Things to Note from Our Introductory Readings

1. Things to Note fromOur Introductory Readings Computers & Composition Weeks 1-3 Dr. Reynolds

2. Humanism and Computers and Writing • Knievel, Michael. “What Is Humanistic about Computers and Writing? Historical Patterns and Contemporary Possibilities for the Field.” Computers and Composition 26 (2009): 92-106. Print. • Argues that a humanistic approach to computers has guided and should guide computers and composition as a field. • Defines “computers and writing” as a subfield of “rhetoric and composition,” which is often (mis)understood as “English humanities-as-literature • Identifies four important meaningful intersections of computers and writing and the humanities that are complicated by postmodernity and new technologies: consumption (complicated by production), textual and cultural permanence (complicated by process and performance), ethics (complicated by broader range of texts, values, and identities), and authorship (complicated by collaboration).

3. Phases of Humanistic Argument Phase I: fear and loathing (1975-1992) Phase II: moving the social turn online (1990-2000) Informed by collaborative and social theories of composition studies AND the growth of networks, hypertext, and the web Computer-based writing spaces envisioned as “student-centered, multivocal… space[s] that might a new way of thinking about knowledge, text, and authorship Hypertext theory defines text as unstable, multivocal, and contextual Also leads to critique of technology as it relates to human “others” • Computers are not usually understood as humanistic • Computers and writing has an interest in understanding them as humanistic • The burden of defining computers as humanistic falls to the field • Fights against ethical concerns that computers diminish creativity, writerly control, and audience response • Argues the goals of computers and writing overlap with the field of composition and rhetoric so that computer-based writing environments should be informed by that theory and pedagogy

4. Phase III: digital literacy and action (2000-present) • Begins to shift beyond purely humanistic concerns to postmodern and posthuman concerns, including more critical approaches to (1) multimedia, multimodal, and multivocal texts; (2) online identity and subjectivity, and (3) civic engagement. • Adopts the notion of “digital literacy,” expanding the focus of computers and writing beyond critical consumption to critical production (through Web 2.0 technologies). • Uses Selber’s work (discussed later) to suggest the remnants of humanism in this era, redefining humanism and computers and writing as requiring “literacies of both consumption (critical, rhetorical) and production (functional, rhetorical).” • This work moves toward a 21st-century notion of the humanities in which (1) human subjectivity/identity is destabilized, (2) text includes nonprint forms and genres, (3) “knowledge is always/already under [constant] revision,” and (4) “a fully equipped rhetor must be equally capable of analysis and production for multimediated participation in the academy, the workplace, and both personal and public spheres.”

5. Computers and Compositionas a field • Moran, Charles. “Computers and Composition 1983-2002: What We Have Hoped for.” Computers and Composition 20 (2003): 343-58. Print. • Reviews the first 20 years of the field’s leading periodical, examining the hopes that writing-classroom technologies will improve the teaching and learning of writing, the status of writing teachers in the academy and beyond, and “a more egalitarian and just society.” • Argues that though much of the early work in the field seems naïve in hindsight, the work is important as it comes from dedicated teachers working with students. • Argues, more importantly, that these hopes, even if our work has fallen short of reaching them, drive the field to continue to research writing, the relationship between technology and writing, and “the world we have always wanted.”

6. What We Have Hoped for … • Researchers published in Computers and Composition “are generally upbeat, optimistic, enthusiastic, and forward-looking” about technology and writing. • This optimism is often expressed alongside and in spite of articles about the failure of particular technologies and pedagogies. • This approach toward technology and teaching is likely a result of “the dominant discourse of technology” (uncritically positive), the profession of teaching (hopeful about potential for positive change), and American culture (solution-based) • Moran observes two persistent hopes that drive the field, one concurrent hope, and one more recent hope and organizes his arguments around those as follows

7. Hopes

8. What We (May) Dowith Web 2.0 Technologies • Moxley, Joseph. “Datagogies, Writing Spaces, and the Age of Peer Production.” Computers and Composition 25 (2008): 182-202. Print. • Introduces the term “datagogy” to theorize and describe what happens when groups of teachers use technology to build and share theory and pedagogy about (the teaching of) writing • Argues that datagogies engage the critical power of individuals working together collaboratively in a climate that respects diversity and independent thinking • Further argues that such datagogies are necessary in order to maintain the relevance of English Studies

9. Wisdom of the Crowds • Focuses on commons-based peer-to-peer technologies (think wiki technology) but may apply to other “new communication technologies” (like social networking). • These technologies seem to challenge traditional assumptions about authorship, authority, collaboration, and power • “these popular writing sites provide models of new learning environments that enable writers to reach broad audiences for their texts, providing a world stage for collaboration, dialogue, conflict, and innovation.” • “In brief, our society has moved from the Information Age to the Age of Peer Production.”

10. Conflicting Communities? The Community of Power (Traditional - Individual) The Community of Learning (New – The Crowd) Driven by the search for and sharing of knowledge and understanding, cooperation, and openness Process-based Social-epistemology “wikilove” • Driven by competition, individualism, and capital success • Instructor as ultimate power • Collaboration can happen in controlled context • Fails to engage students

11. Multiliteracies • Selber, Stuart A. Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2004. Print. • Argues that new technologies do not simply change literacy but require new literacies so that students must be taught to be multiliterate, not only in terms of reading and writing different/new texts, but also in terms of occupying multiple subject positions and working toward multiple objectives as they encounter and create traditional and new media texts • Argues for a fusing of functional, critical, and rhetorical literacies • Places composition teachers at the center of teaching such multiliteracies

