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Digital Writing Across the
Curriculum l Implications of
Technology for the Shape of a College Education
Engaging an audience and thereby engaging
the student: Student authors are more likely to learn in
their majors if they are actually teaching, and interacting
with, an audience that is meaningful to them.
One way to engage an audience is through publishing on the
Web, so that the public can see the work. I remember
hearing about a student at Southern Cal several years ago
who was motivated to do a great job on a multimedia project
about prison life. Her project included information (photos?
video? I don't recall now) about a relative in prison, and
she knew that, because the project was on the web, her
relative and other inmates she'd studied would be able to
see it.
One of the first examples I heard about where
a real audience made a difference was when journalism
students at Miami University of Ohio were assigned to create
a web site about the Bosnian peace talks in Dayton, and were
stunned to receive critical email about their initial site,
from Bosnia. The faculty member wrote later that it was she
who was stunned, however, to see how hard the students went
to work after that. That was in the 1990s. Today,
students at Swarthmore are producing a ratio network and
podcast series called
War News Radio. It was initially a series of class
projects, but developed to the point where it was carried by
37 radio stations in 2009.
Authors on the Web can enable readers to
interact with the writing, by choosing paths and by
using services available in the project (e.g., searching a
database; reading source materials linked to the project,
engaging in a simulation created by the author) or by
soliciting their input to future versions of the essay, as
this web site does. Perhaps most important, it's easier to
make web-based writing available to readers outside the
classroom and outside the academy.
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A 'service
learning' example:
Ruth Kastenmayer is teaching a
service learning course at Judson College in Summer 2006
in which students will create web sites for community
agencies. The course description reads, in part,
"Overall emphasis is centered on those factors which
make writing for the Web different from writing print
documents, e.g., the ability to chunk and layer
information and to employ a more concise, direct writing
style...The service-learning component of this course
provides and maintains effective Web sites for
non-profit organizations in the area of Perry County,
Alabama."
Another meaningful audience is other
students. IN these projects, students were asked to do
digital writing assignments that would be used by other students.
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We hear about more and more classes in which students
are asked to work together to create wiki textbooks
that they can then use in studying or reviewing for the
course.
Click here to see some examples.
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This web site from students in a history
course at Vassar is another example of students creating
study resources for other students to use: they've organized
cartoons and commentary about the Presidential Election
of 1896.
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In this
blog entry, John McClymer of Assumption University
(MA) talks about how his students will be studying web
sites created earlier by several classes of American
Studies students at the University of Virginia. (Thanks
also
to John for pointing out the Vassar/1896 web site.)
The web offers more options than linear text
does for engaging an audience. The author can use
images and the power of the human voice.
Finally, students can collaborate in the
writing of traditional books (and a variety of aspects of
word processing make that easier). Here's
an example of a popular history book co-authored by a
Virginia Tech professor, Peter Wallenstein, and a team of
undergraduates.
Please send me your comments about
this page, and new examples and ideas to add. I'll be happy
to acknowledge your help!
Steve Ehrmann (ehrmann @ tltgroup.org)
Digital Writing Across the
Curriculum l Implications of
Technology for the Shape of a College Education
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