Suggested Section
Computer Literacy
Multiple problems arise from constructing any set of prescribed first-year outcomes relating to technology. Two problems are foremost:
(1) Schools and students who have access to technology are more likely to have the prescribed knowledge or skills than students who have limited access to technology. By imposing a set of outcomes related to technology, we are making school harder for those who are lower in the socioeconomic spectrum of society and consequently have less access to technology.
(2) Teachers may be encouraging a non-critical approach to incorporating technology into writing classes.
Teachers need to avoid using technology for its own sake (and for the sake of those who sell it); on the other hand, students who have a critical awareness of technology and how to use it when writing are more employable than students who do not. Within those parameters, we propose the following set of outcomes:
By the end of first-year composition, students should have a critical understanding of digital literacy, including:
· using the computer for drafting, revising, responding, and editing.
· employing research strategies using electronic databases
· conducting web-based research and evaluating online sources
· understanding the difference in rhetorical strategies used in writing traditional and hyper-text prose/graphics.
posted by Irvin at 10:59 AM
15 Comments:
Suggestion: Have two versions: outcomes statement proper and an expanded version—how we might go forward
Group 1.
have a critical and rhetorical understanding of the interaction between technology and composing
{wanted to get away from a text-based notion of writing}
Experience a range of e-tools that facilitate writing, revising, and editing processes.
Learn to locate, evaluate, and organize resources, using the web and intranet resources.
need some adjustment on the rhetorical strategies
something about generating graphics
[add something about storage, file systems, and retrieval]
Rather than small and large—note ways of expanding beyond general strategies
Group 3
Change computer literacy
Desire to have students participate competently and rhetorically in public technologies and digital discourses.
Students should learn to adopt different rhetorical strategies for understanding, interpreting, and creating multi-media somethings.
To understand how the medium affects the message.
Document design—we need to pay attention to the rhetorical implications of design.
Group 4 or so
Do we want to have a new section of tech literacy or introduce these elements into existing outcome statements?
Group 5
too much to get down
General discussion:
Missing something about ethics in use of technology.
(thinking in terms of digital etiquette.)
Question: what are we leaving out? -- inclusion of data/images in text.
Any inclusion of information literacy projects?
How do we move forward?
1. Present a proposal and/or statements of interest or inquiry to the WPA exec committee.
2. Ask the WPAex how they would like to have us go about it.
3. Continue to work on this on a listserv
4. Return to local sites, get response, suggestions; return to listserv to compile/coordinate suggestions; meet at 4cs.
Don’t forget to have the 7Cs working with us on this—Michael’s suggestions.
Bill’s suggestion of thinking of how we can take this through the CCCC.
Joe’s suggestion of linking to a WPA research grant; make certain that people know about this.
Provide a quick summary to the EC; outline options and decide on which of these options we want to pursue.
1 and 4.
Promises
create listserv
send these notes
organize-reorganize these notes.
decide on future meeting possibilities
think about how we want to proceed.
Kathleen Yancey:
I will also be posting some notes from Michael Day. Hope to have those by the end of the day (6/22/06)
WPA05techoutcomes meeting notes -- M. Day
Deans like the OS in particular. This gave them some tangible way of
recognizing what we are doing and how we assess it.
OS is an articulation between what we are doing locally and what is
going on nationally.
Among all the students in Kathi’s study of HS students, all use some
form of digital technology.
In 97-99 some members of the outcomes group proposed a computer
literacy plank, but there was too much opposition.
(Irv, Susanmarie and Kathi)
We look at the NIU tech outcomes, and then begin by revising the
original suggested WPA tech outcomes as a category in the general
outcomes statement. But, our group suggests, we should also have an
expanded tech outcomes statement.
What kind and form of document gives those who use it the most
political advantage and social capital within their institutions? What
form will gain WPAs the most clout?
It also depends on how we intend to disseminate the document. Who will
endorse it, in which form, and will it have as much clout in one form
as in another?
We DO want to go forward.
1. We could go back to the executive council with a plan for what we
want to do. We’ll need way more than 6 months, meeting at NCTE and CCCC
and finalize it at Chattanooga.
2. We could go back to the WPA exec board and tell them we want to do
this, then ask them how they want to do it.
3. We could take it back to a listserv and keep working on it.
4. We could take it back to our local institutions, get input and then
return to listserv to compile and coordinate suggestions.
We’ll have to use some jargon. What jargon do we use? Susanmarie: we
should test some of the language before we adopt it.
