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Jennifer HewerdineJennifer M. Hewerdine recently earned her Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University - Carbondale. She currently works for the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee. Her research interests include multi- and eco-literacies, collaboration, and the development of ethos. Contents |
AgencyWhen discussing how students use blogs, researchers talk about the physical space of the blog in terms of performance and identity (McGinnis, Goodstein-Stolzenberg, and Saliani, 2007; Lowe and Williams, 2004.; Wei, 2010; Peterson, 2008; Davies and Merchant 2007). This is not a new idea; researchers theorized that the use of computers would change the way agency is displayed in writing. According to composition scholars Patricia Sullivan and Walter Ong, the transition to multimodal composition and the use of technology transform composition and writer agency by allowing the writer more control of the page than can be exerted on a text-based paper document (Sullivan, 2001). Because writers have control of the entire document–from page color to font to background music–a writer’s identity and interests can be seen, heard, and read in digital environments in ways that are not possible on paper. Although teachers may allow students to submit assignments in unique fonts, colors, and with photographs, these options are not usual in academic writing, whereas they are more inherent to blogging. Writers design and compose within blogs. For academic assignments, even informal assignments, students’ design may be limited to specific formatting requirements. When writing by hand, students’ composition and design choices are limited to the available supplies. It is true, however, that blogs pose limitations. Unless bloggers are skilled in code, they are limited to predesigned templates. Nevertheless, templates allow for rhetorical choices that may reflect blogger identity and agency. Indeed, blogging gives students a space that they may view as their own, mimicking the physical space of the classroom or home. This capacity speaks to my definition of agency based on students’ interview responses: students’ ability to incorporate identity or identifying elements, including elements of their personality, beliefs, interests, and social practices, into their writing or writing space. In their blogs, my students seem to display agency both by including identifying personal traits within their writing and by designing the blog space to represent a belief, idea, hobby, or interest. While some may view agency in tandem with ownership, or students’ view of a space or opinion as belonging to them, I am separating them as a means of identifying two areas that I view as distinct within the students’ blogging practices. Research on blogs speaks to the many ways that students take blogs and make them like the physical space in which they feel comfortable, potentially making the act of writing more comfortable for writers by adding a personal feel, similar to the way some writers may seek ideal physical conditions for writing. By decorating a blog, a writer is able to portray elements about themselves, thereby performing identity in digitally inhabited spaces. Within an hour of creating her blog for class, one of my students changed the design of the blog so that a black and white picture of her, including her multiple piercings, shaved head, and tattoos, displayed as the background on her blog. Her physical presence was layered behind the digital writing space of her blog, allowing her to project her physical identity online (see Figure 4). When I interviewed her, she said that the background design made the blog a space in which she could write. She had opted to prime her “space” for an optimal writing experience in the same way that some writers will clear space, grab a favorite pen, and prepare a cup of coffee. Creating an original and unique design for the blog was not a requirement of the course. Despite a lack of directions and prompting, all but two of the 29 students took the extra time and effort to make the blog their own space. Students changed the colors, added pictures, included header images and/or blog subtitles, added widgets, and more. In another example, “Kylie” tiled her background with a photo of country musician Luke Bryan with the words “Keep Calm and Look At Luke Bryan.” When asked about the background, she said she added it because it reminded her of her bedroom. She designed the blog to represent a personal physical space where she had complete control, a fact that is interesting when considering instructors usually control and/or design the physical classroom space. In the virtual classroom space of her blog, she modeled the space like her bedroom. In Zhang Wei’s (2010) research on ELL students using blogs to learn English skills, her student said of her blog, “you can individualize and decorate [the blog] into the style that you like. This gives you the impulse to write on it” (p. 272-273). Wei’s study coincides with my observations of my students’ blog use and indicates that the design of the blog assists some students in feeling that their digital writing space can be a comfortable and familiar place akin to a physical space. In addition to the design aspects of blogging, students demonstrated comfort using blogs to go beyond assignment and class writing requirements in order to add other elements of their identity such as personality, sometimes for social reasons. One student, Seth, began each Monday by posting a “Monday Meme” to his blog as a way of expressing his displeasure that the course was his first early each Monday morning. In her article “Made Not Only in Words,” Kathleen Blake Yancey (2004) says that where teachers see blogs as learning tools, “students see blogs as a means of organizing social action, a place for geographically far-flung friends to gather, a site for poets and musicians to plan a jam” and that digital literacies “are social in a way that school literacy all too often only pretends to be” (p. 302). Two of my students, “Byron” and “Ty,” wrote blog responses to one another, posted private jokes, and updated their potential blog audiences on their beard growth. While not academic, both students were aware of various genre conventions and just as comfortably posted academic assignments for class as they posted their socially-motivated writing. Byron also wrote a story in installments, posting the entries and then arriving to class to ask if I read each story. He previously wrote the story in segments and had them at home on paper. But it was not the paper versions he shared with me. Instead, he took the time to put them on the blog, carefully editing each to reflect changes he wanted to make as he rewrote them for this venue. The same student composed a poem about a class activity and offered “shout-outs” to other students in the class. Byron took the time beyond the requirements for the class to include creative writing. He demonstrated high intrinsic motivation toward writing in his blog. His engagement may be due in part to his ability to incorporate elements of his identity, such as his creative writing, his beard, and his opinions on politics, into the blog where a potential audience could learn more about him aside from his writing for class assignments. |
