"Embracing Digital Literacies: A Study of First-Year Students’ Digital Compositions"

About the Author

Bay VanWagenen graduated from California State University, Sacramento in 2013 with a Master's degree in English Composition. She currently teaches in the Merritt Writing Program at the University of California, Merced. Her research interests include genre studies, digital literacies, and first-year composition.

Contents

Introduction

Methodology Part 1

Students' Knowledge of Audience

Picturing an Audience

Managing an Audience

Managing an Audience (cont.)

Students' Knowledge of Genre

Facebook Genre Content

Blogging Genre Conventions

Blogging Genre Conventions (cont.)

Students' Knowledge of Purpose

Students' Knowlegde of Purpose (cont.)

Conclusion: Embracing Digital Literacies

Works Cited

Introduction

In “Becoming Literate in the Information Age: Cultural Ecologies and the Literacies of Technology,” Cynthia Selfe and Gail Hawisher (2004) issue a call for writing instructors to incorporate a range of literacies into their classroom. They write:

 Writing instructors . . . face the danger of teaching in ways that ignore the considerable strengths in technological literacies that some students bring to our classes. As a result, we fail to build on the literacies that students already have – and we fail to learn about these literacies or why they seem so important to so many students. We also fail, as we deny the value of these new literacies, to recognize ourselves as illiterate in some spheres. And in this intellectual arrogance, we neglect to open ourselves to learning new literacies that could teach us more about human discursive practices. (p. 676)

This call from Selfe and Hawisher made nearly a decade ago has been taken up by many compositionists seeking to build on students’ literacies, particularly digital literacies. New digital technologies have transformed literacy practices and allow greater opportunities for students to write to and be read by global audiences. Writing teachers face a “new, ‘digital’ imperative, one that asks how we can reshape our pedagogy with new uses of the technologies that are changing our personal and professional lives” (Clark, 2010, p. 28). In regard to students writing in a “newly technologized, socialized, and networked” writing environment, Kathleen Yancey (2009) reminds us that “these students know how to compose, and they know how to organize and they know audience. How can we build on all that knowledge? How can we help them connect it to larger issues?” (p. 330). To prepare students as they attempt to navigate this changing professional and social environment, it would benefit educators to broaden their appreciation and understanding of the technological literacies of their students in order for writing instruction to be more meaningful and relevant. Doing so involves more than teaching with technology; it requires teachers to learn from their students’ literacies as an important step in making connections between students’ digital knowledge and academic writing, helping students understand how the literacies required in school are connected to and can build from their self-sponsored literacies.

Recent scholarship has identified a need for learning how digital practices can best be used in the writing classroom. J. Elizabeth Clark (2010) argues for a “pedagogy aimed at furthering students’ digital literacy” (p. 27). She believes “the composition classroom should immerse students in analyzing digital media, in exploring the world beyond the classroom, in crafting digital personae, and in creating new and emerging definitions of civic literacy” (p. 28). The New London Group (2000) believes teachers should design curriculum that draws upon multiple voices, “languages, discourses and registers” as “resource[s] for learning” instead of ignoring differences and teaching literacy as a fixed ideal” (p.18). Among these resources are students’ digital literacies. The New London Group recognizes that new technologies have altered literacy expectations and implores “educators [to] take a lead in developing appropriate pedagogies for these new electronic media and forms of communication” (p. 71). New digital pedagogies would benefit from incorporating students’ digital practices in their design.