A Technological Proficiency: Utilizing the Blog as a Tool for Developing Strong Writing Skills in the University Classroom

Caught uncomfortably in the liminal space between the increasingly obsolete “old” and the uncertainty of the “new” in the current communication shift, the academic sphere is at a powerful position with the potential to alter the very nature of our culture with time.  Aware of the influence that the academic sphere can have upon this transformation, educators and critics remain hesitant to bring newly developing communication modes into the college classroom. The digital nature of the blog makes it a target of ridicule from many contemporary critics and educators who fear the rise of technology will directly lead to the loss of basic analytical skills. Echoing the concerns of many teachers, Palfrey and Gasser convey a growing fear that, “the skills they have imparted over time are becoming either lost or obsolete” (8). With the digitization of the word, text has become far from stable. Such fears are grounded in the concern that the blog exposes students to a writing process devoid of text stability and the editorial process. As the identity of the blog is largely subject to unsystematic responses, scholars such as Jeff Rice perceive the unpredictable nature of the blog to be a manipulated forum by which students are subject to writing devoid of parameters. Marisa A. Klages raises similar concerns, specifically that the lack of editorial process and resolution leads to a virtual world that is process-less, one of instant publishing, which it is feared will facilitate unpolished and underdeveloped writing. Such writing, Klages argues, would lead to a writing style devoid of resolution and legitimate process of thought (33). Other critics are concerned about the loss of grammatical skills. At a recent news conference at the Library of Congress, James H. Billington presented results of a nationwide test of grammatical skills among students. Studies show that about one in four high school seniors are proficient writers. Reflecting, and even amplifying many concerns, Billington poses a question concerning whether grammar is still being taught: “To what extent is students’ writing getting clearer? Is that still being taught?” (Dillon). In seeing student’s familiarity with the written word as one of grammatical shortcuts through text messages and cyberspace community chat rooms, Mr. Billington warns, “The sentence is the biggest casualty.” (Dillon). The losses of certain modes of critical thinking, Klages argues, are seen most prominently in the increasingly widening gap between everyday language and academic speech. Klages observes, “While these modalities are appropriate for digital environments promoting social networking, they confront basic writers, and in fact all students, with one more code from which they need to switch when intersecting with academic and professional realms of writing.” (33). By its democratic nature, critics see technological devices as spaces separate and distinct from the academic realm. Many fear that it will only widen, causing a disconnect that will lead to a loss of basic critical thinking skills. While it is important to be aware of the skills lost in incorporating the blog into the classroom, it is even more important to focus on the skills gained in embracing the blog as a communication mode that allows students to adapt to and be prepared for future demands connected with an increasingly digitalized world. Such hesitancy overlooks a larger and more important focus, which is concerned with how the student will best adapt to and more fully take advantage of the potential that this new kind of writing holds.
While the incorporation of technological devices and digital spaces into a traditional classroom can be seen as a significant threat to the development of basic analytical and grammatical skills that have marked previous writers, critics fail to acknowledge the function that digital spaces, specifically the blog, have as a writing medium that prepares students to develop the skills necessary to handle the modern shift from traditional print literacy to digital literacy. In my paper, I will begin with a look at the blog as a traditional artifact, moving on to a broad overview of the current position students find themselves in as what Palfrey and Gasser call “digital natures” of a digital world. I will then examine the theoretical advantages of the blog in the classroom, showing how the blog allows students to become familiar with multiple voices and modes of rhetoric characteristic of digital literacy, work in a democratic space that allows for risk-taking and freer expression, and establish an identity as a public writer. I will conclude with a look at how college composition teachers could give specific blog assignments that would be most effective in formal composition courses and content-based courses.

The Blog as a Traditional Artifact

As a product of centuries of recurring and evolving human communication shifts, the blog functions as a tool by which the university student is able to bridge that gap between basic analytical skills necessary in the world of print and new modes of thinking requisite to the success of a digital native. The current communication shift is a major part of deep-rooted evolutionary patterns indicative of the nature of humankind in a very direct way. Finkelstein and McCleery assert that “society is based on transactions enabled by communication processes…From the beginning of time, the skill and ability to process, decode, pass on, and utilize knowledge and information has been highly prized” (28). The shift from oral to scribal culture and scribal to print culture offer a broad historical pattern from which we are able to draw parallels with the current shift from print to electronic culture. Just as the invention of the printing press led to an evolution of the printed word, the incorporation of various digital writing spaces (including the blog) is a vital means by which the word is once again altered, this time digitized. Such communication modes allow students to adapt to a lifestyle far different from its preceding generation. Such a shift is an uncomfortable and unsteady one at first.

