this your text.THIS IS HOW YOU EDIT THIS PAGE.This is how you edit the page.This is how they change them.

How do wikis change collaborative learning and thus collaborative writing?

Since the early 1980s, with the rise of the personal computer, electronic technology has become an increasingly researched area of composition studies. We have seen this increased focus on electronic technology and writing with the advent of scholarly journals, such as Computers and Composition, and in educational initiatives such as Writing Across the Curriculum, which has most recently been heavily associated with--and often considered a part of--the Electronic Communication Across the Curriculum movement. In response to this rising interest in technology and writing instruction, and in response to the fast-paced transformation of this specialization due to the leaps-and-bounds of technological innovations, scholars such as Mike Palmquist, Kate Kiefer, and Chris Anson have called for a focus on the pedagogical implications of technology on writing instruction. Chris Anson argues that the ways we teach student writing are being influenced and pressured by technologies. Furthermore, he claims that "the key to sustaining our pedagogical advances in the teaching of writing...[is] to take control of these technologies, using them in effective ways" (263).    

The field's focus on pedagogical implications of technology can be traced back to the rise of the personal computer in higher education in the early 1980s. And over the past 15 years, this focus has largely remained on the personal computer, but has expanded to include closed-source networked software (such as course management tools) and has most recently focused on the pedagogical implications of the world wide web and open-sourced software on writing instruction. In the last decade, Web 2.0 applications have become increasingly relevant to institutions of higher education. These applications have gained more visibility in the context of these institutions for several reasons, but mainly because of their "free" nature. That is, many of these programs and softwares that constitute Web 2.0 applications are easily accessible on the WWW and are free to all users. Examples of this software include everything from social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, to social writing tools like weblogs and wikis.

For the purposes of this paper, I would like to focus on the integration of one Web 2.0 application--the wiki. Much research has focused on the collaborative nature of this application (Alexander; Engstrom and Jewett; Lamb; Loudermilk-Garza and Hern; Morgan; Tepper). However, many of these scholars' works focus on collaborative learning in the broad context of higher education, and for the few scholars who focus on collaboration, the wiki, and writing instruction, their research remains largely underdeveloped. For the purposes of this paper, I would like to extend the work of Hern and Loudermilk-Garza in their online collaboration entitled "WikiArticle." In this on-line article (developed in the textual landscape of a wiki), the authors claim that open-source software "better serve[s] the needs of writers...because writing [with this software] is not done in isolation" (WikiComposition 3). They argue that close-sourced software "rarely mirrors the real process of writing, [because] the students end up writing for the teacher," (WikiComposition 2) and argue for the use of the "open-system nature of wikis [which] more aptly mirrors the dynamic nature of writing" (WikiComposition 4) by "help[ing] students see the social processes of writing more effectively" (WikiStory 1). I intend to further explore these ideas by more fully developing the differences between "traditional" methods of composing and teaching writing in relation to the use of the wiki to accomplish the same teaching goals and objectives. Specifically, I intend to look at how the wiki transforms what once was a pseudo-rhetorical process of writing to a process that more accurately and effectively represents writing as it exists outside the university.

To do this, I will start with a brief introduction that previews the dynamics of the "traditional classroom" and highlights the problematic aspects of writing instruction within these classrooms. Then, I will show how the use of the wiki might act to alleviate these problems by changing the collaborative work in the writing classroom, and therefore changing the process of writing altogether. Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge from the beginning that this is a highly theoretical outlook on this subject; the ideas within this paper are preliminary and I invite you to challenge and build-on these ideas.

FREEWRITE (FREE from THE REIGN OF SOURCES...)

As a graduate teaching assistant of several first-year composition courses at a mid-size midwestern university, I have gained first-hand insight and observation of the "traditional composition classroom." I am aware that this term--"traditional classroom"--might be thrown around loosely across disciplines and throughout classrooms. However, for my purposes, I am defining it as this: I teach in a room where the only pieces of technology are an overhead projector, which many of my students have openly ridiculed, and a "whiteboard," which has recently begun to look like a blackboard from the heavy use it has been subjected to over the years. And though I am a product of the "critical era," one which works to de-center authority between teacher and students in the classroom, I am quite aware that my classroom does not necessarily mirror this pedagogy. I am not quite ready to give the authority up just yet, at least not until I understand the complications associated with this sacrifice, especially for such a young teacher. And finally, so that you understand the dynamics of my classroom a little more, I teach writing as a rhetorical process, a process that is always situated within a particular social context, a process that is always a collaboration between a writer and his or her audience.

