Anson and Brown, "Subject to Interpretation," in Rose and Weiser _The WPA as Researcher_

Summary: This article portrays some of the challenges of the WPA through anecdote and analysis. I think the anecdotes are fictitious, but they ring true and are consistent with the other readings. The authors' focus is on the positioning of the WPA within the larger university context--they "want to explore the role of research in the work of WPAs from the perspective it its broader value and institutional legitimacy" (141). Anson and Brown write that "in order to represent themselves, their programs, their beliefs, and the products of their investigations, successful WPAs must critically read their institutions as complex educational cultures with powerful habits" (142). A WPA needs to navigate these currents. The authors focus specifically on WPAs attaining institutional authority (through research and publication), performing local research in the university, and interacting with other disciplines in the context of writing (such as what it means to other departments that we are "composition specialists" and how understandings of writing are discipline-specific).

Response: Interesting, as all the pieces are. This takes a middle ground between very local, specific narrative and more broad WPA concerns. The authors certainly expand beyond the narratives to make suggestions for what WPAs should engage at large. This piece didn't have quite the resonance with me that some of the other pieces did.

Uses: How the WPA functions in the institution. Also, to scare people, because the WPA in the anecdotes is denied tenure because the institution doesn't value her work. :) But she gets another job.

Shaw et al., "Analyzing Narratives," in Strickland and Gunner _The Writing Program Interrupted_

Shaw et al. "analyze the narratives of three writing program administrators (WPAs) of different rank and gender from the same institution who all held the same job. [...] Together, [their] narratives provide an institutional narrative about the program itself, a narrative that highlights the ways in which a writing program garners resources, support, and institutional prestige and status, while at the same time retaining many of the problems it has always enjoyed" (155). Winter was the first WPA--untenured, part-time for part of it, underpaid, advocating for a full-fledged writing program and a tenure-track WPA. Shaw was next, tenure-track, no budget, small support staff, still fighting for prestige, advocating the hiring of a senior professor. Then came Huot, professor in rank, larger budget and more support, greater hiring/firing privileges, greater curricular responsibility. The authors then analyze the narratives and draw several conclusions, such as the necessity of seizing upon institutional kairotic moments to make changes.

Response: This piece illustrates the power of narrative to represent a larger trend, and fits very well with the broader historical overviews I've read. It's the story not only of the people, but of an institution that began by exploiting its workers and viewing the WPA (and a writing program) as an afterthought to having a better job description and program. Yet the WPAs had to fight for every step. A chilling part of this article is that no one in the institution comes off as particularly "evil," just disengaged. I think this is probably much realer than a picture of a school where the administration and other faculty are anti-writing or anti-WPA; instead, they just don't care or think about it very much.

Uses: This is one of the best articles I've read for humanizing the process of professionalization of the WPA.

Heckathorn, "Moving Toward a Group Identity," in L'Eplattenier and Mastrangelo _Historical Studies_

Summary: Heckathorn uses text documents (publications, conference proceedings, interviews, etc.) to track the professionalization of the WPA from the 1940s to 1970s. She identifies two periods--Early (1940-1963) and Transitional (1964-1979)--that lead to the modern era. The Early Era begins to identify the WPA and engage compensation; in the Transitional Era, the identity of the WPA is more firmly established (the MLA job list features postings for WPAs, for instance), and journals begin to feature articles focusing on WPA issues more prominently. Heckathorn uses the advent of the WPA journal to mark the end of the Transitional Era. She writes that understanding the history of the WPA position means that "current and future administrators do not have to begin the fight for professional recognition at ground zero" (211).

Response: Heckathorn's article was quite interesting, especially as it tracked the growing self-identification of WPAs as WPAs, rather than as composition instructors with some administrative duties tacked on. It's a history of a field, but also of people trying to gain legitimacy in the university setting. She writes that "a professionalized identity was a critical step toward achieving other goals" (192), enabling WPAs to operate within their institutions from a position of (more) power. (However, as is seen in other readings, many WPAs still struggle for legitimacy within their institutions.)