Bill Condon’ s view is that technology has to be interwoven throughout
the whole document.
We could go short term and offer a quick, down and dirty separate
document, on the lines of NIU’s statement, and work hard on an
integrated version.
Joe Janangelos’s suggestion. We give the EB a quick version of what we
want to do and then get some advice, while we work.
*From Michael Day:
Notes from Alaska*
WPA05techoutcomes meeting notes -- M. Day
Deans like the OS in particular. This gave them some tangible way of
recognizing what we are doing and how we assess it.
OS is an articulation between what we are doing locally and what is
going on nationally.
Among all the students in Kathi’s study of HS students, all use some
form of digital technology.
In 97-99 some members of the outcomes group proposed a computer
literacy plank, but there was too much opposition.
(Irv, Susanmarie and Kathi)
We look at the NIU tech outcomes, and then begin by revising the
original suggested WPA tech outcomes as a category in the general
outcomes statement. But, our group suggests, we should also have an
expanded tech outcomes statement.
What kind and form of document gives those who use it the most
political advantage and social capital within their institutions? What
form will gain WPAs the most clout?
It also depends on how we intend to disseminate the document. Who will
endorse it, in which form, and will it have as much clout in one form
as in another?
We DO want to go forward.
1. We could go back to the executive council with a plan for what we
want to do. We’ll need way more than 6 months, meeting at NCTE and CCCC
and finalize it at Chattanooga.
2. We could go back to the WPA exec board and tell them we want to do
this, then ask them how they want to do it.
3. We could take it back to a listserv and keep working on it.
4. We could take it back to our local institutions, get input and then
return to listserv to compile and coordinate suggestions.
We’ll have to use some jargon. What jargon do we use? Susanmarie: we
should test some of the language before we adopt it.
Bill Condon’ s view is that technology has to be interwoven throughout
the whole document.
We could go short term and offer a quick, down and dirty separate
document, on the lines of NIU’s statement, and work hard on an
integrated version.
Joe Janangelos’s suggestion. We give the EB a quick version of what we
want to do and then get some advice, while we work.
I like Duane's approach because it allows us to identify the tools that are most important on a local level. At the same time, for the sake of our thinking together, I"m going to post two other position/outcomes statements, ones that are very different from ours but also instructive in terms of what we might do.
The first is a position statement put out by the National Council of Teacher of Mathematics (a group parallel to NCTE) addressing the role of digital technologies in the teaching and learning of math: http://www.nctm.org/about/position_statements/position_statement_13.htm
I like it because it quite clearly states that technology is part of learning math at this moment in time. This isn't a claim that we have really made, we being writing folks, but it's one that I think we need to make, not only because this is the way we write today, but also because tests coming down the pike are moving in that direction as well: the NAEP in 2001; the 2008 field test of the NAAL.
A second approach is more like Duane's, but with a bit more specificity; it comes from a statement of competencies used at George Mason's New Century College. I've copied the most relevant parts, one on global awareness and the other on technologies.
Global Understanding
Global Understanding is the respect for and appreciation of the interconnections among systems on the planet. Global understanding includes the ability to:
Respect different perspectives and ways of knowing that are based on cultural, ethnic, religious, and geographical differences.
Comprehend the way in which technology has treated a small world, politically, socially, economically and culturally.
Appreciate the interconnectedness of the local and global communities.
Understand various life forms and the environment.
AND
Information Technology
In the information technology competency students will understand, know how to use, and make choices regarding new and existing information and information technology. Because the use of information, computer, and Internet is throughout professional and civic life, competence in information technology and literacy is essential to success. A student skilled in the use of information technology will be able to:
Choose technology appropriate to an activity.
Master the use of common computer and Internet technology.
Learn new technologies confidently and independently.
Locate, evaluate and use information.
Understand the ethical policy and accessibility issues associated with information technology.
What do you all think?
kathi
I like Duane's approach because it allows us to identify the tools that are most important on a local level. At the same time, for the sake of our thinking together, I'm going to post two other position/outcomes statements, ones that are very different from ours in context, but also instructive in terms of what we might do.
The first is a position statement put out by the National Council of Teacher of Mathematics (a group parallel to NCTE) addressing the role of digital technologies in the teaching and learning of math: http://www.nctm.org/about/position_statements/position_statement_13.htm
I like it because it quite clearly states that technology is part of learning math at this moment in time. This isn't a claim that we have really made, we being writing folks, but it's one that I think we need to make, not only because this is the way we write today, but also because tests coming down the pike are moving in that direction as well: the NAEP in 2001; the 2008 field test of the NAAL.