A Technological Instrument in the Academic World

Unsteady it may be, but swiftly it arrives. As a generation at the onset of the electronic age, technology is far from foreign to the modern-day college student. It is a way of life. Klages indicates, “no longer do writing instructors struggle to present the idea of audience to the students in their classrooms. Their students already write publicly on blogs, wikis, and social networking sites, and often, to a large audience of readers connected by cell phones, texting, and the Internet” (36). While the rising generation has largely embraced this communication shift in everyday life, their learning experience within the classroom has remained more traditional than the world around it. However, a visit to any campus today would reveal that change is underway. Students are hardly familiar with a tangible library card, campus bookstores must compete with online book exchange sites such as Amazon and EBay, and online reading assignments threaten to rival the standard book reading assignment. All evidence denotes that there is a growing demand for students to be familiar with technology.
In response to such demands, teachers are increasingly incorporating various technological devices to facilitate familiarity with and proficiency in technological modes of learning. At the Conference on College Composition and Communication in 2004, Kathleen Blake Yancey drew a parallel between the major changes that are a result of technological progression and the large-scale shift of “tectonic” plates in the alteration of the earth’s continents. Yancey joins the rising group of educators who believe that such a shift will be made in the classroom, saying, “Literacy today is in the midst of a tectonic change” (39). She believes this change is a result of technology. It is hard to believe that this change, however, can signify the death of something as necessary to the human experience as the word, regardless of the form it may take. As Palfrey and Gasser argue, “television didn’t transform education. Neither will the Internet. But it will be another tool for teachers to use in their effort to reach students in the classroom”. They go on to add that, “it will also be a means by which students learn outside of the classroom” (250). In facilitating a connection to social networks outside of the classroom (Gladsser), the blog allows students to not only become more familiar with what is going on in the world, but to be an active part of it. As an ideal preparation for an increasingly technological world, the blog thus becomes an important teaching tool that merges both the academic realm with social networking in way that few devices or digital spaces can.

Multiple Voices and Modes of Rhetoric Characteristic of Digital Literacy

As students develop traditional writing skills and a technological proficiency through a social network system, a familiarity with the multi-modal nature of digital spaces is essential. The modern means of expression, cognition, and communication calls for a new type of learning that involves multiple voices, perspectives, and modes of media (Rice 302). Such multiplicity integrates a series of complex structures that require a similarly complex mode of thinking that Rice observes the blog duplicates well: “several writers, in several different spaces, [are] engaging with a text and with each other in several different ways across several different spaces, allow[ing] a conversation to grow, shrink, and develop in specific ways” (309-311).
Not only is the meaning of text dictated by the multiplicity of textual interaction between writers, but also by its incorporation of different rhetorical devices. As Klages asserts, “writing is no longer a purely text-driven practice”, but one that involves new dimensions and forms of rhetoric, by which “digital writers rely on words, motion, interactivity, and visuals to make meaning” (40). By means of standard and easily available software applications, writers are able to incorporate images, video, photographs, animations, charts, graphs, diagrams, links to other web pages, etc., to add meaning to and even interact with the text. At the very threshold of a communication shift towards digital print, the student must be able to reconcile between this multi-modal proficiency, while retaining traditional critical thinking skills taught without digital spaces.
Through my experience with blog writing in my advanced Humanities course at BYU, I was able to see the role that the blog can play in bridging that gap. A majority of my classmates (known to be experts on certain cyberspace communities such as Facebook and Twitter) were at first hesitant to enter the technological realm of writing within the academic atmosphere. As they became more and more familiar with the gadgets, html coding procedures, and embedding capabilities of the blog, they learned to better articulate their thoughts through text and various rhetorical devices such as YouTube videos, images from the web and html coding that alter the layout of the page itself.  Through what Dave Winer calls “a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser”, students began to use the multi-modal nature of the blog as powerful tool for expression.
Altering the composition process and the overall meaning of the composition itself, students not only developed strong writing skills, but also acquired specific cognitive patterns. We were able to see this by the end of our Humanities course. As we looked at our development as writers, comparing early entries with later entries, we noticed an growing tendency to utilize rhetorical devices. As we increasingly drew upon rhetorical devices in our writing, the content and meaning of our posts altered. A growing emphasis was placed on the relationship between ourselves and the world in which we interacted. As we incorporated various musical and visual elements, we were able to more closely relate to our readers the experience we had, appealing powerfully to the sense of sight, as well as sound, in conjunction with text. Such development takes time, and requires effort. Rice denotes that writing is becoming more and more intellectually demanding, with the evolution of a new way of thinking. The blog, however, functions as an ideal means by which students are able to more comfortably become familiar with new means of expression and patterns of thinking that involve multiple modes and voices associated with the nature of online and academic writing.

