“Community” is a common buzzword in composition studies these days, hovering in the air of departments like the hum (or din?) of vuvuzelas at a World Cup soccer match. And like many buzzwords, we tend to assume “community” has a given definition for others. After our class discussion on Monday, we can clearly see that this is not the case. I am as guilty of this as anyone else. “Community” is one of those quick go-to terms I use when people ask me what some of my goals are when I teach. Like most others, I have some general sense of what I mean (usually, students working together to discuss and understand course material). But we can and should provide some clearer definitions of this for ourselves and for our discipline.
Numerous scholars have addressed the issue of community, both regarding its definition and implementation. For Kenneth Bruffee, “[a] community of knowledgeable peers is a group of people who accept, and whose work is guided by, the same paradigms and the same code of values and assumptions” (642-43). The goal of these communities is to build knowledge “by challenging each other’s biases and presuppositions; by negotiating collectively toward new paradigms of perception, thought, feeling, and expression; and by joining larger, more experienced communities of knowledgeable peers through assenting to those communities’ interests, values, language, and paradigms of perception and thought” (646). For Joseph Harris, a community is like a city, a place of “consensus and conflict” (269). In this metaphor, members of a community share a sense of important ideas but not necessarily the same perspectives on them. Robust disagreement might even foster better understanding. We then have tensions to explore and different perspectives, adding richer sites of discussion. Lori E. Amy, too, notes that harmony is not something necessary for a community. Citing Mary Louise Pratt’s theory of the contact zone, she says communities should be a place “of struggle and contest over meanings” (112), much like our class discussion on Monday about the definition of community. Kristine Blair and Cheryl Hoy share a similar perspective. They felt that online discussions allowed students “to generate ideas, discuss issues related to the class and to their papers, and build a sense of collaboration” (38).
But these definitions individually have their faults. Bruffee hints at more consensus than do the others. Harris’s metaphor seems to leave out the violence—Amy finds rhetorical violence a significant problem—and the isolation sometimes present in cities. And Blair and Hoy sometimes use the term “community” a bit generally. But combining these we might help us define community, at least in a rough way. A community is a group of people interested in discussing and analyzing issues meaningful to that community for the purpose of exploring these issues and their value for the community. Consensus might be a part of this. In fact, respectful disagreement might develop fuller consideration of that issue.
We can use this to interrogate our course blogs. Blogs do create a strong possibility for interaction. If the focus of a student’s blog is clear, other students can identify, at least initially, which ones might be of greater interest to them. Additionally, blogs extend one’s claims to an audience beyond the teacher and thus open the door to greater interaction. Traditional forms of education, in which the teacher disseminates the knowledge of the course and evaluates the students on their performance, create a “Community of Power.” According to Joseph Moxley, such communities, which value individual achievement, turn into communities of secrecy so people can protect their knowledge for personal gain (186-87). Blogs can help foster “Communities of Learning,” which encourage sharing and interaction (191).
On the surface, our blogs did not seem to form strong communities in this regard. Many postings received no responses at all and those that did typically received only a few responses. Given the brevity of these posts, the deeper and fuller exploration of issues didn’t seem to be achieved. However, in more fully exploring these posts and responses, we can see some meaningful steps toward community occurring. For example, Cynthia’s blog had only three comments, all on the third entry. Yet Nancy raised some interesting labor concerns and a useful point about not using technology for its own sake. These questions encouraged Cynthia to explore these matters more fully. In response to my second blog posting, Nancy used her experience to complicate my perception of the article’s claims. In addition, Zsuzsanna’s comment on my third blog posting drew connections between her readings on the matter and this reading, drawing out the idea that she might have students use synchronous methods to start projects and asynchronous methods after the project has developed a bit more. Such examples seemed common across the blogs, suggesting that we had the desire to develop a “community of knowledgeable peers.”
But the course’s length was a hindrance here. Forming a community among ten or so students in a few short weeks seems a difficult task. Furthermore, since strong interaction was not required, I felt that I could spend a little less time on the blogs when other work became more pressing. But required postings defeat the purpose of a community. The desire to collaborate, discuss, and debate are what make a community, not just the interaction itself. The instructor might have used one of Scott Warnock’s methods by requiring the use of our peers’ blogs in our other writings (88). This would have encouraged (if I can avoid saying “required” here) students to tie the work of others into their own thinking and writing, but this is something that was completely open to us to do on our own; furthermore, any required interaction is not organic and thus less like a community. Another, maybe less obligatory, method is one that likely would only work in a semester-long course. Here two or three students each could have been responsible for a blog posting every week. This would focus other students’ attention on those blogs, perhaps encouraging responses. But I am not sure how well this would have worked in our short time frame. Ultimately, the blog assignment represented the realities of trying to create a community during a course—successes and some failures.
