2006 Article Notes

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Collective Ownership of Code and Text: A Conversation with Ward Cunningham, Part II

by Bill Venners (2006)

Open Writing: Wikis, Commons-Based Peer Production, and the Composition Classroom

by Robert E. Cummings (2006)

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Chapter Three

"But the common denominator in all three models – market, firm, or CBPP – is that participants choose the model based on the lowest transaction cost." (101-102)

". . . we might look at the transaction cost of rhetoric as the measure of impediments placed on the author attempting to reach an audience." (102)

"The market model is similar to the professional writer in that the writer engages the professional audience, or the market, successfully on his or her own, responding the audience’s signals in reaction to the text. The classroom model mimics the market model of teaching writing in that teachers of writing assume the role of firm manager, based on their skills as professional writers, coaching writers on how best to reach their market, or audience."

"The first structural limitation of the firm-as-classroom model is that the instructor must undertake the impossible task of responding to students’ work as if he or she were the market, or professional audience, and provide a reaction as he or she imagines the audience would." (102-103)

"On the other hand, if the writing teacher misjudges the effectiveness of the student’s potential to reach an audience, then the student carries inaccurate feedback about his or her writing practices on to the next level of education. In either case, focusing on this transactional element of both the economic model and the composition instruction model reveals the problem for the composition teacher of imagining and constructing audience reaction." (103)

"Not only must the instructor create a hypothetical reaction representing all professional audience readers, but he or she must then interpret those imagined reactions in a pedagogical manner to assist the student’s development as a writer. It is impossible to separate these two roles."

"The writing teacher is always “interpreting” his or her own reading, no matter how objective he or she wishes to be. These reactions take the form of assessment, and even if they are predicated on principles of good writing instruction that have been clearly stated in the classroom, instructor reactions are clearly limited and homogenous compared to the range of reactions a large audience might produce." (103-104)

"In this classroom model, students are limited by the instructor’s imagination, not their own." (104)

"In terms of transaction theory, then, comparing the composition instructor to the firm manager reveals that we are raising transaction costs by asking the writing instructor to both gauge and select the most apt writing assignment for the student and then also conjure the audience’s reaction to that text. Given that access to a wide readership is available to student writers through the Internet, our current pedagogical model simply asks the writing teacher to do more than what is either necessary or possible. It is no longer necessary for the writing teacher to act as a proxy for a diverse professional audience, for one exists by if we are simply willing to harness the power of CBPP and accommodate networked writing projects in the writing classroom. In terms of transactional theory, both economic and rhetorical, we can now say that a focus on transaction costs for the writer reveals structural inefficiencies in the current classroom model that limit writers’ connections with audience and writers’ possibilities in terms of invention." (104-105)

"CBPP provides the synthesis for appending the market and firm models of writing. In the CBPP model, writers are trained to maximize their creativity and productivity in constructing responses to the varied demands the professional audience, as both delivered and received over a network. Similarly, the instructor is relieved of the necessity to assess students’ interests and aptitudes for their topic selection, placing that job in the hands of those best-situated to address it and thereby improving the writers’ invention process. Instructors are freed to counsel students as they devise and publish writing projects, applying their knowledge of critical thinking skills to the demands of professional standards." (105)

"CBPP supplies an audience-specific context for topic selection, material development, presentation, and reader response, improving the development of each by reducing the writers’ transaction costs and, in effect, their proximity to an audience." (105)

". . . post-process theory, a specific reaction to the process teaching paradigm that has dominated composition pedagogy for almost twenty years." (106)

". . . the most effective way to break away from the established rhetorical metaphors of understanding and find the most apt theoretical guide for CBPP in the composition classroom comes from James Berlin’s epistemological approach composition theory, which views rhetorical theory not in terms of historical succession, but instead organizes approaches around their self-professed practices of knowledge creation." (106)

