Talking to Myself

You may not have heard me mention this before, but I'm using wikis in my composition classroom.

Sorry, had to say that for the 87th time. Anyway, there're a lot of good reasons for using wikis and (to a lesser extent, blogs) in composition, but the main reason is that I believe that new media is consistent with the goal of first-year composition (FYC) in preparing students for college-level and post-collegiate writing--and I tend to focus a lot on the post-collegiate, as my class might very well be the last writing class some of my students take before their two upper-division "Writing in the Major" courses (or before they drop out, as about 20% of my students will). In other words, I stress digital writing because I'll probably be the first, and may be the last, instructor to introduce students to a form of writing that, while gaining a great presence in composition classrooms as a whole, is not being critically discussed as often as it's being used (Lundin 434); this tells me that assumptions are being made about students' capabilities to compose new media, or their preparation for such, that may be based more on generationalist narratives than on any hard evidence.

And I've made these assumptions too. When I first started teaching English 101 (last semester, but still...) I assumed my students knew how to at least look up information on Google Calendar. Or create a blog on Blogspot.com. Or that they all could (and would) use Microsoft Word. These technologies, especially the third, seemed so rote collegiate material to me that I didn't waste a second thought that anyone might not have encountered them before, or at least gained the literacy to quickly learn them. But I'm not the only one; only two weeks ago we read an article by Stephanie Vie that argued that our students are more technologically literate than us instructors, and that, born to a generation immersed in technology, we needed to incorporate their technological knowledge into the classroom in order to utilize it for composing texts (Vie).

However, my experience has been anything but; too often, I find myself tripping over these assumptions and having to schedule days in the AML to allow students to acclimate to the technology (which reminds me, right after this I need to book the AML for my first few weeks next semester). More importantly, I've encountered an incredible amount of resistance from my students, who often express vocal opposition to wikis, blogs, e-portfolios, and *gasp* reading each others' work. Like most high school graduates (I expect), they come to the university fully expecting to write papers as exercises exclusively for teachers who won't read them (or take them seriously), and the real work doesn't begin until they declare a major.

By incorporating new media and digital writing into my curriculum, I not only get to experience the sheer joy of shattering (and/or dodging) these expectations, but my students also begin to view writing as a public activity, rather than a private one--as Lundin describes it, "wikis can challenge the practice of single authorship and help overcome the spatial and temporal hurdles to produce collaborative writing" (438)--which prepares them for the immense amount of collaborative (group) work and diminished individualism they are certain to encounter in the academy and the workplace.

In my experience, the best way to ease them into this potentially new and frightening dynamic (I may enjoy shattering expectations, but I'm not a sadist!) is to use Gee's 36 learning principles as a guide, but especially #6, which Gee refers to as the Psychosocial Moratorium Principle but I prefer (in less academic cadence) to call "The Newbie Zone Principle." The key is to make sure that students are aware (and perhaps the instructor too) that they are not being graded on their ability to adapt to the new technology (not immediately, anyway; think portfolio-grading), and to provide them opportunity to "play" with new media.

For example, a significant portion of course grades for my classes are peer-reviews, which must be completed in their wikis. Students are prepared for this (admittedly) techno-literacy-required activity by writing other class assignments and exercises in their wikis, including multimodal assignments, and by forming into small peer-review groups rather than being required to peer-review everyone in the class (unlikely) or selecting a few wikis at random (without much in-class interaction with their peers) for comment. I also try to give them a significant amount of time (more than necessary, imho) to complete the peer-reviews, including at least two AML workshop days for the first two peer-reviews (one for each) so that students can play at using the technology while sitting right next to each other in the lab (to discuss any problems they may have). Finally, I also highlight examples of exceptional peer-review work on the overhead projector (in my tech-equipped classrooms) that not only points out what content constitutes great peer-review, but also how the author(s) use the medium of the wiki to offer peer-review in novel ways.

Much of this may be new to you. Much of this may be familiar, especially coming from me. However, I would argue that the most important point you could take away from this week's readings and my blog is this: Remember, your students already enter your classroom knowing how to compose a "paper" paper--albeit with or without knowledge of citation styles or other important things--and if you don't at least introduce them to a new medium, you're playing it safe and letting them compose inside their comfort zone. They may thank you for this now, but I guarantee that in five years we're going to start hearing about a new, academic, Digital Divide--one where college graduates are woefully unprepared for writing in new mediums.