the history segment (long version)

Here is a draft of the history segment. It is too long. I am wrestling with it to shorten it. I would appreciate advice in the meantime.
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What are this course’s central principles that we believe stretch all the way through a writing major?

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 in two ways. Each iteration is 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 began with a working title of “Writing with Computers in Career Settings,” reflecting a sense that using computers for writing was a workplace phenomenon and that such a course would be “needed” by only a segment of students, those in business and professional tracks. We argued for the course by stating:

"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."

By the time this course actually moved through the university’s approval process, the title was shortened to “Writing with Computers” and the rationale for the course included a discussion of the ways the writing process is enhanced, modified and sometimes, perhaps, impeded by composing with computers. Nevertheless, the course and the writing assignments remained the same—practical/utilitarian—and we promised to offer one section a year, taught by a non-tenured faculty member late in the day. A course on the margins, to be sure, and not one overly concerned with principles that stretched through the rest of the writing curriuclum.

The next iteration of the course, which occurred within two years, retained the same title, but the rationale for the new design 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. Consider these first three goals statements for the course.

"Goals
1. This course aims to change the way you write on computer, helping you to use the computer to add depth to each step of the writing process: inventing, drafting and revising.

2. The course aims to change your critical stance towards text, from seeing text as static and permanent to seeing text as fluid, an opportunity for play and open ended.

3. The course aims to have you see texts as hierarchies, especially to have you transform texts into hierarchies with the aid of outliners, hypercard and other analytical text tools."

With this language, the course is clearly more theorized and more in keeping with writing process research and theory. In this iteration the course itself become more driven by the insights and pedagogical savvy gained from forty years of writing-as-a process research and practice. Redesigning the course in this way made it more central to the program and more embraced by the faculty but these changes did not make the inherent principles of writing with computers a driver of the writing curriculum, as a whole.

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 expressive-process pedagogy. This next iteration of the course was prompted by two very important tends. First, access to and uses of computer technology became more personal and affordable, and in a university environment, more insistent. Second, the ways to use the technology became easier and more complicated at the same time. Word processing, formatting text and integrating graphics became routine, for example, while the native forms of electronic writing (such as list serves, web sites) developed so rapidly as to constantly challenge what we thought we knew about writing with computers .

These trends and activities had several effects on the course. First, since the course promised to focus on the use of computers for writing, it attracted more students who wanted to learn more about the practical things of writing (such as, more about word processing, graphics in texts, doing e-mail, web sites etc.). At the very same time, we eliminated the most practical, “how-to” elements of the class. We did this partly because these were available to students through other venues, and partly because day by day, week by week, 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 were 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 they interacted with this technology for self-expression, self-representation, information and communication, the way individuals users (and organizational users) were writing, responding to, seeking out, sharing and representing themselves through this technology. Not surprisingly, these were the very issues that became more central concern to emerging specialists in writing with computers and to the discipline, generally (references needed).

Now the course is driven by themes that invite critical thinking about the way the technology was instantiating writers into roles and identities that had associated writing behaviors, habits and demands. The course deliberately takes up these themes and each theme is associated a writing project that was purely digital in origin and execution. For example:

"Theme: Technologies of Writing and their Effects on Writers and Writing
Assignment: Essay in Two Technologies, One digital, one non-digital

Theme: The Internet as a Technology of Democracy
Assignment: Participation in The Intercollegiate Electronic Democracy Project’s Issues-based List Serves

Theme: The Internet as a Technology for Representations of Oneself
Assignment: Setting up and keeping a web log (blog)

Theme: The Internet as a Technology for the Dissemination of Information (includes Visual Rhetoric)
Assignment: Activist "Website" of 3 - 4 Linked Pages"

Furthermore, whatever themes were selected by the instructor, there was conscious attention 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. For example, for the project on the Internet and democracy, students reflected on such issues as:

"*You now have participated in an extensive email discussion (asynchronous) list? Briefly describe its purpose and qualities. What was the style of writing? What writing and communications “demands” did that environment make on participants?

*Think for a few minutes beyond your personal uses of the computer for interpersonal communication. What might be the larger social, community, or political advantages of the wide-spread availability of chat rooms, email discussion lists, interactive blog sites, and other forms of synchronous and asynchronous communications? What might be the disadvantages or problems?

"According to some political theorists, democracy thrives when and if ordinary citizens are guaranteed freedom of expression and they engage in rational public deliberation about issues of social or political concern. Based on our electronic writing experiences this semester what are your hopes for “keypad democracy”?"

Clearly, a major goal of the course in its third iteration is the development of a critical habit of mind with respect to the writing (and the writer) that occurs in electronic environments. At the same time, this critical perspective included attention to those conventions, features and communicative appeals of digital genres which best assure clear, honest, ethical, and thoughtful communication between writers and their audiences. In other words, the course also included attention to rhetorics and genres of writing in electronic environments.

It would seem that with these themes and concerns, the course in its third iteration moved more firmly to the center of the 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 confirms 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 the instructors of the course, however, the “how-to” of electronic writing is never a substantive focus. New generations of software make the how-to of electronic writing ever easier, while rendering the composing processes and rhetorical options and opportunities more invisible. For the instructors of the course, the urgent question is “What are this course’s central principles that stretch all the way through the curriculum?” As we ponder this we realize that even though the course has evolved to include attention to composing processes, critical theory and rhetorical traditions—all of which link to central principles that stretch all the way through the curriculum--it does so with respect to electronic genres of web pages, blogs, list serves, etc., and these concerns are course specific rather than redounding to the writing major as a whole. To be general we have to take it one step further – to really tangle with what we mean by writing in an electronic environment. What do we mean by making “environment” a principle for writing, generally?
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