| Randy M. Brooks, Ph.D. Millikin University |
Summer Seminar in Rhetoric & Composition
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The web presents new approaches and challenges for teachers of writing. How do we actively participate in the creation of new conventions and assumptions about using the web for research, for reading, for critical awareness, and for writing?
Does this emerging rhetoric of hypertext change the way we think? Does it change assumptions about reading? What happens to traditional methods of establishing focus and achieving unity in a writing? Are transitions and paragraphs no longer essential elements?
In this workshop, we will examine the emerging rhetoric of hypertext and its role in the writing classroom. We will begin by discussing what hypertext is and how it assumes a new reading process. Then we will consider the resistance to hypertext in the Freshman writing classroom which continues to emphasize the prototypical essay and manuscript production conventions. The we consider David Bolter's notion of writing as a technology, especially the hard and soft structures of hypertext writing. We will conclude by learning how to become critical readers of web sites and by considering possibilities for student publishing projects.
What is Hypertext?, The Hypermedia Reading Experience, Freshman Writing & Hypertext
Hard & Soft Structures of Hypertext, Becoming Critical Readers of Web Sites, Student Publishing
Myths and experiential definitions of hypertext?
- nonlinear?
- shallow tidbits without significant substance?
Experimental hypertext may emphasize hypertextual links over comprehension. See Bolter's hypertext version of Writing Space. It is this kind of extreme form of hypertext that Birkerts seems most worried about.
But consider this more typical sample web site for our analysis of characteristics of hypertext features.
Common features or characteristics?
Multiplicity of linked texts and graphics and presented together as a coherent whole?
The range of hypertext (suddenly the more appropriate word is hypermedia)?
More dynamic than traditional texts?
What's hyper about hypertext?
How is hypertext different from traditional texts?
- Presentation media?
- Production assumptions?
- Interaction process?
- Modularity or chunking of information?
- Integration of graphics and other media?
Is a web site a form of communal or collaborative publishing? Does it constitute a discourse community?
Halfway Hypertext:
Transitional online documents--publications and writings posted in an hypertext environment, such as the web, without being designed as hypertexts. Compare a traditional vita with a web vita that has been "hypertextualized."Consider this traditional essay versus the hypertext on the modularity of hypermedia. Significant changes? No, but this is merely a traditional document slightly "hypertextualized" for easier navigation.
Designed As Hypertext:
Here is an example of a publication designed as a hypertext publication. Consider how the publication opens, maintains orientation throughout, provides navigation cues, and allows the reader to control the experience.
From start to finish? Beginnings and conclusions? Content, data, details and meta-text? How do readers begin and when are they done with a hypermedia text?
Consider the hypermedia our children are growing up with such as Living Books CDs:
- integrates music and animation throughout (establishes an atmosphere and tone for experience)
- provides a friendly guide (Barney, Little Critter, etc. . . often a participant in the CD)
- allows the child to control the experience--for example, choosing to read (linear narrator) or to play (explore possibilities)
- includes incredible forgiveness features and prompts when the child is stuck
- assumes a curiosity or exploratory sense in the child
A new implicit social contract for information exchange:
The intertextuality of the web--beg, borrow or steal resources. Obtaining graphics or web pages is as simple as holding down the mouse button. But do we know how to cite sources yet?
Freshman writing pedagogy and teachers remain resistant to teaching hypertext as part of the writing course experience. Perhaps this is merely from a lack of technical knowledge and experience of hypertext production. In the essay and hypertext on the modularity of text in hypermedia, I argue for teachers to make room in the Freshman experience for hypertext production.
Prototypical Freshman Essay The modules of this prototypical essay include:
Optional modules include footnotes, end notes, and tables or graphs in research or business reports. The underlying assumption of these modules is that the reader is going to read the essay from start to finish, so the basic process of navigation is to process each module when you get to it. The scrolling interface of most word processing programs reinforces this assumption that readers begin and continue through the entire discourse. |
Hypertext Web Site The common modules of a web site include:
The underlying assumption of these modules is that the reader is going to structure their own reading experience and go to only a few pages. The interaction model is to go out to a page, then on to another page or back to the home page to venture out again, until the reader takes a link to another web site. |
In chapter three of David Bolter's book, Writing Space, he presents a brief overview of the the history of writing as a technology. He claims that "Writing is a technology for collective memory, for preserving and passing on human experience . . . it obviously enhances the human capacity for social organization--by providing a culture with fixed laws, with a history, and with a literary tradition. Writing is and has always been a sophisticated technology: skill is required to learn to read and write" (p. 33).
Bolter revisits the Greek concept of a "techne" as a "set of rules, system or method of making or doing" and emphasizes the point that writing as a technology has always required a combination of physical space and mental space--hard technology for assembling symbols onto some method of storage outside of the human mind, and soft technology of strategies (rhetorics) for turning thoughts into symbolic representation. The mind and the hand "shape a writing space by filling it with visual signs" (p. 37).
Hard Structures of Writing The hard structures of early writing:
The invention of printing:
The age of the typewriter changes hard structures:
Hypertexual electronic writing hard structures:
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Soft Structures of Writing The soft structures of early writing:
The invention of printing:
The age of the typewriter changes soft structures:
Hypertexual electronic writing soft structures:
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The hard structures of electronic writing have become more complicated and interdependent upon an entire network and industry of computers and computer experts. Whereas the priesthood of writing used to control the soft structures of writing (what to say and how to read and write), now we have a priesthood of computer builders and software interface designers. Fortunately the software developers have made it much easier to use this complex technology, so that the primary focus of writers can be on the soft structures--creating emphases, integrating text and graphics, building modules of information and creating links to help readers quickly find whatever it is they seek.
Students need to learn how to become critical readers of web sites, just as we have always taught them to carefully consider all sources of information. How can you check the credibility of a web site? How do you read the subtle clues of sponsorship? How can you tell who is hosting the web site? Where is the server you are connected to?
I will refer you to an excellent workshop on teaching this evaluation process at INTERNET Sources QUALITY CONTROL Workshop which was developed by Carolyn Sheehy for the Associated Colleges of Illinois faculty development workshop last summer.
Here are some examples of publishing projects: