Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1607326639 ISBN 13: 9781607326632

Publisher: Utah State University Press, 2018

Synopsis

Thinking Globally, Composing Locally explores how writing and its pedagogy should adapt to the ever-expanding environment of international online communication.

About this title

About the Author

Rich Rice is a professor of English at Texas Tech University, where he teaches courses in new media, intercultural communication, rhetoric, and composition in the Technical Communication and Rhetoric program. He is a US Fulbright-Nehru Scholar, and his teaching and research extend to India and China, where he has served as a Visiting Research Professor.

Kirk St.Amant is the Eunice C. Williamson Endowed Chair in Technical Communication at Louisiana Tech University and an adjunct professor of international health and medical communication with the University of Limerick.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Thinking Globally, Composing Locally

Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet

By Rich Rice, Kirk St. Amant

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2018 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-663-2

Contents

List of Figures, 
List of Tables, 
Acknowledgments, 
Introduction — Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Re-thinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet Rich Rice and Kirk St. Amant, 
SECTION I: CONTACTING, 
1 Digital Notebooks: Composing with Open Access Josephine Walwema, 
2 Disjuncture, Difference, and Representation in Experience Mapping Minh-Tam Nguyen, Heather Noel Turner, and Benjamin Lauren, 
3 Lessons from an International Public Forum: Literacy Development in New Media Environments J. C. Lee, 
4 Reconstructing Ethos as Dwelling Place: On the Bridge of Twenty-First Century Writing Practices (ePortfolios and Blogfolios) Cynthia Davidson, 
5 Considering Global Communication and Usability as Networked Engagement: Lessons from 4C4Equality Liz Lane and Don Unger, 
SECTION II: CONVEYING, 
6 Ludic Is the New Phatic: Making Connections in Global, Internet-Mediated Learning Environments Suzanne Blum Malley, 
7 The MOOC as a Souk: Writing Instruction, World Englishes, and Writers at Scale Kaitlin Clinnin, Kay Halasek, Ben McCorkle, Susan Delagrange, Scott Lloyd Dewitt, Jen Michaels, and Cynthia L. Selfe, 
8 "Resources Are Power": Writing across the Global Information Divide Amber Engelson, 
9 Activity Theory, Actor-Network Theory, and Culture in the Twenty-First Century Beau S. Pihlaja, 
10 Examining Digital Composing Practices in an Intercultural Writing Class in Turkey: Empirical Data on Student Negotiations Ma Pilar Milagros, 
SECTION III: CONNECTING, 
11 Writing Center Asynchronous/Synchronous Online Feedback: The Relationship between E-Feedback and Its Impact on Student Satisfaction, Learning, and Textual Revision Vassiliki Kourbani, 
12 Clicks, Tweets, Links, and Other Global Actions: The Nature of Distributed Agency in Digital Environments Lavinia Hirsu, 
13 Connecting the Local and the Global: Digital Interfaces and Hybrid Embodiment in Transnational Activism Katherine Bridgman, 
14 Globally Digital, Digitally Global: Multimodal Literacies among Bhutanese Refugees in the United States Tika Lamsal, 
15 Glocalizing the Composition Classroom with Google Apps for Education Daniel Hocutt and Maury Brown, 
Afterword-Navigating Composition Practices in International Online Environments Kirk St. Amant and Rich Rice, 
About the Authors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

DIGITAL NOTEBOOKS

Composing with Open Access

Josephine Walwema

ABSTRACT

Online media have brought previously disparate communities together and have altered how people around the globe interact. Complicated problems now profit from degrees of collaboration never before possible, and the writing classroom can create opportunities for learning with online media in this context. Using online media such as digital notebooks can facilitate dialogic inquiry where participants can interact with peers from other cultures as they compose locally for global readerships. This chapter relates promises and challenges of such multicultural composing processes in digital spaces.

