Composing for Online Audiences in the Writing Classroom: Experiments and Innovations with Wikipedia

Recent scholarship on the use of wikis in the writing classroom has uncovered that these platforms have the potential to enrich both social and process writing pedagogies. On Wikipedia, the most well known wiki, the discussion pages which showcase the agreements and disagreements between editors of a particular entry represent a type of “peer review” in which the participants are deeply invested in the discussion (Hood). Furthermore, that the online encyclopedia is a product of multiple editors’ collaborative work enacts theories of “knowledge and language as social constructs” (Gaza, Hern). Given the encyclopedia’s stature (Wikipedia is now 10 years old) and frequent use, however, much research remains to be done, especially in terms of specific praxis. This presentation, then, is meant to demonstrate how having students compose Wikipedia articles can result in growth in the following areas: audience awareness, writing styles and tones (Wikipedia standards require encyclopedic neutrality); source retrieval, evaluation and incorporation (Wikipedia’s strict adherence to copyright laws gives incorrect citation and documentation very real consequences); notability (subjects of Wikipedia articles must be deemed significant enough to remain online); and a general familiarity with wikis as an example of online discourses and genres. Because Wikipedia articles are subject to peer review by other editors, students can also gain real experience in accountability and publishing. A fuller understanding of these advantages can only be acquired in the actual practice of the assignment, however. To this end, this presentation also seeks to showcase my own efforts at designing a Wikipedia assignment for a Junior-level composition course as well as my own attempts to complete that assignment. Such an endeavor ultimately has two goals: to further imagine the possibilities and limitations inherent in a Wikipedia assignment, and to form a basis from which to theorize about further pedagogical benefits. The innovative nature of such a project will undoubtedly result in significant trial and error. However, the potential for such curricula in the composition classroom needs to be both recognized and shared.

Conference Proposal Draft

Composing for Online Audiences in the Composition Classroom: Experiments and Innovations with Wikipedia

In their 2007 webtext “Collaboration, Literacy, Authorship: Using Social Networking Tools to Engage the Wisdom of Teachers,” Joe Moxley and Ryan Meehan assert, among other claims, that online collaborative practices can empower students to practice writing for more tangible audiences. Among their many shared experiences with collaborative projects, Moxley and Meehan have experimented with writing assignments which encourage students to compose entries on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Such an assignment undoubtedly affords students new opportunities to connect with tangible online audiences but it also challenges the position of the encyclopedia in academic circles. For despite its ever-growing popularity and frequent use by students and professionals alike, Wikipedia continues to be victim to a significant amount of scorn within academia. Most students see the encyclopedia as a forbidden research database, having been steered away from using it by countless teachers and instructor in secondary and college English classes. Such vilification is ultimately significant of a tremendous loss, as the database offers pedagogical opportunities above and beyond the audience advantage identified by Moxley and Meehan. In particular, having students compose Wikipedia articles can result in growth in the following additional areas: writing styles and tones (Wikipedia standards require encyclopedic neutrality); source retrieval, evaluation and incorporation (Wikipedia’s strict adherence to copyright laws gives incorrect citation and documentation very real consequences); notability (subjects of Wikipedia articles must be deemed significant enough to remain online); and a general familiarity with wikis as an example of online discourses and genres. Because Wikipedia articles are subject to peer review by other editors, students can also gain real experience in accountability and publishing. A fuller understanding of these pedagogical advantages can only be acquired in the actual practice of the assignment, however. To this end, this presentation seeks to showcase my own efforts at designing a Wikipedia assignment for a Junior-level composition course as well as my own attempts to complete that assignment (in order to further imagine its possibilities and limitations). The very innovative nature of such a project will undoubtedly result in significant trial and error. My reflection and completion of the project, and the insightful feedback that might be gained from a conference-setting showcase, should—with any luck—lead to a more insightful and anticipatory assignment design, and fewer e-mails from the confused and overwhelmed composition students who attempt to navigate and complete the assignment.

word count: 390

Negotiating Audiences: A Reflection on Composing (E)Compose

When I think of the blog as a genre, I can’t help but think of audience. The blog is public in incredibly unique ways. It is accessible to an astounding number of people; yet, in most cases, only accessed by a select few with prior knowledge of its existence and a specific motivation.

As I look back at the writing I’ve “published” on this blog so far, I can’t help but notice a significant shift in tone. I’m interested in examining this shift in terms of audience for two reasons. First, I want to speculate about the specific ways the blog genre changes writers’ conceptions of audience, and ultimately their writing. Secondly, I want to attempt to answer this question: Are these new conceptions of audience that blogs make available beneficial to the composition student?

My first full post to the blog “What Makes Media ‘New Media’: Materiality, Agency, and the Composition Pedagogue” can be characterized in two ways: first, I don’t reference the fact that the post is a course assignment. Second, the writing itself is formal in tone and avoids the first-person.

