course history - two paragraph version (with intro.)

Here is a 2 paragraph version of the course history segment, prefaced by a one paragraph intro. I would be glad to revise any of this if the theme, tone, examples, etc. are wrong.

Of course, after mucking around in the history of the class for several days, I find the 2 paragraph version completely inadequate! So, below the 2 paragraph version I have pasted a 5 paragraph version, just in case you want to see a few other ideas available to us by reviewing the history theme.

LS

**********************

Today for those of us in composition studies, a course on writing with computers does not seem like an anomaly, especially if it is one writing course amongst many in a writing curriculum that stretches well beyond first year composition. After all we have --- years of disciplinary research in computers and composition, and we have specializations in this writing with computers at the Ph.D. level. Yet, few of us would anticipate that such a course would be placed at the heart of a writing major that is driven by attention to composing processes, critical theory and rhetorical traditions. Somewhat to our surprise, that is exactly where our version of such a course is now situated: as one of the first required courses students will take as they pursue our new degree program in writing and rhetoric. Situating the course in this way indicates that it has moved from the margins to the very center of the curriculum, a move that prompts us teachers of the course to interrogate it all over again, reconsidering its design and its raison d’etre, particularly in order to understand what are this course’s inherent central principles that stretch all the way through a writing major?

One place to start answering that question is to consider the history of this course as it has unfolded in our program. That history puts us on the trail to an answer, even if it does not fully resolve the question of "inherent cetnral principles." In a very early iteration of the course, which we refer to as WRT 235, we focused on the practical/utilitarian needs prompted by a new writing technology and on how "to use the computer to add depth to each step of the writing process: inventing, drafting and revising.“ Nine years later we totally revised the course, calling it “Writing in Electronic Environments,” and signaling a radical departure from the practical writing assignments and expressivist-process pedagogy of the earlier iteration. Now, we focused on the social and cultural elements that seem to drive the way writers interact with this particlar writing technology for the purposes of self-expression, self-representation, harvesting of information and communicating. The syllabus was organized around themes (for example “The Internet as a Technology for Representations of Oneself,” or "The Internet as a Technology of Electronic Democracy") that invited critical thinking about the ways the technology instantiates writers into surprising roles and identities, and how these are linked to writing behaviors, habits and demands that are purely digital in origin and execution (such as web pages, list serves, blogs, face pages, chat rooms, etc.). With this iteraion, the couse seems both more substantive and thoroughly digital.

This “mini” history seems to imply that by its later iteration, the course had found its inherently appropriate content, centered on its own processes and genres of writing, and is appropriately situated squarely in the center of our writing program’s curricular concerns--composing processes, critical theory and rhetorical traditions. For us instructors of the course, however, when we design the syllabus and assignments by using analytical methods derived from either critical theory or composing theory, we are still using central principles derived from non-electronic writing environments to drive an electronic writing course. Surely, if the course is worth being at the center of the writing major, things should be the other way around: At least some of the theory and analysis shaping the course should derive from principles inherent to the nature of writing in an electronic environment. We are, therefore, pondering, yet again, a new iteration of the class, one that really tangles with what we mean by writing in an electronic environment. In essence, what do we mean by “environment”? Are the concepts entailed in “writing environment” robust enough to form a central principal for the course, and can it redound through the writing major, generally?

******************

5 paragraph version.

One place to start answering that question is by considering the history of this course as it has unfolded in our program. This course, which we refer to as WRT 235 and which has had three different official iterations in our university’s catalog, keeps evolving. Each iteration was initially prompted by practical-utilitarian concerns and rationalizations, but the day-by-day teaching of the course and our observations of students’ writing with computers gradually, inevitably refocuses the course around critical and theoretical concerns of composing and communicating with, through and within advanced writing technologies. For example, the first iteration of this course in 1991 was based on the rationalization that:

Students entering a variety of fields (business, journalism, engineering, resource management, education and public relations) may be expected to write and produce a variety of texts with the computer. In addition, they maybe responsible for supervising, coordinating or leading others who are using the computer to write or publish documents.

