Kevin Brock

University of South Carolina

Against NCTECCCC's OWI Effective Principle 2 on
Technology as Not-Writing

While the relationship between computer technologies and writing practices has come to be nearly universally recognized—although hardly universally implemented—there is a serious gap in composition-oriented research when it comes to understanding how and why students use computer technologies outside of the writing classroom. This is not to suggest that nothing has been said about this issue; Stuart Selber's work on multiliteracies points to the necessity of recognizing the diverse knowledge and skill sets that accompany diverse technological activities, while Kathleen Blake Yancey reminds us that the vast majority of writing occurs in environments we have neither control over nor access to and in genres that likely do not reflect the kinds of writing we prioritize in our curricula.

The increasingly common move toward online writing instruction provides us with, to use Yancey's phrase, “a moment” in which to reflect critically on what this change in physical-to-virtual venue, pedagogical approach, and engagement with students could mean for our ever-complicating relationship with writing technologies. Last year, the CCCC Executive Committee adopted a “Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI)” composed by the CCCC Committee on Best Practices for Online Writing Instruction. Overall, this position statement offers a number of insightful and forward-thinking principles that demonstrate the nuanced nature of online writing instruction.

However, one principle stands out for its philosophical turn away from the others, and this turn is emphasized further by the example effective practices used to illustrate the point of that principle. This is Principle 2, which states in full, “An online writing course should focus on writing and not on technology orientation or teaching students how to use learning and other technologies” (CCCC Committee, “A Position Statement”). Principle 2 falters where the others shine by distinguishing the act of learning to write from the act of learning to use relevant (“and other”) technologies, implying—especially confusing in regards to courses that meet online for writing instruction—the latter has no place in the writing curriculum. I will address why this principle specifically is problematic in several ways. First, I examine how it fails to consider what Selber refers to as “functional” literacy. Second, I articulate how the “example effective practices” ignore digital platform knowledge as an integral component of writing in and for digital spaces. Third, I turn to open source software (OSS) as a model to compare with academic collaboration and review in order to suggest that a more helpful resolution for OWI practices would be for instructors to embrace technology as writing rather than to distance themselves, and the field, from it as “not-writing.”

Functional Literacy

Let's begin by discussing “functional literacy” and how it relates to writing instruction, since it is in regards to this concept that, I posit, OWI Effective Principle 2 was composed, whether this is acknowledged as an explicit exigence or not.

Functional literacy is a term I borrow from Stuart Selber's Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, and it refers to the capability of a given writer to employ a technology (e.g., a computer) for a particular end in relation to a specific activity. According to Selber, functional literacy is generally understood metaphorically to be the pragmatic use of a tool. However, he follows critics like Albert Borgmann and Langdon Winner, in observing that the “instrumental” approach to understanding and using technology is problematic. As Selber notes, “If technology is indifferent to its own ends, and if public policy encourages the marketplace to determine those ends, then it follows that technical experts and other elites will continue to control the shape of technology and to benefit from the effects of the tool metaphor” (p. 39). For Selber, functional literacy provides students with the understanding to apply their skills in “achieving educational goals,” recognizing and working with “social conventions that help determine technological use,” engaging in relevant specialized discourses, managing electronic activities successfully, and resolving “technological impasses confidently and strategically” (45, Table 2.1).

My claim that OWI Principle 2 was drafted in response to this term is based on the clear distinction drawn throughout the principle and its rationale on “writing” and “technological ability” as entirely separate and potentially unrelated concepts; after all, Principle 2 states that “an online writing course should focus on writing and not on technological orientation or teaching students how to use learning and other technologies” (CCCC Committee, “A Position Statement,” emphasis added). The rationale notes that an online writing course “is not considered to be a place for stretching technological skills as much as for becoming stronger writers” (CCCC Committee, “Rationale”). However, such an approach ignores the implications and consequences Selber outlines from an embrace (or rejection) of functional literacy as an integral component of writing instruction. In other words, so much writing today takes place through effective use of electronic and emerging technologies that the former skill requires—and is intertwined with—the latter in order for a writer to be successful in communicating with his or her desired audiences.

