Tech Camp 2010

Wysocki, Ann Frances. “Opening New Media to Writing: Openings and Justifications.” Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition, 1st ed. Wysocki, Ann Frances, Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Cynthia L. Selfe, and Geoffrey Sirc (Eds.). Utah State University Press, 2004.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Writing in the 21st Century.” A Report from the National Council of Teachers of English.

Lovett, Maria, Katherine E. Gossit, Carrie A. Lamanna, James P. Purdy, and Joseph Squier. “Writing with Video: What Happens When Composition Comes Of f the Page?” RAW: (Reading and Writing) New Media. Ball, Cheryl E. and James Kalmbach, (Eds). Hampton Press, March 2010.


Based on the three readings assigned for Syracuse Writing Program’s Tech Camp 2010, I was struck by the common argument insisting on the production of new media in the composition classroom over the (perhaps) more commonly adopted strategies of analyzing new media or applying new media to traditional print forms of writing. Lovett et al. made a strong argument for considering the production of new media texts in their “Writing with Video: What Happens When Composition Comes Of f the Page?” They assert that “When students become producers rather than simply consumers of new media texts they gain a fuller understanding of the ways in which new media shape how writers structure, organize, understand, and evaluate information” (5). For me, this seems an exciting way to facilitate classrooms where students are more active in their educational pursuits rather than passive consumers of it. Plus, students already come to the classroom with a range of new media literacies, literacies that hold weight in the ever growing image-driven world, as Lovett et al argue. The authors also point out the agency students already hold when entering the classroom, a writerly authority that should be fostered and upheld rather than dismissed or discouraged: “Students are experts of their own experience and educational pursuits, and when given the opportunity, they are often eager to share what they know. The course encourages students to demonstrate new technologies they are using, such as podcasting or sound editing techniques” (16). It seems new media fits in well when taking a more student-knowledge-centered approach.

Just tasking students with producing new media, however, is only a part of the calls for using new media in the writing classroom. As with any composition, textual or digital or otherwise, it’s important to acknowledge the social and political and material contexts, possibilities, and constraints. In Anne Frances Wysocki’s Introduction (“Opening New Media to Writing: Openings and Justifications”) to her coauthored book, Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition, I was immediately interested in an early acknowledgement to the “materiality” of new media texts. The term and its multifaceted definition are taken from Bruce Horner’s Terms of Work for Composition: A Materialist Critique. The “materiality of writing” is described as referring to “socioeconomic conditions”; “networks for the distribution of writing, controls of publishing (in whatever forms), and global relations of power articulated through these”; “particular subjectivities”; “social relations”; and “the materiality of the work of teaching composition” (qtd. in Wysocki 3-4). For me, through recognizing what material restraints and possibilities come from producing new media, it seems as though students would simultaneously be analyzing and applying new media to their writerly tasks. Through even blogging, for example, participating writers might be privy to considering what material constraints and possibilities are evident: the labor involved; the technological access, knowledge, and skills required; the rhetorical power of content design and architecture; the political and ethical implications of arguing something publicly; the social implications of speaking to certain local and global audiences; the legal implications of borrowing words and images and ideas from other texts; etc. The materiality of writing as is described by Horner and summarized by Wysocki, then, seems an important aspect of teaching with new media that deserves careful attention from instructors. Using a blog as a means of writing in the classroom just to use a blog is a step, but I can imagine a much more fruitful and critical approach would be to consider as a class the material aspects of this kind of work.

I’m fairly convinced. My immediate concern, however, again goes back to the frequently posited questions we hear whenever calls for adopting new approaches in composition courses are made: How might I, the instructor, negotiate the inclusion of new curricular assignments and outcomes when I’m already pressed for time as it is? Should I eliminate other practices to make room for more of a focus on writing with new media? Just because I add in a component where students analyze, apply, and produce new media, wouldn’t it be naïve to assume that students will garner a better sense of purpose in their writing? These were concerns articulated numerous times by numerous writing instructors during Tech Camp.

