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Dear IDCers,<br><br>
Apologies for the long post. Trebor suggested that I write up some
thoughts about teaching an experimental undergraduate digital rhetoric
course this quarter, and I discovered that I actually had a lot to say
about the subject. <br><br>
I'd suggest skimming through this post and picking something that you
might disagree with in order to foster some discussion about our
pedagogical practices and preferences on the list. For example, I'd
welcome feedback from people who have made wikis written by
undergraduates work in their courses or who think that teaching with
YouTube is a morally bankrupt practice indulged in by lazy teachers or
who prefer restricting the video production technologies used by their
students or who think that student blogging should focus exclusively on
assigned class material. <br><br>
There are certainly legitimate counterarguments to be made to just about
everything I've listed below, even though the course received very high
evaluations from students. <br><br>
Liz<br><br>
<b>TWENTY LESSONS I LEARNED THIS YEAR IN MY DIGITAL RHETORIC COURSE<br>
<br>
Elizabeth Losh, U.C. Irvine<br>
<br>
1) Warn students in advance, so they know what they’ve signed up for<br>
<br>
</b>I made a YouTube video for this course
(<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=F66qju9N0SE">
http://youtube.com/watch?v=F66qju9N0SE</a>) so that students who signed
up for my digital rhetoric course would know that this course in “social
media and persuasive games” would involve some media production as well
as media theory. It still attracted students from a wide range of
backgrounds, from hardcore gamers and students who had already created
strong media brands for themselves through blogging and campus
broadcasting to nontraditional students with very little experience
working with digital tools, <br>
<b> <br>
2) Embrace gossip and eavesdropping<br>
<br>
</b>I corresponded with and talked to a <i>lot </i>of people about this
course to take advantage of their collective intelligence. A
partial list includes Trebor Scholz (about the syllabus), Ian Bogost
(about the syllabus and using the same course reader), Jonathan Alexander
(about the course requirements), Nick Montfort (about the course reader),
Julia Lupton (about teaching web design skills), Geoffrey Middlebrook
(about teaching blogging), Mark Marino (about teaching blogging and using
collaborative and dynamic research tools), Sarah Robbins (about teaching
with Second Life), Lisa Gerrard (about teaching with MMO environments),
Lynda Haas (about privacy issues), Stephen Franklin (about copyright
issues and course management tools), Barbara Cohen (about copyright
issues), and Alan Liu (about course outcomes).<br>
<br>
While my course was going on, I also stayed abreast of the progress of
similar courses being held concurrently. Three Fall 2007 courses
that I followed closely from week to week were Bill Tomlinson’s Social
Analysis of Computerization
(<a href="https://eee.uci.edu/07f/37100/">
https://eee.uci.edu/07f/37100/</a>), in which one of my students was
simultaneous registered, Ian Bogost’s Introduction to Computational Media
(<a href="http://www.bogost.com/teaching/introduction_to_computational.shtml">
http://www.bogost.com/teaching/introduction_to_computational.shtml</a>),
and Trebor Scholz’s The Social Web
(<a href="http://www.collectivate.net/the-social-web/">
http://www.collectivate.net/the-social-web/</a>).<br>
<br>
Finally, I took advantage of contacts I had made through Southern
California regional groups for digital educators at SCIWRITER
(<a href="http://www.sciwriter.org/">http://www.sciwriter.org</a>) and
the Digital Educators Consortium
(<a href="http://iml.usc.edu/?page_id=9">http://iml.usc.edu/?page_id=9</a>
) and through Special Interest Group meetings at the MLA and the 4Cs,
especially those led by Dennis Jerz.<br>
<br>
<b>3) Choose a flexible course website template<br>
<br>
</b>Before the course began, I made a conscious choice to embrace
nondescript ugly utilitarianism rather than making a strong design
statement with the course materials. In retrospect, that may have
been a mistake, since my colleague and collaborator Julia Lupton very
strongly believes in academic branding and distinctive design in all
pedagogical materials. At the time, I thought that this would give
the students more freedom to develop their own aesthetic preferences and
design sensibilities. <br>
<br>
But I made another, very time-consuming mistake, when I chose the
template for the course web page. We actually had a little design
session as a class, where I asked them what they liked in other course
web pages they had used. They wanted something with tabs, so I
