INQUIRY DESCRIPTION

WRT 205 courses in Writing and Technology will explore how technology shapes what it means to be a writer in the twenty-first century. We live in an age when digital technologies are seemingly everywhere, shaping how we write, research, and publish our work. Rather than taking these changes for granted, this course interrogates how technologies have impacted writing practices across a range of contexts, both past and present, at the university and beyond. It explores issues of research, collaboration, authorship, textuality, and ethics as they connect with media and technologies. Students write across a range of genres and modalities in order to cultivate practices that are reflective, ethical, and persuasive.

Below are two possible trajectories on which to approach this inquiry. Detailed explanations of each trajectory, readings, and assignment sheets are offered in links below.¹

Trajectory 1

Trajectory 2

These trajectories were developed in consultation with leaders and members of the 2016-2017 inquiry working group and the 2017-2018 Lower Division Committee. Special thanks to Brett Keegan for providing the basis for Trajectory 1 and to Emily Dressing and Rajendra Panthee for providing the basis for Trajectory 2.

TRAJECTORY 1

This trajectory is composed of three main units. Unit one centers around a condensed research project based around one of the three “problems” presented by readings: Filter Bubbles, Media Literacy, and Big Data. Students pick one of the topics, summarizing and synthesizing secondary sources. They then do primary research—generally interviews, personal experience, or finding artifacts and examples online—to respond to the secondary sources and add another data-driven voice to the conversation. This can be done as an individual or group project, and it emphasizes the process of research, including its rhetorical and social dimensions.

Units two and three are essentially a more spread-out and engaged version of this initial project. Unit 2 has students create a “syllabus,” collecting secondary readings and curating those readings around subtopics. This emphasizes secondary research and the curation of that research through a specific genre.

Unit three is essentially the student’s “response” to the conversation explored in the syllabus assignment. Drawing on their research, they must make an intervention to an audience, keeping in mind the rhetorical situation (or the rhetorical ecology), though the project itself can take many forms. For example, one student produced a video to help educate people about aerial yoga and its equipment for a local gym, while another made pamphlets to hand out regarding cyber security for elderly technology users. This unit is designed to emphasize the social, rhetorical dimensions of writing.

Each of these projects concludes with a submission of a portfolio, collecting process-based work together with the “final” draft and reflecting on the process and the assignment goals.

Along with the WRT 205 foundational readings provided here, below are readings that may be useful for this trajectory:

Technology and Society
Kline, Stephen J. “What is Technology. Philosophy of Technology: The Technological Condition: An Anthology. Ed. by R. C. Scharff and V. Dusek. Blackwell, Oxford, 2003. 210–12.[PDF]

Pacey, Arnold. “Technology: Practice and Culture,” The Culture of Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1983. 1-12.[PDF]

Filter Bubbles and Algorithmic Curation
CGP Grey. “This Video Will Make You Angry.” YouTube 10 March 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc.

Estrada, Daniel. “You Are Not Your Bubble: Stop Worrying and Learn to Love It” Medium 26 November 2016.
https://medium.com/@eripsa/you-are-your-bubble-stop-worrying-and-learn-to-love-it-1d80d6da6df7.

Pariser, Eli. “Beware Online Filter Bubbles.” TED Talk, 2011. https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.

Kim, Eusong. “The Politics of Trending,” Model View Culture 18 (2015): https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-politics-of-trending.

Media Literacy
boyd, dana. “Did Media Literacy Backfire?” Points (2017): https://points.datasociety.net/did-media-literacy-backfire-7418c084d88d.

Center for Media and Social Impact. “The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education.” http://cmsimpact.org/code/code-best-practices-fair-use-media-literacy-education.

Gee, James Paul. Selection from What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. [PDF]

Klein, Ezra and danah boyd. “Why Fake News is So Easy to Believe,” The Ezra Klein Show. Podcast. https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/the-ezra-klein-show/e/50602244.

Big Data
boyd, danah and Kate Crawford. “Critical Questions for Bid Data.” Information, Communication & Society 15.5 (2012): 662-79. [PDF]

Huang, Zheping. “All Chinese Citizens Now Have a Score Based on How Well We Live, and Mine Sucks.” Quartz 9 October 2015: https://qz.com/519737/all-chinese-citizens-now-have-a-score-based-on-how-well-we-live-and-mine-sucks.

O’Neil, Kathy. “Weapons of Math Destruction.”NPR. 12 September 2006.
http://www.npr.org/2016/09/12/493654950/weapons-of-math-destruction-outlines-dangers-of-relying-on-data-analytics.

Stephens-Davidowitz, Seth. Everybody Lies (Interviews on NPR’s Hidden Brain, "Who We Are at 2 a.m."http://www.npr.org/2017/05/01/526399881/what-our-google-searches-reveal-about-who-we-really-are.

