Since I have become a student, technology has had an increasingly prominent role in the ways in which courses are taught, assignments are completed, and information is disseminated. The speed of digital educations rise to prominence is evident in the difference of technology use in college faculty, even within one department. While some may stick to the “old-school” roots of analog copies of readings, physical textbooks, and written assignments, others have embraced the growing prevalence of digital education through online assignments, class discussion forums, projects in digital medias, and more. The possibilities in embracing pedagogical platforms that incorporate digital literacy are seemingly endless, as new technologies and opportunities seem to present themselves as soon as a student can learn the former. Like many aspects of digital education, digital writing is a medium that offers a number of exciting possibilities for college classrooms, campuses, and beyond. This is not to say that digital writing is perfect; writing online brings with it it’s fair share of potential troubles and complications. However, the ever expanding opportunities for digital scholarship and writing have a place in the permanent pedagogical practices of college faculty.
In order to map out the importance of digital writing in the college classroom, it’s important to first contextualize and define the medium itself. In her article “Keeping Up With… Digital Writing in the College Classroom”, Andrea Baer defines digital writing as “… writing that is composed – and most often read – through digital environments and tools. The growing pedagogical interest in digital writing is evident in the increasing number of college courses in digital writing and the rhetoric, as well as in courses across disciplines that incorporate elements of digital composition.” (Baer) Baer’s definition notes a few important characteristics of digital writing in today’s classrooms; first, digital writing is most frequently read on digital platforms. The audience is interacting with the content on a typically multimodal platform, meaning the opportunity for distraction away from the article is consistently prevalent. Digital writing itself must be composed with this in mind, as writers for online formats must find ways to keep the reader’s interest when they are surrounded by a litany of other attention grabbers just a click away.
Baer also notes that digital writing is being taught increasingly as a course in itself, pertaining its own rhetorical style and characteristics. This shows that digital writing can hold many places in the world of publishing; not only is it a method of distribution and consumption, but also an individual style that contains within it its own rhetorical strategies and idiosyncrasies. Writing for online audiences has its own stylistic differences than analog publication, which in itself shows the importance of specific academic offerings in the method of writing for an audience in-front of a screen.
Image Credit Christophe BENOIT
For many in the digital audience, blogs are a typical site-type to read digital writing, and educators are increasingly finding merit in using blogs as an exercise in classrooms. As Brian Sztabnik writes in “Start a Reading Revolution: Flip Your Class With Blogs”, “The blogs add a maker mentality, stirring the imagination to create, design, and tinker. They choose their theme, incorporate images and gifs, and decide if they want to promote their work via social media platforms… Blogs provide choice and independence, allowing them to own the learning experience.” (Sztabnik) Sztabnik’s article points to one of the most exciting aspects of digital writing; individuality. Especially in self-run blogs, online authors have autonomy over the ways in which their writing creates an identity through not only the text of their article, but the way their article and website appear visually to the reader. Where analog writing is often just words on a page, digital writing provides additional tools to supplement arguments in creative ways. Digital writing allows students (and other writers) to not have to rely solely on words to get their message or argument across, but instead gives them the ability to explore creative means of rhetoric.
The opportunity for individual creativity and expression in digital writing is an important and exciting characteristic of the medium. That makes the next characteristic of note here rather ironic. As writers like Sean Michael Morris have shown, digital writing is communal. As he writes in his article “Digital Writing Uprising: Third-Order Thinking in the Digital Humanities”,
As a self-proclaimed Internet non-user (a proclamation that elicits hoots and howls from my friends), the allure of digital writing for me does not lie in its medium; instead, I’m tantalized by the proposition that digital writing is action. Not that the writing inspires action, or comes out of action, or responds to action. But that the words themselves are active. They move, slither, creep, sprint, and outpace us. Digital words have lives of their own. We may write them, birth them ourselves, but without any compunction or notice, they enact themselves in ways we can’t predict. And this is because digital writing is communal writing. (Morris)
For Morris, digital writing is so intriguing because it can alter depending on the participation of its readers. In writing that “We create the choir as we preach, and the choir creates us”, Morris argues that digital writing is a manifestation of all of the ideas that contribute to the subject, from original writers to readers who comment on posts and other writers who write their own pieces in response. Digital writing is consistently evolving through a seemingly collaborative ownership of content; while ideas and writing is still intellectual property, what is created in response to online writing is based in a community of contributions.
In “Organic Writing and Digital Media: Seeds and Organs”, Pete Rorabaugh notes that even the act of contribution through commenting is a skill in itself that is learned through participation in digital writing. As he states, “We must realize that comments are mini-compositions too, ones for which students may need models.” (Rorabaugh) In his article “Document Sharing and Markup”, Rorabaugh further emphasizes the importance of commenting when he writes that “What we write, the way that we write, and our interactions with the writing of others determines who we are in the online or hybrid classroom.” (Rorabaugh) Comments are here understood as their own compositions, representing an author in the same way that a full-length composition would. In digital writing, comments are both interpersonal interaction and individual composition.