built
<a href="http://www.digitalrhetoric.org/course">
http://www.digitalrhetoric.org/course</a> with some CSS and JavaScript
components that I could read the code for and tinker with relatively
easily.<br>
<br>
The problem with a course like this, which incorporates student input and
is being taught for the first time, is that things change. You talk
guest speakers into coming; you redesign the assignment sequence when you
discover your students’ strengths, etc. This meant that I was
constantly updating the HTML code on the tabs of about fifty different
pages, which was crazy. If I had it to do all over again, I would
have chosen something widgety, where I could easily add elements and move
things around by working from a single interface. Repeating the
same operation over and over got old really fast. Or I would build
the whole thing in ActionScript as a Flash site and use what I now know
about coding up a variables layer. <br>
<br>
<b>4) Know that wikis are hard<br>
<br>
</b>This is one thing I have heard from almost everyone who has taught
undergraduates with wiki technology is that getting students to work with
wikis in a productive way is very, very hard. They work for bio
pages
(<a href="http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/wiki1/index.php/Class_Members">
http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/wiki1/index.php/Class_Members</a>) and
for repositories of finished work
(<a href="http://thistle.skiles.gatech.edu/bogost8823f05/">
http://thistle.skiles.gatech.edu/bogost8823f05/</a>), but participation,
plagiarism, and polish become real issues when you ask students to work
collaboratively on informational electronic documents. <br>
<br>
I know that Michael Wesch had great luck with having a huge lecture hall
full of students work on a single Google doc, according to his class’s “A
Vision of Students Today”
(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o">
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o</a>), but I found that my
students were very invested in individual authorship for a course with
academic credit, a grade, and public exposure involved. The class
blog
(<a href="http://www.humanities.uci.edu/socialmedia/">
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/socialmedia/</a>) produced much better
writing than the class wiki
(<a href="https://eee.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/English_101W_Digital_Rhetoric:_Social_Media_and_Persuasive_Games_(Fall_2007))">
https://eee.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/English_101W_Digital_Rhetoric:_Social_Media_and_Persuasive_Games_(Fall_2007))</a>
. This happened even though I tried to give them a template and
pre-selected topics for which there were no Wikipedia entries, in order
to make page hijacking less tempting, but they had real trouble writing
from a NPOV (no point of view) perspective.<br>
<b> <br>
5) Don’t be afraid to let YouTube do some of the work<br>
<br>
</b>Unlike what the Chronicle <i>of Higher Education</i> has called
“PowerPoint abuse,” students often respond positively to the pedagogical
use of YouTube videos. When I gave students an electronic
mid-quarter evaluation, they said that they were much clearer on Lev
Manovich’s chapter on “The Interface” in <i>The Language of New Media</i>
after watching humorous YouTube videos like “Introducing the Book”
(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek">
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFAWR6hzZek</a>) and the Microsoft Surface
parody
(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY">
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY</a>). My overview of
Manovich’s “The Operations” used even more YouTube videos
(<a href="http://www.digitalrhetoric.org/course/classseleven.html">
http://www.digitalrhetoric.org/course/classseleven.html</a>), which
students responded to positively with lively class discussion. I
noticed that faculty lecturers in the large 1,300 student course of which
I direct the writing portion
(<a href="http://eee.uci.edu/programs/humcore">
http://eee.uci.edu/programs/humcore</a>) were also using more YouTube in
lectures to positive audience reactions. Unlike showing longer
films, YouTube videos are short and discourage passivity, since they are
used to thinking about them in terms of modes like commenting,
responding, and embedding.<br>
<b> <br>
6) Don’t let principles interfere with pedagogy<br>
<br>
</b>Two of the activities that students enjoyed most this year were those
that involved distance learning platforms to which I am opposed on
philosophical grounds and have even written about in conference
proceedings (papers on “Going Digital” and “Private Idahos”).