It is through this last point that I would like to more fully explore the complications with writing instruction in classrooms like mine. With the experience I have gained over the past two years, I have come to believe that our teaching practices--our practices of teaching writing as a rhetorical situation--are at odds with the actual rhetorical situation that surrounds writing, at least outside the university. Over the past two years, I have become hyper-aware that the writing insturction I provide is anchored by phrases like: Writing is a conversation; Knowledge is co-constructed; Peer workshops are about you helping your peers understand revision; develop these phrases more effectively and there seems to be a never-ending list of these phrases that stress the social and collaborative aspects of writing. But I am not suggesting that the ways that I teach writing--or the ways that other instructors teach writing--do not highlight the social, collaborative aspects of writing; instead, I am contending that the way we teach the process of writing--the collaboration that is part of the process, the interactions that occur throughout this process--are fraught with inaccuracies and misrepresentations of the process as it exists outside the university walls. Our pedagogies, in other words, do not reflect the "other" processes of writing, especially in a time when much of our writing occurs electronically, via the greatest collaborative tool--the WWW. 

To focus this discussion, we might start by thinking about the "textual landscapes" in which we ask our students to compose. Chris Anson states that "the textual landscape of writing instruction has a long and stable history: students write or type on white paper of a standard size and turn in their work, adhering to various admonitions about the width of their margins and the placement of periphera such as names, dates, and staples. Teachers collect the papers, respond in predictable places (in the margins or in the spaces left at the end) and return the papers at the institutional site" (262). Anson's description of this "textual landscape" illuminates several significant issues regarding composition theory. Specifically, I am interested in his claim that we, as teachers, "collect...respond...and return the papers at the institutional site"; and I might add, "and never outside of this site." The questions I would like us to consider are: what do these insights--that writing occurs within the university walls, that it mainly appears within the confines of a white piece of paper--tell us about our current teaching practices, coupled with writing theory, in the field of writing? What do these ideas tell our students about the writing process and writing in itself?

For instance, what does it mean for students' understandings of writing when we have them compose in the confines (yes, my wordchoice is deliberate) of the white pieces of paper? In asking this question, I hope to draw your attention to the notion of "audience" within the rhetorical context of writing. As we know, the basic premise behind this notion is that each time writers engage in writing--the process, the act--there is a specific or particular audience for which the writing is occurring. Unfortunately, in the traditional classroom, student understandings of audience theory remain largely underdeveloped and for some students nearly incomprehensible. As teachers, we recognize the problematic nature of asking our students to "imagine" their audience for the purposes of understanding the rhetorical situation and for completing assignments. But to further compound this abstract notion, we ask our students to write for this audience--engage them, persuade them, educate them--and then ask our students to hand us (their teacher) the writing. This act is the death of the audience. First, with the range of assignments we allow our students, how appropriate of a "landscape" is this white piece of paper? Second, by confining the writing to the landscape of the paper, we undermine any notions of the transfer of knowledge. The knowledge, instead, is confined to the white paper and destined to a isolated exchange between the teacher and the student.

