” “privacy,” “accessibility” and “intellectual property” values more than male students, the percentages relating to “intellectual property” for females in the higher stages remain lower than for males. Moreover, these results are interpreted from a Chinese guanxi culture perspective. In light of these results, educators should take account of such improvements when designing effective teaching methods and incentives.     

Integrating word processing skills with revision skills

Many teachers hoped that word processing would encourage students to take greater risks and make more structural changes in their writing. Unfortunately, research has shown this has not been the case. To revise at the structural level, novice writers need to develop skills closer to those that expert writers possess — the abilities to detect, diagnose, and remedy problems within their writing. This article suggests that integrating generic word processing functions with revising strategies can help students develop these skills. The methods described in this article help novice writers establish a repertoire of revising strategies that, while not expert, certainly move them beyond the novice stage. At the same time, these methods encourage students to rely less on peer and teacher intervention for detecting, diagnosing, and remedying structural problems. Students begin to internalize revising strategies that they can use independently.Erna Kelly is an Associate Professor of English and the Technical Writing Internship Director at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Her research interests include computers and writing, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature, and emblem books. One of her more recent publications, Processing Words and Writing Instructions, appeared in Writing At Century's End, New York: Random House, 1987.Donna Raleigh heads the Academic Computing Center's User Services unit at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. She teaches courses in the Computer Science and the English Departments and researches the effects of writing with a word processor. In May, 1989, she presented The Effects of Word Processing Experience on the Revising Strategies of Inexperienced Writers at the Fifth Computers and Writing Conference.     

Writing, technologies, and the fifth canon

Andrea Lunsford's keynote address to the 2005 Computers and Writing Conference at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, expands the definition of writing to include epistemic, multivocal, multimodal, and multimediated practices in the computers and writing classroom. The article describes the development and piloting of a new undergraduate course in Stanford's Program in Writing and Rhetoric that applies these concepts to the undergraduate composition process. The address closes with a challenge to create classroom experiences that allow students to compose in “the most compelling discursive modalities of their generation”.     

The educational affordances of blogs for self-directed learning

To be successful university learners, students need to develop skills in self-directed learning. This encompasses a range of cognitive and meta-cognitive skills including generating one’s own learning goals, planning how to tackle a problem, evaluating whether learning goals have been met, and re-planning based on this evaluation. The educational affordances of blogs offer opportunities for students to become self-directed learners in a supportive social environment. Based on qualitative analysis of design diaries written by 113 computer science students about a creative project, this paper presents a framework of the ways in which blogging activities can assist groups of students and their teachers in the development of a range of cognitive, social and self-directed learning skills. Although the students in this study used the commenting feature of blogs effectively for the purpose of praising and encouraging their peers, and giving hints and tips for solving problems, they did not coach each other on higher order skills. The paper discusses how this could be achieved in order to extend the educational value of blogging within a university learning community.     

“Always a shadow of hope”: Heteronormative binaries in an online discussion of sexuality and sexual orientation

In this article, I examine an asynchronous online discussion about sexuality that lasted for several weeks and involved students at three different universities, seven of whom I interviewed. Although issues of gay rights and alliance groups were brought up, students focused primarily on the causes of homosexuality and whether homosexuality is natural or not, with one student insistently posting that homosexuality is unnatural because same-sex couples cannot experience “true love-making.” On one level the focus on the causes and naturalness of homosexuality (with few references to heterosexuality) reinforced the heteronormative binaries that often structure thinking and discussions about sexuality, a reinforcement that I initially found disheartening. However, in many ways I came to realize that this online thread still served important academic and personal purposes for students despite and because of being situated in binaries. Drawing from my reading of the posts and from discourse-based interviews with participants, I show that online discussions developed around heteronormative binaries can serve as catalysts for movement in students’ thinking about complex issues and that online spaces in particular are valuable forums for students to articulate and then complicate their understandings of issues relating to sexuality and sexual orientation.     

The future of rational-critical debate in online public spheres

This paper discusses the role of blogs, wikis, and online discussion boards in enabling rational-critical debate. I will use the work of Jürgen Habermas to explain why wikis, blogs, and online bulletin boards are all potentially valuable tools for the creation and maintenance of a critical public sphere. Habermas’ story ends on a sad note; the public writing environments he argues were so essential to the formation of a critical public sphere failed as commercialism and mass media diminished the role of the community and private persons. Unfortunately, the Internet will likely suffer a similar fate if we do not take action to preserve its inherently democratic and decentralized architecture. Here, I describe the integral role that blogs, wikis, and discussion boards play in fostering public discussion and ways they can be incorporated into college composition courses.     

Feminism asks the “Who” questions in HCI

In this brief personal essay, I describe some of the ways that feminism has influenced my life as a researcher and practitioner in HCI and CSCW - in the creation of work to be read by others, in the critical reading of works that were created by others, and in the planning and framing of practical work in enterprise workplaces. I discuss three variations of “Who” questions that feminism helps us to ask in HCI: The “who” of the identity of the user; the “who” of the identity of organizational actors; and the “who” of the practitioner or researcher.