Despite the growing ubiquity of new forms of communication and media (foursquare, googletv, diaspora) and the monolithic status of those that have become household names, much of academia remains unaware or indifferent to the significant connection between English /Composition studies and these new forms.

The impulse to create and maintain a detached and formal tone originates from my conceptions of audience. Because the blog is hosted on an open and available platform, I conceived of the assignment not only in terms of the course, but in terms of other possible audiences. Maintaining the blog in the future, and using a generalized language intended to reach a wider audience, I imagined, might result in a product that could be referenced in other rhetorical contexts. If nothing else, the blog could be an added line in my C.V., especially if tied to other publication or scholarly activity.

This conception of audience influenced my writing enormously. I could not let myself assume, for example, that my readers had any prior knowledge of the texts I discuss. Any such text must be introduced and summarized before an in-depth analysis.

Yet this conception of audience was debilitating in a way as well. By acknowledging alternate audiences and purposes beyond the immediate rhetorical context of the course, I was also limiting the depth of engagement with the text and interaction with other members of the class. Extended summary and introduction of these texts was not necessary in this localized context—my classmates had read these texts.

The public nature of the blog oriented my conception of audience towards an awareness of content as well. What do I mean by this? Another specific audience of the blog are the authors of the texts I discuss. While it is unlikely that many of the authors I discuss will access these discussions, the act of “self-googling” makes this a distinct possibility, a possibility that I am acutely aware of when critiquing another’s scholarship. I’ve actually had the experience of an author I’m writing about in a blog read and comment on a post, which makes this possibility even more tangible. Poet Jared Carter responds to my discussion of his poem “Dark Transit” as an opportunity to connect with his audience (and promote his work):

Jared Carter said...

Thank you so much for noticing my poem, "Dark Transit." You're from Maysville, Kentucky? It's a beautiful place, and one of my favorite towns. I've whiled away many a pleasant hour in the Old Mill Tavern. I think the Simon Kenton Bridge is a noble structure. Years ago I wrote about it in a long poem entitled "Maysville. Kenton Bridge. Dusk" (not online). It appeared in the anthology Down the River, compiled by Dallas Wiebe and published in Cincinnati in 1991. As for "Dark Transit," I'm indebted to Valparaiso Review for including the poem among its Pushcart Prize nominations for 2009. If you have a moment, please stop by and visit my web site at http://www.jaredcarter.com
Thanks!

On (E)Compose, this awareness was most present when I critiqued a webtext by Cheryl Ball and Ryan Moelle in my post “Practicing New Media Analysis”:

While Ball and Moeller further demonstrate how these terms might be applied by analyzing and discussing two student compositions, they don't apply their terms to a new media text that we might consider professional or expert. Their own "webtext," in fact, accomplishes very few of the topoi or commonplaces a new media text might employ and could be almost as effective as a "letterate" text.

The “shift” I mentioned above is most apparent in my more recent posts. Where my original writing was formal and intent on summary, my later writing is subdued in these regards. I’m still attempting to frame my discussions in ways that can be applied to a variety of audiences, but I’m also positioning myself as an individual member of the course. More frequent use of the first-person, along with a less formal tone, as can be seen below, bears testimony to this shift:

I've been trying to determine what it is that sets Dickie Self's study "Techno-Pedagogical Explorations: Towards Sustainable Technology-Rich Instruction" apart from a large majority of the work done on the intersections between technology and composition. I think I've hit on it: while other scholars expend considerable energy explaining WHY composition instructors should consider implementing more technology in their classrooms and assignments, and offering example assignments as a second-thought, Selfe begins his study by acknowledging his audience has already accepted this pedagogical need.

This passage also demonstrates how I am more comfortable with positioning myself as a fellow learner in a community of learners, rather than as someone who is sharing expertise on a subject. “I’ve been trying to determine,” I write in the first sentence ; “trying” is key here.

Ultimately, my experience with the blog genre and with (E)Compose has been most characterized by my attempts to balance a specific, local persona with a public persona, a result of my awareness of the various audiences the blog genre affords. Such balancing changes writing in significant ways, as I’ve tried to demonstrate above, but is it an act beneficial to the composition student? At this point, I believe it is. Student negotiation with the fluctuating audience that online publication affords is constructive if only because it allows those students to imagine audiences beyond the local, beyond their classmates and instructor. If this imagining results in a little anxiety over who is reading (or not reading) their work and how it is being assessed on an open, public platform, even better. A little anxiety can go a long way; it allows students to walk the thin line between public and local persona, and to practice the performance of each.

Building Bridges (Farther): Networking Beyond the Discipline

Jo Ann Griffin's contribution to Cynthia Selfe's Multimodal Composition: Resources for Teachers,

"Making Connections with Writing Centers,"

identifies both the need for support among such networks as well as the particular obstacles instructors may face when attempting to gain such support.