Finally, all of this is not to say that community did not develop elsewhere, and in what seemed like strong ways, elsewhere in the course. The use of the chat area developed as a source of community as we began adding brief comments and jokes. This brought in members of the class (like myself) who maybe were not as vocal. We could add our opinions easily, and, for the distance students, this was perhaps somewhat more effective for short comments than raising a hand, clicking on the microphone, and adding a brief comment. People would also share experiences, ask questions about readings or other people’s comments, and give links to and tips about various tools and teaching strategies. The general discussion of the course also built strong community. On a regular basis, we would push each other’s thinking and challenge positions to develop more precise understandings or add more complexity. Certainly, our discussion from Monday after my presentation gave me a number of ways to think about my use of wikis and some of the pedagogical concerns this might create. We also added significant complexity to what “community” can or does or should mean. In short, while the blogs may have stepped toward community, the class overall developed that community.
Works Cited
Amy, Lori E. “Rhetorical Violence and the Problematics of Power: A Notion of Community for the Digital Age Classroom.” Role Play: Distance Learning and the Teaching of Writing. Eds. Jonathan Alexander and Marcia Dickson. Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2006. Print.
Blair, Kristine and Cheryl Hoy. “Paying Attention to Adult Learners Online: The Pedagogy and Politics of Community.” Computers and Composition. 23 (2006): 32-48. ERIC. Web. 10 June 2010.
Bruffee, Kenneth. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” College English 46.7 (1984): 635-52. JSTOR. Web. 3 June 2010.
Harris, Joseph. “The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing.” On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays, 1975-1998. Ed. Lisa Ede. Boston: Bedford, 1999. 260-71. Print.
Moxley, Joseph. “Datagogies, Writing Spaces, and the Age of Peer Production.” Computers and Composition 25 (2008): 182-202. ERIC. Web. 28 May 2010.
Pengilly, Cynthia. “Blog.” CynthiaPengilly. N.p. 10 June 2010. Web. 14 June 2010.
Serfling, Nathan. “Collaborative Writing at a Distance.” Nathanserfling.blogspot. Blogger. 14 June 2010. Web. 16 June 2010.
Warnock, Scott. Teaching Writing Online: Why and How. West Lafayette, IN: NCTE, 2009. Print.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Pedagogical Tool Review: Google Sites Wiki
Recently, much of composition pedagogy has emphasized the importance of establishing communities that encourage critical analysis of course material among students and between students and teachers. Collaboration in particular has become a central means of establishing such communities. Educators developed varieties of learner-centered pedagogical methods and tools to help build communities and utilize collaboration in traditional, face-to-face (f2f) writing classes.
The growing emphasis on online and distance learning in most universities today has caused many instructors to reevaluate their collaborative practices in online environments. Fortunately, course management systems (CMS) such as Blackboard, WebCT, and Desire2Learn contain tools such as chat rooms and discussion boards that can help students. Web 2.0 technologies also add an array of tools to assist instructors in their pedagogical pursuits. Discussion boards, social networking sites, blogs, and wikis that are free and user-friendly make adding additional tools to build community and collaboration possible. Because of their open and democratic nature, wikis perhaps are one of the more uniquely situated Web 2.0 tools educators, especially distance educators, can utilize to build community and foster collaborative learning.
Community and Collaboration
In the composition classroom, especially one that holds that thought and knowledge are socially constructed (Bruffee 640), students’ varying perspectives can create a richer, fuller learning environment, one that encourages students not necessarily to come to a consensus but rather to understand the variety of perspectives that exist on an issue (Harris 269). Furthermore, and perhaps more important, by understanding knowledge as social and not static, students can then begin to challenge assumptions, values, and authority (Bruffee 649). Echoing this, John Trimbur claims that the use of collaboration can develop in students, as Harris and Bruffee suggest, a greater ability “to generate differences, to identify the systems of authority that organize these differences, and to transform the relations of power that determine who may speak and what counts as a meaningful statement” (602-03). This helps students critique the culture around them and understand that they have valuable intellectual contributions to make.
Wikis as Collaborative Tools
Wikis hold great potential to promote community and collaborative learning in a writing class. Aside from their general ease of use (Wilson Lundin 436) and their ability to show the growing multimodality of writing (Moxley 184), to emphasize rhetorical choices in a blank wiki page (Wilson Lundin 436), and to display the non-linear nature of the writing process (Navarre Cleary, Sanders-Betzold, Hoover, and St. John), wikis have an open nature that can better facilitate collaborative learning.