To further understand the problematic nature of writing instruction, we can consider the now basic foundational theory of writing taught in first-year writing courses, that all forms of writing are dialogic. That is, that all forms of writing engage the writer and his or her audience in a dialogic relationship based on the exchange of ideas. Kenneth Bruffee, in his article "Collaborative Learning and the 'Conversation of Mankind,'" highlights the collaborative nature of this dialogic relationship between reader and writer. He states that "collaborative classroom group work...makes students aware that writing is a social artifact, like the thought that produces it" (423). Several pages later, however, and still developing this idea, he claims that "what students do when working collaboratively on their writing is not write or edit. What they do is converse" (425). My points in calling attention to Bruffee's observations are several. First, we might accept that collaborative classroom work raises students awareness of writing as a social artifact, but also ask, "How effectively does it do this?" While students may realize that they are socially collaborating with classmates (through conversation), it is arguable whether during this time they remain aware of the greater social context of their writing and if at this time they are still aware of their intended audience. In addition, it seems that the textual landscapes we ask our students to compose in, limit the range of collaboration that occurs during the process, and therefore undermine the complexity of the collaborative aspect of the process of writing. For instance, when peers engage in a group workshop, the collaborative editing and revising processes are limited in that the writing being workshopped resembles more of a "finished" product, which is only open to "suggestions of change" (often times manifested in chicken scratched incomplete thoughts down the margins of or hidden within the text on the white page). Therefore, a significant amount of "suggestions" during the revision process are verbalized and lost in transit between the classroom and wherever the students tend to revise. If these suggestions are not lost, the students are left to "unpack" suggestions on their own, disconnected from the community of writers and readers that make up the classroom. All of these problematic issues allude to Bruffee's idea that sometimes "Writing may seem to be displaced in time and space from the rest of a writer's community of readers and other writers" (423). So, then, how might one alleviate these problems?

The answer might lie in the social software known as the wiki. As Garza and Hern note in their electronic "WikiArticle: WikiAndCompositionTheory," "the dynamic nature of wikis encourages writers to [...] better understand the social nature of writing." INTEGRATE PAGE NUMBER I would like to consider the "landscape" of the wiki and the possibilities it presents. Unlike more traditional textual landscapes, such as the white piece of paper, the wiki is not privitized. When students compose within the confines of the paper, their writing is only accessible to those who have access to that paper. Furthermore, in acknowleding that most individuals have internet access and thus email accounts, the process of distributing this writing is complicated and involves many tedious steps at the very least. Therefore, the transfer of knowledge through this piece of writing is limited in several ways. However, the wiki's "textual landscape" has the potential to alleviate these problems. This landscape is a public webspace accessible to anyone who has the address or searches for the content within this wiki. Hern and Loudermilk-Garza highlight the importance of this public space by stating that the wiki not only allows students to "consider the needs and demands of [their] ultimate audience, but those of [their] collaborators [or peers] as well" (WikiCollaborative 1). And while these authors allude to the fact that students (or writers in general) usually are able to envision their ultimate audience, and that the connection to peers that the wiki allows for is the significant contribution of this tool to writing instruction, I argue that it is in fact the opposite. That is, I argue that students are too often connected to the social community of peers and not often enough given the opportunity to write in a space that is accessible by or connected to their ultimate audience. 

In addition to providing writers with a landscape that is accessible to multiple audiences, the wiki's landscape also transforms the collaborative aspect of the writing process. As I previously stated, Bruffee claims that often times when students are collaborating they are simply conversing, but not writing. And as I discussed, when I identify this as a problematic aspect of the way many of us teach the process of writing, I am not implying that conversatin, or dialogue, or dicussion is in itself an insignificant part of the process. On the contrary, I mean to illuminate that the time spent discussing is time students are not writing, and I intend to ask, "Can students not discuss and write and the same time?" According to Bruffee, teachers “must involve engaging students in conversation among themselves at as many points in both the writing and the reading process as possible” (422). I believe that one way we can both engage students in conversatin among themselves and encourage them to conduct this conversation through writing is through the use of the wiki. Essentially, the wiki presents the opportunity to streamline different aspects of the process of writing, in this case, the act of writing and the social conversation that influences this act as well as the process itself.