A second approach is more like Duane's, but with a bit more specificity; it comes from a statement of competencies used at George Mason's New Century College. I've copied the most relevant parts, one on global awareness and the other on technologies.
Global Understanding
Global Understanding is the respect for and appreciation of the interconnections among systems on the planet. Global understanding includes the ability to:
Respect different perspectives and ways of knowing that are based on cultural, ethnic, religious, and geographical differences.
Comprehend the way in which technology has treated a small world, politically, socially, economically and culturally.
Appreciate the interconnectedness of the local and global communities.
Understand various life forms and the environment.
AND
Information Technology
In the information technology competency students will understand, know how to use, and make choices regarding new and existing information and information technology. Because the use of information, computer, and Internet is throughout professional and civic life, competence in information technology and literacy is essential to success. A student skilled in the use of information technology will be able to:
Choose technology appropriate to an activity.
Master the use of common computer and Internet technology.
Learn new technologies confidently and independently.
Locate, evaluate and use information.
Understand the ethical policy and accessibility issues associated with information technology.
What do you all think?
kathi
I'm interested in the chosen terminology for the OS.
In my own writing classroom I use a 2-part component -- the "how to" (basic knowledge of tools) and the "what does it mean" (rhetorical choices with tools)
Computer Literacy, Information Literacy, Technological Literacy, and Digital Literacy often seem to conflate while Media Literacy frequently gets excluded.
But maybe it's just that I've come across too many students who think a .org provides "better" information than a .com because it's an organization. :)
The lack of response to the computer literacy outcomes statement probably means that we’re all hanging onto our seats as we fly through our other professional responsibilities; it could also mean that most of the proposed statements are ho-hum—more or less “of course” statements. I am not quite certain about Duane’s and Kathi’s suggestions—just how they would change the format or wording of the proposed statement. These are issues we can work out in our session at Chattanooga.
One thing I suspect we all agree with: the OS so far has proved very useful to most of us as we meet with people in other fields at our local sites. To that end, we don’t want to add on to a useful statement any kind of statement that would do more harm than good, perhaps by making it more of a ho-hum document. The question I ask is: what are we really adding here and what benefits will some members of our community get from it?
I need to add a couple of other comments that I received in a conversation with Nora Bacon (and that I am here adding without her permission—please forgive me, Nora).
Nora points out that the preface to the actual computer literacy outcomes seems to be from a conversation that was over some time ago. I agree with this—we need to rewrite it so that it doesn’t sound negative but puts a positive frame to the listed outcomes. When we talk about disadvantaging socioeconomic groups, that conversation should be somewhere else other than in the preface. Both that worry and the concern about tech for its own sake have been diminished by advances since we first proposed these outcomes.
Nora also points out that “students should have a critical understanding of digital literacy” is an arrow aimed at the wrong target. We don’t need to be teaching an “understanding” of digital literacy. We need to help our students use digital literacy (an ugly phrase anyway) productively.
Technology & Writing: A Manifesto & Outcomes
C. Jeney
Because “technology” is a loaded term, with vast implications, it seems best to clarify the depth, breadth, and seriousness of the issues involved with a “technology plank” in the WPA statement on outcomes in college composition. After doing so, I will then list the student "outcomes" that seem necessary in light of a critical understanding of the uses of computer technology in college writing instruction.
A reasonable amount of activism and political involvement at the curricular and administrative levels is appropriate for the further advancement of good practices. When possible, for instance, faculty and writing program administrators charged with online teaching responsibilities should consider some of the following:
--Educators must learn how to deal with political and state-mandated technology initiatives as components of their writing programs.
--Writing programs may need to deal with private enterprise and with independent academic researchers when implementing technology systems and innovative projects.
--While writing programs might be expected to have the ability to study technology-rich approaches to course design, collecting accurate outcomes data, and predicting online success both qualitatively and quantitatively, writing program administrators should be ready to explain that the state of the technologies and the user population is dominated by uncertainty. Computer and internet technologies are still too new to produce static conditions and predictable outcomes.
--Educators should encourage their institutions to construct stable and sensible missions/plans for growth and development of online and technology-enhanced writing courses.
--Effective conventional, traditional, and intuitive approaches to teaching writing should be encouraged, but writing programs should also make room for educators willing to improvise and push the newest edges of technological development, expanding and re-defining goals and processes as they go.
