Really, I think the intent is often good. This is a case where we need to talk to each other about what we want and why we want it. I will give you a local and a global way of thinking about it that I hope will be helpful. One, is that on we are having the same kind of struggle on my campus.
The IT group, my husband isn’t a part of that particular group, wants to give us a system. The current model is to actually give us a little piece inside Blackboard, which is our course management system. However, the original mock-up didn’t even have a box for reflection, so we’re not talking as well as we might. And we aren’t going to use that system anyway. How do I know that? Well, our students as a general education requirement have to demonstrate some knowledge about an ability to use technology, and one option is for students to create a student portfolio. They get two credits for it. We’re taking one credit and dropping it inside an introductory course for the major. The second credit is going into a junior level studio course that is focused exclusively on digital portfolios, and in it, they have to use common tools and we just simply wrote it into the curriculum. Now, I don’t need IT’s system because we wrote it into the curriculum, and it’s so wonderful I can hardly wait to teach it. There’s a really wonderful piece on reflection, there’s a really wonderful piece on visual, there’s a really wonderful piece on auditory, it’s just going to be amazing.
In the past, you have commented on the centralization and uniformity of technology within universities. What should we do as WPAs and as instructors when the universities are taking the labs away, taking the computer technologies away, and then telling us that this is the technology that they can offer us?
You’ve identified rather nicely the discourse. In fact, let me take that one point further. They will take the “burden” off your shoulders, I think we all should be wary of somebody who wants to unburden you. I’m married to an IT guy, and he and I go round and round on this, which is actually really fun and interesting, but to be fair, I think the intent is really quite wonderful, I really do. Of course, we know the road to hell is paved with...
And then there’s the national level. The WPA has an outcome statement that’s gotten a fair amount of press. There’s a new book out from Utah State called, The Outcomes Book, that is really wonderful, and addresses how that outcome statement has been used in any number of ways from redesigning writing curriculums to working with general education programs; it’s really quite something. Well, one of the issues at the time that it was being formulated, and this was in the late nineties, had to do with technology, and whether or not you were going to be specific with the role technology might play in composition, and that’s addressed in that book, so I would refer people there, but the short of it is, we decided not to do very much with that but Chris Ansen and Shirley Rose who are the president and vice-president of WPA have asked me, and I’ve asked Irv Peckham to work with me, on leading an outcomes effort that will look specifically at the role of technology in composition, so I know from the former outcomes statement that it did so much good. I can see that if we can come up with a position statement, it’s not a position statement exactly, I’m not going to say an outcomes statement is a position statement really, it’s a different genre, but if we either revised the current outcome statement or if we created a separate statement, depending on the disposition of the group, we could address this in a way that spoke to the issue that you raised, I think that might be an enormous help.
And I might say that I’m not alone in this. I’m teaching a year-long National Writing Project Advanced Institute right now with three elementary school teachers, three middle-school teachers, three high school teachers, and do you know, two of the high school teachers are tickled pink, we met last week, and for the first time they presented a proposal to NCTE. It is on digital portfolios, and it was accepted, so they will be in Pittsburgh in the fall presenting on this. This is not something that is of issue only to college people. I’m beginning to see some movement in this area in K-12, so I see ways to work locally.