This openness begins with its structure. As Rebecca Wilson Lundin notes, writing instructors can capitalize on this structural openness to encourage deeper considerations and conversations about rhetorical choices (440). This does not take the instructor out of the picture, though. Wilson Lundin found that some students disliked the lack of openness and wanted greater structure, something she responded to by establishing minimal structure—direction enough to encourage participation but without stifling organic conversation about and development of the wiki and the course material (441-42).
This openness of structure also produces a space that is more open in terms of power and writing, too. Matthew Barton notes that since wiki readers are also its authors, the hierarchy that privileges authorship significantly weakens in a wiki (183). Pedagogies that try to disrupt the teacher/student hierarchy and encourage more collaborative interaction between teacher and students certainly can benefit from using a tool that reiterates this perception. Additionally, the type of writing that wikis encourage is also quite democratic. All users have the ability to add, edit, and delete any parts of the wiki; no one person’s knowledge contribution is exempt. And by allowing users to see the edits of others, “[w]ikis emphasize a progressive, democratic aspect of writing” (Barton 187) that value the process as much as the product, something that composition pedagogy has been working toward at least since the 1970s.
But more important is the ability that wikis have to promote collaborative learning. Certainly, this extends from their open and democratic nature. Since wikis (theoretically) don’t allow any one person’s views more privilege than another’s views, the “Community of Power” where one person or a small group of people holds all authority of the interface and the content, is replaced more easily by the “Community of Learning” where knowledge is shared and open (Moxley 186-87, 191). This positions students “as part of a community of learners and cocreators” (Tharp 40), and it helps position the instructor as a member of this community rather than as the source of knowledge, the gatekeeper working to indoctrinate students into a certain set of knowledge practices. Furthermore, students learn to take into account the perspectives of others, debate their claims, and otherwise engage in the rhetorical and persuasive acts writing instructors teach (Wilson Lundin 441; Navarre Cleary, Sanders-Betzold, Hoover, and St. John).
Review of Google Sites Wiki Creator
When considering new tools to use for our classes, especially Web-based ones, we must remember to approach our use of them critically (Hawisher and Selfe). As with any tools, wikis can have limitations that we must recognize. Students may have difficulty accessing Web tools that are not part of their university’s CMS; students may be apprehensive about using tools that are new to them; universities may not allow instructors to incorporate outside tools; some wikis may force much of the form on users rather than allowing them to consider their designs rhetorically (Arola); users can “vandalize” the wiki by posting inappropriate or false information; and some wikis charge monthly or yearly rates for access. The job of instructors is to choose a wiki that fits their individual pedagogical needs through its flexibility, one that is easy for all parties to access and use, and one that is cost efficient. Google Sites offers a wiki that can generally meet these criteria but is not without its limitations.
Google Sites is an extension of the ubiquitous Google search engine. It allows anyone with a Google account create his or her own Web page or wiki. It contains a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WSIWYG) editor and additional templates for pages, though users can change and customize these templates to suit their needs quite easily. While not specifically designed for pedagogical purposes, a wiki created through Google Sites easily meets pedagogical ends. Because of the wiki’s flexibility, instructors can create pages for syllabi, calendars, peer review, group projects, or anything else they think will benefit students.
Accessing and using Google Sites is quite simple. The instructor establishes a page and chooses a template. The template has more to do with the graphical features of the page than determining its overall layout. Since about everything is customizable, instructors can choose images, page layouts, navigation links, and many other features to suit their needs. Some sites (Pbwiki, Wikispaces) dictate some more features and even have less user-friendly interfaces (mostly the case with Pbwiki) that take more time to learn than does Google Sites. And as with other wiki creators, Google Sites allows the creator to establish the level of privacy. The site can be completely public or accessible only to those the creator invites to the site. And inviting members only requires their email address. They can be invited as owners (who can change all parts of the site, add and edit any pages they would like, and even delete the site), collaborators (who can add, edit, and delete pages and add attachments and comments) or viewers (who can only view the site). So even the level of interaction is customizable.
Students, too, can easily access Google Sites. Once receiving the invitation email from the instructor, students need to create an account—if they don’t already have one—through a link provided in the invitation. After completing this, the student can click the link to the site that is also in the invitation. Depending on the level of access the instructor gave to them, students can begin interacting with the wiki at this point. Editing and creating pages only takes a click of an easily-identifiable button. Page histories are also easy to find, so students can track changes that have occurred on any page. Users can add links, upload images and video, link to other pages on the wiki, and include drafts for review with just a few clicks in the editor mode.