Keywords: collaboration, invention, cross-cultural rhetoric, digital notebook, online media, participatory writing technologies, transnational

INTRODUCTION

The global proliferation of online media and Internet access enables individuals from different cultures and nations to interact in different ways. Activities such as crowdsourcing, crowd funding, user reviews, and social media groups are a few that characterize online interaction. Moreover, such interaction is not limited to nation states. It is often global, fueled by open access to content and passion for causes. Because digital media allow people around the world to access more content more quickly, the capacity to bridge the gap between local concerns and international dialogue is now possible. Live tweets from crisis spots around the world have, for example, informed the reporting of media organizations such as The New York Times, but with a more globalized focus (see The Choices Program: Teaching with the News). If this paradigm can revolutionize the news and impact global dialogue, what new, global context for teaching writing as a "transnational literacy practice[s]" does it offer (Hawisher, Selfe, Kisa, & Ahmed, 2010, p. 58)? Digital notebooks, in turn, represent a ready platform for students to interact and collaboratively compose with peers locally and globally.

Digital notebooks describe a range of participatory writing technologies in which a topic initiated by the writer is opened up for collaborative engagement with others. Because the collaboration begins at the conceptual level, the process allows for a cumulative flow of information where, through a back and forth, participants add, comment on, correct, and edit content. Here is how writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who originated the phrase digital notebooks, openly invited the site's dedicated group of commenters (who he calls the horde), "On things I am not sure on, I'll state my opinion rather gingerly and then hope my commenters can fill in the gaps" (Coates, 2008, para. 1).

Coates's used the phrase "Talk To Me Like I'm Stupid" to invite commentary on various topics ranging from Hermeneutics, Revolutionary Island, Locke's State of Slavery and War, Victorian Fashion, to Financial Derivatives (Coates, 2011). He was rewarded with comments (content) explicating topics beyond their dictionary definition. Coates turned his comments section into a remarkable array of analyses, discussions, debate, and virtual reading group where people learned from each other. Such a form of crowdsourcing helps engage citizens in public issues by blending data, video, and social networking tools. It connects writers with the communities they serve by leveraging their knowledge and lived experiences to generate knowledge from the ground up.

Unlike the easy displays emanating from simple Google searches, the kind of knowledge that comes from this active back and forth is significant for its ability to shape the reality of its immediate audience. And that is an important element in interactive and collaborative global composing because it demonstrates that a genuine intellectual community can be formed, even on Internet.

I contend therefore that digital notebooks hold enormous promise for knowledgeable and skillful collaborative composing and open up more global communicative possibilities for students. Further, digital notebooks come with a built-in pedagogical system that (a) broadens the perspectives of the writer, (b) prompts real time revision, (c) heightens the writers' audience awareness, and (d) promotes metacognition through self-reflection. In this chapter, I examine how digital notebooks can support collaborative composing and promote transnational literacy practices.

THE INTEGRATION OF ONLINE MEDIA INTO COMPOSING PRACTICES

Making online media a regular composing space — akin to word processing — is still a work in progress. The extant literature on online media in composition tends to emphasize ancillary components such as peer review (Bradley, 2014), revision, or online reflective practices of student writers (Ross, 2014). Other literature (e.g., Kirby & Crovitz, 2012) suggests ways to "incorporate technology" into writing, but in so doing, implies it is an add-on. Moreover, such literature draws from functional approaches to composition as means for teaching skills (Guth & Helm, 2010) rather than as forums that can promote collaborative educational experiences among disparate global learners. Further, articulated differences between so-called traditional composition — where the technology of word processing is an "instrumental tool of writing" (Porter, 2009) — and new media in which the actual work of composing occurs, suggest the need for more work.

Those shortcomings aside, the consensus on online media indicates it has heralded a "writing and reading renaissance" (Garcia, 1997) or, as Lunsford puts it, "a literacy revolution" (cited in Thompson, 2009) that permeates the composition class. Studies of online media have also led to it being referred to by various names, including the following:

• Digital (e.g., Porter, 2009; Eyman, 2012; Losh, 2014)

• New media (e.g., Wysocki, 2004; Ball & Kalmbach, 2010)

• Multimedia (e.g., Faigley, 2003)

• Multimodal (e.g., Kress, 2005; Selfe, 2007; Palmeri, 2012)

• Online (e.g., Warnock, 2009)

• Web writing (Santos & Leahy, 2014).

Such dissimilar terms, as Lauer (2014) notes, "depend more on the audience to whom we are speaking than any external definition of the term itself" (p. 73). Currently, the term digital is evoked to refer to cutting-edge technologies of meaning — making and managing content.

