Ashley Humphries Fleckenstein Final Paper Due: May 1, 2014 Unveiling the Future of Composition Studies As Composition instructors, we know that the purpose of a writing course is to help our students expand their knowledge of genres and also inform their processes, their thinking, and their revisions through various types of feedback via the instructor and peers in the classroom. We aren’t “teaching "how to write in college’ [but instead, we are] teaching about writing” (emphasis ir original, Downs and Wardle 553). To be more fot ie specific, our field recognizes our purpose, at least as it's defined by universities or other external forces: to teach students how to compose for different divdiplines and the workforce, At risk of being obvious or reductive, we construct theory in order to figure out the best way to reach’ this goal. However, there is often a disconnect between theory and practice. This gap is the very one that Composition Studies will continue to bridge in the future. However, that isn't to say that we do not prepare our students for writing outside of our classrooms now, but there is a greater demand, a greater push (as seen through the wave of Writing Across the Curriculum programs and emphasis on transfer) for us to teach our students to perform in these spaces. But how to do it? In her article titled "Identity, Authority, and Learning to Write in New Workplaces,” Elizabeth Wardle argues that using collaboration in the classroom not only teaches students how to collaborate, but it also teaches them how to "learn{...] to write in and for new situations and workplaces [that/are] complex in ways that go far beyond texts andk Humphries 2 cognitive abilities." ae that students need to learn to see themselves and their work as a part ofa larger éntity}in other words, students must learn how to write with and for spaces and audiences with different identities than their own. They must learn to negotiate their own identity, performed through written discourse, with the identity that they are expected to have. As a result, they can gain authority, to which I'lladd etKos, or lose it if they cannot (Wardle). In order for our students to effectively engage with this skill, they first need to develop it by learning to negi ate various writing identities in our classrooms, so they will be more nimble when approaching newer academic or v9, professional discourse communities~different discourse cultures. Ultimately, this will — (8 thake sure that they do not lose authority either within their major or in their profession by pein unable to assimilate or change the nature of the discourse they are expected to perform According to Reither and Vipond, there are three different categories of w collaboration: peer editing (which Yancey and Spooner deem as workshopping), peer tutoring (Inowledge-making), and coauthoring (859; Yancey and Spooner 47), The future of Composition Studies must expand our acceptance and practice ofall kinds of | y>/..) - collaboration, especially coauthorship. (OSV 7% Like our students leaving our classrooms and out into other disciplines and workforces, we, as compositionists, must be willing to "negotiate various perspectives” and DY eappropriate some new ways of seeing and doing” (Wardle). The way to do this is to focus on written follaborative practices, meaning multiple authorship with singular texts, by using digital writing tools both in theory and practice, agit encompasses many writing contexts and cultures. Kenneth Bruffee writes that collaboration is symbiotically key toHumphries 3 acculturation (8-10), as learning for individuals can occur as a result of different cultures or communities rubbing against one another. Similarly. to Wardle's ideas, Bruffee also argues that collaboration leads to a deeper, more nuanced understanding, In this paper, | explore the various aspects of theory that first establishes a need for change of opinions /ideas/notions of written collaboration in the field. Then, I argue that written collaboration is important in the spaces that we are expected to teach our students to write for, how this relates back to the field's notions of collaboration, and thus authorship, and the signs that point to the future of collaboration both in theory and practice in our field: | written digital collaboration. ~ Jes no secret that theory informs (or at least usually intends to) practice, which then (re)informs theory. Like theory and practice, technology is symbiotically informed by culture, as Rik Hunter argues through Christina Haas. This is because "technological changes in tools can ‘transform the act of writing; the behaviors of writing; the form and of written textual genres; and the uses, function, and significance of writing ithin culture," and it is also "symbiotic" (Hunter), similarly, Yancey argues that echnology changes and informs writing and literacy practices (299). It can be helpful, then, ook at what other writing practices different cultures~the ones that our students are ted to perform in and the ones we're expected to prepare them for--value. Other fields inside and outside of the academy, such as the work force or spaces of participatory culture such as Wikis, haven't operated under the single author/genius delusion for quite some time, For example, the sciences are actually quite suspicious of | single authorship. Their field believes that the more eyes, the more specialities, Y nowledges, terministic screens, etc, the better. Scientific experiments and even their YP,t Humphries 4 papers are done in teams, sometimes spreading across disciplines. This is because someone in Biology can understand certain aspects of a project that a Chemist cannot, does not, or doesn't have time to; they collaborate in order to improve theproduct. Also, their 2 2 individual expertise can add ethos to the project and its circulation. As a field, Rhetoric and sleet uehat Q area Composition strives to emulate the sciences in other ways, especially with research methods. Quantifiable data, something typically associated with the sciences, is what is | hard-hitting for WPA work (Haswell 185), can be more highly valued in