Other
Caroll, Chris. “High Tech Trash." National Geographic. Jan. 2008, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/01/high-tech-trash/carroll-text.

Gladwell, Malcom. “Small Change: Why The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted.” The New Yorker. 4 Oct. 2010, <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell>

Turkle, Sherri. “Connected, but Alone.” TED, Feb. 2012,
https://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_alone_together

Sautman, Matt. “The Art of Trolling: A Philosophical History of Rhetoric." The Artifice. 12 April 2017, https://the-artifice.com/art-of-trolling/

Syllabus and assignment sheets can be found here.

TRAJECTORY 2

This WRT 205 Writing and Technology course trajectory is composed of two brief projects, an extended inquiry project, and a final self-assessment. The course relies on a portfolio approach, which includes process-based work, polished drafts, and ongoing reflection.

Unit one focuses specifically on the impact of various technologies on different kinds of writing. Students pool different sources and statistics, sharing them on Blackboard, that seek to explain how technologies affect writing. They also do primary research (generally interviews and observations) to learn how students and teachers at SU view the relationship between technologies and writing. Students first work individually to sift through the data and create a synthesis. Students then work in groups to make a data-driven argument to a specific audience that would benefit from seeing this research, choosing a genre that works for their particular context.

The second project is centered on genre analysis that looks carefully at one particular type of text that connects to technologies’ relationship to writing. In the past, some classes have analyzed one common genre. For example, some sections analyzed TED Talks taking into account Nathan Heller’s claim that that these talks exemplify the intellectual style of the digital age. Other sections ask students to choose the genres they’d like to analyze, such as Snapchat, a Facebook status update, a breaking news update, a report in a particular field or discipline, etc. In their analysis, students consider ideas, sources, attitudes, and other aspects of genre: what are the possibilities and limitations of a particular genre, and what can we learn from analysis?

The extended inquiry project, which lasts more than half of the semester, integrates research materials from varied sources and asks students to compose in multiple genres. The project begins with a text that students encountered as part of the genre analysis—a TED Talk, a blog post, etc.—that makes an argument about technology. Working in groups, students first complete a proposal in which they assess the research used in a particular text. They then develop a research plan to flesh out the conversation surrounding the topic and offer a fuller picture of the issue. After conducting primary and secondary research, the group presents their findings to the class, discussing sources in terms of content, genre, and discipline. Finally, drawing on the collective research, students work individually to choose an audience and create a research-driven multimodal text (e.g., a persuasive blog post, infographic, podcast, video, etc.) that help them understand something that emerged from the group’s research. A statement of goals and choices accompanies this piece.

At the end of the course, students complete a self-assessment, which is an opportunity to look back on the work that they have done and to consider possible skills and strategies that they can draw on in the future.

Along with the WRT 205 foundational readings provided here, below are readings that may be useful for this trajectory:

Introductory
Baron, Dennis. “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies.” Writing About
Writing: A College Reader, edited by Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2014. [PDF]

boyd, danah. It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. 2014.
https://www.danah.org/books/ItsComplicated.pdf

Nobles, Susanne, and Laura Paganucci. “Do Digital Writing Tools Deliver? Student Perceptions of
Writing Quality Using Digital Tools and Online Writing Environments.” Computers and Composition 38 (2015): 16-31. [PDF]

Readings vary based on genre analyzed. Sources below are useful for analyzing TED Talks

Bratton, Benjamin. “We Need to Talk About TED.” The Guardian. 30 December 2013.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/30/we-need-to-talk-about-ted

Heller, Nathan. “Listen and Learn.” The New Yorker. 9 July 2012.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/07/09/listen-and-learn

Romanelli, Frank, Jeff Cain, and Patrick J. McNamara. “Should TED Talks Be Teaching Us Something?” American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 78. 6 (2014): 113. [PDF]

Various examples of TED Talks and TED spoofs can be found at www.TED.com.

Readings vary based on genre analyzed. Sources below are useful for genre analysis more broadly:

Bazerman, Charles. “Speech Acts, Genres, and Activity Systems: How Texts Organize Activity
and People.” What Writing Does and How It Does It: An Introduction to Analyzing Texts and Textual Practices. Edited by Charles Bazerman and Paul Prior. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2004. 309-39. [PDF]

Luders, Marika, Lin Proitz, and Terje Rasmussen. “Emerging Personal Media Genres.” New
Media and Society 12.6 (2010): 947-63. [PDF]

Syllabus and assignment sheets can be found here.

Possible Variations

This inquiry lends itself to many variations. Below is another option provided by David Maynard. Here’s an excerpt from his syllabus that provides a brief overview of the course design:

In WRT 205, we will critically engage with the theme of technology in a variety of ways. We will examine how technology is represented in the media, how student learning technologies influence your learning process, and you will ultimately take a stand on a particular technological debate.

Teaching Materials including syllabus, assignments and calendar can be found here.

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