"In most institutions," Griffin acknowledges, "writing center resources are stretched thin, and many writing center directors, when faced with the prospect of helping teachers and students on multimodal composition assignments, will express concerns about time, attention, and material resources" (153)

To respond to these attitudes, Griffin recommends that instructors be able to demonstrate the many instances in which "rhetorical issues" (audience, purpose, context, etc) "cross forms" (genres/modes) (155).

I think Griffin offers some useful advice; but I wonder about the type of support most needed by instructors attempting a multimodal curricula for the first time. Is it, perhaps, even more necessary that these instructors "build bridges" with students and professors in other departments: communication, video production, graphic design, etc? It seems that the particular elements of this curricula that require a sustaining network are those elements that other English-Studies professionals have least experience with: namely, technology, graphic design, audio /video production.

A particular strength of multimodal texts,

those that are effective at least, is the broader levels of accessibility they provide. The transmission of information in multiple semiotic channels should enable the reception of that information on multiple semiotic levels.

The multimodal text is useful because it can be understood by a wider audience, right? If this is true, instructors need to build bridges farther, to consider widening their network to gain support beyond that available within their own department.

From WHY to HOW: Dickie Selfe's "Techno-Pedagogical Explorations: Toward Sustainable Technology-Rich Instruction

I've been trying to determine what it is that sets Dickie Self's study "Techno-Pedagogical Explorations: Towards Sustainable Technology-Rich Instruction" apart from a large majority of the work done on the intersections between technology and composition. I think I've hit on it: while other scholars expend considerable energy explaining WHY composition instructors should consider implementing more technology in their classrooms and assignments, and offering example assignments as a second-thought, Selfe begins his study by acknowledging his audience has already accepted this pedagogical need. Whether or not this warrant is successful is difficult to say, but Selfe does offer a great deal of extremely interesting and practical suggestions for putting the theory into practice. In short, Selfe tells us HOW to approach "technology-rich" curricula in very specific and thorough terms.

The study is full of helpful material; but i'm most interested in Selfe's discussion of the experimental nature of "techno-pedagogy" and his realization of the need for "sustainability."

"All Technology-Rich Pedagogy
Is Experimental"

Selfe warns us about the "experimental" nature of "technology-rich pedagogy" by exhaustively listing the multitude of dynamic factors involved:

The fact is that the interface or interfaces that we use, students' lives, access levels, the underlying networks, people's placements on the technological learning curve, the material conditions that surround, the class and students, the curriculum, and everyone's expectations are all unstable and change term by term, sometimes even class session by class session. (18)

Composition teachers, Selfe asserts, must be constantly aware that teaching with technology will always be "experimental" on some level and shape their pedagogy and classroom practices accordingly, often by involving students into the dialogue of the experiment.

"Commit Yourself to Developing
Locally Sustainable Teaching Practices"

This student involvement is inherently connected to Self's suggestion that composition teachers "commit yourself to developing locally sustainable teaching practices" (20). Such sustainability emerges from a public awareness of objective (either specific assignment objective or course objective) shared between student and instructor. Sustainability can be realized, then, by instructors who "apply a structured use of the technology to that objective, watch how the community of students reacts to your approach, and let them help you redesign the approach to better accomplish the objective next time" (20).

I'm attracted to the apparent ease with which Selfe is able to experiment with his classes and empower students to help him revise curricula that is ineffectual. The application of such a pedagogical attitude is also enormously comforting to those faced with incorporating technology-rich media and assignments into an English course for the first time. That this type of instruction can be experimental and is always evolving to meet students' needs and course objectives takes some of the pressure off.

At the same time, as a relatively inexperienced composition instructor, I get the feeling that "experimental" equates "unprepared." I do modify the curricula and schedule of a course I'm teaching based on student feedback at times, but not nearly enough to call it an "experiment." Anyone else feeling this? I also wonder how status and experience enable teachers to be more experimental?

(DE)Compose: Disrupting the Essay

“There’s something increasingly untenable,” writes Geoffrey Sirc, “about the integrated coherence of college essayist prose, in which easy falseness of a unified resolution gets prized over the richer, more difficult, de facto text the world presents itself as” (123). Sirc’s “Box-Logic,” an article published alongside Wysocki’s definitional work on new media, represents his own response to the stranglehold of the academic essay as form and a recommendation of nonlinear, non-coherent, and unconventional methods of composition within material frameworks. Much of Sirc’s inspiration for such pedagogy comes from Joseph Cornell, American artist famous for his box assemblages.



Cornell’s boxes were essentially containers of found objects, random assemblages of materials which challenged, in Sirc’s opinion, “notions of articulate coherence, conventional organization, and extensive development” (115). Because they remain completely abstract, these types of assemblage lead the viewer to ponder placement and meaning, to attempt to find pattern among the unpredictability, and to acquire attentive modes of observation.