"Faigley posits that the key generalization to take from the many postmodern currents in culture, art, philosophy, and theory is “that there is nothing outside contingent discourses to which a discourse of values can be grounded – no eternal truths, no universal human experience, no universal human rights, no overriding narrative of human progress”. Further, Faigley adds that “what a person does, thinks, says, and writes cannot be interpreted unambiguously because any human action does not rise out of a unified consciousness but rather from a momentary identity that is always multiple and in some respects incoherent. If consciousness is not present to one’s own self, then it cannot be made transparent to another”." (107)

"Most of Faigley’s emphasis in assessing the importance of postmodernism falls on the loss of the sense of self." (108)

"The loss of a definable subject is also Faigley’s emphasis in explaining how postmodernism affects the teaching of writing. He writes that

Where composition studies has proven least receptive to postmodern theory is in surrendering its belief in the writer as an autonomous self, even at a time when extensive group collaboration is practiced in many writing classrooms. Since the beginning of composition teaching in the late nineteenth century, college writing teachers have been heavily invested in the stability of the self and the attendant beliefs that writing can be a means of self-discovery and intellectual self-realization.(15) (Cummings 108)

"In many ways, CBPP would then seem to represent the fullest, most troubling manifestation of Faigley’s postmodern reality. In the CBPP environment, all readers are also authors. In many CBPP projects, contributors write collaboratively, and thus there is no discernable voice of the subject and no autonomous self." (108-109)

"In order to successfully write in a wiki, students need the ability to pre-write in a traditional environment, to journal and gather ideas in a format where only the author, or perhaps the author and the writing teacher, are the only readers." (109)

"Thus, in practice, CBPP – a most postmodern and electronic space where all of Faigley’s characterizations of disconnected self and loss of rhetorical roles applies perhaps even more fully that he would have predicted in 1992 – relies on a sandwich of “modernist” writing techniques to surround the postmodern CBPP experience and to deliver its fullest meaning. Thus, while Faigley’s characterization of the challenges of teaching writing in the face of postmodern theory are beyond question, the mistake lies in assuming that teaching in the networked environment assumes a reflexively postmodern approach. In contrast, successfully teaching writing in the CBPP environment links us even more strongly to the history of rhetoric and calls for an imaginative application of traditional rhetorical concepts in the classroom." (109)

"Such a lens, like Faigley’s postmodern crisis, implies that teachers of writing who employ an electronic writing environment such as CBPP are forced to choose an attendant electronic rhetoric. Again, such a choice is a false. There is no reason why working in electronic environments should require writing teachers to reject or minimize familiar and established rhetorical concepts." (110)

"Yet the fundamental truths of written communication do not change because the communication environment has changed." (111)

"There are several underlying presumptions in this proposed model of the CBPP classroom. The primary belief is that the role of the writing teacher is to prepare the student writer to interact with a diverse, public, and professional audience who share knowledge and expertise about a given topic. The highest form of that interaction would be student writing that demonstrates critical thinking, subject knowlege, professional ethos, context-appropriate appeals, and a fluency of form and convention." (111)

"He [James Berlin] groups composition theories around the broad concept of truth – how each approach assumes truth is positioned, and how writers reveal it." (112)

"Berlin writes: “I have [. . .] three epistemological categories: the objective, the subjective, and the transactional. Objective theories locate reality in the external world, in the material objects of experience. Subjective theories place truth within the subject, to be discovered through an act of internal apprehension. And transactional theories locate reality at the point of interaction of subject and object, with audience and language as mediating agencies”" (112)

"Both objective and subjective theories support the role of the writing teacher as the sole interpreter of the audience: subjective theories implicitly support it because they assume that truth lies within interpretation, and as such there is no improving upon positioning the most experienced writer in the classroom – the writing instructor – as the sole interpreter of the value of student writing and the sole conjurer of audience response. Objective theories also privilege the position of writing teacher as proxy for the audience since they assume that truth is to be verified through the exercise of writing that can be demonstrated to be “good” according to the application of a particular set of writing practices." (112-113)