As indicated, digital notebook technologies and related approaches to writing are increasingly gaining widespread use. They cultivate an inquisitive culture that appreciates uncertainty and encourages interpretation. In the process of creating meaning, absolute truths are set aside and complexities examined, making for a more informed writer. The implication is digital notebooks are spaces that allow for unbridled access to a global connected community that can collaboratively contribute to, compose, and critique ideas to prompt real-time revision, reflection, and review. Digital notebooks are collaborative software applications that allow several people to work together in real time.

Aside from individual writers, MIT runs Climate CoLab for an online community of people concerned about climate change. Here, individuals brainstorm and share ideas on how to combat climate change in their own localities before sharing those solutions globally. Thus, while Web 2.0 has seemingly integrated the tools of collaborative composing, "education 2.0 remains an aspiration" (Carr, Crook, Noss, Carmichael, & Selwyn, 2008, p. 1). Given their obvious scope of communication in the twenty-first century, digital notebooks, are products of our time that can influence how we make meaning. They deserve their place in the composition classroom.

Because the potential of digital notebooks highlights the ability to improve students' language skills along with their intercultural communicative competence (Guth & Helm, 2010), educators can leverage students' social-media skills into academic composing strategies. Students can be taught to use these spaces for educational purposes because, as Thorne and Black (2007) find, online exchanges support more meaningful interactions rather than fixate on learning the content. Students can thus interact in situ to initiate and further global conversations on issues of interest within the writing classroom.

Composing Globally

The nature of communication has fundamentally changed. We are now grounded in the networked textual and image world in which we can instantly and globally communicate. Thus we don't simply draw information from the web; we actively participate in and contribute via blogs, social media platforms, and "comments" sections of online articles. It is thus essential composition teachers train students to be participatory in a world that has radically redefined what expertise means. To compose successfully in the twenty-first century, one must excel at verbal and written expression and at the use and manipulation of images.

One of the more promising approaches to building expertise is through collaborative composing. To promote collaborative composing in this global context, educators have to work closely with students through direct instruction to engage the theory of composition and guided application of practice using digital tools. Educators also need to be guided by identifying barriers that can affect how students interact and collaboratively compose with peers from other nations and cultures. Such barriers are numerous, but I focus on two:

• cultural differences

• linguistic differences including communication expectations, patterns, practices, and the language of interaction

Granted, addressing cultural and linguistic barriers veers into intercultural communication. However, one of the ways rhetoric examines the available means of persuasion is through assessing the role of social practices in meaning making. Because this essay focuses on composing collaboratively for textual production, examining the sociocultural aspects that shape meaning is important. As such, educators and students will need a "repertoire of complex and interrelated skills" (Cook, 2002, p. 7) and multiliteracies pertinent to the twentyfirst century — in short, a hybrid of literacies (Cook, 2002, p. 7; Selber, 2004). For this author, the literacies most applicable to collaborative global composing are

• digital literacies — to collaboratively compose; instantaneous and wide access; direct reach

• rhetorical literacies — to address specific audiences, purposes, and medium of delivery

• cultural/social literacies — to negotiate meaning by learning local communication patterns

To develop these literacies learners need to develop a cosmopolitan and global perspective necessary to look beyond their own communities. The concept of cosmopolitanism, understood here as an embodiment of cultural identity formation and promoting global citizenship through transnational communication (Appiah, 2006; Hull, Stornaiuolo, & Sahni, 2010, p. 331), can help bridge cultural communication differences among students.

Competencies for Collaborative Writing in Global Contexts

Here, I discuss the competencies necessary for participating in/co-authoring digital notebooks.

DIGITAL LITERACY

When we speak of digital literacy, we speak of a functional literacy beyond the ability to comprehend the "core competencies of the Internet" (Giles, 2005, p. 900) in which students can search, navigate, assemble, and evaluate texts for their information quotient. We aspire, instead, to a digital literacy of multimodal texts. To be digitally literate, as Lanham (1995) asserts, is to be "skilled at deciphering complex images and sounds as well as the syntactical subtleties of words" (p. 200). Lanham's definition speaks to digital skills that are broad in scope and cutting edge. Hull & Nelson (2009), in turn, suggest digital texts require "transliteracies" to engage not just across platforms, but also beyond barriers and territories. Without these literacies, students' ability to collaborate would be greatly compromised.