Google Sites also has a few other features of note. The number of users in unlimited. Sites like Pbwiki, which sells versions of its software, limit the number of users in their free versions. Pbwiki, for example, allows a site to have 100 users, which, for one writing class, is acceptable unless the instructor was using the wiki across numerous sections. In addition, Google Sites is absolutely free. Many wiki creators are free, but some do have versions that users can pay to access with more features and fewer restrictions on use. The lack of cost of Google Sites is certainly appealing to instructors who don’t wish to (or can’t afford to) pay for wiki space and whose university doesn’t subscribe to a service like Pbworks (of which Pbwiki is a part). And while some free sites make up for this by allowing ads on the wiki the instructor creates, Google Sites is free of ads, unless the instructor chooses to monetize the site.
Despite these benefits, Google Sites has one significant drawback. It only allows 100 MB of storage per wiki. (Pbwiki’s free version allows 2 GB and Wetpaint’s storage space is unlimited.) This can be a serious hindrance to an instructor who might want to encourage students to create personal Web pages complete with images and to upload many drafts of essays or group projects/presentations to the wiki. But if an instructor wanted to use this wiki space to include discussion of course materials and group work (collaborative knowledge-building) in a more open and democratic fashion and use the CMS for drafts, 100 MB might prove enough space.
Conclusion
Wikis can provide an effective tool to reinforce current collaborative and democratic pedagogies popular today. They offer a unique way to create collaborative communities, especially in distance learning courses where students have little to no f2f interaction with one another. Providing such a community can not only benefit the students’ writing skills by encouraging more writing and revision in an open environment with a real audience but can also help students challenge power structures and cultural assumptions. And because wikis generally have a more open environment, students might appreciate such lessons more since the methods support the content. But instructors must carefully choose their tools with their pedagogy in mind. In this instance, I recommend Google Sites for a basic, entry-level wiki because of its cost and ease of use, instructors who want to incorporate more multimodal elements into their courses might find its storage space limiting.
Works Cited
Arola, Kristin L. “The Design of Web 2.0: The Rise of the Template, the Fall of Design.” Computers and Composition 27 (2010): 4-14. ERIC. Web. 1 June 2010.
Barton, Matthew D. “The Future of Rational-critical Debate in Online Public Spheres.” Computers and Composition 22 (2005): 177-90. Print.
Bruffee, Kenneth. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” College English 46.7 (1984): 635-52. JSTOR. Web. 3 June 2010.
Google Sites. Google. 2010. Web. 28 May 2010.
Harris, Joseph. “The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing.” On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays, 1975-1998. Ed. Lisa Ede. Boston: Bedford, 1999. 260-71. Print.
Hawisher, Gail E. and Cynthia L. Selfe. “The Rhetoric of Technology and the Electronic Writing Class.” CCC 42.1 (1991): 55-65. Print.
Navarre Cleary, Michelle, Suzanne Sanders-Betzold, Polly Hoover, and Peggy St. John. “Working with Wikis in Writing-intensive Classes.” Kairos 14.1 (2009): n.p. Web. 19 May 2010.
Moxley, Joseph. “Datagogies, Writing Spaces, and the Age of Peer Production.” Computers and Composition 25 (2008): 182-202. ERIC. Web. 28 May 2010.
Pbwiki. Pbworks. 2010. Web. 4 June 2010.
Tharp, Tara Leigh. “‘Wiki, Wiki, Wiki—What?’ Assessing Online Collaborative Writing.” English Journal 99.5 (2010): 40-46. Print.
Trimbur, John. “Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning.” CE 51.6 (1989): 602-16. Print.
Wetpaint. Wetpaint. 2010. Web. 4 June 2010.
Wikispaces. Tangient. 2010. Web. 9 June 2010.
Wilson Lundin, Rebecca. “Teaching with Wikis: Toward a Networked Pedagogy.” Computers and Composition 25 (2008): 432-48. Print.
The growing emphasis on online and distance learning in most universities today has caused many instructors to reevaluate their collaborative practices in online environments. Fortunately, course management systems (CMS) such as Blackboard, WebCT, and Desire2Learn contain tools such as chat rooms and discussion boards that can help students. Web 2.0 technologies also add an array of tools to assist instructors in their pedagogical pursuits. Discussion boards, social networking sites, blogs, and wikis that are free and user-friendly make adding additional tools to build community and collaboration possible. Because of their open and democratic nature, wikis perhaps are one of the more uniquely situated Web 2.0 tools educators, especially distance educators, can utilize to build community and foster collaborative learning.
Community and Collaboration
In the composition classroom, especially one that holds that thought and knowledge are socially constructed (Bruffee 640), students’ varying perspectives can create a richer, fuller learning environment, one that encourages students not necessarily to come to a consensus but rather to understand the variety of perspectives that exist on an issue (Harris 269). Furthermore, and perhaps more important, by understanding knowledge as social and not static, students can then begin to challenge assumptions, values, and authority (Bruffee 649). Echoing this, John Trimbur claims that the use of collaboration can develop in students, as Harris and Bruffee suggest, a greater ability “to generate differences, to identify the systems of authority that organize these differences, and to transform the relations of power that determine who may speak and what counts as a meaningful statement” (602-03). This helps students critique the culture around them and understand that they have valuable intellectual contributions to make.
