ENG511 Questions on Computers and Composition

From WolfWikis

This page has been started for ENG511 to answer the questions below (the four questions we have been asking all year about writing). The graduate students involved in this class on Theory and Research in Composition are welcome to make changes to the questions/answers below. All answers were developed by the class.

1 The Four Questions
2 Presentation Notes/Questions
3 Page Links

The Four Questions

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What is writing on/with computers?

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What is important about writing with computers?

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What is good writing with computers?

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What does it mean to write well with computers?

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Presentation Notes/Questions

Ask class to name software that they use, know of as in use, or could see using in education or coursework.
- Examples include Word Processing, Blogs, Wikis, Email, Internet, etc.
Out of all the software on the board, are there any that could not be used in composition? Why not? Are there any that lend themselves naturally to composition? Why?

Charles Moran. “Computers and Composition 1983–2002: What we have hoped for.”

Hopes in the early issues of the journal focused on technology’s presumed potential for improved writing, teaching, and learning in the composition classroom; a later and recurrent hope was that by embracing technology, composition teachers would improve their status in the academy. Authors in recent issues looked less at the technology and much more through the technology, toward a more egalitarian and just society. (Abstract)
In Computers and Composition, we are generally upbeat, optimistic, enthusiastic, and forward-looking—more so than we are in other journals. Our hopefulness is refreshing and positive. (344)
. . . some of the forces that have made us hopeful. First, we are participants in the discourses of technology, which carry with them the assumptions that technology is good and that it will bring good. (344)
Second, we are teachers, and teachers are by profession—or should be—hopeful. (344)
But at least as important as these cultural forces has been the agency of particular people at particular times. (344)

3. Do you agree with Moran’s categories of drudgery: copy-editing, revising, and retyping?

4. Computers have been seen to have the possibility to eliminate “drudgery” in teacher work. Do they actually do this? What does this say about and how does it affect the role of the teacher? FYC is considered by many (non-composition professionals and some in the field) to be a “drudgery” course. Does this mean that computers could alleviate this course by providing the instruction necessary to eliminate the need for teacher (or TA) instructed FYC courses?

. . . two early and persistent hopes: that computers would eliminate the “drudgery” of writing and of teaching writing and that the computer used as a word processor would improve student writing. I will then move to a third and concurrent hope: that through the adoption and application of technology, we would improve our marginal situation as writing teachers. (345)
The perpetual hope for technology is that it will release us from what we deem to be the boring aspects of our work and enable us to do something better with the time that we will have saved. (345)
We understand the drudgery of writing to be copy-editing, revising, and retyping. (346)
The computer threatened to take over not drudgery, but a major part of what we consider our special province, our means toward larger ends: reading and evaluating student writing. (346)

5. Is it truly possible for technology to improve students’ writing? If so, how can we definitively evaluate this affect?

A second early hope was that computer-based writing had the potential to produce global improvement in the quality of student writing. The mechanism by which technology would improve writing quality was not clear, but the hope was strong (347)
Bernhardt and Appleby concluded that “writers use the machine because they believe the written product will be better in terms of ideas, organization, correctness, and style” (p. 33). (348)
This particular hope—that computers would somehow make a difference in student writing—has been one that “springs eternal.” (349)
By dividing our three initial terms we generated hundreds of possible hopes: for example, that word-processing software would help basic writers with revision (Crafton, 1996), that style-checkers would stimulate writers-in-general to do more revising, that networking would facilitate ESL writers’ learning (Braine, 1997), that hypertext would stimulate invention, that hypermedia would help students in synthesis writing (Palumbo & Prater, 1993), or that composing in hypertext would help students see the need for structure (Fischer, 1996). (349)
Robert E. Crafton (1996) delivered what seems to be the final blow to this hope. Crafton found that basic writers were disadvantaged by computer environments: “Computers may distract students from the task at hand or even prevent them from developing a fuller appreciation of the complexities of the act of written communication” (p. 323). He recalled earlier beliefs that computers relieve “drudgery,” but argued that far from being a “labor-saving device,” the computer “actually complicates matters. . . computers may shortcut the body of experiences a student needs to develop writing skills” (p. 323). And yet as I write this, here at the University of Massachusetts our basic writing course is still taught in computer-assisted classrooms. We still believe—we hope—that the computer will advantage these disadvantaged writers. And there is a piece of me that thinks that this hope has a positive effect on the teaching and learning that take place in these classrooms. (350)

6. Moran claims that the inherently positive attitude of the journal community (and the field at large) has enabled researchers and teachers to “look for and develop what we feel to be positive applications of technology,” instead of “massaging problems.” Do you think this is correct in your experience or hypothesis? Has the field neglected some problems/side-effects of computers in view of the benefits of this technology? (347)

7. Do you agree with Charles Moran that computers are “potentially, or inherently supportive of critical pedagogy and, through this pedagogy, of a new and more just society” (352)? If so, how does or can this happen with computers in composition?

Yet the 1996–1997 issues seem a kind of watershed; before these issues, hopes for improved writing and the teaching of writing through technology predominated; after these volumes, we increasingly saw the computer as potentially, or inherently, supportive of critical pedagogy and, through this pedagogy, of a new and more just society. (352)
If we choose to do so, we can use technology in our writing classrooms to produce ideological change, to value difference, and to transform oppressive power relations. (354)

8. Do you think there are advantages to being planners, creators, and designers of computers in composition (versus just being users of the technology)? Disadvantages?

9. To what extent do we “shape technology to our own ends” and to what extent does technology shape our ends?