Blogging as Freshman Composition

 

Next fall, a few colleagues and I who teach Introductory Composition will begin experimenting with a full-on blogging curriculum in our classes. This goes beyond merely incorporating blogging into the composition classroom; the majority of the students’ production over the course of the semester (along with some short audience analyses and reflective essays) will be writing regularly updated content.  Students will team up across our sections, four or five to a blog.  These will not be personal blogs, but will follow outside interests and industries, and engage with existing communities.

Why are we doing this?  Well, I suspect each of my colleagues would answer the question differently (for more information on this particular cat sans bag, check here and here).  One hope is that this strategy will take the idea of “audience” firmly out of the realm of “thought experiment” and make it a palpable influence on student writing.  Another is that it will prepare them for a world in which writing for the web is a very marketable skill.  My favorite reason, though, has to do with the production cycle, and how the composition classroom, until now, has been unable to accurately simulate what writing really is.

Let’s examine the life  of an academic paper, first as a classroom assignment, then as an actual published article.  The process for the former (depending on the student) probably looks like this:

 

Pretty straightforward.  Note that the word revision doesn’t appear.  It’s been my experience that, unless revision is a part of the assignment, most students don’t revise in any meaningful way.  Even proof-reading is expecting a lot.

Now let’s look at how articles are published in peer-reviewed journals:

 

And that’s the most oversimplified explanation I can give of the dryest genre of writing.  The traditional composition classroom simply cannot account for the utter insanity that is writing for the public.  What excites me the most about blogging in the composition classroom is the messiness it accounts for. 

 

Writing is not sitting at a computer in your dorm room, alone with your thoughts, but it can seem that way to the beginning writer.  There are so many other concerns besides the desires of the writer (to make a point, to get an A) that to not provide these kinds of influences, forces, and audiences is to almost completely miss the point of writing.

 

When you post something on a website (and, god forbid, it receives attention) the stakes are suddenly very high, higher than for most student writing, and almost or just as high as print publication.  And that’s what my colleagues and I hope to do next semester: raise the stakes in Freshmen Composition.  Stay tuned.

Comments

[insignificantwrangler]

That visualization is outstanding--and you're definately right that we are really pushing the "post-process" approach.

I think another benefit is the emerson in a discourse community--learning what that community considers important, who the major players are, where the community turns for information, etc.

This should be interesting. It will either be wildly successful or the greatest flop in the history of Introductory Composition (which is why only graduate students can try it!)

[insignificantwrangler]

And, um, victory is mine.

[Casey]

Looks awesome -- seems like a great idea. Should be a syllabus approach. Gets you a CV line or two. Good work.

I love the end of that second flow chart, the Conrad/Brando "horror, the horror."