Wikis as Collaborative Tools
Wikis hold great potential to promote community and collaborative learning in a writing class. Aside from their general ease of use (Wilson Lundin 436) and their ability to show the growing multimodality of writing (Moxley 184), to emphasize rhetorical choices in a blank wiki page (Wilson Lundin 436), and to display the non-linear nature of the writing process (Navarre Cleary, Sanders-Betzold, Hoover, and St. John), wikis have an open nature that can better facilitate collaborative learning.
This openness begins with its structure. As Rebecca Wilson Lundin notes, writing instructors can capitalize on this structural openness to encourage deeper considerations and conversations about rhetorical choices (440). This does not take the instructor out of the picture, though. Wilson Lundin found that some students disliked the lack of openness and wanted greater structure, something she responded to by establishing minimal structure—direction enough to encourage participation but without stifling organic conversation about and development of the wiki and the course material (441-42).
This openness of structure also produces a space that is more open in terms of power and writing, too. Matthew Barton notes that since wiki readers are also its authors, the hierarchy that privileges authorship significantly weakens in a wiki (183). Pedagogies that try to disrupt the teacher/student hierarchy and encourage more collaborative interaction between teacher and students certainly can benefit from using a tool that reiterates this perception. Additionally, the type of writing that wikis encourage is also quite democratic. All users have the ability to add, edit, and delete any parts of the wiki; no one person’s knowledge contribution is exempt. And by allowing users to see the edits of others, “[w]ikis emphasize a progressive, democratic aspect of writing” (Barton 187) that value the process as much as the product, something that composition pedagogy has been working toward at least since the 1970s.
But more important is the ability that wikis have to promote collaborative learning. Certainly, this extends from their open and democratic nature. Since wikis (theoretically) don’t allow any one person’s views more privilege than another’s views, the “Community of Power” where one person or a small group of people holds all authority of the interface and the content, is replaced more easily by the “Community of Learning” where knowledge is shared and open (Moxley 186-87, 191). This positions students “as part of a community of learners and cocreators” (Tharp 40), and it helps position the instructor as a member of this community rather than as the source of knowledge, the gatekeeper working to indoctrinate students into a certain set of knowledge practices. Furthermore, students learn to take into account the perspectives of others, debate their claims, and otherwise engage in the rhetorical and persuasive acts writing instructors teach (Wilson Lundin 441; Navarre Cleary, Sanders-Betzold, Hoover, and St. John).
Review of Google Sites Wiki Creator
When considering new tools to use for our classes, especially Web-based ones, we must remember to approach our use of them critically (Hawisher and Selfe). As with any tools, wikis can have limitations that we must recognize. Students may have difficulty accessing Web tools that are not part of their university’s CMS; students may be apprehensive about using tools that are new to them; universities may not allow instructors to incorporate outside tools; some wikis may force much of the form on users rather than allowing them to consider their designs rhetorically (Arola); users can “vandalize” the wiki by posting inappropriate or false information; and some wikis charge monthly or yearly rates for access. The job of instructors is to choose a wiki that fits their individual pedagogical needs through its flexibility, one that is easy for all parties to access and use, and one that is cost efficient. Google Sites offers a wiki that can generally meet these criteria but is not without its limitations.
Google Sites is an extension of the ubiquitous Google search engine. It allows anyone with a Google account create his or her own Web page or wiki. It contains a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WSIWYG) editor and additional templates for pages, though users can change and customize these templates to suit their needs quite easily. While not specifically designed for pedagogical purposes, a wiki created through Google Sites easily meets pedagogical ends. Because of the wiki’s flexibility, instructors can create pages for syllabi, calendars, peer review, group projects, or anything else they think will benefit students.
Accessing and using Google Sites is quite simple. The instructor establishes a page and chooses a template. The template has more to do with the graphical features of the page than determining its overall layout. Since about everything is customizable, instructors can choose images, page layouts, navigation links, and many other features to suit their needs. Some sites (Pbwiki, Wikispaces) dictate some more features and even have less user-friendly interfaces (mostly the case with Pbwiki) that take more time to learn than does Google Sites. And as with other wiki creators, Google Sites allows the creator to establish the level of privacy. The site can be completely public or accessible only to those the creator invites to the site. And inviting members only requires their email address. They can be invited as owners (who can change all parts of the site, add and edit any pages they would like, and even delete the site), collaborators (who can add, edit, and delete pages and add attachments and comments) or viewers (who can only view the site). So even the level of interaction is customizable.