Not only does the wiki's landscape allow students to engage in a written discussion about writing, it opens up new possibilities for the teaching and understanding of revision. As I noted earlier, more traditional landscapes limit revision and discussion of revision to either a verbal dicussion and/or to nothing more than abstract suggestions. However, as teachers we should recognize the complexity of revision and the foreign nature of this concept to our students. Wikis, according to Hern and Loudermilk-Garza, "present visual and physical representations of the decentralized nature of the act of producing writing" (WikiComposition 3). By forwarding this claim, the authors are arguing that these visual and physical representations of writing presented by the wiki help writers "see" that writing is not only the "act" of composing but also the negotiation of complex thought processes that inform and accompany this act. (For instance, click on the "history" link at the bottom of this page, select two or more versions to compare, and you will see the chunks of text that were integrated, deleted, clarified, focused, and otherwise revised in the past 65 drafts of this paper.) This ability to "see" the process is a significant part of the revision process that is often missing, or under-represented in more traditional forms of writing instruction and textual landscapes. Building on this notion of the visual and physical representation of process, I would also like to consider the visual and physical capabililities the wiki offers peer collaborators, and thus writers, during the process of revision. Not only are collaborators able to edit and revise their peers' writings, they are able to do so in fresh and creative ways. All within the browser of the wiki, students can cut and paste text, manipulate font size, style and color, and then save their edits as a "newer" version of the draft that can be digitally (visually) compared to previous drafts. Students, thefore, are able to see the draft as it existed before their peers edited it. In addition, students can leave comments for their peers, explaining their process of revision and the motivations that drove this process. The greatest part is that if students do not wish to accept the changes their peers have made, they can simply resave the previous draft and reinstate its status as the "newer" draft. With guidance from the instructor and carefully planned assignments and activities, this tool can forward a writing process that more closely represents the process as it exists outside the university walls and in the social and professional world students will likely enter into.  

how effectively does this illuminate the true complexity of writing as a social artifact? Also, how might the traditional textual landscapes we ask our students to compose in, affect the range of collaboration that can occur throughout the process of writing? Regardless of this classroom community, the writer still remains disconnected from the intended audience. And my second point is this: if we accept that many students when working on writing collaboratively in the classroom are not actually writing but simply conversing, then how effectively are we relating to students the idea that writing is a social, collaborative process? Though I recognize the danger in the assumption that I have just made, the danger in thinking that writing is only the act of writing, I am trying to look at this problem from various viewpoints. In other words, I recognize that conversation is an important aspect of the process of writing, but can conversatin not be streamlined with the act of writing as well? My points in highlighting this "disconnect" that Bruffe exposes between the collaborative process and writing are several. First, I question whether the act of "conversing," as Bruffee mentions, adequatetly illuminates, for students, that writing is a social artifact; concurrently, I do not deny that conversation has its own significant place in the process of writing. I question this because as a composition instructor, I am well-aware that the "act" of writing occurs in isolation and after the conversation has ended.  

If you accept the fact that the textual landscape our students compose in as a significant part of the writing process, and if you believe that our traditional landscapes are fraught with limitations, then you might be asking "So what can we do?"

The answer might lie in the social software known as the wiki. As Garza and Hern note in their electronic "WikiArticle: WikiAndCompositionTheory," "the dynamic nature of wikis encourages writers to...better understand the social nature of writing." I would like for you to consider the "landscape" of the wiki. Unlike the paper's landscape, the wiki is not privitized. When students compose within the confines of the paper, their writing is only accessible to those who have access to the paper. That is, the sharing of the knowledge within that paper--the transferability of that knowledge--becomes difficult due to things such as the students' and their audience's geographical location (at the very least). However, the wiki eliminates this disconnect. The wiki's landscape--a public webspace accessible to anyone who has the address or searches for the content within this wiki--is centralized at the wiki's URL, which can be accessed from anywhere at anytime. We should consider the implications of this fact on student writing in composition classrooms. 

traditional composition classroom, we find ourselves teaching writing--the act, the process--in ways that are at odds with many of our philosophies. More specifically, we teach writing, stressing the collaborative and social dimensions of writing, and then design student assignments and tasks in a way that does not re-emphasize these dimensions. We ask that students draft an argumentative essay for "next class," implying that it must be done on their own time, apart from the community of writers created in the classroom. When the students return "next class," we try to create a collaborative environment by conducting peer workshops in which they provide and receive commentary and suggestions on their drafts; and I am not contending that the collaborative environments we create in these workshops are not beneficial. I am simply wondering, how beneficial are they? How effective? How efficient? After the workshop concludes, we send them off to arguably one of the harder--or less navigated--tasks in the writing process, revision. Once again, they are left to make sense of, to navigate through, their peers' responses alone, not to mention to sift through helpful and unhelpful comments and after doing this, to apply these responses in effective and meaningful ways to their own drafts.