Developing Freer Expression By Means of Trial and Error

Freer expression is obtained not only by the multiplicity of the blog, but also in its role as a democratic space that allows for risk-taking. While critics may view the blog’s unstable text and lack of legitimacy as detrimental, they overlook the blog’s capacity to serve as an interface that facilitates a need far more necessary for students than closure, which is already inherent in us as writers and can be adjusted to quickly. Text instability allows the student to become acquainted with the process of revision and correction. Furthermore, Cheryl C. Smith denotes that the role of error functions as a means by which students are able to “develop more authority as critics with valued opinions and voice and let go of some of their fear about making mistakes that can prevent the inexperienced writers from discovering and communicating their best arguments” (40). For Smith, the process of risk-taking allows students and teachers to “evolve a new view of what it means to learn to write – and write effectively – in academic settings”(41). As a platform that allows for freedom of expression and experimentation with voice and argument, the student is able to understand more fully the mechanics working behind authorship and develop an awareness of audience response and interactivity. As the student acquires an ability to cater to a specific audience, a sense of motivation to express more accurately arguments and thoughts allows the student to establish an identity as a writer within the public sphere – a common and necessary process in the professional world. 

Establishing an Identity as a Writer Within the Public Sphere

While the process of trial and error may at first become rather discouraging, the blog’s position within the public sphere counteracts any anxiety that can potentially paralyze student’s ability to write with a motivation to create something good for the public domain. In facilitating writing experimentation for the student, the blog becomes a medium by which the student is able to establish an identity as a public writer. I was able to witness this, firsthand, through my experience with blog writing in my advanced Humanities course at BYU. Among my classmates, I noticed that the students are more inclined to produce higher-quality writing when they knew other classmates, friends, and family members were reading it. I noticed in my classmate’s writing an increased independence and a stronger, more unique voice. In observing student’s progress as writers in the public sphere within the realm of the classroom, the effect of Yancey’s students was similar:

To write, to think together, to organize, and to act within these forums – largely without instruction and, more to the point here, largely without our instruction. They need neither self-assessment nor our assessment: they have a rhetorical situation, a purpose, a potentially worldwide audience, a choice of technology and medium – and they write. (36)
As students found their niche as public writers, the fear of error was replaced with incentive to successfully cater to an audience that extends far beyond an individual reading with the professor. In being exposed to the nature of the public domain, students are able to, as Klages puts it, gain a voice that, “enters the ongoing conversation to change, amend, intervene, extend, disrupt, or influence it” (42).
The ability to establish an identity as a public writer is a vital need in the professional world. A primary skill attached to the demands placed upon the public writer is an ability to effectively deal with the dynamic nature of modern text. Describing this as “process”, Harris urges that “to really change the teaching of writing, a view of process must go beyond the text to include a sense of the ongoing conversations that texts enter into – a sense, that is, of how writers draw on, respond to, and rework both their own previous writings and those of others” (68). Within the classroom, the blog allows students to become accustomed to this type of process. It was within my Humanities course that I witnessed the ways in which the blog facilitates this process of going beyond the text. As my classmates and I responded to, drew upon, and expanded one another’s reflections, we were able to more fully realize the strengths that such modes of writing can have within the public domain that could hardly have been possible by traditional means. The blog encouraged community and the output of ideas, which spurred a stronger need for identity, as writers. As our comments and responses allowed us to build off of one another, we were able to more fully gain motivation and confidence in our abilities to question text, develop arguments and ideas and form opinions. By the public nature of the blog, students are able to speak to a broad audience that may expose them to differing perspectives. In establishing a strong identity as a public writer, students will be familiar with a process applicable to a variety of specific tasks, and be prepared for a myriad of circumstances and demands within the professional world.  