This last observation—that which read: Just because I add a component where students analyze, apply, and produce new media, isn’t it naïve to assume that students will garner a “better” and more “organic” purpose in their writing?—is of particular interest to me. Yancey’s NCTE report, “Writing in the 21st Century,” attempts to contextualize, I think, some of the historical reasons for why students may not treat writing experiences as organic processes within composition classrooms. Yancey suggests that writing has historically been treated as a “rudimentary skill” or as a having the “predominant role in the testing of students” (3). Yancey offers a few broadly described goals in her disciplinary call for writing instructors to pay attention to the rise of new media and visual argumentation in the classroom, attention leading to new curriculum and pedagogical approaches. Perhaps because her focus was different and perhaps because of the minimal space she was afforded due to the nature of the genre she writes in, Yancey does not provide her readers with strategies or theoretical frameworks to guide instructors’ implementation of new media approaches to composition. I was left wondering, then, how students have responded to producing new media in the comp classroom. Do students really walk away feeling as though they achieved a more meaningful purpose than they would when writing more traditional print-based texts? It seems taking Wysocki’s argument for acknowledging the material constraints is a step towards tailoring assignments so that they speak to more organic rhetorical situation. Still, I can’t help but suspect that no matter our commitment to designing assignments for students in hopes of creating more organic writing experiences, it’s us still designing them. Students are still complying with our agendas. Students are still writing for a grade. Students are still concerned, therefore, with the “rudimentary skills” their instructor will assess by. Since a grade is attached to their performance, writing in the composition classroom is still rooted (as it has been historically) with testing. I wonder, then, if my struggle with interrogating this issue of “organic” writing has more to do with assessment practices than with students producing new media in the classroom. I am by no means trying to argue that there’s an easy way out of this dilemma. We teach in the university and grades and assessment come with the territory. I suppose I’m just compelled to complicate the issue a bit more based on the materiality of writing, as Wysocki suggests, and situate the issue within the politics of assessment and education more generally.

I’ll end here with a return again to Horner, as cited by Wysocki. I think I do this in attempt to offer some personal relief for the complicated questions that remain unanswered for me (and for many instructors, I imagine). While we may aspire to consider at all times the materiality of writing, it was a relief to me to hear of Horner’s recognition that “no representation of teaching or writing can exhaust the full range of their materiality” (xix, quoted in Wysocki). By recognizing that writing classes sometimes decontextualizes writing and, damn it, it’s ok that this happens, then it seems a reasonable task to also take a critical approach to acknowledging this with our students as well. At the conclusion of our time in tech camp and having considered some of the arguments of the authors we read together, I feel even more driven to have open dialogues about these issues of materiality, this being an important principle to apply to my upcoming teaching endeavors where new media practices will be more central to our writerly processes and our written products.

Johnson-Eilola (2005) *Datacloud: Toward a New Theory of Online Work"

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Toward a New Theory of Online Work. Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, Inc., 2005. Print.

Authors as Symbolic-Analytic Workers

People in this type of work identify, rearrange, circulate, abstract, and broker information in response to specific, concrete situations. They work with information and symbols to produce reports, plans, and proposals. They also tend to work online, either communicating with peers (they rarely have direct supervision) or manipulating symbols. (28)

Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s description quoted above is in reference to “symbolic-analytic workers”—those folks working under titles such as “investment banker, research scientist, lawyer, management consultant, strategic planner, and architect” (28). I imagine for individuals researching in the field of comp/rhet—like me—this passage can be read synonymously as the work of writers writing. We too “identify, rearrange, circulate, abstract, and broker information in response to specific, concrete situations.” We too “work with information and symbols to produce reports, plans, and proposals” among other genres of writing. We too “tend to work online either communicating with peers…or manipulating symbols” through various avenues of collaboration, most times without “direct supervision” or explicit direction or guidance from our mentors or superiors. For me, writers—whether we’re novice students writing in first year comp or we’re seasoned professors writing for publication—can be seen as “symbolic-analytic workers.” While I imagine for compositionists this analogy may not be all that surprising, I was struck by imagining this analogy, mostly because I personally hadn’t ever given much attention to analyzing the role of digital technology when it came to “academic writing.” Of course, I considered the possible limitations of generic formats such as Word when it comes to composing (which the author nicely criticizes on page 105 as too linear for the ‘clouds of data’ strategically negotiated and creatively assembled by today’s digital worker), and I’d considered how much technology impacted our research practices, but I guess I just hadn’t given much credit to (nor really acknowledged the potential possibilities of) digital technology when it came to our writing formats and practices. I was realizing the limitations of writing genres, but I wasn’t realizing any real alternatives for transforming them.