"Therefore, both objective and subjective theories of composition seek connection with a genuine audience beyond the instructor with no particular urgency. Conversely, transactional theory is a writing approach which is vested in audience connection as a composition strategy."(113)

"Thus, while the importation of CBPP into the writing classroom revitalizes transactional rhetoric, it does not render all teaching approaches based on subjective and objective theories valueless." (114)

"Now that CBPP clearly identifies that student writers have alternative paths to an audience and that the teacher need not attempt to always approximate a professional audience, it is possible to see that are other routes to an authentic audience that simply were not possible in the past. These new, networked approaches clearly favor transactional rhetoric, as will be explored below." (114)

"Similarly, rhetorical transaction theory locates its focus between speaker and audience instead of with either party." (114)

"As Berlin makes clear, transactional theories of rhetoric imply an awareness of multiple parties at all times as it locates truth between those parties rather than with any particular party. This perspective offers an apt fit for CBPP because its underlying structural network assumptions mimic the same structural assumptions of transactional rhetorical theories: CBPP is direct result of network structure, and transactional rhetoric assumes a communication network. By situating truth between communicating parties, transactional rhetorical theory assumes the equal importance of each communicator. Similarly, CBPP assumes a network structure, with communication between equal nodes creating content through the act of transmission." (114-115)

"Similarly, application of CBPP in the writing classroom reduces the cost of accessing an audience for student writers, or, in more practical terms, thrusts them into the sphere of electronic public discourse." (115)

"Berlin’s three categories for transactional rhetoric are classical, cognitive, and epistemic. These three transactional rhetorics are united epistemologically around the idea that truth is located not within ourselves (as held by subjective rhetoric), nor within external objects (as held by objective rhetoric), but rather through transaction between the subject and object." (115-116)

"Berlin notes that the main appeal of classical rhetoric . . . is its coherent and comprehensive approach to each stage of the writing process, as well as its ability to emphasize emotional, ethical, and logical appeals." (116)

"In essence, classical rhetoric gives us the concepts for understanding what transpires on the network, even if it does not envision the network itself." (116)

"Epistemic rhetoric, however, is most readily adapted to inform teaching writing with a CBPP system." (117)

"In defining epistemic rhetoric, Berlin writes: “Rhetoric exists not merely so that truth may be communicated: rhetoric exists so that truth may be discovered. The epistemic position implies that knowledge is not discovered by reason alone, that cognitive and affective processes are not separate, that intersubjectivity is the condition of all knowledge, and that the contact of minds affects knowledge” (165)." (118)

"Knowledge is thus a product of a conversation between parties. The more parties in that conversation, the greater the potential. Therefore the fundamental premise of epistemic rhetoric is that an effective knowledge-making strategy needs multiple participants. Composition pedagogy that is structurally designed to maximize multiple conversations among multiple participants offers the surest approach for writers to discover and contribute to new knowledge. Wikis such as Wikipedia, which present knowledge collaboratively, offer the most obvious example of an epistemic network. However, the most accomplished example of an epistemic network is Linux as a detailed analysis shows." (118)

"To make a direct analogy to the rhetorical epistemic network, it is not too much to suggest that indeed truth itself is situated as a rhetorical object between multiple participants." (119)

"What is the most direct path, then, to integrating the multiple contributions of robust epistemic network? A clearly defined purpose for the network, or, a clearly defined topic." (120)

"CBPP systems rely on a clearly defined topic to assess the relevancy of contributions, and since off-topic contributions would distort the meaning of the overall project, all contributions are reviewed for how they will affect the overall project." (121)

"Successful CBPP integration is fed by the structure of classical rhetoric and how it positions truth claims . . . . For CBPP, this distinction between what truth is verifiable and what truths are contingent is pivotal for evaluating user contributions." (121-122)