To sum up the advantages of the blog as a teaching tool, the blog allows for familiarity with multiple voices and modes of rhetoric characteristic of digital literacy while also filling the need for as a democratic space that allows for risk-taking and freer expression, which encourages public writing and allows the student to develop a writing identity within that domain. In its different models and uses, a blog assignment could more than adequately replace assignments currently in place in most composition classes, but only when put into proper practice. A look at specific writing assignments in both formal composition classes and content–based classes will reveal how college composition teachers could effectively incorporate the blog into class writing projects to facilitate the development of superior modes of writing and learning.  

Developing Editing, Persuasive and Expository Skills in Formal Composition Classes

The blog is an innovative means by which professors can facilitate the development of strong writing skills for students. There are several approaches composition teachers could choose to take, depending upon the curriculum they intend to base the course upon. The blog has the potential to foster writing development on a broad range of topics, current or traditional, while simultaneously developing persuasive writing and expository writing skills, and/or basic grammatical and editing skills. In all cases, students would regularly keep blogs on issues related to the class. Topics could range in anything from the arts and humanities, to the social sciences or current events, with an emphasis on literature or even more specific domains based on student preference. Between each class period, students will respond to an online article from The New York Times, The Washington Post, the BBC, or the Guardian. Providing a link to the article, they will write brief reflections on their reaction to the article, relating it to overarching themes of the class (Klages 44). Students will be asked to comment on one another’s blogs on a weekly basis, encouraging one another to form conclusions about and articulate what they think makes good and bad persuasive or expository writing. Professors intending to teach persuasive or expository writing can choose to stress particular writing techniques involved with such writing styles. For instance, basic grammatical and editing skills can be developed through an online vetting process, in which students will edit one another’s work and respond to text already made public. Students will then meet in the classroom to discuss and explain one another’s responses, further solidifying their knowledge of basic grammar and editing rules. This procedure could apply to a both persuasive and expository writing.
While traditional techniques have been taught by a number of different means, the advantages of the blog in the development of persuasive or expository writing is that it functions as a public interactive domain that tangible products could hardly come close to achieving. Its multi-modal nature allows for a familiarity with the proper way to meld grammatical skills with the incorporation of various rhetorical devices (images, sound, video, ect.) that help students more fully persuade, or inform. Within formal composition classes, the blog offers controlled practice in the repetitive processes entailed in editing, critical analysis, delivery and composition. 

Developing Basic Familiarity in Content-Based Courses

In addition to its use in a formal composition class, the blog could be used within the content-based course with a focus on broad literary movements and traditions. While assignments within this course would similarly require regular writing on the blog on issues related to the class, the focus would shift from writing style to actual content, with a strong emphasis on narrative writing and broad literary movements. For instance, a professor teaching a Late British Literary History course would assign the students a written blog post on a particular author read and discussed in class and require students to relate it to the overall movement from which the author emerged, or even broader concepts studied in class. Additionally, students will be required to respond a given number of times to other student posts. This will motivate the student to more fully establish themselves as strong writers.

The potential benefits of this type of blogging assignment include an added awareness of traditional movements in context with modern ideology expressed on the blog, as well as an ability to react to other student’s opinions concerning broad themes and analysis of text. The benefits of both modes lead to a question concerning what the future of the blog will be in the classroom.