Because of this rationalization, a major assignment for the class asked each student in the class to visit a work site in order to study how computers used for writing in that setting.

This practical/utilitarian orientation stayed in place until next iteration of the course, which occurred within two years. This iteration, called “Writing with Computers,” focused on the ways in which composition research alerted us to “how the computer changes the writing process, how it transforms [a writer’s] view of text from static and linear to fluid and hierarchical, how graphics may enhance text or be irrelevant, and how [it facilitates writing] as part of a team.” Clearly, the practical/utilitarian aspects of the course, while still present, were becoming secondary or, more accurately, were becoming a means to thinking about the nature of texts and about composing practices, including, according to a standard syllabus, “helping you [the student] to use the computer to add depth to each step of the writing process: inventing, drafting and revising [ . . . ] seeing text as fluid, an opportunity for play and open ended exploration . . . “ With this language, the course was clearly more theorized and driven by the insights and pedagogical savvy gained from forty years of writing-as-a process research and practice. These changes, however, did not make the inherent principles of writing with computers a driver of the course. Indeed, the opposite was still true: writing process research and theory, including expressivism, was driving the course.

By 2000, however, the title of the course became, “Writing in Electronic Environments,” signaling a radical departure from the nine-year history of a course anchored in practical writing assignments and expressivist-process pedagogy. This next iteration was prompted, in part, by our day by day, week by week, observations of our WRT 235 students’ writing on list serves and e-mail, in their rudimentary web sites, in their appropriation of others’ texts when researching, and their desktop publications. These artifacts offered evidence that much more was changing than the writing process. Slowly but surely, the course became more and more focused on the social and cultural elements that seem to drive the way students interacted with this technology for self-expression, self-representation, harvesting of information and for communication. In this third iteration, the course was driven by themes that invite critical thinking about the way the technology instantiates writers into surprising roles and identities, and the way these are linked to writing behaviors, habits and demands that are purely digital in origin and execution. For example, when students’ study of the theme “Technologies of Writing and their Effects on Writers and Writing,” the assignment is the writing of an essay in Two Technologies, One digital, one non-digital; when they study “The Internet as a Technology for Representations of Oneself,” the assignment calls for setting up and keeping of a web log (blog). Furthermore, whatever themes are selected by the instructor, conscious attention is given to critical analysis of the popular, social hopes and promises of that use of the technology, as these were challenged by the students’ actual experiences as writers.

With these themes and concerns, the course in its third iteration moved more firmly to the center of our writing program’s curricular concerns: composing processes, critical theory and rhetorical traditions. Indeed, naming the course as a required as part of the major in Writing and Rhetoric seems to confirm its central place. But, once again, there is pressure for the course to revert its earliest conception, a course anchored in practical demands This course is central to a writing major because, said our colleagues, it is students’ first exposure to those writing tasks that we expect our graduates to be able to do: to develop an electronic portfolio of digital documents that presents their best work from their courses and through which they represent themselves as skilled rhetoricians, writers, editors, and text designers. In other words, the course is central to the major because it serves students’ practical needs in their career setting!

For us instructors of the course, however, the “how-to” of electronic writing is no longer a substantive focus or rationale. In addition, we realize that even though the course has evolved to include attention to composing processes, critical theory and rhetorical traditions, we recognize that the analytical methods derived from critical theory and rhetorical traditions currently push the course through its readings and assignments, similar to the course in its second iteration, when it was driven by process theory. But surely, if the course is at the center of the writing major, things should be the other way around: the inherent nature of writing in an electronic environment should drive the course. We are, therefore, pondering a fourth iteration of the class, one that really tangles with what we mean by writing in an electronic environment. What do we mean by “environment”? Are the concepts entailed in “writing environment” robust enough to form a central principal for the course, and can it redound through the writing major, generally?

*********************