Kenneth Bruffee, in his article "Conversation....," argues that writing is a collaborative process, one that is embedded in, driven by, social dimensions. Perhaps few contemporary compositionists would disagree with this contention. If we accept the premise that writing is a social, collaborative process, then why do many of our classrooms not reflect this premise? Why do many of our more "traditional" classrooms--which I argue make up a majority of our classrooms--not emphasize this perception of writing? And for those classrooms that do make the social, collaborative, and dialogic characterisitics of writing a focus, how might they further emphasize, or emphasize in new, creative ways, these characteristics? How might they extend the collaborative and social support network that is the classroom, beyond the classroom?

One way to overcome the issue highlighted by the slew of questions posed above might lie in the emergence of new technologies, such as the rise of Web 2.0 applications. Although these applications, and the various softwares that are included in these applications, are difficult to "pin-down," to define and describe with absolute certainty, the concensus seems to be that these applications share particular characteristics. Web 2.0 applications are gaining traction on the scene of higher education and their pedagogical effects are yet to be fully explored (ALEXANDER AND LAMB?). We do know that they provide many benefits in higher education, such as acting as "cost efficient" software (LAMB?) that highlights the "collaborative" nature of use (INSERT ALL SOURCES). In addition to these benefits, scholars are beginning initial research into the effects of Web 2.0 applications on writing instruction. 

In this paper, I intend to explore how one particular Web 2.0 application--the wiki--might challenge some of the traditional forms of writing instruction. Furthermore, I intend to consider how the wiki acts in several ways to highlight the social and collaborative aspects of the writing process, as well as transform these aspects of the writing process, offering students and teachers a new way to involven themselves in these processes.

Wikis: From the "Pseudo" Rhetorical Writing Instruction to the Real Deal

In many FYC courses, the dominant theoretical approach we use to teach writing is anchored in modern rhetorical theory. When we teach writing--the act, the process--we inform students about the contextual nature of writing. That is, we teach them that each writing process is anchored in and influenced by factors such as the audience and the purpose. In different writing situations, the audience members and the writer's purpose change. However, our curriculums--that assignments that create the curriculum--do not adequately reflect issues of audience. As a first-year composition graduate teaching assistant, many of my students have voiced this problematic issue to me. It is hard for them, as we konw as writers ourselves, to "imagine" an audience when they cannot seem to look past the most significant audience, the teacher. Too often, writing is displaced from the community of writers and readers that drive writing (Bruffee ???).

Chris Anson lends insight into one possible cause of this pseudo-rhetorical situation we teach. He says, "Theorists, or reasearchers or just plain teachers, we spend much of our time working within the framework of certain fairly stable educational conditions. These conditions include physical spaces that define the social and interpersonal contexts of teaching." Anson expands this stability that teachers prefer beyond the physical spaces of their classrooms to include the "textual landscape" of students' work--the spaces and places where students compose. He states, "students write or type on white paper of a standard size and turn in their work, adhering to various admonitions about the width of their margins and the placement of periphera such as names, dates, and staples." And teachers, he concludes, "respond in predictable places...and return the papers at the institutional site" (262).

This problem, in part, is an effect of the "textual landscape" that we, as instructors, ask our students to compose in. In other words, adding to the difficulty of imagining a "real" audience, is the realization that these students are essentially doing nothing more than composing on an 81/2 * 11, white piece of paper. This paper, when completed, is handed directly to the teacher and, theoretically, any notions of a "real" audience die during this transaction. There are many effects of containing this textual landscape to the white paper, or the forum found in the course management system of choice, for students and teachers alike. But mainly, it seems to act as a control measure for teachers, offering them stability (Anson), a place to "contain," collect and return student writing. But I argue that this undermines the teaching of audience theory in first-year composition courses. Instead, we should consider the effects that tools such as the wiki might have on the teaching of this theory.

