Post-Literacy: Designing Writing Curricula Around Emerging Literate Activities

POST-LITERACY: DESIGNING WRITING CURRICULA AROUND EMERGING LITERATE ACTIVITIES George Bret Bowers A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2013 Committee: Dr. Kristine L. Blair, Advisor Dr. Lan Li Graduate Faculty Representative Dr. Lee Nickoson Dr. Sue Carter Wood ii ABSTRACT Dr. Kristine L. Blair, Advisor This dissertation, titled “Post-Literacy: Designing Writing Curricula around Emerging Literate Activities,” focuses on the integration of digital and multimodal literacies in first-year writing curricula. This dissertation situates itself among other scholarship in new literacies, such as the work of Gee, Selfe and Hawisher. Using an Actor-network theory (ANT) methodology, this project focuses on indentifying and describing how digital and multimodal literacies are being used throughout one first-year writing curriculum Additionally, it identifies who is using these literacies, and where these digital/multimodal literacies are being incorporated into the writing curriculum. The primary research methods used in this study were largely ethnographic, specifically site conversations, observations, and artifact collection. Based on the work of Bruno Latour and other ANT scholars, I articulated and translated the actors most apparent in the emergence of digital and multimodal composition within the first-year writing curricula at the site studied. Based on my findings, I trace literacy as network and give specific recommendations on how to best use and incorporate digital and multimodal literacies in college writing curricula. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Throughout this process the members of my dissertation committee—Dr. Kris Blair, Dr. Lee Nickoson, Dr. Sue Carter Wood, and Dr. Lan Li—have offered valuable advice, support, and much appreciated patience. I am grateful for all the work they have put into my growth as a student, scholar, and colleague. I would like to give particular thanks to my advisor, Dr. Kris Blair whose insights and advice have help guide me as both a teacher and scholar. It has been my privilege to work with her on this project. Finally, I would like to thank all my participants at MCU. It was my honor to work alongside you. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY............................................................. 1 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY, METHODS, AND THE RESEARCH SITE................. 26 CHAPTER 3: THE CAST OF CHARACTERS................................................................... 48 Human Actors ………………………………………………………………………. 49 Non-Human Actors.................................................................................................... 67 CHAPTER 4: ACTORS AT WORK..................................................................................... 73 Teacher Training........................................................................................................ 75 Institutional and Curricular Documents..................................................................... 84 Assessment………………………………………………………………………….. 94 CHAPTER 5: IMPLICATIONS............................................................................................ 99 Complexity Model for Writing Curricula.................................................................. 103 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 109 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................... 112 APPENDIX 1: GUIDING QUESTIONS ............................................................................. 118 APPENDIX 2: LEARNING OUTCOMES .......................................................................... 119 APPENDIX 3: MCU FIRST-YEAR WRITING SYLLABI ................................................ 120 APPENDIX 4: ROAD RUBRIC .......................................................................................... 132 APPENDIX 5: HSRB APPROVAL DOCUMENTS ........................................................... 133 v LIST OF FIGURES/TABLES Figure/Table Page 1.1 Course Information and Requirements ...................................................................... 86 2.1 Guiding Questions and Findings................................................................................ 101 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY The interaction of pictures and text is constitutive of representation as such: All media are mixed media and all representation and heterogeneous; there are no ‘purely’ visual or verbal arts… —W.J.T Mitchell For Mitchell all arts—verbal, visual, aural, etc.—are multimodal, occurring and interacting across media using numerous and various techniques and technologies. One such art, the art that directly concerns this project—writing—is evolving and changing through the emergence of new digital and multimodal communication. In the digital age writing occurs in various environments in a wide array of media. To be a “good” writer in the new media age, students need to learn to interpret and produce texts in various media, using different modes, while writing or composing with different tools. The increasing modes of textual production, however, cause an increase in the literacies needed to be a skilled writer in a variety of settings. This increase of these literacy demands has risen along with the value that society has placed on digital texts. These demands, however, are not adequately being adapted for current first-year college writing curriculums. Though there is much in the way of research on digital and multimodal literacies, as Peter Goggin notes in his book, Professing Literacy in Composition Studies, the tendency in composition scholarship has been to focus on the classroom as a site for digital and multimodal literacies (25). With such focus on classroom as sites for these literacies, the larger social, curricular, and extracurricular contexts that are at work within writing programs becomes largely ignored. Though many composition and literacy scholars (Blair, Hawisher, Moran, Selfe) interested in computers and writing are paying attention to the use of digital and multimodal texts within first-year writing programs, a large number of programs solely focus on traditional academic prose as the main artifact produced within first-year writing. The ways in 2 which these multiple literacies are being developed and included in these programs has become disregarded, and what remains is a writing curriculum that has largely remained unchanged, focused primarily on a textual understanding of literacy. Deborah Brandt notes the emerging trends in literacy: Rapid changes in literacy and education may not so much bring rupture from the past as they bring an accumulation of different and proliferating pasts, a piling up of literate artifacts and signifying practices that haunt the sites of literacy learning. These complicated amalgamations of literacy’s past, present, and future help to formulate the interpretive opportunities and complexities facing current generations of literacy learners. (665) The changing spaces and mediums, from blogs to new media texts, require a new way of identifying, teaching, and developing writing curricula for these rapidly changing literacies. Because digital writing and multimodal texts have become ubiquitous outside of academic spaces and the increasingly changing literacy demands, first-year writing programs that do not have some sort of digital or multimodal component need to better adapt and incorporate projects that meet the literacy demands of writing in the digital age. This dissertation begins with this idea as its starting point and shifts the focus from the classroom as a site of digital and multimodal literacy and composition research to the curriculum. In order to better understand the larger curricular context at work, this study focuses on one first-year writing program that does not have explicit or even implicit goals of including digital or multimodal texts and literacies; however, the writing program is a site where digital and multimodal composition projects occur in spite of the lack of curricular motivation to include them. For all intents and 3 purposes, the writing program that is being studied could be considered a neutral site for digital literacy and multimodal composition. The goal of studying a neutral research site is to see how digital literacies and multimodal composition are occurring within writing classrooms without curricular or institutional motivation—or, that is, how these literacies and projects are occurring organically within the writing program. Moreover, by responding to Goggin’s notion that literacy research needs to examine more than just the classroom context, the purpose of this dissertation is to discover various artifacts, entities and exigencies that are not apparent in a singular classroom, all of which shape how digital and multimodal literacies are developed and sustained throughout a writing program. There are numerous reasons why this dissertation focuses on the larger context of the curriculum and new media literacies. First, focusing on the classroom limits the scope of what is being seen to have an impact on the way digital and new literacies are taught. Widening the scope of research beyond the classroom allows for the examination and analysis of curricular and institutional nuances that mediate literacy development. Second, the

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