Students loved the video conference with our Washington D.C. office that
we did with YouTube celebrity and critic of the videos of presidential
candidates James Kotecki who went from a Georgetown senior making videos
to the candidates in his dorm room to a paid vlogger for Playbook TV and
frequent commentator on the politics of online video
(<a href="http://www.jameskotecki.com/">http://www.jameskotecki.com</a>
). Students also wrote much more about their Second Life
experiences than the assignment required
(<a href="http://www.digitalrhetoric.org/course/secondlife.html">
http://www.digitalrhetoric.org/course/secondlife.html</a>), and -- even
if they found the program frustrating to use -- they said intelligent
things that rose to the level of analyzing the interface and operations
of the database and the navigable space and the social interactions in
which they participated. <br>
<b> <br>
7) Give them web-based research tools<br>
<br>
</b>Usually I have the library come in and do an orientation of some kind
with students, but I thought that our library staff did not seem familiar
with some of the popular social bookmarking tools (and Net bookmarking
tools in general) that students would probably find appealing. I
had learned about some of these tools from Mark Marino, who has used
Zotero, Netvibes, and Diigo with his classes. Marino explains some
of these instructional technology applications in a recent talk on
“Teaching with Web 2.0”
(<a href="http://writerresponsetheory.org/wordpress/2007/11/29/teaching-web-20/">
http://writerresponsetheory.org/wordpress/2007/11/29/teaching-web-20/</a>
).<br>
<b> <br>
8) Unleash your inner schoolmarm<br>
<br>
</b>Writing instruction is often treated as the neglected stepchild of
the university, but you can’t teach a course like this without some
attention to your students’ prose, and -- since their work is publicly
viewable -- your students’ competencies as writers also says something
about <u>you</u> as a teacher. For example, Alan Liu was inspired
to write a Wikipedia Use Policy
(<a href="http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/ayliu/courses/wikipedia-policy.html">
http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/ayliu/courses/wikipedia-policy.html</a>
), and Trebor Scholz wrote Guidelines for Writing
(<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/guestc7bd54/guidelines-for-writing-160073">
http://www.slideshare.net/guestc7bd54/guidelines-for-writing-160073</a>
).<br>
<b> <br>
9) Allow for some disciplinary crutches<br>
</b> <br>
Some of these texts I had taught before when guest lecturing in Jennifer
Cool’s version of the Social Analysis of Computerization class at UCI
(<a href="https://eee.uci.edu/06y/36360/">
https://eee.uci.edu/06y/36360/</a>), but it was very different to teach
these texts to English majors. Although I believe in
interdisciplinarity on principle and the mission of Critical Information
Studies, as Siva Vaidhyanathan describes it
(<a href="http://www.sivacracy.net/archives/002930.html">
http://www.sivacracy.net/archives/002930.html</a>), I soon discovered
that it was important sometimes to privilege literary interpretations
with this audience. I actually changed two assignments to
capitalize on their identities as book-loving students of print
literature. I asked them to translate a
<a href="http://www.digitalrhetoric.org/course/elit.html">poem into an
electronic hypertext</a> and a book-length
<a href="http://www.digitalrhetoric.org/course/game.html">work of
literature into a game</a>, which turned out to be surprisingly
successful prompts for composition. At a more advanced level, this
graduate course on translation with digital media – specifically
videogames – by Ian Bogost is a really interesting model for these kinds
of assignments and what can be learned about digital design from the
translation trope:
<a href="http://www.bogost.com/teaching/videogame_adaptation_and_trans.shtml">
http://www.bogost.com/teaching/videogame_adaptation_and_trans.shtml</a>
<br>
<br>
<b>10) Let your own social networks be visible<br>
</b> <br>
Because using social media in constructive ways was one of the themes of
the class, I opened with a “tale of two college students”: Aleksey Vayner
and James Kotecki, who attended prestigious American universities, Yale
and Georgetown respectively. While Vayner became an unwilling
YouTube celebrity when his ludicrously padded video résumé became an
Internet meme that was subject to all forms of parody and ridicule,
Kotecki managed to parlay his YouTube presence posing questions and
commentaries about the presidential candidates in his dorm room into a
professional career as a political webcaster.<br>
<br>
However, asking students to think critically about their social networks
and be willing to make them visible means that you should also be willing
to examine how your own social networks can inform your pedagogy.