For those that are unfamiliar with the wiki, it is a "public space" found on the internet. Essentially, it is a website--found at a URL of choice--that anyone can use to write and edit. By its very nature, as a public software, it changes the textual landscape we are asking students to compose in. Instead of writing in the contained, isolate confines of the white paper, students can compose on a public webpage that anyone can view. In addition, they are able to embed hyperlinks to other sites or ask that other sites link to their wikis. The potential of this tool to teach audience theory remains untapped. But if we consider possibilities for a moment, it becomes obvious that this is a valid area of research. For instance, as an instructor of a FYC course, my students' final writing assignment revolves around the University's community. For this assignment, students are asked to identify a site of interest--a particular course, a campus organization, a campus cultural/social interest, etc--and to conduct field research on this site. They are then asked to develop an explanation of their site of interest for a particular audience (i.e. incoming freshmen students) which informs this audience about the site of interest. Usually, the semester ends as students develop an argument from this explanation (i.e. a program/organization review, etc.). In the past, I have struggled with offering students freedom of genre, due to the difficult nature of assessment on my part. How do I assess the impact and effectiveness of a YouTube video, for instance? As any teacher may know, there is value in the freedom of genre--it promotes creativity and thinking outside the box--but with this value comes a challenge of assessment as well.

If we consider the possibilities of a wiki, though, we might find a solution. In the space that a wiki provides, students can compose in a more "traditional" sense and yet their writing can be made visible to actual audience members. For instance, they might write their explanations and arguments in the space of a wiki and allow incoming freshmen to visit their wiki and view their work. The value in this is it allows for the "real" audience to remain alive even after the "product" has been complete. Students need this connection, this emphasis on the relevance of the work they are doing in school.

Wikis: From a Discussion About Writing to a Discussion That Is Writing

To often we hear a colleague, or a critic, ask us, "When do you guys actually write in your classroom? Isn't that what you teach? Writing? Then why all the discussion?" And I must admit, as a writing instructor myself, I often find myself wondering how much my students are learning about writing by writing. There is little doubt that the conversation that drives many of our classrooms is invaluable. It allows students to co-construct knowledge, navigate their ways through the unknowns of writing. And with guidance from the instructor, these discussions act as paths of knowledge that students walk down (LAME). But I cannot help hear the voice in the back of my mind, hear the voice of my colleagues, how much do these discussions contribute to students' abilities to write?

Bruffee highlights the importance of collaboration in writing. argues that "writing is an act...of conversational exchange" (423).

There are several significant claims Bruffee makes about collaboration and writing:

• Bruffee states that writing may “seem to be displaced in time and space from the rest of the writer’s community of readers and other writers, but in every instance writing is an act, however much displaced, of conversational exchange” (423).

  In this claim, Bruffee alludes to the solitary "reality" of writing while highlighting its social foundation. Nearly 25 years after Bruffee made this observation and the underlying  claim still remains in many traditional writing classrooms today. Few contemporary compositionists will disagree that writing is a social construct, that writers both influence and are influenced by, engage and are engaged by, and define and are defined by the social world that surrounds us. If we accept this notion--that writers are involved in a dialogic relationship with the "social"--then it seems necessary to ask, why do many of the teaching practices in composition classrooms today not reflect this emphasis on the social? Why do a majority of our teaching practices still present writing as a predominantly solitary process? Why do our practices not highlight the collaborative, conversational process that is writing? 

   

  In Bruffee's call for a more collaborative approach to writing instruction, he expands his claim that writing remains largely a solitary act.Further expanding his claim that writing remains largely a solitary act, despite its social foundation, Bruffee states that “what students do when working collaboratively on their writing is not write or edit or, least of all, read proof. What they do is converse” (425). This still holds true in many traditional classrooms today.

   

  Joe Moxley and Ryan Meehan grapple with this discrepancy between theory and practice in his online

   

   

   

  Chris Anson, speaking to this phenomenon, claims that "many educators are haunted...by a sense that bigger things are happening around us as we continue to refine classroom methods and tinker with our teaching styles.  

• Bruffee claims that  The wiki challenges this claim. In the wiki space, students can write, can edit, can converse, all in one seamless process. And in fact they are writing to edit, they are writing to converse when they make their posts to a wiki space. In essence, web 2.0 apps such as the wiki transform the act of conversation—it diverts the verbal, and integrates and fuses the written and the collaborative with the process.

I think one of the major points Bruffee makes is that writing is a conversation. This conversation always occurs between individuals, in a community, but it takes the form of an internalized conversation--where the writer is acting out the other half of the dialogue (the community members' half) and there own response and interpretation--and an actual conversation between individuals within this community--where everyone is participating. Bruffee's argument is significant to composition studies in that it alludes to the collaborative nature of writing--the production....etc...etc of texts. Assuming that this perspective is true, it is arguable that writing is not a solitary activity and that all writing is a result of collaborative conversations--internalized within one individual or not. 