"Here again we have the famous distinction between science and rhetoric; testing whether or not the code contribution works is the business of science – a truth claim which is easily verified or discredited. Testing whether or not the code contribution is valuable? This is the business of rhetoric. But the transactional network is structured to handle both types of truth claims. Whether integrating content into the CBPP network is cheap and easy, or nebulous and tedious, the rhetorical principle of defining truth through the conversation between nodes in the network is stable and verifiable." (123)

"In essence, these CBPP topics define the discourse community: the methods within each CBPP community for verifying the accuracy and relevance of contributions is a statement of its ethos, or an epistemic reflection of what it believes to be possible and practical in the act of knowledge community." (123)

"The CBPP composition experience thrusts upon the writer the full weight of making meaning for a discourse community and ultimately calls upon writers to employ sound techniques of persuasion to defend their contributions." (124)

"In epistemic rhetoric, knowledge itself is a rhetorical construct. Since epistemic rhetoric assumes that language itself is part of the meaning-making process and that truth is not external to this process, it provides instruction for writers in CBPP who wish to defend the worth of their challenged contributions." (124)

"But epistemic rhetoric teaches us that a stable consensus within large discourse communities is simply impossible. If the community itself is defined by diverse participants, then the size of the community is the direct inverse of its for consensus." (124)

". . . while classical rhetoric is valuable in pointing up the distinction between what is a conflict of opinion and what is a conflict of fact, epistemic rhetoric acknowledges that these conflicts are inherent within the system." (125)

"The very qualities of epistemic rhetoric that ensure rich conversation and a tolerance for multiple perspectives also ensure a great divergence among writers and a difficulty in reaching consensus. Ultimately, guidance for dispute resolution in a CBPP project comes from a clearly defined topic for the entire project, for that topic, or purpose, is the ultimate authority for determining which contributions are relevant and which are not."

"Epistemic rhetoric . . . seeks to advance conversation by defining multiple perspectives and assuring that truth remains suspended between those discourse participants." (126)

". . . if we can assume that writers will need the skills of assessing the relevance and accuracy of content within a CBPP system as a rhetorical task – then the experience of writing within a CBPP system is an asset for the composition classroom for yet another reason."

". . . we have rarely, if ever, asked student writers to share the role of evaluating the relevance and accuracy of another’s text as basis for inclusion to a CBPP system."

"The text, and its truth, are always external to the participants, and always in the process of being determined through the input of discourse." (130)

"Ultimately, however, the judgment of what constitutes truth in this epistemic network is left up to opinion, and even though it is a nearly instantaneous opinion of a large majority, it is still susceptible to the swings and fallacies of popular opinion." (132)

"The currency of the college composition classroom is the grade earned by the student for acquiring and demonstrating composition skills." (134)

"The most immediate problem facing any teacher who would seek to import a CBPP network is how to integrate that network into the existing reward structure." (134)

"Further complicating the currency problem is the fact that much CBPP work also dissolves the traditional roles of author and reader, asking students to work in collaboration with either other writing students, or people in the CBPP network who are not enrolled in the class, or both." (134)

". . . the discipline of English has clung to the sole authorship model for years in spite of the developments of electronic media, the success of the science model of joint authorship attribution, critical theory itself, and the attendant reduction individual authorship." (135)

". . . the portfolio not only allows the student to reassemble the work in a meaningful narrative for presentation to audiences outside the composition classroom but the reflective practices it occasions also allows student writers to apply critical thinking skills in assessing their own work as a meta-reinforcement of the overall goals of the composition classroom." (136)

"Economic transaction cost theory instructs us that CBPP offers lower transaction costs by placing the writer in closer proximity with the reader. If we fundamentally alter the teaching arrangement in the composition classroom by replacing the firm model with a CBPP network, then we have also fundamentally altered the flow of academic currency." (135)

". . . the writing instructor can now assign at least a portion of the currency – or the process of acknowledging effective writing – directly to the student’s audience."