--Responsible writing programs should hesitate to commit their design and development time to any one particular proprietary (for-profit) system that could be defunct within a year (or less).
--Online course development must be based upon sound pedagogical and theoretical foundations; it is irresponsible to press for large-scale enrollment in computer-mediated classes.
--Until statistical and qualitative data is gathered on student success, tuition cost-benefits, and student-centered technological design, WPA’s should be aware of (and take measures to counteract) the stressors and challenges to teachers—many of whom are newly hired faculty, adjuncts, and graduate teaching assistants.
--Propaganda celebrating faculty members’ abilities to “adjust” and “innovate” should be used judiciously, since the pressure to constantly adapt to new technologies could be adding undue (and irresponsible) stress to the workload of many teachers.
--WPA’s should weigh the cost in time and activities that might weigh more heavily with hiring/tenure committees against the gains made by faculty members and GTA’s who are deeply involved in technology-based pedagogies.
--Encourage a vision of technology that represents the Internet as a malleable, borderless entity, rather than a “delivery conduit.”
--Without becoming overly zealous, writing instructors need to have a healthy respect for security and privacy issues.
--Faculty should request and receive sufficient “front-loading” time and resources to investigate new and innovative software and web technologies.
--Institutions should critically analyze proprietary “course delivery systems” licensed to their institutions, and offer alternatives when possible.
--Students should be surveyed regularly, concerning issues of usability and connectivity.
--Faculty should also be surveyed regularly, concerning issues of usability and connectivity.
--Educators should make informed and well-reasoned decisions about their own “presence” in online courses—including images, video, and textual “personality” in electronic classes.
--Writing courses offered online or in technology-rich computer labs should be consistent with the practices of the college or university, not just “added on” for profit or marketing purposes (see: National Education Association, Office of Higher Education (2002). The promise and the reality of distance education. Research Center Update. 8 (3) http://www.nea.org/he/heupdate/vol8no3.pdf).
--Faculty should enlist the aid of systems administrators, instructional technologists, software experts, and of course each other, to learn as much as possible about the available technological options.
--Educators should be willing to act as advisors and consultants to upper-level administrators and governing boards when they make major institution-wide technology decisions.
--Institutions, governing boards, and legislators should be willing to put money and resources into development efforts made by faculty and writing programs, to develop effective and updated courses that employ current technologies in relevant ways.
--Proprietary, for-profit technology vendors should be separate from – and even in competition with – established, traditional institutions of higher education, rather than hired-on and wedged into curricula that may or may not be well-suited for their use.
--Online and hybrid writing courses should not be seen as exploitable “cash cows” for departments or colleges looking to load large numbers of students into writing intensive freshman courses.
--Innovative and talented educators can and should be allowed to rescue good designs and ideas before they are snatched away by concerns unrelated to writing and critical thinking.
--Poor pedagogical designs implemented in the name of budgetary, political, or technological expedience should be rejected and prevented before they do harm to students and writing programs, not after.
Compared with other technological and architectural infrastructures in place on most college campuses (i.e., water, gas, electricity, landscaping, telephones, buildings, bridges, roads), computer technologies are new, shaky, and untried on any grand scale (consider a bridge that only collapses once a month, or a traffic light that only malfunctions every 100th hour). Yet eduators who are new to teaching with computer technologies typically blame themselves for malfunctions that result from bad design; they may waste numerous hours exploring fruitless catacombs of techno-horrors expecting rewards for their students at the end of the endless tunnels. We can pool our resources and skills, and listen to each other, learn from each other, demand better design, better technological products and management, and better understanding of the issues and challenges faced by faculty and administrators who must work to discover best-practices in the a world of ever-changing, yet powerful and exciting new technologies.
In light of these recommendations for administering and teaching college writing with new technologies, I would suggest the following outcomes for students learning to write in the Computer Age.
Students learning to use computing and internet technologies in college writing courses should become familiar with the following concepts and skills:
-Understand general concepts of what the internet is, and how it works.
-Understand basic file management: saving and retrieving files to local, removable, and remote directory systems (i.e., hard drive, ‘flash’ drive, portable disks, and remote servers)
-Understand general uses and basic skills for word processing and producing printed documents in standard, assigned formats.
-Understand general uses and basic skills for electronic messaging systems, including synchronous and asynchronous technologies such as electronic mail, instant messaging, and online discussion boards.