Digital Media, Platform Knowledge, and Writing

My second complaint about OWI Principle 2 is in regards to its erroneous separation of writing from medium, suggesting that the former can be considered without the mediated, situated, and embodied variables that influence a given writing activity—as if writing done with a keyboard occurs precisely the same way as with pencil and paper. Christina Haas observes that these qualities generally only become “profoundly obvious” to us when we change writing environments or encounter unfamiliar tools with which to write (24). The rationale for OWI Principle 2, however, distinguishes these qualities of media from the act of writing when it states that

[u]nlike a digital rhetoric course an OWC [Online Writing Course] is not considered to be a place for stretching technological skills as much as for becoming stronger writers in various selected genres […] Students should use the provided technology to support their writing and not the other way around. It must be clear that OWI teachers and students alike do not need to be technology experts, computer programmers, or Web designers to accomplish the instructional purposes of an OWC. (CCCC Committee, “Rationale”)

This rationale proposes several inaccurate interpretations of digital rhetoric courses, functional literacy, and assumed or expected levels of technological expertise regarding potential activities and assignments that might be employed in an online writing course.

First, a course in digital rhetoric is often as much a course in which students “becom[e] stronger writers in various selected genres” as any other writing course. The primary difference is that these genres are focused on the digital. However, there is no reason that such genres must be exclusive to the digital rhetoric course, especially if—to quote Yancey once more—students actively “compose words and images and create audio files on Web logs (blogs), in word processors, with video editors and Web editors and in e-mail and on presentation software and in instant messaging and on listservs and on bulletin boards—and no doubt in whatever genres will emerge in the next ten minutes” (298). Such work is not being done only in digital rhetoric classrooms nor primarily in classrooms of any kind. To suggest that only one particular mode of communication (presumably composing linear texts in a word processing program) is relevant and valuable to understanding writing is, I argue, a serious misrepresentation of the last several decades of scholarship published in the field—not just in regards to computers and writing but also to visual rhetoric and multimodal composition.

Second, the suggestion that any attention to technology will invert the focus from writing to technology sets up a strawman. If writing proficiency is gained through practice, writing activities will inevitably be informed by the technologies used as the technologies will be chosen—again, through practice via trial and error!—to support particular means of and approaches to writing. Eliminating from instructional practices attention to technological choice and relevant affordance and constraint significantly limits how we might understand writing as an ecological, mediated, and situated practice.

Finally, the implication that there is a binary opposition connected to computer technologies, with technical “experts” on the one hand and entirely novice students on the other, promotes a harmful disconnect between writing activities and the technological media that facilitate such activities. Richard Lanham has argued that there is a necessary oscillation between looking “at” and “through” texts in order to appreciate more fully how they are composed. The rationale for Principle 2 suggests that not only is looking “through” texts enough but that writing instructors should actively work against any attempts to look “at” the technologies used to produce those texts, and this is confirmed in an example effective practice where “transparent software” are recommended so that students “focus on learning composition” rather than the software (CCCC Committee, “Example Effective Practices”).

OSS and Collaboration

An unfortunate consequence of the effort to separate writing and technology is that entirely appropriate models for collaboration, peer review, and iterative process that exist outside the sphere of academia are preemptively ejected from potentially beneficial use in the writing classroom. Specifically, I point to the primary paradigm of open source software (OSS), in which development of a given software program occurs in a public venue, with the code used to make that program available for scrutiny and modification, and any and all contributions to that program's code are capable of being reviewed by a given community for potential inclusion into the continued development of the program. A related model can be seen in regards to the crowd-sourced construction of articles on wikis like Wikipedia.

In other words, OSS development is an extremely appropriate, although hardly perfect, real-world reflection of the academic peer review process and its values—a realized example of why much of our writing instruction is structured as it is. However, if we shut out technology as an inherently insignificant or unworthy component of writing (if we even connect the two at all), we miss out on recognizing not just the functional capacities of technology but the sorts of critical activities that occur with and around them that we might otherwise hold central to our conceptions of writing.

I recognize that by bringing in an example from the software development industry into this discussion that my position may be interpreted as a demand for the “technological expertise” that the Principle's “example effective practices” argue against. My intent is to argue for a heightened awareness of the writing systems embedded into and surrounding the use of many of the very technologies students are already being asked to use for OWCs, such as Firefox, Chrome, LibreOffice, and HTML/CSS. Students do not need to be able to contribute code to these projects, but recognizing how individuals look for and create knowledge in relation to the projects could be far more beneficial than suggesting students ignore these complex compositional activities as being irrelevant or useless to their own practices.

This benefit is strongest in regards to its emphasis on collaboration. We rarely, if ever, ask students to consider their writing as existing in a vacuum. However, this is exactly how OWI Principle 2 asks students and instructors to consider writing in relation to writing technologies. What if instead we highlighted the ways in which OSS contributors assist one another in learning how to use given technologies (with varying degrees of success, clarity, and accessibility)? Such a practice could help students learn, practice, and reinforce not only functional literacy but critical and rhetorical literacies as they navigate questions or problems—when appropriate—related to writing with various computer technologies.