Uses: To understand the early history of the field. This might work well paired with the histories and overviews of composition.

Phelps, "Composing Administration as a Writer"

Summary: Phelps discusses what it might mean to use writing as "a primary metaphor or source of administrative strategies."  She explores this idea in some detail. As a professional writer, a WPA might be predisposed to writing to learn and plan; to favor writing for those in the program to accomplish work; to "turn to writing experiences and writing theory for the metaphoric resources [necessary] to conceptualize and talk about administration"; to reflect through writing. Phelps gives and analyzes an extended example from her own time as WPA, pointing out how it reveals her "predisposition to think and act like a writer and to project the metaphors of writing and its theories onto administration." Phelps then lists "modes...for composing administration as a writer": making one's own writing the primary vehicle for administration, hosting a writing-intensive work environment, using writing as a metaphor to conceptualize administration, and writing about (and encouraging others to write about) administration.

Response: I find the idea of how metaphors influence how we see and operate as a powerful one. Related to Burke's terministic screens, this understanding of metaphor means that how we perceive administration (and a writing program, and a college, etc.) is filtered through how we conceive of it. Certainly our actions as an administrator are influenced by the same process. This article spoke to me on its face (I, too, conceive of myself as a writer, and it was interesting to explore how that might influence how I see my writing program and my role as WPA), but also on a more theoretical, generalized level. It suggests not only ways to act, but ways to perceive potential conflict in a program and college. (If I'm thinking of myself as a writer, what does that mean for my interactions with my colleagues and superiors who think of themselves as social scientists, or historians?)

Uses: To make you think! But also as a way to conceive of the WPA.

Gold, "Conclusion," from _Rhetoric at the Margins_

Summary: It is difficult to be sure (having only read the conclusion), but my guess is that Gold's goal is to establish a history of writing and rhetoric in higher education through the examination of three colleges' programs in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. He draws from these histories to suggest ways we can "[recover] the full richness of the rhetorical tradition" (154). Gold suggests looking beyond English departments for rhetoric and integrating it more in many courses in the English department (not just FYC). He also suggests a stronger connection with students' lives, through the creation of "legitimate classroom communities" incorporating service learning, online forums, and other methods (155). He also suggests we acknowledge students' goals for personal and economic advancement instead of scorning them.

Response: This may be an article that could benefit from more contextualization in the classroom. It was difficult for me to see that he was saying much new. I'm sure this is in part because I haven't read the whole book. I think part of Gold's point is that when we push for a greater integration of rhetoric, we aren't doing anything crazy and new, but that we're actually returning to an established tradition. That's a useful thought.

Uses: Grounding the integration of rhetoric in history? Suggesting that WPAs try to advocate for rhetoric in other classes, not just those in English?

Valentine, "'Acting Out,'" in Strickland and Gunner, _The Writing Program Interrupted_

Summary: Valentine relies on Wenger's understandings of communities of practice to examine authority and agency in a writing center (and, by extension, in writing programs). She looks at three "disruptive" acts by graduate student consultants in the center and re-contextualizes them as examples of students trying to claim agency in an overly authoritarian environment. Valentine suggests that WPAs should attempt to structure programs to encourage agency from constituents (graduate students, in her examples, but her argument can be expanded to include pretty much everyone, especially those lower on the hierarchy such as part-time faculty). To return to Wenger, encouraging agency helps traditionally disempowered parties become more legitimate participants in the CoP.

Response: Valentine had me at her use of Wenger, whose concept of CoPs has been one I've found myself going back to a lot over the past year. I am surprised at how many of these readings have to do with writing centers--it reveals a blind spot I had prior to this course in that I had not conceived of writing-center directors as WPAs. This article (and the others I've read) was useful in opening my eyes to this bias. I think the argument is sound and necessary, especially for the newer WPA who might, due to feeling unsettled in the role, be over-authoritarian. This is similar to the new-teacher problem, where one feels as though one needs to hold on too tightly to one's authority and sees challenges everywhere. A key solution to both situations is a relaxing of the grip, as Valentine points out here.