our publications | (Neal), and is valuable for writing program research (Hesse 145). If we strive to become ~“ more like the sciences in other aspects, then why wouldn't Rhetoric and Composition challenge our own assumptions of other aspects of our theory and practice as well? Why is the idea of authorship, both for ourselves and our students, any different? This writing culture influences us in other ways; why not this way? If our students do not know how to create cohesive, single documents with peers, as they need to do in other fields, and we do hot teach them in our classes, they will be ata disadvantage. Similarly, writing in the workforce is overwhelmingly collaborative. Employees aren't encouraged to reinvent the wheel, butrather, they are asked to begin writing by using boilerplate and add, tweak, or change as needed. Boilerplate is any amount of text that has been used or circulated before within or for the company. For example, credit card denial letters aren't written anew each time; they use some boilerplate, perhaps an introduction and conclusion, and the reasons for denial are tailored to the recipient. The , "writing that people in the workforce do is also commonly done in writing teams or committees, with various reviewers on different levels of management. Most of this is transmitted, written, and edited digitally, even using synchronous tools like Google Docs or |Humphries 5 PiratePad. In this coauthored collaboration "..two or more people work{...] together to produce one written document ina situation which a group takes [equal] responsibility in {for having produced the document" (emphasis added, Bosley, qtd in Yancey and Spooner 47), rewwespreparingoursstudents:toxcreate:thesekindsioftextsand accept this Kind OF bray Despite what we practice, many scholars in Rhetoric and Composition have talked about the status of the author and authorship as being tenuously unfair, Perhaps most famously is Roland Barthes in "Death of the Author" in which he suggests that our words Delong or have belonged to others before us; in other words, well, our words are not our own. Andrea Lunsford tends to agree about the “current impossibility of ‘owning’ language” (539). Johndan Johnson-Eilola, in talking about symbol-analytics, created the last chapter of his book Datacloud entirely from quotations from other's work in order to create something new; this has the same implications of Lunsford and Barthes. Rik Hunter also argues that "the social constructionist perspective holds that language and ideas, and indeed the writer, are shaped by external social forces, and thus absolute authorship of any given piece of writing is impossible" (42). Despite the idea that we cannot own or author our own language anymore, which is admittedly Mee ie our field still holds on to traditional, romantic notions of authorship in practice—the single author struggles alone in a dark room, preferably with a strong beverage and a deeper understanding of the human condition. He, as this person is typically a “he,” generates completely new and compelling ideas alone. This idea of single,Humphries 6 original, genius authorship is sought after in the composition classroom as students must create original, genius texts; this has been changing in more process-oriented classes. | However, in our own scholarship, we openly and aggressively value single authorship, "despite the naturally collaborative processes we use to get published. Yancey and Spooner agree: "Accounts of the [collaborative writing] process are important also because, at the same time composition teachers and scholars are promoting collaboration inside the classroom and out, our academic institutional structures continue to punish it as a dishonorable ‘giving or receiving help.’ Our ways of handing out grades, or promotion and tenure, are not informed by our best thinking on writerly collaboration. And this may be only alittle less true for publishing scholars than it is for students" (46). Unfortunately, this hasn't changed much in the 16 years since this article was or! ally written, With all the research and influence from technology and different cultures, one might assume that multiple authorship would make a greater appearance in composition journals, but, largely, it has not. For example, a newer rhetoric journal named Present Tense only has 7 collaboratively written articles in the history of the journal, about three and a half years. Most texts in our field aren't collaboratively coauthored, but that isn't to say that we aren't seeing improvement; in fact, we are slowly seeing changes in the right direction. For example, there are several writing ¢6-ops like the New London Group or the Multimodal ( Assessment Project (MAP) Group. Other scholars prefer to work consistently and collaboratively with their colleagues or friends such as Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede, whoHumphries 7 collaboratively wrote a book on collaboration called Writing Together: Collaboration in Theory and Practice. Or perhaps Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Self are a better example of how the field is beginning to value coauthorshi in our scholarship. Recently, they jointly won the Rxemplar‘Aveard at CCCCa2014:fortheit ealldhorative works @” My argument, however, is not that we don't teach our students to collaborate, as we have had a recent history of doing so. Composition instructors ask their students to brainstorm and workshop their papers with one another. This encourages collective intelligence and the free exchange of ideas. Knowledge-making collaboration is one form that the field seems to accept whole-heartedly, However, "[I]ess common yet valued in composition studies is the collaborative writing assignment, in which student work together from start to finish, producing a single paper from the group. [..] Yet so firm a grip does the solitary author have on modern representations of writing that collaboration is sometimes perceived as plagiarism--as cheating" (Meere-Howard 55). However, the field must let go of the solitary author and move toward coauthorship. We must do this for several