The opportunity for community input is imperative to the eternally-evolving nature of digital writing, but it can pose challenges in college classrooms. While public input is helpful in developing arguments and creating dialogue, some students may feel uncomfortable sharing their work for the broadest of all audiences, anyone with access to the internet. Jack Dougherty addresses this concern in his courses and his article “Public Writing and Student Privacy”, noting that “Our prose has greater potential to improve when we author for real audiences (not just the professor), and revise our work in consideration of thoughtful feedback and alternative points of view. On the other hand, all students deserve—and are legally entitled under U.S. law—some degree of privacy in our educational institutions and ownership over the words they have authored.” (Dougherty) Balancing the benefits of web writing with the privacy of student work is particularly challenging in college classroom settings. In his web-writing policy, Dougherty allowed his students to change the privacy settings of their work (or delete the work entirely) after it had been graded. While this is a seemingly ethical resolution, the dilemma is still existent; do the benefits of web writing outweigh the challenges of maintaining student privacy?
In my opinion, the answer is an overwhelming yes. Before college, I had little experience with any type of multimodal learning experience or digital writing. Essays were written on paper with pen or on Microsoft Word documents and handed in to be meticulously combed over for their precise structure and content. In college, specifically at my small liberal arts school, I had the opportunity to write blog projects for multiple classes in multiple different academic subjects. I wrote articles, participated in discussion forums, and commented on my classmate’s work. These experiences have shown me the opportunities for students gained through the use of digital writing and education in college courses. The video below shows a bit of that experience, though slightly outdated from the tremendous digital humanities projects going on at the college now.
First, through writing blogs I have found that I’ve learned to incorporate feedback more frequently and readily in my work. As part of my courses, my classmates were required to comment on my blog posts with their own opinions, reactions, or suggestions on my writing. Consistent feedback can seem discouraging at first, but soon became a source of material for future posts, both through new ideas that I had not yet thought of or as reaction to comments made about my original work. Not only did the subject of my writing begin to change based on the feedback, but my writing style changed to meet what elicited response from the audience. I have blogged now for three classes as an undergraduate, and for each one I have learned to write for a different audience. This has helped me as a writer overall by strongly considering the prospective audience when deciding the style in which the piece will be written.
Digital writing has also allowed me the opportunities to take creative liberties with my writing in order to create more well-rounded and engaging arguments. When writing for the web, my work has been able to incorporate images, videos, recorded interviews, and other pieces of multimedia to reinforce the paper’s rhetoric in ways that are impossible to accomplish in analog writing. This is always an exercise in creativity; there are always multiple different ways to present the information, and deciding which works best for the piece is a rather difficult endeavor. Digital writing has required me to think critically about the potential complexities of presentation in online writing, as well as the effectiveness of different sources. (Check this out for an example of one of my earliest attempts at producing online writing for an undergraduate class.)
As many at my college like to say, “Life doesn’t end at the limestone walls, what you learn must be applied to what you do after your four years here.” Experience with digital writing not only allows students to think critically, incorporate feedback, and interact with peers, but provides a useful tool for careers past their undergraduate years. Anything that exists in the market exists online, and much of our reading is done through a screen. Understanding how to write most effectively for a web-based audience, (which may be the majority of the country), is a useful tool that can today be applied in any industry that a student enters post-graduation. As more classes begin to incorporate the practices of online writing, more students will be prepared to enter a workforce where seemingly everything is marketed, read, and written for the web.
Works Cited
Baer, Andrea. “Keeping Up With… Digital Writing in the College Classroom.” Association of College & Research Libraries. American Library Association, Apr. 2013. Web. 11 Mar. 2016. <http://www.ala.org/acrl/publications/keeping_up_with/digital_writing>.
Dougherty, Jack. “Public Writing and Student Privacy.” Web Writing: Why and How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning. Ed. Tennyson O’Donnell & Jack Dougherty. United States: University of Michigan Press, 2015. n. pag. epress.trincoll.edu. Web. 11 Mar. 2016. <http://epress.trincoll.edu/webwriting/chapter/dougherty-public/>.
Morris, Sean Michael. “Digital Writing Uprising: Third-Order Thinking in the Digital Humanities.” Digital Pedagogy Lab. Hybrid Pedagogy, 8 Oct. 2012. Web. 11 Mar. 2016. <http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/hybridped/digital-writing-uprising-third-order-thinking-in-the-digital-humanities/>.
Rorabaugh, Pete. “Organic Writing and Digital Media: Seeds and Organs.” Digital Pedagogy Lab. Hybrid Pedagogy, 21 June 2012. Web. 11 Mar. 2016. <http://www.digitalpedagogylab.com/hybridped/organic-writing-and-digital-media- seeds-and-organs/>.
Sztabnik, Brian. “Start a Reading Revolution: Flip Your Class With Blogs.” Edutopia. George Lucas Educational Foundation, 17 Oct. 2014. Web. 11 Mar. 2016. <https://www.edutopia.org/blog/flip-ela-class-with-blogs-brian-sztabnik>.