The idea that writing is a collaborative endeavor, influenced by the conversations define and are a result of our social context, does not seem to be in question; at least not any more than it always has. Rather, the focus of this article centers on the notion that if this idea is true--or accepted--than many traditional writing pedagogies are at odds with the collaborative, conversational, act of writing. Further, this article will look at how the rise of Web 2.0 applications--specifically the appearance of the "wiki" in educational settings--presents an opportunity to teach and learn about writing in a unique way. If teachers of writing become aware of the ways that the wiki might highlight writing as a process, new possibilities and unexplored areas of research arise.

Wikis streamline aspects of the writing process--the writing, the response, the revision, and the conversations that facilitate the individual components of this process. As a composition instructor myself, I am quite aware of the dynamics of the traditional composition classroom. We try to balance lecture, writing, and discussion within the classroom, but often send students home to do much of their writing on their own time. As major assignments approach their due date, we conduct peer workshops that are fraught with inadequacies. Students are unable, or unwilling, to provide substantive feedback in the allotted time. The comments and suggestions they do provide are given to the writer who returns to the solitude of writing, left to his own interpretations of the commetns and suggestions--left to carry on the conversation of peer review internally. 

Wikis and web 2.0 applicatoins allow for us to streamline in one big collaborative space the writing, response, revision and the ensuing cycle. All of these things are done in the SAME browser. This differs for instance from the composition process in a word processing program where the writer works in isolation (offline), uploads a draft, waits for response, receives it, interprets and analyzes in isolation, revises based on internal thought and then engages in the process all over again, if time permits that is.

•  The conversation is occurring through the act of writing; the act of writing is facilitating the conversation.

   

  Wikis narrow the gap between writers and their audience—especially the community of readers (their classmates and instructors) by allowing for quick, topical exchanges that more exemplify dialogic conversation between writer and reader. This may prove especially beneficial for invention and revision tasks. Of course, the question remains, how close to we want this community to become? I argue that they are too far removed in the traditional classroom. However, I see a danger, on the other hand, of placing this community in a “dependent” state, where each relies on the other so heavily that they are unable to produce, interpret and analyze on their own.

According to Kenneth Bruffee, the task of the writing teacher Due to their live-editing feature, which allows students to make changes immediately to a text (the original text that is) within the browser it was composed and for those changes to become the newer document, wikis promote this form of conversation among themselves…….what?

Bruffee continues by saying that “collaborative learning provides a social context in which students can experience an dpractice the kinds of conversation valued by college teachers. This kind of conversation he suggests is that which is “emotionally involved, intellectually and substantively focused, and personally disinterested” (423). Students in a writing in a wiki, with guidance from the instructor can make the connection between writing and the thoughts that produce it. This connection can be visual through revisiting the ongoing conversation—which demonstrates the cyclical relationship between suggestions and rebuttal involved in writing and revision—which are saved in wiki sites.

The close community that the wiki advocates closely resembles the professional community, and the process by which work in the professional community is completed, in that it develops a “topical” conversation. The exchanges in this conversation are usually micro-content….work on this….The exchanges are more frequent and the concerns within these exchanges are based on narrowly identified topics…

DO THESE WIKIS RISK INDIVIDUAL VOICE? DO THEY PROMOTE THE TYPE OF DISCOURSE THAT PROFESSIONAL WORLD ADVOCATES AND THAT WHICH BRUFFEE CALLS “NORMAL DISCOURSE”? DO THEY HOMOGENIZE THOUGHT? MIGHT THEY HOMOGENIZE THOUGHT? (BETWEEN PEERS) SEE PAGE 423 IN BRUFFEE’S MANKIND ARTICLE…HOW CAN I SYNTHESIZE ABNORMAL DISCOURSE AND THE WIKI ENVIRONMENT? THIS SEEMS LIKE IT MIGHT BE PREVALENT TOO..PAGE 429. the abnormal discourse might actually work to help students learn. As bruffee says we become immersed in our normal discourse—the academic discourse community—and the abnormal discourse (or not as normal discourse) that students might practice in the conversations within the wiki might act as a learning tool where our instruction has failed due to our immersion as instructors.