Uses: Writing centers, WPA administrative structure and how our concepts influence our actions.

Liggett, "After the Practicum," Ch. 6 in Rose and Weiser, _The WPA as Researcher_

Summary: Many writing programs that employ GTAs have a required practicum in which those TAs learn the program and some writing theory. Liggett uses this article to explore what happens to the GTAs after the practicum--how their teaching changes, from whom they seek advice, and what impact keeping a teaching journal has. She gives a fairly detailed description of her methodology and results and finds that most teachers changed their pedagogy slightly to put their personal stamp on the course, and that they used the theory they got in the practicum to guide them (although few continued to read in composition studies). GTAs rely on a wide variety of people to get advice, although they predominantly rely on their peers. Many students kept journals and found them helpful. Liggett ends the article with a list of the changes she will make to her practicum based on her research findings.

Response: I find this piece interesting on two main levels. First of all, it is useful to see the aftermath of the practicum. I had one as an MA student (when I was a TA), and I found it very helpful for many of the reasons Liggett lays out, especially in forming the peer-to-peer networks I relied on through the program. Secondly, I thought this article modeled a WPA engaged in reflective practice. It took guts for her to research how useful the practicum was and whether the things she taught had staying power, and it took more guts to change her program based on what she found. This is the key value I see in the piece: Liggett serves as a model for aspiring WPAs.

Uses: Mostly for modeling, but also as a snapshot of how GTAs operate (and how a WPA should) at a university.

Durst, et al. "Portfolio Negotiations," in Huot and O'Neill, _Assessing Writing_

Summary: This article focuses on "the kinds of discussion and negotiation that take place around student writing in portfolio norming sessions" (219). The system at the school is that trios of teachers exchange portfolios and pass or fail each other's students (high stakes!). Before these evaluations, larger groups of teachers meet to norm. The authors provide transcripts of key conversations that took place during those norming sessions, illustrating the questions teachers had and the dissensus that often resulted. They see these conversations as productive and natural ("grading papers [is] another act of reading, as complex and varied as all acts of reading" (224)) opportunities for instructors to reflect on why they value what they do in writing and why they make the judgment calls they do. The authors examine the tension between trying to assure uniform standards and value the different perspectives in a group of teachers.

Response: This is another quite interesting snapshot of the realities of an assessment program. When the stakes are so high--students can pass or fail based on an outside reader--it's no wonder teacher tensions are also fairly high. There may be a bit of cross-over between this article and Martin's, so we may be able to cut one.

Uses: Assessment, but also professionalization of faculty.

Martin, "Outcomes Assessment," Ch. 4 in Rose and Weiser, _The WPA as Researcher_

Summary: Martin tracks the development of an outcomes-assessment program at her school. She argues that "outcomes assessment not only can help us to see what we are doing well and what needs attention, it can also help to increase the quantity and quality of faculty conversation about teaching and can provide opportunities for interested graduate students to participate in the design and execution of research with real-world significance" (41). Her group engaged the value of the FYC requirement, the value of the individual outcomes, and whether students were meeting them. She describes the evolution of the assessment program, from a relatively quick read of student portfolios with minimal norming or discussion. This resulted in highly divergent readings and faculty dissatisfaction. She then modified the program to include extensive norming and discussion and revised the assessment tools, resulting in better consensus and more faculty confidence in the process. She notes that the conversations were extremely productive and led the group to examine far more than just the essays at hand, but also the goals of the courses, the practices of the teachers, the relative value they placed on different writing issues, etc.

Response: This was an excellent and honest piece that not only provided a model of what (and what not) to do, but raised the point that good outcomes assessment, when undertaken not for compliance to some outside agency, but developed within a program, can spur really excellent conversations. I thought this piece was quite useful. It reminded me quite a bit of my own college's program, which I was strongly involved in starting and evolving. I've written about it here and here. (For some reason they yanked my byline in the second link, but the piece was originally published in Community College Week.)

