DRAFT until 10 Jan. 2007.
Course url: http://biro.bemidjistate.edu/cgi/twwtwiki.pl
Additional readings provided by the instructor: CourseReadings (from 2005). Moved to del.icio.us/twwt
Given technological changes in the use of the networked computers,
This course gives you the opportunity to become familiar and comfortable with both the technologies and some of rhetorical and pedagogical principles that inform the sound use of the technologies. We will move between theory and practice as we move back and forth between reading, activities, and discussions. This is a technology-rich, hands-on course with an emphasis on forging a conceptual framework for understanding writing and reading in a new, changing (even unstable), technological context.
That's the official description. Here's the elaboration.
Behind this course is the premise that writing and reading change when we change technologies - and change significantly. Writing is learned, and relearned, in conjunction with a writing technology which influences that teaching and learning, as well as what can be done in writing. Change the technology and you change literacy: new techniques of writing and reading are possible; new understandings and new ways of understanding become necessary. Although the discipline of rhet/comp has been studying the changes for over 30 years, we're still grappling with the changes and how to understand them.
Reading hypertext, for instance: How is reading hypertext different from reading print-based text? And how, then, is writing hypertext different from writing print-based text? Or, how does the essay change when hypertextualized?
Or computer-mediated communication (cmc) in general: We know that online discussions demand different rhetorical strategies of participants than those demanded in writing the monologues that are classroom papers. We know that. So what do we as teachers do differently? What do we teach? How do we recast our interactions with students online?
With such significant and deeply-rooted (deeply rhetorical) changes fostered by technology, it's tempting to bring order to the new by collecting techniques into recipe boxes of Tips and Suggestions (often labeled Best Practices to add some quasi-business caché to the set.) This is how teaching develops its practitioner lore: by trading teaching suggestions.
In this course, you will have the opportunity to do exactly that: to collect a recipe box of (more or less) Tried 'n True Techniques - if you so desire.
But I hope we can go further. This course gives you the opportunity to develop new techniques, bring in new ways of understanding, and base those ways on a solid theory. Doing so is known as philosophizing the classroom, and students of Rhetorical Theory will have had some experience with this.
We'll be doing both theory and practice in this class - looking at practices, and looking at rhetorical and pedagogical foundations of practice. But my point is that you are free - encouraged, even - to focus on what you wish to, to focus on what you sense you need to at the moment. Theory and practice are bound up in one another; they don't follow in sequence (first theory and then practice, nor first practice and then theory). We know why and how practices work, and so which to pursue, by means of theory; and we come to understand theory by means of practice. (Ask any painter: color theory on the wheel and on the canvas inform each other.) In this course, we can explore both, test things, try things out, refine them.
You'll form pairs, generally. Each week, one pair will choose the readings and develop the activities you would like the rest of the class to engage in for the following week. I'll ask you to meet with me before class to discuss your plans and preview what's coming. Then, you will teach the class: have us share, lecture, present, moderate discussion, have us engage in an activity, whatever it is you do when you teach.
The next week, it's another pair of co-teachers. We'll plan it so that all the grad students teach twice.
To begin, we'll collectively develop a list of topics we want to work with. I've sketched some out on the CourseSyllabus page, but we will modify and develop this list further.
My role is to oversee what you're doing, give you input, coordinate efforts, make sure that we don't ignore the significant work that has already been done in teaching writing with technology, and complicate matters if they become simplistic or formulaic. Your role is to learn what you can - theory and practice - by teaching others.
For instance, you might want to look at how teachers use the web to teach research strategies. There are a couple of articles in each book that give an overview that we might all read. But you might want us to try to apply something as well, and to bring note on our experience to class to work with. Or, you might want us to prepare to work in pairs or groups in class for an hour or so, and then moderate a discussion on what we encountered.
None. There will be, I expect, weekly reading and writing for activities, writing that you should collect in a paper or virtual notebook or binder to look back on and consider. But there will be no Final Paper, no Annotated Bib, no Final Presentation.... I may moderate a final discussion - a sort of group reflection - the last evening of class or in finals' week. But this would not be an exam.
Grad students are expected to openly tie rhetorical theory and/or pedagogy to the activities, reading selection, and discussion. Undergrads are invited to do so, but need not. We will probably take this up in our pre-teaching discussion, but grad students should be prepared to discuss the rhetorical and pedagogical foundations of what they present.
After each class session you present, we'll either meet to debrief or I'll write up some brief notes. I'll give you a grade for your evening's work at that time.
I'm interested in seeing
If an activity fails to develop as you expect, or a class session you're running fails to move along, don't worry. We will muddle through. If it gets really bad, we can stop as a class for a while and try to figure out what happened.
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