Trusting the Electronic Edition

This paper discusses the contested role of images in electronic editions, and summarizes some of the chief arguments for their inclusion. I then argue that, to truly determine the importance of images to the function of electronic editions, we must understand the contribution the image makes to the form of textual knowledge provided by the edition. I suggest a distinction between editions which are primarily pedagogical in their aims, those which aim above all at scholarly authority, and those which attempt to provide textual information as high-quality data which can be analysed and processed. I conclude that the latter represents the most significant future trend in electronic editing. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Sexualities, technologies, and the teaching of writing: A critical overview

In this introduction to a special issue of Computers and Composition, the authors critically review current literature on computer-assisted writing pedagogies that grapple with issues of sexuality. Although this body of work is small, it points to provocative ways to develop our students’ critical and rhetorical sensibilities about the constructions of sexuality in our culture. Further, such work innovatively addresses the place of networked communication technologies in the interrogation of such constructions. The authors conclude with both an introduction of the work in this special issue that addresses the intersection of sexuality studies and computer-assisted writing studies and with a call for additional work in this field.     

《数据库原理及应用——SQL SVRVER 2000》课程的实践探索

高职高专院校的课程(特别是计算机软件类的课程)教学中,常见问题及处理对策。以及开展的教学活动,主要采用项目驱动教学方法,通过具体的项目开发,培养学生综合实践能力。     

A case study of developing ICT-supported pedagogy through a collegial practice transfer process

A collegial practice transfer process between more- and less-experienced teachers was examined in two cases that sought to encourage teachers to use information and communication technology (ICT) in a pedagogically meaningful way. Collegial practice transfer aims to offer new models for in-service teacher training. The process included guiding sessions, training materials presenting authentic pedagogical examples, and try-outs in the classroom. The success of practice transfer was examined through comparing the classroom practices of more- and less-experienced teachers applying the Pedagogical Infrastructure Framework, and through analyzing the tutored teachers' self-reported experiences in interviews. The process provided flexible support and gave self-confidence to the less-experienced teachers. Technology use was successful, but the tutored teachers designed less coherent tasks and weaker support for pupils' collaboration, knowledge construction and metacognition than their more-experienced colleagues. When tutoring, underlying educational ideologies and reasons should be explicated in addition to practical issues of classroom orchestration and technology use.     

Tuning the Sonic Playing Field: Teaching Ways of Knowing Sound in First Year Writing

In recent years there has been a call within composition to include sound, among other modes, such as word and image in writing. Some of this call relies on a movement to multimodal composition in order to capture both the richness of rhetorical possibility and the reality of communities of practice, and some is in response to a perceived shift in writing due to digital media tools and environments. Regardless of the impetus for including the auditory realm in the composition classroom, it is important for the field of composition and rhetoric to develop further pedagogies of sound so that students are not simply offered the opportunity to produce diverse texts, but instead, are invited to enter “the playing field.” In order to do this I first explore an approach to teaching auditory rhetoric based on ways of knowing sound from an acoustics and musicology perspective, then I consider a phenomenological approach based on listening, and finally I construct a model of “tuning the sonic playing field” that draws on the literal, material practice of tuning as a metaphor for how sound may be taught in composition. The “tuning” approach to teaching sound draws on attention, embodiment, listening, and negotiation. Rather than simply offering students opportunities to use sound in rhetorically sensitive ways, this final approach asks instructors to become “attuned” to how different auditory epistemologies influence students’ ability to design and compose in sound.     

建构主义教学法在JAVA程序设计课程中的改革与应用

大学计算机相关专业中,学生在理解和掌握知识的同时更关注自己的学分总数和学分积点,学习兴趣和能力培养成为获取毕业证书和学位证书的一个副产品。导致学生难以产生浓厚的程序设计兴趣,对专业课程的掌握不够扎实。因此改变学生的学习心态和认识尤为重要,基于建构主义的教学方法在专业课程中的应用则会起到促进的效果,让学生在主动学习,享受学习的过程中掌握计算机课程的核心技术,让证书成为一个必然的副产品。     

Strange Bedfellows: Human-Computer Interaction, Interface Design, and Composition Pedagogy

As digital interfaces increasingly mediate our access to information, the design of these interfaces becomes increasingly important. Designing digital interfaces requires writers to make rhetorical choices that are sometimes technical in nature and often correspond with principles taught in the computer science subfield of human-computer interaction. We propose that an HCI-informed writing pedagogy can complicate for both writing and computer science students the important role audience should play when designing traditional and digital interfaces. Although it is a subtle shift in many ways, this pedagogy seemed to complicate student understanding of the relationship between audience and the texts/interfaces they created: it was not just the “human” (beliefs, attitudes, values, demographics) or the “computer” (the software or hardware or other types of mediation) that mattered but rather the “interaction” between the two. First we explore some of the ways in which writing code and writing prose have merged and paved the way for an HCI-informed writing pedagogy. Next we examine some parallels between human-computer interaction principles and composition principles. Finally, we refer to assignments, student responses, and anecdotal evidence from our classes where an HCI-informed writing pedagogy drew—or could have drawn—student attention more acutely to various audience-related technical and rhetorical interface design choices.     

Usability Research in the Writing Lab: Sustaining Discourse and Pedagogy

Redesigning Purdue's Online Writing Lab (OWL) presented the opportunity for collaboration among Writing Center and Professional Writing Program members. While the article briefly describes the OWL redesign process, the argument focuses on collaboration and presents a model for sustainable intraprogram collaboration. Following Hawhee, usability research is defined as “invention-in-the-middle,” which offers a model for understanding research process as part of the infrastructure of new media instruction as described by DeVoss, Cushman, and Grabill. This article offers four stakeholder perspectives on the process of participatory technology design: of writing center administrators, graduate students, technical writing practitioners, and writing program graduate faculty members. The model asserted by this article presents a dynamic understanding of expertise and of fluidity in the roles of participants. Collaborative usability research, seen as invention-in-the-middle, contributes both to long-term sustainability of technological artifacts as well as the discursive interactions among stakeholders whose work supports these artifacts.     

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.     

Pop Up Play: a digital creative play space

This article discusses the research findings from a year-long investigation funded by a Digital R&D for the Arts grant. The overarching aims of this research project were to understand how arts and cultural organisations can access mixed-reality environments and digital technology for creative play and learning, and how they can enable children and young people to access meaningful digital realm engagement. The article starts by introducing the underlying philosophical and cognitive framework built from embodiment philosophy, gaming theory and digital pedagogy that helped the research team determine what was meant by meaningful engagement in mixed reality. This is woven into an analysis of the four action-research case studies, followed by a discussion on the potential future areas for investigation. The conclusion evaluates how the resultant Pop Up Play product (free software download, supporting materials and bespoke digital creative play framework http://thesparkarts.co.uk/popupplay/) can be considered an environment for communications skill development, innovative thinking and immersive exploration through experiential play.