Uses: This could be used to humanize the assessment effort and show that it can have benefits at the local class- and program-level if approached as a way to encourage dialogue and continually improve courses. It also has applicability to the professionalization of part-time instructors and developing cohesion in a department.

O'Neill, et al., Ch. 4 and Intro, from _A Guide to College Writing Assessment_

Introduction
Summary: The gist of this piece is that WPAs will have to come to terms with assessment, a major initiative at colleges nation-wide. The authors write that assessment often drives curriculum, and that a good WPA needs to take an active hand in developing and administering assessments to ensure that productive, research-based assessments are used, thereby improving the curriculum instead of taking it down a dark path to poor pedagogy. They encourage readers to see assessment as an opportunity. The authors also state that WPAs need to understand assessment so they can advocate for productive assessment to audiences--other administrators, the public, the state--that may be less versed in writing theory and practice.

Response: I agree!

Uses: It's a short read that makes a good point. It's also a necessary point (based on my experience), and one that WPAs should recognize. Of course, this could have a place in the assessment section. I wonder if the same points could be made in a different way--in class, or in a general post--but then, it's good to have a reading make that point. This is a possible one to cut, though. We would need some way to introduce assessment, if we did decide to cut it.

Chapter 4
Summary: This chapter focuses on the context of a writing assessment. By context, they mean the writing program itself--spatially, courses and curricula, students, faculty, administrators, etc. The authors give a series of questions to consider about many of these. The gist of the chapter is that an assessment program does not occur in a vacuum--if it is done well, it should be a local artifact, closely tied to its context. This is a very practical chapter that gives suggestions for how to analyze the context of a writing assessment to aid in its development.

Response: I would not get rid of this piece. It is easy to apply and makes an extremely good point. One can't just adopt an assessment program from another school or discipline and expect it to work. It needs to be grounded in the individual school. Still, I have seen people try to do just that--search the web for an assessment model and try to adopt it wholesale. So an article like this is needed.

Uses: The assessment section of the course. It also has some relevance to a basic understanding of a writing program and how the program itself is a local artifact.

CIP Codes

Summary: These are codes used by the Department of Education. They represent, I think, national understandings of what these terms mean (such as rhetoric and composition). The tables can be accessed here.

Response: Firstly, I noticed a good bit of overlap between the definitions (writing, professional writing, etc.). I'm not sure of the significance of these codes, to be honest, other than to show what the government thinks we're doing when we're studying, say, rhetoric. The website looks like you can use the codes to do research, but I found the site difficult to navigate.

Uses: I'm not sure.

Phelps, "Composition Studies," from Enos, _Encyclopedia_

Summary: This article tracks the development of composition studies from around the 1960s to the mid-90s. Phelps identifies major tensions and commonalities between the different sub-areas of comp. studies. She discusses the teaching tradition (and composition's still-remaining grounding in the practical), the new rhetoric ("composition is the inheritor of classical Western rhetoric"), and the new science (which draws on methodologies from other fields such as the social sciences and education). A major heuristic she uses to explain the field is "a process of equilibration between forces of expansion and differentiation" (126)--expansion in terms of what the field studies (traditional writing, multimodal writing, etc.) and differentiation in terms of, I think, growing differences of focus that sometimes threaten to tear it apart. Phelps describes different ways to hold the field together--the dominance of one paradigm, the inclusion of all, and dialogue between different perspectives. She also discusses the importance of practice to the discipline.

Response: This article serves as an excellent introduction to the discipline. It is extremely readable and does a great job of outlining the different areas of interest in the field and showing the tensions. The publication of date of the book is 1996--I wonder what has changed? From my perspective, the digital dimension has been growing like wildfire, and I wonder if there could be another article that speaks to that that could perhaps be paired with this one.

Uses: This would be good early in the course to provide a basic description of the field to those students who are unaware of composition's history. It is important to understand the discipline, I think, before we get into the administration aspect.