Johnson-Eilola, a teacher of writing and innovator of transformative approaches to genres for writing, (see Johnson-Eilola and Selber’s “Plagiarism, Originality, Assemblage,” which I need to revisit since now buying into Johnson-Eilola’s argument here) apparently makes similar connections as mine as is apparent with his likening of symbolic-analytic workers to rhetoricians. His emphasis, though, remains on the intersection of technology and rhetoric: “we might think of symbolic-analytic workers as technical rhetoricians or rhetorical technologists” (29). When it comes to the modern understanding of the term “rhetoricians,” it’s now a bit challenging for me to separate the two terms “rhetoric” and “technology,” especially when it comes to writing (which, as I can’t seem to stress enough, surprised the hell out of me).

If ya’ll are interested—as I am now—in learning about some of the ways that Johnson-Eilola has implemented a transformed approach to writing genres in the writing classroom, you might want to check out his article from Computers and Composition, “Plagiarism, Originality, Assemblage,” that he co-authored with Selber. We read this in Becky’s authorship class and I plan to revisit it since now buying into many of Johnson-Eilola’s arguments in Datacloud. See my blog below to read the summary I wrote on this text last semester.

Johnson-Eilola and Selber (2007) "Plagiarism, Originality, Assemblage"

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan, and Stewart Selber. "Plagiarism, Originality, Assemblage." Computers and Composition 24.4 (2007): 375-403.

Summary

In their article titled, “Plagiarism, originality, assemblance,” published in Communication and Composition in 2007, authors Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Stuart A. Selber propose a new approach to composition instruction, one that complicates traditional views of plagiarism and originality. They construct their argument by first criticizing the common practice in composition instruction where assessment of student writing is based on students’ ability to produce original ideas as inspired by their reading of other texts—projects where students are asked to illustrate their new and unique perspectives, using sources in their arguments or analyses only as secondary background information or supporting evidence. The authors criticize this traditional method for maintaining hierarchical assessment practices, where exceedingly more value is placed on the students’ unique contributions and originality, rather than the student’s practices of consulting, framing, modeling, and/or quoting texts during the composition process.

It is suggested that the traditional approach assumes that students’ ideas and writing are the intellectual property of students and not the product of social, cultural, and historical contexts—contexts where writing is inherently shaped by discursive practices and the intertextual nature of texts. The authors demonstrate that traditional practices, therefore, reinforce notions of the “lone, creative genius” and ultimately weaken other scholars’ recent attempts for reimagining complicated concepts such as plagiarism, authority, and creativity (Howard, 2000; Porter, 2006; Price, 2002; and Spigelman, 2000 are cited as examples). The authors further explain that placing such value on student originality is counterproductive since it results in students being more likely to plagiarize: if teachers value most students’ unique creativity, students may be more inclined to hide their borrowing and appropriation of texts in order to appear as the original authors of ideas or sentences.

In response to their criticism of the traditional approach, Johnson-Eilola and Selber argue that instructors should design projects where students problem-solve through “assemblance”—a practice where writers borrow, remix, and reformulate texts into new texts. Instead of instructors valuing most a students’ unique originality and fresh contributions, this approach recognizes that all writing is an assemblance of ideas, words, and discursive practices and that students can find creativity in reconstructing this information in new ways. Since the authors claim that such borrowing and sharing of practices have been accepted and widely adopted in other disciplines and contexts, they support their argument for this new approach with examples of “remix” and “assemblage” found in web design, music, films, and architecture.

Ultimately, their examples work to illustrate a number of qualities apparent in this new approach: how originality is accomplished through assemblance of other texts, discourses, and formats; how authors and creators borrowed are still cited or otherwise acknowledged when remixed; how assemblance requires substantial rhetorical sophistication and should not be viewed as mindless copying and pasting; how plagiarism likely decreases with approaches such as assemblance since writers are less inclined to hide their borrowing of sources; and how common creativity is promoted through the remixing of others’ ideas and texts. While it is not their goal to have remixing practices replace all approaches to teaching composition, the authors ask that instructors at the very least include new practices in hopes of deconstructing hierarchies that limit the value of remix, collage, and assemblance in composition.