Students, too, can easily access Google Sites. Once receiving the invitation email from the instructor, students need to create an account—if they don’t already have one—through a link provided in the invitation. After completing this, the student can click the link to the site that is also in the invitation. Depending on the level of access the instructor gave to them, students can begin interacting with the wiki at this point. Editing and creating pages only takes a click of an easily-identifiable button. Page histories are also easy to find, so students can track changes that have occurred on any page. Users can add links, upload images and video, link to other pages on the wiki, and include drafts for review with just a few clicks in the editor mode.
Google Sites also has a few other features of note. The number of users in unlimited. Sites like Pbwiki, which sells versions of its software, limit the number of users in their free versions. Pbwiki, for example, allows a site to have 100 users, which, for one writing class, is acceptable unless the instructor was using the wiki across numerous sections. In addition, Google Sites is absolutely free. Many wiki creators are free, but some do have versions that users can pay to access with more features and fewer restrictions on use. The lack of cost of Google Sites is certainly appealing to instructors who don’t wish to (or can’t afford to) pay for wiki space and whose university doesn’t subscribe to a service like Pbworks (of which Pbwiki is a part). And while some free sites make up for this by allowing ads on the wiki the instructor creates, Google Sites is free of ads, unless the instructor chooses to monetize the site.
Despite these benefits, Google Sites has one significant drawback. It only allows 100 MB of storage per wiki. (Pbwiki’s free version allows 2 GB and Wetpaint’s storage space is unlimited.) This can be a serious hindrance to an instructor who might want to encourage students to create personal Web pages complete with images and to upload many drafts of essays or group projects/presentations to the wiki. But if an instructor wanted to use this wiki space to include discussion of course materials and group work (collaborative knowledge-building) in a more open and democratic fashion and use the CMS for drafts, 100 MB might prove enough space.
Conclusion
Wikis can provide an effective tool to reinforce current collaborative and democratic pedagogies popular today. They offer a unique way to create collaborative communities, especially in distance learning courses where students have little to no f2f interaction with one another. Providing such a community can not only benefit the students’ writing skills by encouraging more writing and revision in an open environment with a real audience but can also help students challenge power structures and cultural assumptions. And because wikis generally have a more open environment, students might appreciate such lessons more since the methods support the content. But instructors must carefully choose their tools with their pedagogy in mind. In this instance, I recommend Google Sites for a basic, entry-level wiki because of its cost and ease of use, instructors who want to incorporate more multimodal elements into their courses might find its storage space limiting.
Works Cited
Arola, Kristin L. “The Design of Web 2.0: The Rise of the Template, the Fall of Design.” Computers and Composition 27 (2010): 4-14. ERIC. Web. 1 June 2010.
Barton, Matthew D. “The Future of Rational-critical Debate in Online Public Spheres.” Computers and Composition 22 (2005): 177-90. Print.
Bruffee, Kenneth. “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” College English 46.7 (1984): 635-52. JSTOR. Web. 3 June 2010.
Google Sites. Google. 2010. Web. 28 May 2010.
Harris, Joseph. “The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing.” On Writing Research: The Braddock Essays, 1975-1998. Ed. Lisa Ede. Boston: Bedford, 1999. 260-71. Print.
Hawisher, Gail E. and Cynthia L. Selfe. “The Rhetoric of Technology and the Electronic Writing Class.” CCC 42.1 (1991): 55-65. Print.
Navarre Cleary, Michelle, Suzanne Sanders-Betzold, Polly Hoover, and Peggy St. John. “Working with Wikis in Writing-intensive Classes.” Kairos 14.1 (2009): n.p. Web. 19 May 2010.
Moxley, Joseph. “Datagogies, Writing Spaces, and the Age of Peer Production.” Computers and Composition 25 (2008): 182-202. ERIC. Web. 28 May 2010.
Pbwiki. Pbworks. 2010. Web. 4 June 2010.
Tharp, Tara Leigh. “‘Wiki, Wiki, Wiki—What?’ Assessing Online Collaborative Writing.” English Journal 99.5 (2010): 40-46. Print.
Trimbur, John. “Consensus and Difference in Collaborative Learning.” CE 51.6 (1989): 602-16. Print.
Wetpaint. Wetpaint. 2010. Web. 4 June 2010.
Wikispaces. Tangient. 2010. Web. 9 June 2010.
Wilson Lundin, Rebecca. “Teaching with Wikis: Toward a Networked Pedagogy.” Computers and Composition 25 (2008): 432-48. Print.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Web 2.0 for Activist Pedagogy
Barton, Matthew D. “The Future of Rational-critical Debate in Online Public Spheres.” Computers and Composition 22 (2005): 177-90. ERIC. Web. 25 May 2010.