Blog Community Analysis

For a definition of community, I draw from Lave and Wenger’s discussion of Communities of Practice (CoPs) and Garrison and Vaughn’s outline of Communities of Inquiry (CoIs). These theorists provide a useful map for the type of community desirable in a graduate program, and their theories can be extrapolated to apply to first-year composition as well.

Lave and Wenger address CoPs in the context of situated learning, in which what and how the learner learns is a function of his or her participation in the community. Lave and Wenger’s CoPs are always doing something—the “practice” component of the term—rather than simply existing. A learner begins on the periphery of the community and, by developing the skills, knowledge, and identity valued within the community, gradually becomes a full member with the ability to shape the community. This process involves more than memorizing certain facts or writing a certain way: Lave and Wenger write that “learning involves the whole person; it implies not only a relation to specific activities, but a relation to social communities—it implies becoming a full participant, a member, a kind of person. […L]earning involves the construction of identities” (53). More on this in a minute.

Garrison and Vaughan’s CoIs may be seen as a subset of CoPs that is focused within the classroom (virtual or physical). Garrison and Vaughan define a CoI as “a unifying process that integrates the essential processes of personal reflection and collaboration in order to construct meaning, confirm understanding, and achieve higher-order learning outcomes” (29). Through a blend of social, cognitive, and teacher presence, CoIs contain mutually supportive members who have “a sense of belonging” (21) and who identify, explore, and attempt to solve problems (22). The teacher “establishes the curriculum, approaches, and methods; [she] also moderates, guides, and focuses discourse and tasks” (24).

These two frameworks become useful when we consider that the blog assignment was given in the context not only of an individual course, but in the larger context of a graduate program. To my knowledge, the majority of the students in the course are in the PhD track; although individual goals differ, one accepted goal of PhD programs in general is to prepare students to become members of the academic community. Seen through Lave and Wenger’s lens, the “practices” of the academic community include critical reading and thinking, knowledge-making, inquiry, and discourse. Doctoral students begin on the periphery of this CoP and move toward full membership. As Lave and Wenger point out, full participation involves a shift in identity—we not only learn how to write in an academic way, we become academics.

The blog postings served to move us toward full participation in several ways. Firstly, the critical reading and analysis of research are key practices in academia, as is learning to write robust, concentrated, analytical prose that engages that research. Secondly, the blogs were public, which is important to the assignment: in academia, we engage in public discussion of ideas through publication. This serves to distribute knowledge freely and to open our ideas to criticism by our peers, which is vital to the continual evolution of understanding (knowledge-making) that is a central goal of academia. Learning how to publically critique research and post our own ideas moves us closer to full participation in the academic CoP. Thirdly, we can read and comment on each other’s blogs, which, in effect, represents a microcosmic Burkean Parlor in which we can share and debate ideas (the extent to which this last goal was realized will be discussed later).

The blogs also functioned well as part of a CoI, especially when seen as a component of the entire course. By asking us to critically read and respond to articles connected to the course outcomes, the blogs encouraged us to employ personal reflection and construct meaning. Additionally, we had to discuss why we would (or would not) recommend the article to others in our field, which asked us to engage not only the class community, but the academic community at large. While individual students’ paths of inquiry differed, they could be seen as diverging from the central course question of how best to teach writing from a distance, and can also be seen as a collaborative attempt to answer that question.

Whether the collaborative aspect of CoPs and CoIs was addressed to its fullest with the blog assignment is worth further inquiry. As I have discussed above, the blogs required us to engage with the scholarly community at large. However, the assignment as written did not require the same level of engagement with the class community. Individual course members commented on blogs to differing levels. (I have not done a systematic study, and am basing my conclusions on my observations of my own and others’ blogs.) The comments varied, sometimes suggesting connections to another article or providing another perspective, and sometimes amounting to a well developed “good job.” There was not a high level of collaborative inquiry and debate as might be hoped for in a CoI.