"This need not mean that the instructor surrender all authority in assigning grades. Instead of acting as the sole source for assessment, however, the instructor of the CBPP writing classroom can focus on assisting the writer to assess for his or her self audience feedback and make changes in the text to improve its reach" (136-137)

"However, if we accept the premise of epistemic rhetoric that truth is made in a dialogue between writer and reader and reject the objectivist and subjectivist notions that it is held exclusively by either party, then assigning the audience a greater role in assessing the effectiveness of the student writer’s prose is a logical development." (137)

"Just as the closer proximity to audience lowers the transaction costs of writing in CBPP, so too does that nearness lower the invention costs as the writer benefits from seeing the existing text, acknowledging the kairos of a particular CBPP contribution, inventorying his or her own creativity, and envisioning a fit between his or her creative output into the existing text." (138)

"CBPP does not erase the identity of authorship by obfuscating identity through collaboration. Instead, CBPP fundamentally transforms identity by clarifying the audience’s access to the text. When the roles of author and audience become interchangeable and fluctuate rapidly, then control over a text requires a consensus between authors and audience. CBPP is not only a more “fluid and dynamic” rhetorical situation than Ede and Lunsford could have anticipated in 1984, but it is also a full manifestation of what they called “the integrated, interdependent nature of reading and writing” (321)." (140)

"The difference is that within the CBPP environment the potential gap between audience addresses and audience invoked is considerably diminished." (141)

"Thus the student who approaches a CBPP network can first address his or her own creative impulses and expertise to select a writing project. Yes, the instructor will still need to coordinate that writing activity with the overall goals of the classroom, but instead of the instructor controlling that process from the beginning by positioning his or her self as the mediator between writer and audience, the student writer has the more challenging responsibility of assessing her preferences, the project’s needs, and its standards for contributions. Adding these responsibilities to the composition process not only alters how we conceptualize invention, but also creates a learning environment that develops professional writing skills by more accurately admitting the challenges of a mature writer’s goals." (144)

"Student creativity is increased through CBPP as the writing process starts with the student assessing creative desires and then acting upon them, rather than simply accepting a line of inquiry from the writing instructor. When the writing project is initiated in this context, the student is more likely to identify with the results and is more invested in the outcome of communicating a message with an audience." (145)

"Thus, Bruffee sees successful college learning as forming these support groups for students in the process of moving from one community to an academic community. . . . Bruffee describes them also as knowledge seekers." (146)

"Bruffee argues then that the process of learning is essentially the same for all of us, whether or not we are experienced academics. All learning is the process of moving from one knowledge group to another; in this way, we can envision that engaging in scholarship and traditional library research is actually the process of engaging in conversation with various knowledge communities scattered across time and organized by topic." (147)

"When writing in an extended CBPP system, one encounters the same dynamic of entering a new knowledge community, stepping from a traditional learning community into an electronic one." (147)

"Thus, in terms of Bruffee’s analyses, Wikipedia is an online knowledge community." (148)

"Under Bruffee’s classroom models, the teacher sets the foundation for effective collaboration through the following tasks: (1) breaking students into groups of approximately five, (2) providing the students with a task, (3) reconvening students in plenary groups, and acting as a referee to negotiate consensus, (4) acting as the class’s local representative of the academic community, and (5) evaluating explicitly the quality of the students’ work (21)." (149)

"When CBPP is applied to the composition classroom, the firm model is augmented first by moving the teacher from the position of ultimate authority (the firm manager) – dispenser of what Bruffee calls foundational knowledge – to the role of knowledge community transition facilitator." (149)

"Bruffee’s collaborative learning theory points out that CBPP in the composition classroom will require two fundamental entities in order to support students properly: support from the teacher in the role of both leader and guide, and facilitating conversation within peer groups in class." (150)