In my past blog postings, I have addressed mostly the practical use of wikis. With this posting, I wanted to address the wider importance of the use of Web 2.0 technologies, including wikis, and of encouraging collaborative learning for the benefit of society at large. Matthew Barton’s article points us in this direction and helps us consider some tools that might help us migrate current activist pedagogies to an online class.
Barton’s central argument revolves around the belief that interactive Web tools, specifically blogs, discussion boards, and wikis, can increase and improve rational-critical debate. (He doesn’t specifically define this last term, but from the article, readers can gather he means the analysis and critique of current social, political, and economic issues.) He claims that these democratic tools hold the promise of developing a more socially aware and active public, so long as the public, and not corporate interests, can maintain control of these tools.
He puts this discussion in the context of Jürgen Habermas’s notion of the public sphere, a place for rational-critical debate that theoretically allowed all citizens to participate and addressed previously unchallenged assumptions and issues. Habermas saw such spaces rise in Europe in the seventeenth century. This incarnation failed, though, because corporate/profit interests that limited viewpoints and people’s ability to engage in debate took over the newspapers that grew out of these public spaces for discussion.
Barton claims that Web 2.0 technologies, particularly blogs, discussion boards, and wikis, can reinvigorate this public sphere in part because they provide not only greater access to information but also to the production of that information. To these ends, Barton envisions that these three tools will help students grow in their abilities and willingness to engage in rational-critical debate.
The typically personal nature of blogs makes them an ideal space for self-discovery, a space where students might find out what they think and why, preparing them for rational-critical debate. Discussion boards, the next step in the progression, offer greater equality and greater interaction among users, “expos[ing] students to the sphere of critical debate and foster[ing] rhetorical awareness” (189). Finally, wikis’ open and democratic nature and their focus on the text as process “provide that space where students strive for consensus and learn to share a common, community voice” (189).
We may argue about how much and what kind of “consensus” we want our students to reach, but we can certainly recognize his claims’ connections to the type of social awareness and critique that has bloomed in composition pedagogy recently (e.g., critical pedagogy). Because it clearly articulates the benefits of these tools for activist pedagogies, this article is a relevant piece for any instructors who espouse these pedagogies but are struggling to incorporate them into online classes. Though general application details are not present, Barton does ground these tools in theory, which might encourage more faculty to see them as possibilities for achieving their pedagogical goals and ease their move into online environments.
In my past blog postings, I have addressed mostly the practical use of wikis. With this posting, I wanted to address the wider importance of the use of Web 2.0 technologies, including wikis, and of encouraging collaborative learning for the benefit of society at large. Matthew Barton’s article points us in this direction and helps us consider some tools that might help us migrate current activist pedagogies to an online class.
Barton’s central argument revolves around the belief that interactive Web tools, specifically blogs, discussion boards, and wikis, can increase and improve rational-critical debate. (He doesn’t specifically define this last term, but from the article, readers can gather he means the analysis and critique of current social, political, and economic issues.) He claims that these democratic tools hold the promise of developing a more socially aware and active public, so long as the public, and not corporate interests, can maintain control of these tools.
He puts this discussion in the context of Jürgen Habermas’s notion of the public sphere, a place for rational-critical debate that theoretically allowed all citizens to participate and addressed previously unchallenged assumptions and issues. Habermas saw such spaces rise in Europe in the seventeenth century. This incarnation failed, though, because corporate/profit interests that limited viewpoints and people’s ability to engage in debate took over the newspapers that grew out of these public spaces for discussion.
Barton claims that Web 2.0 technologies, particularly blogs, discussion boards, and wikis, can reinvigorate this public sphere in part because they provide not only greater access to information but also to the production of that information. To these ends, Barton envisions that these three tools will help students grow in their abilities and willingness to engage in rational-critical debate.
The typically personal nature of blogs makes them an ideal space for self-discovery, a space where students might find out what they think and why, preparing them for rational-critical debate. Discussion boards, the next step in the progression, offer greater equality and greater interaction among users, “expos[ing] students to the sphere of critical debate and foster[ing] rhetorical awareness” (189). Finally, wikis’ open and democratic nature and their focus on the text as process “provide that space where students strive for consensus and learn to share a common, community voice” (189).
We may argue about how much and what kind of “consensus” we want our students to reach, but we can certainly recognize his claims’ connections to the type of social awareness and critique that has bloomed in composition pedagogy recently (e.g., critical pedagogy). Because it clearly articulates the benefits of these tools for activist pedagogies, this article is a relevant piece for any instructors who espouse these pedagogies but are struggling to incorporate them into online classes. Though general application details are not present, Barton does ground these tools in theory, which might encourage more faculty to see them as possibilities for achieving their pedagogical goals and ease their move into online environments.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Article #4: They're Wikis, Not Revolutionary Wonders!