reasons, but one reason is that our students, once they are no longer ours, will need to know how to work collaboratively in the workforce on a number of tasks, including writing, In the very least, we must make this change in our pedagogy in order to benefit and prepare our students. As previously mentioned, in order to make this mental shift in favor of coauthorship, we must use digital writing tools that ease the transition, forms of synchronous collaboration as opposed to asynchronous. Synchronous tools streamline the process of collaboration and encourage multiple authorship with the creation of single products. A Google Doc, for example, is able to be edited simultaneously and instantly, creating a singleHumphries 8 product. If we use technology that promotes a certain idea (coauthorship), it will be easier to both achieve the idea and change our notions of what constitutes legitimate authorship. However, this written digital collaboration isn’t necessarily just more collaboration; itis a different kind of collaboration. A newer genre, a mediation of both our ideas about (co)authorship and various culture's desires to do so, the wiki, is an incredibly important aspect of digital collaborative writing-one that embodies the future of composition studies: "[Whikis erase signs of authorship. The design of the wiki software plays a role in this, Additionally, text on WoWWiki is by its very nature not just communal property, but also public property of a sort, whereas according to Spigelman, individual writers in successful face-to-face writing groups must strike a balance between maintaining and giving control over their writing. [..] In addition, articles can also be edited by anyone at any time. [..] Texts are, in effect, never the property of any one person or even a community." (Hunter 45-56) This kind of writing is similar to the kinds of writing that we need to prepare our students to do both in other disciplines and in the workforce. The product, never final but always growing or transforming, is seamless and has no single author, but instead has many authors with parts that are not identifiable from any one person. In creating these documents, writers pull on different levels of expertise in order to create a more polished whole. In other words, the future of composition and Composition Studies is a partial loss of ownership. Hunter, drawing on the work of Spigelman, argues that "for writing groups to function-and hence for writers to write-they must be committed to both public and private notions of ownership" (Spigelman, qtd in Hunter 42). In other words, writers of Wikis, andperhaps other collaboratively written texts, need to accept that they own text, yet they do not own it--as other writers have the ability to edit, build on, or even delete their text(s). Hunter also argues, still drawing on Spigelman, that "[w]riters in voluntary writing groups [..] understand that in the peer review process a writer must accept giving up 'a measure’ j y Humphries 9 of control to readers (p.2) whose readings and responses will contribute to the ongoing formation of a text" (Spigelman, qtd in Hunter 42). Hunter recognizes this as a" contract” (42). While the field and our students are learning to collaborate better and/or _ differently, the kinds of texts needing to be produced during this digital revolution is changing, We need to begin composing for webtexts. While I'm not arguing for students to become composers, to then become coders here, I am arguing that students need to be (prepared to coauthor texts that rely on multiple and varying abilities or expertise, just as f composers in the sciences do. Rhetoric and Composition is seeing this right now with the all-digital journal, Kairos. Articles seem to be collaborative in that there are different types of composers. Some articles are credited with several authors; however, they are categorized--this person created the coding, that person designed the visuals, and another wrote the piece.“ ! fas Kathleen Blake Yancey argues in “Made Not Only in Words” that we must keep up with the effects of the digital revolution or risk becoming obsolete. And, indeed, Yancey had a point. With the introduction of numerous collaborative tools, access to information about how others are collaborating, and the demand for various expertise(s)s, the digital revolution gives us an opportunity to reconsider and alter our ideas about what constitutes legitimate authorship; the digital revolution and its tools could potentially validateHumphries 10 coauthorship collaboration even more than it already is in the field. 1 emphasize the nature of the digital turn because it has changed our writing and literacy practices and will continue to do so. It is changing the way that we value and see authorship via collaboration, as other cultures have informed technology, and the use of this technology can further change our writing culture, which in turn changes the technology again. imontier fo retain relevant, we need to bring collaboration-and multiple authorship to the forefront in our classrooms and in our scholarly pursuits--in theory and our publishing practice. We need to teach our students to pull on their expertise and other's in order to compose texts that they would have never been able to do alone. Digital collaboration is the future of composition studies--not because we have a choice, but because we do not.Humphries 11 Works Cited Bruffee, Kenneth. Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge, 2nd ed. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. EBSCOhost. eBook. Downs and Elizabeth Wardle. "Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning "First-Year Composition’ as ‘Introduction to Writing Studies." College Composition and Communication 58.4 (2007): 522-84, PDF. Haswell, Richard H. "Quanitative Methods in Composition Studies: An Introduction to Their Functionality." Eds. Lee Nickoson and Mary P. Sherdian, Writing Studies Research In Practice: Methods and Methodologies. Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. Print, Hesse, Douglas. "Wr Mary P. 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