A Note on Access

There is certainly something to be said about the problem of access connected to online writing instruction. Not all institutions serve the same kinds of students, assume students have access to course technologies (whether computers, software, Internet connections, or even relevant literacies), populate the instructor pool with technologically inclined or trained instructors, or possess IT support staff capable of or interested in working with, rather than against, instructors. My intent is not to suggest that all institutions should provide a uniform embrace of emerging technologies before proceeding with online writing instruction. However, I want to continue pushing against OWI Principle 2, as one of its “example effective practices” suggests that the “OWI teacher should not be considered a technology point person to be held responsible for technical assistance,” as “[t]eaching writing is the key work of the OWI teacher” (CCCC Committee, “Example Effective Practices”). This statement provides institutions with an endorsed CCCC position that technological familiarity on the part of the instructor—and by extension, the student—is incidental if not unnecessary. I acknowledge the final effective practice, which states, “To maintain the appropriate focus on writing, OWI teachers should be provided professional development in the institution’s technologies sufficiently in advance of a scheduled online course” (Ibid). However, this argument for sufficient professional development is confusing given the emphasis otherwise provided throughout the position statement. What kind of professional development would be necessary when instructors are recommended to offload technological assistance and literacy instruction to IT?

The endorsement against technological literacy becomes even more confusing when contrasted against the 2005 NCTE Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies, which was developed by the Multimodal Literacies Issue Management Team of the NCTE Executive Committee. This position statement predates the OWI Position Statement by eight years and it attempts to address—among other topics—the “unique capacities and challenges of digital forms.” Of special note are the arguments made in favor of expanding, rather than outsourcing, technological literacy; for example, the authors claim that “[d]igital technologies have increasing capacity for individuals to adapt the tools for their own information and communication purposes,” which means that “[s]tudents and teachers will need assistance in the skills of multitasking, accessing 'just in time' information, problem solving, and prioritizing tasks and resources to accomplish the goals of their assignments,” since “the quality of the ideas and the effectiveness of the communication media will become more important and more relevant to students” (Multimodal Literacies). This position statement, in contrast with the more recent statement on OWI principles, appears to support an increased critical and functional engagement with communication technologies by students and teachers as well as by their institutions. There is an onus on each agent to participate; no one is given leeway to absolve him-, her-, or itself from working to improve the means by which students access, learn about, and practice functional literacy activities.

Conclusions: I'm Thinking of a Master Plan...

As it stands, despite existing within a well-crafted document that provides a generally successful set of principles for online writing instruction, Effective Principle 2 simply fails to provide students, instructors, programs, and institutions with a clear articulation of a well-formed understanding of technology as it relates to (is fundamentally a component of) writing and to online writing instruction. That said, there's not that much that would need to be done to revise this particular principle—but this revision requires a focused effort toward several related ends. The first is an explicit advocacy for improving functional literacy for students and instructors alike. The second is a pedagogical embrace, rather than a rejection, of the mediate qualities of writing to inform relevant activities in an online class environment. The third is an incorporation of extracurricular models for technological collaboration and composition to provide students with clearer examples of “real-world” application, such as that demonstrated by open source software development communities.

I do not in any way wish to imply that these changes would eliminate issues connected to online writing instruction and technological literacies; there will remain questions of access that must stay a significant concern for instructors and institutions. However, it is through head-on experimentation from working through potential solutions to—or at least mitigations of—these issues that will provide us, faculty and student alike, with innovative ideas for improving how we approach writing instruction (online and offline). I look forward to seeing what we can come up with together.

Works Cited

CCCC Committee for Best Practices for Online Writing Instruction. “A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI).” Conference on College Composition and Communication. 13 Mar. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.

---. “Example Effective Practices for OWI Principle 2.” Conference on College Composition and Communication. 13 Mar. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.

---. “Rationale for OWI Principle 2.” Conference on College Composition and Communication. 13 Mar. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.

Haas, Christina. Writing Technology: Studies on the Materiality of Literacy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996. Print.

Lanham, Richard. The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts. Chicago: U Chicago Press, 1993. Print.

Multimodal Literacies Issue Management Team of the NCTE Executive Committee. “Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies.” National Council of Teachers of English. 2005. Web. 7 Mar. 2014.

Selber, Stuart A. Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 2004. Print.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key.” College Composition and Communication 56.2 (2004): 297-328. Print.