The Future of the Blog in the Classroom

It remains to be seen what the future of the blog is as a teaching tool in the classroom. I predict that current criticism against its use within the classroom will most likely cease to be valid, as there are ways to get around the concerns people have about the medium. Grammatical and critical thinking skills can be stressed and even better developed through the vetting process on the blog, and text legitimacy will cease to be a concern when online academic writing has become standard. Text instability will most likely continue to evolve and fulfill its potential to more powerfully shape modes of expression. Consistent with previous historical patterns and communication shifts, I feel that the blog will most likely cease to be seen as a threat to the development of basic analytical and grammatical skills, but rather a significant tool that allows the student to establish an identity as a public writer, work in a democratic space that allows for risk-taking and freer expression, and become familiar with multiple voices and modes of rhetoric characteristic of digital literacy. Thus, the blog functions as a writing space that prepares students to develop the skills necessary to handle the modern shift from traditional print literacy to digital literacy. It serves as a vital link between the development of basic analytical skills, and technological proficiency essential in this increasingly digital world. Not only is it able to bridge the gap between new and old modes of communication, but the blog functions as a medium by which students will be able to more fully and more readily lead the way into the digital future.

© 2008 by Secret Life of Daydreams. All rights reserved.
Works Cited

Dillon, Sam. In Test, Few Students Are Proficient Writers. New York Times. New York Times, 3 April 2008. Web. 5 April 2010.
Finklestein, David, and Alistair McCleery. An Introduction to Book History. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.
Harris, Joseph A. A Teaching Subject: Composition Since 1966. Upper Saddle: Prentice Hall, 1997. Print.
Jeff, Rice. “Networked Exchanges, Identity, Writing.” Journal of Business & Technical Communication 23.3 (2009): 294-317. Print.
Klages, Marisa A., and J. Elizabeth Clark. “New Worlds of Errors and Expectations: Basic Writers and Digital Assumption.” Journal of Basic Writing 28.1 (2009): 32-49. Print.
Palfrey, John, and Urs Gasser. Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. New York: Basic Books, 2008. Print.
Smith, Cheryl C. “Technologies for Transcending a Focus on Error: Blogs and Democratic Aspirations in First-Year Composition.” Journal of Basic Writing 27.1 (2008): 35-60. Print.
Winer, Dave. What Makes a Weblog a Weblog? Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. Weblogs at Harvard Law, 23 May 2003. Web. 11 April 2010.
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key.” College Composition and Communication 56.2 (2004): 297-328. Print.

Consulted

Bloch, Joel. “Abdullah’s Blogging: A Generation 1.5 Student Enters the Blogosphere.” Language Learning and Technology 2.2 (2007): 128-41. Print.
Bloch, Joel, and Cathryn Crosby. “Creating a Space for Virtual Democracy.” Essential Teacher 3.3 (2006): 38-41. Print.
Canagarajah, Suresh. “Toward a Writing Pedagogy of Shuttling between Languages: Learning from Multilingual Writers.” College English 68.1 (2006): 689-704. Print.
Danielewicz, Jane. "Personal Genres, Public Voices.” College Composition and Communication 59.3 (2008): 420-50. Print.
Elbow, Peter. “Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries.” College English 70.2 (2007): 168-88. Print.
Ferdig, Richard E., and Kaye D. Trammell. “Content Delivery in the Blogosphere.” T.H.E. Journal 31.7 (2004): 12-20. Print.
Graff, Gerald. Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind. New Haven: Yale UP, 2003. Print.
Gurak, L. J., and A.H. Duin. ”The Impact of the Internet and Digital Technologies on Teaching and Research.” Technical Communication Quarterly 13.1 (2004): 187-198. Print.
Jenkins, H. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. Print.
Law, John. After method: Mess in social science research. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print.
Liu, A. The laws of cool: Knowledge work and the culture of information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Print.
Pryor, Larry. “A Weblog Sharpens Journalism Students’ Skills.” Nieman Reports 57.3 (2003): 97-98. Print.
Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America’s Educationally Underprepared. New York: Penguin, 1989. Print.
Spinuzzi, C.  Guest editor’s introduction: Technical communication in the age of distributed work mobility and composition. Technical Communication Quarterly 16.1 (2007): 265-277. Print.
Striphas, Ted. The Late Age of Print. New York: Columbia UP, 2009. Print.
Sunil, Manghani. “Confessions of a Virtual Scholar, or Writing as Worldly Performance.” Journal of Writing in Creative Practice 2.2 (2009): 173-192. Print.

No comments:

Post a Comment