12. A Helpful Summary/Review A Review of Multiliteracies for a Digital Age by Shawn Miller from Currents in Electronic Literacy Fall 2005 (9), http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/fall05/miller.html. • The word literacies has apparently not yet been added to Microsoft Word’s dictionary, as it repeatedly comes up underlined in red every time it’s typed. While this sort of occurrence can be generally dismissed or brushed aside as simple technological error, it’s become particularly alarming in light of software packages such as Microsoft Word’s place amongst the growing din of “solutions” touted as cornerstones of our new found digital, computer literacies. Perhaps the software engineers behind the current version of Word never gave pause to consider sentiments currently found in such books as Cynthia Selfe and Gail Hawisher’sLiterate Lives in the Information Age, where they write: “because students from different cultures, races, and backgrounds bring different literacies and different experiences with literacy to the classroom, focusing so single-mindedly on only one privileged form of literacy encourages a continuation of the literate/illiterate divide that perpetuates violence and functions in a conservative, reproductive fashion to favor existing class-based systems” (Selfe 232). • Since the first appearances of digital literacies in academia, the focus hasn’t been so much on whether or not the concept is valid, so much as which discipline has the right to become the authority on it. Computer science departments, art departments, and even education programs all have some vested interest in the growth, development, and proliferation of the concept of digital literacies, creating multidisciplinary shifts in various programs just to stake their claim as gatekeepers and experts. Often, however, it’s the champions of the old, foundational literacy, the English departments, which become surprisingly silent and passive. Penn State University assistant professor of English Stuart A. Selber, however, sets out to reclaim the English discipline’s place at the forefront of digital literacy study and education with his book Multiliteracies for a Digital Age.

13. Selber begins by establishing a different perspective on what computer literacy in its most basic form actually is. Selber seeks to release the concept of computer literacy from the actual tools and hardware that currently binds it to ‘hands-on’ workshops and laborious tutorial documentation. Instead, he reestablishes digital literacy as a ‘multiliteracy’, wherein the conversation can open up beyond the computer lab, and connections can begin to be established across formats, functions, documents, and disciplines. As Selber puts it, “although it is sensible and helpful to begin with current ways of knowing and working, such a model is ultimately limiting because it becomes non-dialogic: Not only does the model assume that technology is neutral, but if it fails to recognize that technology can encourage teachers to reconsider taken-for-granted assumptions, goals, and practices” (Selber 23). • At the heart of the book, Selber establishes three separate areas of digital literacy: functional literacy, critical literacy, and rhetorical literacy. Each section provides a basis and framework for each concept, generally followed by explorations of Selber’s own experience and research. In his chapter “Functional Literacy: Computers as Tools, Students as Effective Users of Technology,” Selber assumes that computer literacy starts with a rudimentary acquisition of skills and the utilization of various ‘tools’; however, his inquiries ask us to reflect on the political assumptions that exist within “tool metaphors” (Selber 36) that are generally presented as being politically neutral. Selber goes so far as to write that “functional literacy often becomes a blunt tool with which ruling classes create minimally skilled workers” (Selber 33), though he later modifies this idea by suggesting that rhetoric and composition faculty can help students “situate technological impasses in a broader context so that their characteristics can be organized and understood” (Selber 70). Students can begin to accomplish this through the use of a systematic heuristic approach to technological and web-related problems, wherein they set up qualitative inquiries into these problems, identify them within an empirical framework , and then apply the “appropriate forms of assistance” (Selber 71), thus empowering the students to overcome what Selber calls “performance-oriented impasses”(Selber 72).

14. Selber then moves into a call for critical literacy amongst both students (asking them to question the technologies as ‘artifacts’ of potential political and social use and abuse) and teachers (whom he calls on to guide and foster such inquiries). It’s here, within a framework bolstered by pedagogical theory (including a useful discussion of constructivist and post-constructivist theories), that Selber’s argument for multiliteracies as the domain of rhetoric and composition begins to shine. Selber makes the case that students should be asking why and how technology institutions such as websites, campus computer labs, software packages, etc., have been set up to persuade, control, direct and use them. He then points to areas where the digital divide has worsened and deepened, though he is “not suggesting that this troubling state of affairs has been brought about solely by the politics of design cultures, only that these politics are implicated with crucial issues of access, a fact that can help students focus their critical analyses of computing infrastructures” (Selber 108). • Selber then turns his attention to rhetorical literacy to engage students in an increased understanding and perception of social and cultural climates and changes. He does this by issuing a call for faculty to help students evaluate technology in rhetorical contexts and then re-evaluate and even reproduce the technology in positive ways (he refers to this practice as ‘reflection in action’). Ultimately, Selber hopes that students will move on from just being functionally adept computer users to becoming fully aware, fully critical interface designers. Here, Selber perhaps misses an opportunity to reshape the conversation as an interdisciplinary ‘call to arms’. Interface design, in its fullest implementation, could branch out to embrace a truly interdisciplinary effort between rhetoric, graphic design, computer science,and many other fields. This isn’t to say that Selber doesn’t mention and acknowledge the interdisciplinary nature of interface design and digital literacies, though one cannot help but feel that a slight opportunity for additional elaboration was missed. The discipline of rhetoric itself, for example, continues to undergo various transformations, most of which involve further integration with disciplines such as philosophy, communication, computer science, education and the like. • Whatever may be said about missed opportunities, Selber’s audience remains clearly identified from the very beginning: rhetoric and composition teachers and professors. Throughout Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, teachers can expect to encounter various ideas for implementation into multiple classroom settings, as well as a hefty amount of theory that supports and highlights their own attempts to establish a rhetoric of multiliteracy education. Works Cited: Selfe, Cynthia L. and Hawisher, Gail E. Literate Lives in the Information Age. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2004.