An emphasis on similar methods, modes and genres in the composition classroom, argues Sirc, allows the student to consider everyday materials and objects from an equally new perspective. Furthermore, this attention to the quotidian becomes liberating to the student who is not versed in traditional / linear academic-compositional skill sets (128).

Sirc’s study is important to understanding Wysocki’s definition of new media primarily because his praxis does not depend upon technology. For Sirc, new media is not necessarily even “new”—we might find models in the surrealism and avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. His application, however, is postmodern rathern than modern, and this is what I’m most interested in exploring. Sirc’s pedagogy further de-emphasizes product in the classroom in favor of a kind of postmodern, pastiche-there’s no other word for it-play.

My initial response is: Yes! Why not make composition more fun, and in the process, more meaningful for the student who struggles to acquire linear academic skills. But just immediately after that, the pedantic and cynic in me enters and has a few questions and doubts:

1) Where do we draw the line between language composition and artistic compostion?
2) If we replace traditional forms and structures including but not limited to the essay with more fluid / open forms like the box, what do we lose? and
3) Are there essential forms that students need to know?

Practicing New Media Analysis

While Wysocki provides a conceptual framework in which to define new media, other scholars are exploring possible rhetorical systems in which new media might be described, understood and critiqued. In their webtext "Re-Inventing the Possibilities: Academic Literacy and New Media," Cheryl Ball and Ryan Moeller seek to demonstrate "that rhetorical theory is a productive way to theorize how meaning is made among new media texts, their designers, and their readers" (abstract).


What sets Ball and Moeller apart from other new media / composition scholars is their insistence on the creation of particulr rhetorical terms to practice rhetorical analysis of new media texts. The authors employ two Greek concepts to create these rhetorical terms: topoi, "designerly strategies for meaning making or persuasion;" and commonplaces, "points where readers of a text come together and negotiate agreement among their readings." Types of topoi include genre, sequence, designer, link and audience. Context, reader, element, emotion, juxtaposition and proximity all serve as types of commonplaces (New Media Topoi, New Media Commonplaces).

While Ball and Moeller further demonstrate how these terms might be applied by analyzing and discussing two student compositions, they don't apply their terms to a new media text that we might consider professional or expert. Their own "webtext," in fact, accomplishes very few of the topoi or commonplaces a new media text might employ and could be almost as effective as a "letterate" text.


To satisfy my own curiosity, in part, and to test the applicability of Ball and Moeller's terms, I decided to experiment with an application of topoi and commonplaces to one of the most successful new media texts I could think of, a website/game/humanitarian project freerice.com. Freerice, a "a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Programme" was designed to accomplish two goals: to "provide education to everyone for free" and to "help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free" (About). The "text" accomplishes these goals through rhetorical usage of numerous topoi and commonplaces throughout. Audience and link topoi are perhaps the the most interesting / effective, although the text utilized the other types as well. Additionaly, the commonplaces proximity and pathos are also exceptionally effective.

In line with Ball and Moeller's definition of audience (see New Media Topoi), the designation of the audience's participation in freerice is participatory and empowering. The player or contributor of freerice creates rice donations by interacting with the trivia game: "For each answer you get right, we donate 10 grams of rice through the World Food Programme to end World Hunger" (Index). This transaction is made possible by the presence of advertisements.

Such participation is ultimately rewarding for the audience and extremely effective rhetoric because of the explicit link, the "direct connection to elements within or outside of a text used to inform a reader in support of a designer’s claim" (New Media Topoi), between the fun of game-play and the pleasure of humanitarianism. On Freerice, giving is not only "free," it's fun.



Such topoi are major contributors to the text's multimodal system of rhetoric, but commonplaces play enormous persuasive roles as well. The text's use of emotion or pathos, which is most evident in a proximate link to view videos of rice distribution, demonstrates tangible results and thus encourages more playtime among users/readers.

Furthermore, the text's proximate display of social network links (twitter, facebook) to the main module (the quiz game) allows users to broadcast their smart and charitable identities, thus reinforcing their own identification and connection with the text and further encouraging more game play.

The application of a few of Ball and Moeller's rhetorical terms demonstrates, I think, the efficacy of their critical system. Furthermore, applying this system to new media texts which are unconnected to new media studies is an especially important task for two reasons. First, such a task demonstrates the unbiased capability of new media critical vocabularies to analyze current new media texts. Secondly, the online and thus public presence of these critiques serves to further disseminate knowledge the utility of new media studies as analytic tool.

Ball, Cheryl and Ryan Moeller. “Re-inventing the Possibilities: Academic Literacy and New Media” The Fiberculture Journal 10 (2007). http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue10/ball_moeller/index.html

Breen, John. Freerice. United Nations World Food Programme, 2007. Web. 18 Jan. 2011.