This doesn’t mean that you should add all your students as “friends” who
can see your personal information, but it does mean that you could do a
limited amount of modeling how social networks can be used for creative,
activist, or instructional agendas. Hawisher and Moran, in
their older work on e-mail, have talked about the “apprenticeship” method
for giving students models for electronic discourse, but it involves
being somewhat open about your own online practices, which may sometimes
also be generationally, culturally, or socio-economically incompatible
with your students and thus inappropriate to talk about. <br>
<b> <br>
11) Make campus visitors an offer they can’t refuse<br>
</b> <br>
In addition to drafting my friends to come and participate in the class
to add more perspective on these subjects, I also did a lot of advanced
planning to coordinate the talks of campus speakers and gallery shows
with the curricular material that we would be covering. This
creates a sense of rhetorical occasion around the class, which can be
very important for keeping students engaged. If the goal is
creating a class that students look forward to, a calendar of special
events can foster anticipation of each session. Under the tab
marked “Guest Speakers and Special Events” at
<a href="http://www.digitalrhetoric.org/course/allweeks.html">
http://www.digitalrhetoric.org/course/allweeks.html</a>, the different
guests for the quarter are listed.<br>
<br>
<b>12) Use regional advantage<br>
</b> <br>
In Southern California, there are many universities within driving
distance. I definitely took advantage of the fact that I had
colleagues at UCLA, USC, and Cal Tech.<br>
<br>
<b>13) Remember that there are no little people<br>
</b> <br>
Unfortunately, instructional technology people are often not treated
entirely as sentient human beings by the faculty with whom they
work. And yet, IT people who run computer labs, media resource
centers, teleconferencing facilities, and equipment rental services for
the university often want to know more about the pedagogical applications
for the technologies that they work with every day. A few months
before the start of the class, I met with all the tech people I could
think of on campus, and I contacted them again just before I or my
students would need their services for particular sessions of the class
or challenging individual or group assignments. Progress reports
and thank yous afterwards are also appreciated. <br>
<b> <br>
14) Pick off the students off one at a time<br>
</b> <br>
Because there was so much unfamiliar material to cover, I often had to
lecture or give formal presentations. So, in addition to office
hours, I made individual appointments with students at the beginning,
middle, and end of the course, so I could get to know their challenges
and objectives a little better. This really helped in giving them
advice about their media-making and message-making, since I had more of a
sense of their possible purposes in using social media.<br>
<br>
<b>15) Showcase interesting work <br>
</b> <br>
As the instructor see drafts, rough cuts, and works-in-progress from
students, it can be very helpful to enrolled undergraduates to see models
for success. Students often appreciate having their work publicly
recognized, although you will want to make sure to get their permission
first. Of course, there are often multiple audiences for
experimental courses that go beyond the classroom. I will be
talking about the class at a few formal teaching colloquia the coming
months, but I also discussed it with colleagues more informally at
workshops while the course was in progress.<br>
<br>
<b>16) Respect student privacy but don’t let it stifle opportunities for
public discourse<br>
</b> <br>
Some students do have genuine concerns about being subject to
intimidation, discrimination, and future negative consequences from
employers and admissions committees because of their online forms of