However, as a learner, I did not find this aspect to be problematic. As I have written above, the blogs were valuable even without strongly encouraging engagement with the other class members. The in-class discussions have been particularly robust and draw from readings, experience, and analysis. We have also had frequent collaborative projects that have required us to apply our knowledge in ways fully consistent with both the CoP and CoI concepts—the Blackboard-mediated project in which we were members of a school technology committee, for example, was exactly the type of thing we would have to do as full members of the academic community. These collaborative projects were, in my estimation, the key spurs to the development of course community.

The blog assignment could be modified to require more cross-student engagement. One way would be to use the collaborative class projects as a model: students might be assigned in groups (or self-assign based on interest), and each group would have the task of answering a central question about teaching writing from a distance. The blogs could be seen as pre-writing in which they looked much the same as they do now, but they would be focused on gathering and processing research to be used to answer the group’s central question. Groups would then need to engage with each other’s blogs as they moved forward in their process of inquiry. Chi-Cheng Chang found a positive correlation between class groups’ online discussion performance and the quality of collaborative class projects, suggesting that a collaborative project of the type I outline above might be enriched by incorporating a blog aspect.

I am not sure I would argue for this change, however. The blogs functioned quite well as they currently are, and their structure allowed students to pursue their individual interests, which probably increased engagement. Also, as I have said above, they met many of the key criteria of CoPs and CoIs.

They might also be useful in FYC courses. Many writers have explored the affordances of blogs in composition classes—Charles Tryon writes that encouraging FYC students to read, write, and rhetorically analyze blogs “provoked one of the most productive conversations [he has] ever enjoyed with students about writing, specifically in terms of the relationship between writing and audience. […S]tudents quickly grasped the importance of interactivity in the blog world” (130). Shu and Wang found that using blogs in college reading courses increased student retention, probably because “blogging activities increased the members’ interaction and helped them form a learning community in which they could make friends quickly and easily, offer comfort and support to one another, exchange relatively private information about school work and social life, and offer suggestions to deal with academic problems” (n.p.). Ben McCorkle successfully used blogs in a basic-writing course to encourage students “to participate in the academic conversation [and validate] their voices as engaged citizens with real opinions on issues that mattered to them” by having students post reviews of other blogs, a book, and individual topics that they found “newsworthy” (n.p.).

However, the community of the FYC class is significantly different from that of our class. The CoP of FYC might be seen as that of undergraduate academics, but that could be debated, and certainly their membership is likely to be more temporary than we hope ours will be in the wider world of academia. The CoI framework holds more promise for FYC—many schools offer themed FYC courses that examine art or science or literature, and it would be relatively easy to frame a themed FYC class around inquiry into some key questions. Blogs could be a part of that inquiry; however, they should not be seen as leading directly to the development of a class community.

In sum, the blogs were effective in our course, and they were consistent with the CoP and CoI concepts. There are ways in which the assignment could be modified to increase collaboration, but since collaboration was reinforced in multiple other areas of the course, such modification is not necessary.

Works Cited

Chang, Chi-Cheng. “A Case Study on the Relationships between Participation in Online Discussion and Achievement of Project Work.” Journal of Educational Media and Hypermedia 17.4 (2008): 477-509. Print.

Garrison, D. Randy, and Norman D. Vaughan. Blended Learning in Higher Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008. Print.

Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: CUP, 1991. Print.

McCorkle, Ben. “English 109.02: Intensive Reading and Writing II, ‘Reading, Writing, Blogging.’” Composition Studies 38.1 (2010): 108-127. ProQuest. Web. 8 March 2011.

Shu, Hui-Yin, and Shiangkwei Wang. “The Impact of Using Blogs on College Students’ Reading Comprehension and Learning Motivation.” Literacy Research and Instruction 50.1 (2011): 68-89. ProQuest. Web. 22 Feb. 2011.


Tryon, Charles. “Writing and Citizenship: Using Blogs to Teach First-Year Composition.” Pedagogy 6.1 (2006): 128-132. Print.

