Students as Researchers [1 2 3 4]

Even more compelling than their multimedia affordances are the ways in which these CDs construct their users (i.e., students) and the processes they cover (argument and source use and citation). The name of each CD, i-claim and i-cite, gives agency to the student viewer-user. When read as a sentence-"I claim"-the title i-claim constructs the viewer-user as one who is capable of making, indeed one who already makes, claims. The title i-cite, when similarly structured as a sentence, "I cite," constructs the viewer-user in a similar way: one who can and does cite. From the outset student viewer-users are positioned as insiders rather than outsiders.

Indeed, i-cite positions student researchers as participants in an ongoing conversation. i-cite presents all sources as "people" to which students can respond. One of the concepts around which the CD, particularly tutorial #2, is organized is that "sources are people talking to each other" (see figure 1). Downs, then, gives sources an identity that other composition texts do less explicitly (or do not do at all). Because for Downs sources maintain their identity, student researchers do, too. In doing research students likewise are people talking to other sources, which is perhaps the most important contribution of this text in teaching students about research. i-cite does not ask students to forsake their identities as researchers or discredit the online materials with which they may be comfortable working. Instead it asks students to engage in conversation with these sources and to interrogate their usefulness for answering a research question. In the overview to tutorial #4 (sources help you shape what you think), Downs explains that the "coolest thing about sources isn't what they do-it's what you do with them" (emphasis in original). One might say the coolest thing about i-cite is that it represents and respects students as researchers: researchers who can build on their previous experiences, researchers who have the agency and capability to make informed decisions about source use, researchers who can adapt to a variety of tasks and situations, researchers who do not have to choose between doing "inappropriate" web research or sanctioned academic research-researchers who can, with guidance, have both and rather than either or.

Figure 1: Animated Introduction Section: Sources Are People Talking to Each Other

Click on the image above to play the video.*

*Videos are saved as .wmv files. When clicked, they will open in your computer's Windows Media Player.

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