expression. When I introduced the course, I emphasized that they
would be creating lasting public artifacts not ephemeral or private
reflections.<br>
<br>
My students felt <u>very</u> strongly that closed systems for blogs,
wikis, and video file-sharing weren’t equivalent to real participation in
the public sphere. Although non-commercial and process-oriented
course management systems like The Writing Studio
(<a href="http://writing.colostate.edu/">http://writing.colostate.edu/</a>
) offer a better alternative to corporate products like Blackboard,
students can’t reach audiences beyond their writing classes or sustain
writing projects after graduation. <br><br>
Just as fear of violating copyright law can stymie good pedagogy, fear of
running afoul of FERPA can also limit the effectiveness of
teaching. And the use of usernames easily can give students more
anonymity, if they feel that the simple use of first-name-only posting
won’t do. <br>
<br>
For example, one of the most popular video essays made by one of my
students
(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A5UcyaAFwU">
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0A5UcyaAFwU</a>) was a direct response to
this video “On Profanity”
(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18cGSTKalUk">
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18cGSTKalUk</a>), which had been watched
hundreds of thousands of times. And students who made blogs
like this one
(<a href="http://callingoutbs.blogspot.com/">
http://callingoutbs.blogspot.com/</a>) plan to continue writing for
broader audiences. They signed up for the course because they
wanted to participate in exchanges beyond the classroom.<br>
<br>
I also discovered that they wanted their online identities to be separate
from the institution of the university. Although humanities
computing generously offered server space and technical support, all of
the students chose to set up their own free Blogger accounts.<br>
<b> <br>
17) Let them choose the problems to be solved<br><br>
</b>Blogging constituted a large portion of the students' grades.
Following the advice of innovative writing instructor
<a href="http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/faculty/faculty1003534.html">
Geoffrey Middlebrook</a>, I told them to choose a topic in which they are
truly interested and for which they can build an audience, because they
have something original to say. I also instructed them to select a very
narrow niche topic, a message that class guest YouTube celebrity
<a href="http://www.jameskotecki.com">James Kotecki</a> also emphasized.
For blogging about subjects related to the academic content of the
course, there was also a
<a href="http://www.humanities.uci.edu/socialmedia/">class blog</a>.
<br><br>
This was a media-savvy group, so many of them chose topics like
<a href="http://freshcutsradio.blogspot.com/">hip-hop music</a> or
<a href="http://omenofclarity.blogspot.com/">videogames</a>. But I was
struck by the fact that even more of them picked issues about the design
challenges of their chosen lifestyle or what I might call "life
hacking." It was fun to read their writing and also to see the
ingenuity with which they compensated for obstacles in the material
circumstances of daily life. <br><br>
Their stories were very different, but there was definitely a theme.
<a href="http://mylifeindecay.blogspot.com/">A forty-something mother
adjusts to life on campus among younger students.</a>
<a href="http://mytaleoftwocities.blogspot.com/">A homesick San Francisco
native adapts to living in Orange County.</a>
<a href="http://whyshouldiride.blogspot.com/">A long-time motorcycle
rider from Singapore plans for his transportation needs in car-centric
Irvine.</a> <a href="http://ohthankcod.blogspot.com/">A seafood lover
searches for affordable but palatable local food to suit her tastes and
limited budget</a>. (The photos on her food blog make me hungry.)