Becoming "transliterate" (Hull & Nelson, 2009) to engage diverse ideas and construct "text across geographical spaces" in multimedia (p. 87) supports this goal of collaborative global composing. It builds on categories of "new literacy studies" (Gee, 2005) that include knowing the sociocultural contexts where discourse is rooted. Because the digital interface brings together users and technologies in an "attempt to broker solutions" (Johnson-Eilola, 2004, p. 201) so that meaning is produced in the content rather than transmitted from sender to receiver, such writing has been deemed a twenty-first century technology (Wysocki, 2004; Johnson-Eilola, 2004). However, Hull and Nelson (2009) suggest the ability to negotiate differences and meaning across territories is a literacy consistent with the twenty-first century because it involves more than technological competence. It is also about engaging the cultural and linguistic sense of people beyond students' own territorial and geographical boundaries. Engagement is what in the end makes global interconnectedness possible. In addition, it makes the composing process transparent and the resulting knowledge collaborative and transactional. It thus democratizes meaning making, which is important for cultivating global ideas (Berlin, 1987).

Meaning making is central to composing in online media and its communal nature as Yancey (2009) discusses, and can act as a means to cultivating global citizenship. As Yancey contends, an improved form of composition is capable of rendering, even cultivating, state and global citizen writers in a communal literacy and "writers of the future" (p. 1). That way, as students collaborate in a community of inquiry (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2010) at a lateral level, they can stake out and contest claims with peers from different cultures and nationalities based on a sociocultural understanding and a consideration of each others' values. Such is what digital notebooks do.

CULTURAL LITERACY

Cultural and structural differences, linguistic challenges, and belief systems are a few of the barriers students would need to overcome to successfully write collaboratively in global contexts (Hartley, 2011; Volet & Jones, 2012; McCalman, 2014). Existing research on multilingualism and the cultural challenges pertaining to writing (e.g., Bawarshi & Reif, 2010; Sofianou-Mullen & Mullen, 2011; St. Amant & Rife, 2014; Leonard, 2014) suggests approaching culture as a people's view of what they deem un/acceptable behavior. Ongoing and extensive research on the communities with which students are paired can reveal sources of ambiguity and contextualize stylistics and wording (Walwema, 2016) — what Leonard (2014) calls "rhetorical attunement." Such attunement can be attained through a translingual approach that "assumes multiplicity" (p. 228), yet makes it possible to negotiate meaning across culture. It is a literacy developed over time.

In addition to culture, McCalman (2014) suggests developing a global awareness entails overcoming language differences among communicants. Such differences can be indicative of socio-economic status constituting "the dialects of [the speakers'] nurture" (NCTE, 1974) or may belong to the category of Global Englishes (Schneider, 2014). Acknowledging language differences even among native speakers from the same country is an important first step in intercultural communication (Galloway & Rose, 2014). Exposing learners to Global Englishes sensitizes them and makes them more receptive to ideas originating from those speakers (Cheung & Sung, 2014).

Related to linguistic understanding is acquiring the intercultural competence that limits instances of miscommunication (Dooly, 2011; Bradley, 2014). Writing collaboratively, for example, often involves peer critique. Couched in established norms here in the United States, students offering peer critique engage in a delicate balance of praise tempered with gentle critique (Bradley, 2014). Not so with Asian or even Latin American cultures. Guardado and Shi (2007), for example, have found some members of certain Asian cultures associate critique with negativity and see it as putdown. Such (U.S.) norms might prevent collaborative composing with cultures where people are more interested in "maintaining harmony" than upsetting the balance established within the group.

Cultural understanding can be learned as long as educators and students recognize the multilayered nature of communities. Knowing communities are comprised of individuals who interact outside of their dominant groups is important (Wilson & Peterson, 2002; Walwema, 2016). Intercultural interaction is therefore not only situated and dynamic; it also "requires high levels of sensitivity and a genuine mutual search for reciprocal understanding" (Ujitani & Volet, 2008, p. 297). And that mutual search for reciprocal understanding is rhetorical.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1607326639
• ISBN 13: 9781607326632
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 378
• Editor: Rice Rich, St.Amant Kirk