Welcome to English 854, Fall 2012: Seminar in College Composition, Theory and Pedagogy: Teaching Writing With Digital Technologies

As I wrote in the original course description, back in March:

The class’s subtitle probably misleads, for this is not a class focusing on how to teach with PowerPoint or D2L. Instead, we will consider how networked digital communication technologies play with our understanding of "writing." How therefore might we play with what it is to teach "writing," be a "teacher of writing," shape a "classroom," or responsibly prepare others (as well as ourselves) for future communications? What happens to students, learning, bodies, aesthetics, distance, and rhetoric through such networked play? What counts as "critical"?

In addition to reading a range of texts supportive of our inquiry, we will be "writing" our own texts — with color, video, animation, and space — to ground our readings, questions, and arguments. We will explore a range of environments and interfaces — gaming, immersive, graphic, narrative, non-linear, social, non-western, drill-and-kill — so that you experiment with the positions and communications (and hence teaching and learning) possible within them.

You need have no particular technological proficiency for this class, but you do need a strong critical perspective to bring to the play. You will keep a reflective journal throughout the class (through the form of a blog, but we can discuss a paper-based option), and will propose (alone or collaboratively) a final project that supports your pedagogical/research interests.

If we take seriously the observations many make about the possibilities of digital technologies and education (some range of which I assume you have heard and a range of which we will read and discuss), then this needs to be a class fueled by experiment — at the same time we seek rigor and well-grounded critical perspectives. Rigorous play?

As currently designed, the course is divided into five sections: 

• Four of the sections will each focus on one of the four words of the course subtitle: Technology, Digitality, Writing, and Teaching. It is impossible cleanly to segregate these concepts in practice and theoretically, and so each weaves into the other — but by digging into each I hope that, over the course of the semester, we will be eventually be able to synthesize fuller reasons for further action.
• The final section will be time for you to design, compose, and present your course projects. In addition to a multimodal project tied to course interests, I expect you to compose a written seminar paper, due on December 17th, in which you argue for what and how you should be teaching in a writing class now. (You can choose the level of writing class: first-year, advanced, basic, and so on.)

My part in shaping this class is the basic template above, grounded in the assumption that digital technologies are shifting what it is to write, to be a writer, to be a person, and so to participate culturally and politically. We will be questioning this assumption throughout, both through the more traditional means of reading and questioning but also through making and questioning — and through trying out different class structures.

From you, then, I need a willingness to suggest, to rip apart while treading thoughtfully, to read like a demon, and to be willing to risk and create in unfamiliar terrain. I also need you to push me equally in doing all of this!