<a href="http://www.ranchquest.blogspot.com/">A young woman with an
equestrian background tries to help her family find a horse ranch in the
region that is in their price range.</a>
<a href="http://www.xanga.com/babyxfiesty">A Christian student reviews
books that suit her beliefs and yet are still full of juicy controversies
and even sex.</a> <br><br>
By letting them choose the problems to be solved, it made it much more a
class about the rest of their lives.<br><br>
<b>18) Let them bond electronically without your interference<br>
</b> <br>
When students began commenting on each others blogs, they really began to
function as a much more cohesive unit. It made me also understand
the function of a “commiseration comment” more in blogging, and the
assertions of solidarity that they expressed about subjects like working
for tips
(<a href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=8354744214866507190&postID=3166885182513503573">
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=8354744214866507190&postID=3166885182513503573</a>
), being a nontraditional student
(<a href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3033091677346242296&postID=253584952289701588">
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=3033091677346242296&postID=253584952289701588</a>
), or having restricted diets that others didn’t understand
(<a href="https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=2652374139435883486&postID=7882623376561083040">
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=2652374139435883486&postID=7882623376561083040</a>
). <br>
<br>
<b>19) Let them choose as many of the technologies as possible<br>
</b> <br>
For the final video essay assignment, I was tempted to be very directive
about technologies, since our Electronic Educational Environment group
and other IT groups on campus had developed tutorials and workshops
oriented around iMovie software, which was widely available on the labs
on campus. Although many students made their videos largely with
iMovie
(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBOzo6Y0V_g">
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBOzo6Y0V_g</a>), many others found that
other technologies better suited their rhetorical objectives. Some
used screen capture technology
(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKY4tOAKfxE">
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKY4tOAKfxE</a>), some embraced the role
of citizen journalist and selected and edited together hours of film in
foreign locales with Final Cut Pro
(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0riBOTD6egc">
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0riBOTD6egc</a>), some were interested in
machinima
(<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPaUT9GtdPk">
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPaUT9GtdPk</a>), and some were more
comfortable with software with simple and familiar interfaces like
Microsoft’s MovieMaker
(<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=yq6c_JEJVdI">
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yq6c_JEJVdI</a>). None of them chose the
lowest tech option: a webcam/headset speech into the camera. <br>
<br>
<b>20) Tempus Fugit <br>
</b> <br>
Trying to have students produce more than one social media genre in ten
weeks was probably too much to ask. Although when I talked with the
students on the last day about which assignments could be cut, to allow
for showing rough cuts of the students videos and workshopping more
material as a group, they were aghast that I would consider cutting the
wiki assignment, which I thought was the least successful in terms of the
student writing produced. (The prose to me seemed incoherent and
not up to the informational or expertly authorial pretensions of real
Wikipedia entries.)<br>
<br>
For more on the class: <br>
<br>
Here are some blog entries about the classes<br>
<br>
<a href="http://virtualpolitik.blogspot.com/2007/11/what-if-teacher-has-to-sit-in-corner.html">
http://virtualpolitik.blogspot.com/2007/11/what-if-teacher-has-to-sit-in-corner.html</a>
<br>
<a href="http://virtualpolitik.blogspot.com/2007/11/fourth-wall.html" eudora="autourl">
http://virtualpolitik.blogspot.com/2007/11/fourth-wall.html<br>
</a>
<a href="http://virtualpolitik.blogspot.com/2007/11/virtual-worlds-and-real-classes.html">
http://virtualpolitik.blogspot.com/2007/11/virtual-worlds-and-real-classes.html</a>
<br>
<a href="http://virtualpolitik.blogspot.com/2007/12/twenty-first-century-english-majors.html" eudora="autourl">
http://virtualpolitik.blogspot.com/2007/12/twenty-first-century-english-majors.html<br>
</a> <br>
Here is some YouTube video of one of the classes (on academic
blogging):<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybMkqQwj-_I">Peter Krapp Part
One</a><br>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMTFMdEx_vA">Peter Krapp Part
Two</a><br>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGJk9bM-3qw">Scott Eric Kaufman
Part One</a><br>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErElwORrSx8">Scott Eric Kaufman
Part Two</a><br>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq5hCUMhOt8">Elizabeth Losh Part
One</a><br>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9CQUOhtc7Q">Elizabeth Losh Part
Two</a><br>
<x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
Elizabeth Losh<br>
Writing Director<br>
Humanities Core Course<br>
HIB 188<br>
University of California, Irvine<br>
Irvine, CA 92697<br>
949-824-8130<br>
lizlosh@uci.edu<br>
<a href="http://eee.uci.edu/faculty/losh" eudora="autourl">
http://eee.uci.edu/faculty/losh</a></body>
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