"In his seminal 2001 article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Marc Prensky says, "our students have changed radically. Today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach." Because many of its methods were developed before the rise of technology, education feels very much out of sync with the rest of the world digital natives are used to. Instructors who grew up learning in a step-by-step, lecture based, highly structured environment - the digital immigrants - have difficulty adapting to and seeing the value in the multitasking, fast-paced, highly collaborative and boundary-less way digital natives prefer to work."
". . . teachers should approach technology with an open-mind. By doing so, teachers can take advantage of the tools and language students are already using to build a better, more productive relationship with their students."
"The resulting simplicity of the wiki has a compounding effect, that is, the more people use it, the more they want to keep using it and their contributions become vital to the growth of information and community."
"Now, rather than "pushing" separate copies of the document to each person, all collaborators are "pulled" in to a central place where everyone sees the same text."
"The above example demonstrates the power of the wiki to make collaboration more inclusive and knowledge construction efficient, distributed and fast."
"Because of its natural ability to let authors focus on content over technology . . . and very low cost compared to most software, the wiki is showing potential to change how information is handled and built - potential whose precedent seems second only to the Internet itself."
"

From Wikipedia to the Classroom: Exploring Online Publication and Learning

by Andrea Forte and Amy Bruckman. (2006)

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The LTC Wiki - Experiences with Integrating a Wiki in Instruction

by Stuart Glogoff (2006)

HowTheWikiChangesWriting

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"Writing - even when not publishing - tended to focus on the page, or the document, read from a specified start to a specified end. The wiki is a hypertextual, pan-document space where any topic can be linked to any other and the reader decides reading order."
"Being authorless in this case means that it has many authors."
"The wiki topics that work the best, are going to be the ones that are defined clearly, on the one hand, and the ones that work well in a wiki format."
"A wiki page needs to have a clear objective that focuses the topic."
"Thread modes good backgrounds for a testing field of ideas whether related or not. They are where the discussion takes place, the disagreements are heard, and consensus are reached. They also are an indication of a good documented topic. This is then TheCollectiveNotebook so-to-speak, where the ideas of many are jotted down with branches and twists, as well as solid content that adds to the document."
"Essentially, all writing in a GroupWiki is about conformity. In order to project ClearAndReasonedThoughts, everyone must adapt to a common theme, style, and mode of conduct when refactoring information. If this doesn't happen, it will cause incomprehensible chaos to the rhetoric, and nothing of value will be obtained."
". . . in order for a person's contributions to be useful and effective on a wiki, that person has to care about what they write."
"People need to believe in the mission of the wiki so that it encourages them to be more purposeful in their writing."
"The writing becomes much more clipped, precise, and exact. The language itself changes."
"It's probably also pretty important, but not necessary, for people to understand that wikis are fluid, and that the ideas in people's writing are the focus rather than the writing itself on a wiki."
"This is what makes the wiki so unique as a writing medium: it has the capacity to bring people together in concerted effort to publish for the sole reason of information sharing, not recognition." -Jessica Theroux
" We're constantly finding new ways to develop our language(s) into new ideas and ways to communicate. We're constantly pushing and expanding the borders of what we know, in ways we didn't even necessarily realize there was room to grow." - William Grapevine
"We're collaborating on forums and wikis to make and explore ideas greater than ourselves and what our minds can achieve without the outside influence." - William Grapevine
"I don't know what it is about wiki writing, but it seems to encourage contributors to write their opinions, thoughs, and ideas down in a more straight-forward, self-assured manner." - Loni Swensen
"Even in thread mode it seems that people write in an authoritative tone on the wiki. The nature of the wiki and the things they are used for almost makes writing with authority a necessity. Document mode is the cumulative effort of many, and must be synthesized into an organized, third person document in order to make sense. In thread mode, people write in a way that they sound like an expert on what they are writing. In order to be heard, the entry must sound inteligent and offer ideas not already represented in the document of the wiki." - Jessica Theroux