Blog Post #5

Halio, Marcia Peoples. “Teaching in Our Pajamas: Negotiating with Adult Learners in Online Distance Writing Courses.” College Teaching 52.2 (2004): 58-62. Print.

Halio focuses her article on the challenges of responding to online students’ emotion-charged e-mails. This is a subject I have been interested in for some time, having experienced a number of emotional e-mail exchanges from both my online and face-to-face students. Halio’s article does not provide absolute answers; instead, it is structured to pose observations (mostly centered on one class that is representative of her experience) and suggest eight key questions for online writing teachers to address.

Halio uses research to contextualize her observations, but the bulk of the article is drawn from her analysis of e-mail archives from one specific online FYC course “for returning adult students” (59). Halio does not discuss how such students are filtered into (or choose to take) the course, but the eight students she describes are, indeed, returning students of non-traditional ages, mostly working and some with families. She notes a difference between both the volume and the content of the female and male students’ e-mails: “[w]omen’s messages often demonstrate their preoccupation with caretaking issues” and request emotional reassurance that they will succeed in the course (59); they also, as a group, write far more messages than the male students. The males “write angry messages challenging the structure of the course or questioning the usefulness of assignments […or] angry messages in response to feedback on assignments[….E]mail messages from male students are often subversive” (59).

The gender differences Halio observes are a key component of her article. Five out of eight of her questions—whether men and women approach online courses differently, how to help women find supportive networks, whether we should change assignments to focus on care-giving, how to help women “take charge of their own paths through our courses” (61), how to help male students take criticism better—focus on different approaches for each gender. These questions, as well as the more gender-neutral ones such as how to help students cope with stress and how to “avoid becoming therapists for our students” (61), are interesting and worth examination.

Perhaps because I am male, it seemed to me that Halio’s conclusions about female students were better supported than those about the males. She grounds her discussion about female students with several specific citations from three separate sources, but she does not cite any sources to support her analysis of male students. As I said above, the article is primarily based on her observations, and it is fair to note that the studies of female students she cites were probably discussing how female and male students differed, and so could be used to speak to male students. However, this is an area of the article I wished had more than anecdotal evidence. As a male adult distance student (admittedly in a different socioeconomic and cultural situation than her students), I have never written an angry e-mail to a professor; nor did I in my MA or undergraduate experiences. And while I have not systematically analyzed my e-mails from my own distance students, I would not agree that I have seen the same things noted by Halio.

However, this does not mean the article is not useful. Her questions at the end of the piece are good ones to address when building a course, and get back to the teacher’s responsibility to design a course that works well for students while also managing the workload and emotional stress of teaching. 

Blog Post #4

Prensky, Marc. “H. Sapiens Digital: From Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom.” Innovate: Journal of Online Education 5.3 (2009): n. pag. Web. 5 June 2012.

Prensky is the originator of the term “digital natives,” which has gained widespread (albeit not unconditional) acceptance since he coined it in 2001. I decided to see what Prensky had written more recently.

In this article, Prensky suggests that the distinction between digital natives (those who have grown up with digital technology) and digital immigrants (those who have not) will become less relevant as time goes on, presumably because the digital immigrants will die off, or at least become less influential. He advocates an increased emphasis on the development of “digital wisdom,” which he defines as “a twofold concept referring both to wisdom arising from the use of digital technology to access cognitive power beyond our innate capacity and to wisdom in the prudent use of technology to enhance our capabilities.” By the first statement, he means making wise choices aided by technology—accessing health systems to improve patient care, for example. In the second statement, Prensky is referring to critical technology use, which he does not explore in the same detail as the first point. This is probably because the bulk of the article does not itself exhibit this second quality of digital wisdom, but consists of a list of the ways in which digital technology will improve our lives, such as “enhancing our ability to conduct deeper analyses.” Prensky writes that “digital technology is making us smarter.” He does not qualify this sentiment; while he does write that “every [technological] enhancement comes with a trade-off,” he doesn’t characterize any negative components of these trade-offs as meaningful, but as necessary sacrifices in service of positive progress. “The unenhanced brain,” Prensky writes, “is well on its way to becoming insufficient for truly wise decision making.”

