Hypertext and Its Usefulness

To respond to this critique of the use of hypertext in a composition course (a critique which I find powerful and important to answer if I plan to continue studying hypertext as part of a composition curriculum), I think we need to turn to the fourth question: What can colleges do to prepare students to interact better with hypertext systems? The point of teaching from a rhetorical perspective instead of a compositional perspective is that choices about what values and cultural content will be addressed in the classroom “are not made on the basis of the instructor's sole personal preference. Rather, they are guided by what the instructor's scholarly research can tell her or him about the values and cultures that are important in our society” (Bizzell). At this moment in time, what does my “scholarly research,” my knowledge about hypertext tell me about “the values and cultures that are important in our society?”

To limit the field for just a moment:

• What does my knowledge of computers tell me about the values and the uses of hypertext in society?
• Hypertext shapes the WWW; how does this change patterns of research?
• As researchers and as potential designers of hypertext documents, shouldn't students consider these questions?
• Although the WWW makes research very convenient, there is a clear tension with the potential for the researcher to get lost in unnecessary information. What do students think about this issue? Does our developing understanding of hypertext help them think about how to be more effective researchers?
• What value does this knowledge have in terms of society and culture?
• Does an understanding of hypertext prepare students to be more active members of society?
• Does it create the ability for them to play a more engaged role in the shaping of culture? in the structuring of knowledge?

The answers to these questions are open; they wait upon interactions among students, instructors, webpage designers, and librarians. Asking students these questions allows society, not the instructor, to set the agenda. Bizzell reminds us that “if the teacher knows that these choices [about the values and cultural content that will be addressed in the classroom] can be justified only thus, communally, then involving students in making them becomes not just a gesture of good will, but a pedagogical necessity. The students become the front-line representatives of society in the classroom, helping to establish its discursive norms with which they hope to become more fluent, with the aid of the instructor.”

If this is the case, then we must decide if the study of hypertext increases the amount of discussion about “the values and cultures that are important in our society” or if it is primarily a playing with words that does not count, that does not develop students' abilities as writers.

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