Or rather, how do we ensure that students are collaboratively learning, on these wikis, the “normal” discourse that we are teaching (academic…i.e.) and not the normal discourse of the everyday?

Bruffee argues that these conversations ‘break down’ if the teacher is not present or “guiding” at some points. This needs to be a focus of using wikis collaboratively. We cannot simply turn them loose and assume that more interaction is better. The interaction must be guided and utilized for what it is: collaborative interaction. We’re still posing the same issues, problems, etc. but we are allowing for a different method for answering when we use things such as wikis…..what?

What students stand to gain from learning from each other about the revision process through a wiki or web 2.0 is perspective. That is, a different way of re-visioning their writing. EXPAND ON RE-VISION AND “VISION” IN A WIKI. Of course, this is where the teacher guidance comes into effect. If we turn students loose in a wiki and tell them to “help each other revise,” we’ll end up with the same old problem, a focus on lower-order concerns. If we structure our revision assignments, we might overcome this problem in that students are able to do things such as “rewrite” and offer as a model particular sections of a piece of writing. In addition to this, they are able to offer explanation of their suggested revision in the same space. While one might argue that they can do this on paper, or face-to-face, this is true. However, through the wiki, we’ve changed the rules of conversation, and therefore the “skills and …” needed to converse. We’ve eliminated the immediacy of response to allow for thoughtful reflection by joining the community in a cyber community. In addition, we’ve allowed for a more fluent and quick response (than on paper) by allowing for features such as “live-edit.”

“But if we accept the premise…then to learn is to work collaboratively to establish and maintain knowledge amoung a community of knowledgeable poeers through the process that Rorty calls “socially justifying belief.” We soically justify belief when we explain to others why one way of understadnign how the world hangs together wseeems to us perfereable to ther ways of understadnig it. We establish knowledge by challenging…”(427). Wikis foster an environment where others can explain their ways of seeing the process OR REVISION of writing. This is what is absent in the teaching of revision and the process of writing—conversation with peers I think.

“Knowledge is the product of human beings in a state of continual (ongoing) negotiation and conversation” (428). How might this quote match with some of the wiki-advocates claims?

This type of environment, the wiki, forces students to become articulate through writing in order to instruct their peers, through suggestion in writing. See bruffee’s claim on page 434…”it involves demonstrating…”

A LOOK TOWARD EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ON WRITING INSTRUCTION—CHRIS ANSON: “DISTANT VOICES”

In this article Anson claims that as teachers “we spend much of our time working within the framework of certain fairly stable educational conditions. These conditions include physical spaces that define the social and interpersonal context of teaching: classrooms…” He continues by stating that our “textual landscapes,” the spaces and places where we compose—white paper, etc—has been stable as well (262). However, he argues that due to “burgeoning technological innovations” the teaching of writing is in an era of change. Specifically, he attributes this change to multimedia technologies and the expanding capabilities of the WWW. The key to pedagogical advances in the teaching of writing, he claims, is to take control of these technologies using them in effective ways” (263). He alludes to the fact that we should reconsider what we consider to be teaching—one teacher at the front of the room. THIS CONVERSATION PAVES THE WAY FOR DISCUSSION OF WEB 2.0 APPLICATIONS AND WIKIS.

He also claims that there is a tendency to “ignore the sweep of change in the way that many students now create, store, retrieve, use, and arrange information (including text) in their academic work (264). I would like to add revision to this list.

It seems that although our classroom instruction may change in some ways, much of the work done with the wiki could be assigned outside of class. What this does: for instance, if we assign a revision exercise for homework, once the student leaves class, they are working in isolation from the community of the classroom. But, if revision is done within the wiki space, it is a place to rejoin the community they left in the physical confines of the classroom and draw on those same resources, not to mention work collaboratively.

Anson poses these questions which my claims might address:

1. How do new communication technologies change the relationship between teachers and students?
2. How might the concept of classroom community change with the advent of new technologies? What is the future of collaborative learning in a world in which “courseware” may increasingly replace “courses”?

This page demonstrates the writing process as it exists in a wiki. You can view the saved edits to piece together the process of my writing, from preliminary reactions to texts, to more developed and organized analysis and synthesis of these texts.