Cleary, Michelle Navarre, Suzanne Sanders-Betzold, Polly Hoover, and Peggy St. John. “Working with Wikis in Writing-intensive Classes.” Kairos 14.1 (2009): n.p. Web. 19 May 2010.
Without question, computer technologies have revolutionized how we teach writing in a number of ways. Yet we seem to be on revolution overload lately. Every new bit of computer technology seems to promise the next revolution. To calm these (often) hyperbolic claims, we need reasonable and practical examinations of these tools to remind us that they are often just that: tools that help us with but are unlikely to revolutionize what we do. This article examines wikis in just such a practical way—no grandiose claims, no promise of miracles.
The authors are frank about their findings. They cannot and will not say with any certainty that the wikis they used for their writing-intensive courses made the students better writers. However, they do argue that the wikis they used in their classes provided students with a useful space to collaborate generally, work on group projects, revise work, and build communities.
They began by noting the generally wide-spread praise for wikis in the scholarship, especially claims about wikis’ ability to demonstrate the “messy” writing process; to give students more autonomy and power; and to encourage students to collaborate, negotiate, and think critically and reflectively. The authors found that some of these praises were well-deserved. Their students did collaborate on projects quite effectively, often creating rich sites of negotiation and “metacognition” where students would reflect critically on their writing. And since wikis record changes, the non-linear nature of the writing process was quite visible, which they found especially useful for students who came to their courses expecting writing to be linear. The public nature of the wikis also kept students revising and thinking about wider audiences. Finally, wikis helped students develop community bonds, even in the f2f classes.
But wikis also produced problems. The instructors wanted to capitalize on the open nature of wikis, but some students disliked this openness. The students also found working around others’ schedules and habits problematic. And instead of using the wiki as a wholly revisable entity, students often approached it as a discussion board, posting comments and changes separately rather than in the text in question. While students did negotiate, they would sometimes choose a revision for the sake of consensus rather than based on what would be the best option. What they found, then, was that wikis may not be the revolutionary tool that some of the literature represents them as.
This article reminds instructors who are considering using wikis (or any new technology) in the writing class—distance, hybrid, or even f2f—that we cannot expect wonders from these tools. The authors certainly promote the use of wikis, but they did not present wikis as a cure-all or the new writing revolution. Rather, wikis for them were tools to enhance their existing practices. Indeed, this article will help my peers recognize that we should let our pedagogy drive our use of technology.
Without question, computer technologies have revolutionized how we teach writing in a number of ways. Yet we seem to be on revolution overload lately. Every new bit of computer technology seems to promise the next revolution. To calm these (often) hyperbolic claims, we need reasonable and practical examinations of these tools to remind us that they are often just that: tools that help us with but are unlikely to revolutionize what we do. This article examines wikis in just such a practical way—no grandiose claims, no promise of miracles.
The authors are frank about their findings. They cannot and will not say with any certainty that the wikis they used for their writing-intensive courses made the students better writers. However, they do argue that the wikis they used in their classes provided students with a useful space to collaborate generally, work on group projects, revise work, and build communities.
They began by noting the generally wide-spread praise for wikis in the scholarship, especially claims about wikis’ ability to demonstrate the “messy” writing process; to give students more autonomy and power; and to encourage students to collaborate, negotiate, and think critically and reflectively. The authors found that some of these praises were well-deserved. Their students did collaborate on projects quite effectively, often creating rich sites of negotiation and “metacognition” where students would reflect critically on their writing. And since wikis record changes, the non-linear nature of the writing process was quite visible, which they found especially useful for students who came to their courses expecting writing to be linear. The public nature of the wikis also kept students revising and thinking about wider audiences. Finally, wikis helped students develop community bonds, even in the f2f classes.
But wikis also produced problems. The instructors wanted to capitalize on the open nature of wikis, but some students disliked this openness. The students also found working around others’ schedules and habits problematic. And instead of using the wiki as a wholly revisable entity, students often approached it as a discussion board, posting comments and changes separately rather than in the text in question. While students did negotiate, they would sometimes choose a revision for the sake of consensus rather than based on what would be the best option. What they found, then, was that wikis may not be the revolutionary tool that some of the literature represents them as.
This article reminds instructors who are considering using wikis (or any new technology) in the writing class—distance, hybrid, or even f2f—that we cannot expect wonders from these tools. The authors certainly promote the use of wikis, but they did not present wikis as a cure-all or the new writing revolution. Rather, wikis for them were tools to enhance their existing practices. Indeed, this article will help my peers recognize that we should let our pedagogy drive our use of technology.
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