How do the increased opportunities for public participation and engagement brought about by digital composing technologies shape the way we teach writing?

The rise of what Manuel Castells has called “mass self-communication” technologies–open-access web publishing platforms, social networking technology, curation software, etc.–cannot help but radically reshape what we think of when we talk about “writing.”  A wide range of technologists and researchers have reminded us of the increased public agency we now possess as a result of these technologies of/for writing and have pointed to their role in expanding the public sphere. The rise of these technologies also roughly parallels the rise of a renewed interest in civic education and global civic education in higher education.  If mass self-communication technologies have expanded opportunities for civic writing and public participation, and we believe that higher education has a civic role, then how must our approaches to teaching writing adapt and change? What types of digital literacies, writing processes, and rhetorical capabilities do our students need for lives of civic engagement?

In this talk session, I would like to draw upon examples from a variety of writing courses to explore the possibility of an integrated, interdisciplinary understanding of writing, digital literacy, and rhetorical education that can help define more concrete goals and outcomes for civic education. I am interested in working together with participants to identify potential civic outcomes for the teaching of writing in an age of mass self-communication.

This topic may be rudimentary, but I am interested in having a conversation about how technology can facilitate collaborative narrative or “social editions” of texts and how these texts can enhance a curriculum.

A prime example of socially-edited text would be fan fiction; how these and other “living texts” are created in the context of an online community with ample feedback and communal editing are surely applicable to the composition or creative writing classroom, but may be pertinent elsewhere, too. Should we shelter student work from a larger, online community, or would having them participate within a larger beyond-the-university environment benefit their understanding of themselves as writers in a larger context?

But maybe these texts don’t need to be created and published online in order to achieve the same kind of communal narrative. Social editions might be anything from class soundtracks to digital photo albums/blogs.

These online communal texts might also work in the linking of interdisciplinary communities within the university—allowing for cross-course collaborative projects.

I’m curious to see what you find to be the relative value, practical application, and logistical framework for such a tool in your own courses or if you see the forming of interdisciplinary/intercourse projects as something we should be doing more of.

I’m interested in having a discussion about bias and standards in Wikipedia’s editorial process, especially who decides and how is it decided what constitutes “worthy” sources of knowledge or if a subject is important enough to “deserve” an article. One recent example is the controversy over creating a standalone article for the twitter hashtag #yesallwomen. Most Wikipedia editors fit into a specific set of demographics- single, educated males in “developed” countries aged 18-30 with no children. What are the micro- and macro-level implications that arise when most of the editors come from the same social group- especially in one of the most dominant information sources worldwide? What solutions might attract a more diverse base of editors? Is the wiki model liberating (by putting power of knowledge creation in the hands of anyone who wants to participate) or does it reinforce structural oppression (access is limited to those with internet access and literacy, and it can be difficult to make edits that are not deleted)?