I am no Luddite, but I found this article somewhat chilling in its unconditional boosterism of technology. Similarly to his famous “digital natives” article, Prensky cites very few academically valid sources, and those he does cite are only examined in the most superficial way. Ironically, according to his reference page Prensky has accessed the majority of his sources digitally; yet rather than exemplifying digital wisdom, his article embodies its opposite.

I would not recommend this article to my peers. However, Prensky raises a few points that are useful in planning how one might teach writing in a digital space. He writes that “as we offer more courses in digital literacy, we should also offer students guidance in developing digital wisdom [...] by letting students learn by using new technologies, [with teachers] putting themselves in the role of guides, context providers, and quality controllers.” This is excellent advice, and would serve students much better than the arbitrary limits some writing teachers impose on their students’ technology use. Teaching students critical technology use requires that we teachers approach technology with an open mind ourselves and move away from overly simplistic guidelines such as minimum numbers of non-electronic sources in a paper or word-processing being the only acceptable classroom technology. We need to exhibit digital wisdom ourselves so we can teach it to our students.

Blog Post #3

Smith, Cheryl C. “Technologies for Transcending a Focus on Error: Blogs and Democratic Aspirations in First-Year Composition.” Journal of Basic Writing 27.1 (2008): 35-60. Print.

In “Technologies for Transcending a Focus on Error,” Smith describes a blog project she undertook in a first-year composition class and suggests that it might be productive to explore similar projects in the basic-writing classroom. For her project, she created a class blog that she used primarily as a space for “pre-writing exercises [she] called ‘meditations,’ which would lead up to the three longer, formal essays” (41). Smith posted a variety of prompts on the class blog and encouraged her students to write longer, experimental pieces in response to the prompts and to reply to each other’s posts. She discouraged a focus on grammar, encouraging students to “try on writerly identities, try out ideas and claims, and test different styles for approaching those claims” (41). For one prompt, she also encouraged students to incorporate YouTube videos in their posts. For the most part, students responded very positively, both to the blog idea itself and to each other’s posts.

Smith’s approach rests upon several key understandings. Firstly, she adheres to the belief that “students at all levels, from basic to advanced, and with all degrees of academic experience, are likely to have had their minds and writing styles impacted by their exposure to technology. […] Basic writers are as likely as their peers to come to college with a determining Web 2.0 fluency” (36). Secondly, she sees blogs, specifically, as being democratizing through their “unique potential to free the writer’s voice that can especially empower those students who lack confidence in their language skills or are otherwise struggling. Further, by giving participants equal access to a public voice in a forum that is familiar to many young people, blogs create a safe place for risk-taking and error” (38).

Both of these understandings are worthy of examination. It is probably true that many traditional-age students have significant familiarity with Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and other social media. However, as Pavia points out in the article I blogged on previously, we should be wary of assumptions that ALL students, especially those in our basic-writing classes (because of the higher prevalence of working-class students), share a given level of comfort—let alone fluency—with Web 2.0. Additionally, as Smith notes herself, a blog might not be seen by all as a safe place. She describes an episode where students used the blog to critique a class project, and then interpreted her response to that critique as embodying the message “watch what you say” (48). Students became more timid in their posts, and Smith had to work to reestablish a more open environment on the blog.

Despite these concerns, I see Smith’s experiment as worth trying. One way I might proceed in the fall is to establish a private class blog for the developmental students in my ALP section. This could provide my basic writers with a space to experiment and pre-write, as well as develop a community where they do not feel any pressure of having their writing read by the college-level students. As I learned from past blog experiments—and as Smith recommends—one key will be good prompts. I like Smith’s idea of using the blog as a pre-writing space, but I may also incorporate prompts that address other topics to give students a chance to write on diverse topics.