"Digital Invention: A Repository of Online Resources for College Composition Instruction"
About the AuthorMary K. Stewart is a PhD candidate in the School of Education at UC Davis, where she is pursuing an emphasis in Language, Literacy, and Culture, and a designated emphasis in Writing, Rhetoric, and Composition Studies. Her dissertation research focuses on the ways first-year composition instructors design collaborative activities (namely small group discussion and peer review) in computer-assisted, hybrid, and online environments. Find her website at MaryKStewart.com Contents
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Digital LiteracySimultaneously teaching computer and composition skills promotes digital literacy; teaching invention using online resources is especially appropriate because many digital activities require skills similar to invention. What is Digital Literacy?In Multiliteracies in a Digital Age, Stuart Selber (2004) defines digital literacy by first noting that there are different levels of literacy: functional, critical, and rhetorical.
Selber further argues that to produce digitally literate students, we need to simultaneously teach computer and composition skills (functional literacy). We should also explicitly highlight how technologies operate and the contexts within which they operate so that students can make informed decisions about how and when to use digital tools (critical literacy). The student should not be confined to what the computer can do; the student should be empowered to use the computer to accomplish her goals (rhetorical literacy). As Selber says, the point is to “help students become more resourceful” (72) so they can “succeed in technological contexts and develop a fluency needed to critique those contexts” (73). How does digital literacy relate to invention?Digital literacy is related to invention in a few ways. First and foremost, invention is an important part of teaching composition, and to follow Selber's suggestion of simultaneously teaching composition and computer skills, we should involve computers in our approach to teaching invention. Additionally, the way humans interact with technology actually requires a lot of invention, which means there is a unique opportunity to relate digital composition practices with more traditional composition strategies. More specifically, both digital literacy and invention are forms of problem solving that require similar approaches to imagination and creativity. Digital Literacy & Invention = Problem SolvingFor example, as Selber explains, part of digital literacy involves enabling students to overcome “technological impasses,” which occur when students “lack the computer-based expertise needed to solve a writing or communication problem” (67). Because technological advancements occur so frequently, students need to be prepared to face these impasses on a regular basis and learn to “play with” unfamiliar technology until they figure it out, which is a form of invention. Interestingly, Selber also argues that technological impasses can be the result of psychological or behavioral factors as much as they can be from lack of experience with computers, which should sound similar to the impasses writing students encounter, e.g., writer's block. In approaching technology, as with approaching a writing assignment, invention is not exclusive to “getting started.” On the contrary, designers and writers alike need to be able to “tackle problems that have multiple, contradictory solutions” (152). Selber calls this deliberation: experienced writers
In the field of digital learning and media, Selber's deliberation is called tinkering. This may involve surfing the web for how-to videos or FAQs created by other uses, borrowing code, or simply experimenting like the old-fashioned guess–and–check method. In each instance, the technology user employs flexible and creative thinking characteristic of invention. Digital Literacy & Invention = ImaginationAdditionally, digital literacy requires a new act of imagination, one that brings invention to the center of the composing process. Gunther Kress (Literacy in the New Media Age, 2003) argues that digital environments make reading and writing less linear because digital space favors visual design over blocks of text, which means the reader determines order based on her opinion of relevance rather than the author's logical progression of ideas (140-167). He extends this argument to claim that in the digital world, imagination “becomes a different activity, one that focuses on the possibilities of the ordering of full elements rather than on the supplying of meaning to ordered elements” (170). For a writer, this new form of imagination requires heightened attention to “selection, arrangement and transformation, involving many modes, in always new environments, with their always changing demands” (171). To be successful in such an environment, a writer needs strong invention strategies. Digital Literacy & Invention = First Year CompositionBecause invention is key to both traditional and digital texts, and because digital literacy is changing the definition of composing, I contend that introductory composition courses should use online tools to teach invention. The fusion of a traditional rhetorical concept with digital tools helps students see the similarities between the way we write papers and the way we interact with technology, and this connection is crucial if the introductory composition course is to promote digital literacy. Failure to do so threatens to produce students who view academic writing as a separate and unrelated process to composing with digital tools, and that is an increasingly limited understanding of “composing” inside and outside of the academy. |