-Understand general uses and basic skills for producing various digitally formatted information, including digitized graphics, sound, video, and text formats.
-Understand some of the theoretical, ideological, institutional, and social implications of various computer and internet technologies that transmit written language and other human symbolic systems of communication.
-Understand critical approaches to technology both within and beyond the sphere of the academy (“critical” here is used in the sense of requiring students to learn, discuss, and debate the implications of social, political, and cultural power structures that are enhanced and created through the adoption and use of advanced technologies).
-Understand the scope of complexity that technology brings to the already vast and rich landscape of the study of language, rhetoric, and writing.
CJ Jeney
Assistant Professor of English
and Technical Communciation
Missouri Western State University
St. Joseph, Missouri
Since my good friend CJ has taken the time to think through the proposed technology plank, I am replying on the WPA list rather than the technology blog. First, I think CJ brings up many of the issues that some of us are worried about. I hope that she and others with these concerns will be at our WPA session (and maybe at a party afterwards, where we can seriously address these issues). One of my worries in a tech plank (although I am in favor of it) lies in the inherent social reproduction game. As CJ notes, we have to pay attention to this.
At any rate, I hope people will pay attention to CJs concerns and bring them up at our session. One thing I would say: the plank needs to be clear and concise. That concision has, I think, contributed to the OS success.
I'm going to add another note: The statement should avoid political perspectives or leanings. My friends know that I honor Freire. But I also know his theory begins from an assumption.
A couple of thoughts from an outsider:
As CJ notes, technology is a problematic term. By and large, this plank deals with digital/computer technologies rather than “technology” in general and that distinction should be made. Any "critical" understanding of the role digital technologies do and will play in composition must begin with an understanding that all writing--and all teaching, for that matter--has always depended upon technology, and, in fact, that writing is itself a technology.
While it's almost cliche to point this out, I'm not sure I see much evidence that this is assumed in the initial statement here. Take, for instance, the statement that "Teachers need to avoid using technology for its own sake (and for the sake of those who sell it)." Isn't this statement just as applicable to textbooks as it is to computers? Seriously, with common syllabi and program-wide textbook adoption, aren't textbooks being used "for [their] own sake (and for the sake of those who sell it)" far more than computers are?
While it would be easy to brush me off as a crank, if one understands that writing and teaching have always been dependent upon technology, then one can understand that textbooks are themselves technologies, and if one understands that point, then one understands my concern regarding the need to be careful about conflating computers with technology in these issues.
I’m also concerned by the way a “critical understanding of digital literacy" is defined is here. It seems far too print-centric to me. While I agree that one needs to evaluate a web site differently than one evaluates a print source, isn't learning to evaluate these different types of sources as well as other sources such as people to interview, archival material such as personal letters, television shows all part of learning how to do research? Why separate learning how to evaluate electronic databases and web resources as a special case? Isn't this an othering of computers and digital technologies that risks implying that “traditional" writing and research practices aren't dependent upon technology or that they don't need to be approached with a "critical understanding?"
If literate activity is, as Paul Prior suggests, "not located in acts of reading and writing, but as cultural forms of life saturated with textuality, that is strongly motivated and mediated by texts," or, as Ong might put it, if literacy is about the noetic processes and habits of mind which coevolve with particular social, cultural, economic, and technological milieus, do we really want to define this set of outcomes as "a critical understanding of digital literacy"? I certainly don't.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to attack or undermine the work being done here. As a member of the CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition and Communication, I’m deeply concerned about and committed to these issues. And, really, I don’t object to the outcomes themselves. But I do think we're fooling ourselves if we define these outcomes as "digital literacy." These aren't cultural forms of life or habits of mind based in digital texts and digital culture. These outcomes are, instead, extensions of print culture applied to the use of computers. And that’s fine. In other words, instead of defining digital literate activity, what you’ve done here is define the kinds of literate activities we should expect from a college student who has completed first-year composition in the early years of the 21st century.
If we’re going to make distinctions between what we might call “literate activities” and “digital literate activities,” I would suggest that digital literacy activities cover such issues as network theory, remix culture, secondary literacy/visualism, game theory, and the like. As Jeff Rice notes in his blog, one can teach full time in a computer lab and not engage digital literacy, and, conversely, one can teach digital literacy without using computers.
I realize that what you’ve got here is a draft, and from the above comments, it seems as if some of the language that rubs me the wrong way is already on the way out. So please don’t take my comments as a critique but rather as suggestions to keep in mind as you all revise the statement.
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