Collaborative Discourse(s) -- Virtual Voices Deaf to the Rules of Composition
By Cheryl Greene

Interaction: Collaborative Writing Practices in the Virtual World

Virtual Invention

Collaborative Discourse(s)

Sources

 

The beauty of the digital, beauty caught on the froth of the daydream, is always social: it belongs to the sociality of the human-machine interface, the new community of the cyborg planet.

--Sean Cubitt

What happens when we enter into an on-line group discussion? How do our notions of language and community shape the ways we engage each other? What do our posts signify? Are we able to build a text together - and what does this new text look like? In what ways is collaboration encouraged and rewarded? Do some types of students contribute more than others? I have decided to begin with these questions or contemplations because they are the residue from my experience in Dr. Patricia Webb's on-line graduate seminar Writing in the Virtual Age. What does an on-line class look like? When we sign up for a class we usually imagine a building with a room, a physical space with four walls and a door, in which the course will be taught. But what do we imagine when we sign up for an on-line class? Do we picture our computer or laptop at home and see the screen glowing with a Blackboard site that contains the professor's name and the course title? Which image appears more friendly to us the first one or the second one? Which space do we imagine first as an effective environment in which to create a learning community? This paper is meant to be a compilation of voices geared towards reimagining our traditional learning environments and creating new spaces for the teaching of writing.

What interests me is how on-line writing courses can be a powerful tool for creating, as well as studying and understanding, collaborative writing. Dr. Webb's course WVA allowed me to experience the multiple ways writing contributes to an on-line course. Her syllabus and the assignments on Blackboard, as well as the discussion board on Webboard provided a frame, but the real content of the course was created during our synchronous, and asynchronous discussions with each other, as well as with the three professional experts that participated in our on-line conversations.

I think students' experiences differed in this 'conversational' on-line space because of their ideological notions of the role of collaboration in writing practices. Those students who see writing more as an individual journey would be more likely to resist the set-up of WVA, because the course has a very fluid and interactive design that looks at writing more as a social practice. Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford have classified collaboration as 'praxis' in two different ways. The category that I will refer to is when collaboration in writing is viewed as 'dialogic.' Thus it is "a more loose, fluid mode of collaborative writing, one that focused more on the process of collaboration rather than the end products, one that emphasized dialogue and exploration rather than efficiency and closure" (67). Ede and Lunsford's description of collaboration shows how the on-line course can be a 'dialogical' space where the process of creating the course is shared by the students and professors - and they create multi-authored writing(s). Going back over the course and rereading the synchronous and asynchronous discussions on Webboard, we can see how the course took on a unique shape that reflects the various students' and professor's experiences, knowledges, and writing practices. I would argue that what we need to do is work on how to read collaborative writing in an on-line environment, so that we can have a clearer understanding of how collaboration serves our purposes as writing instructors.

 

Interaction and Collaborative Writing Practices [top]

The academy has yet to figure out a way to build collaboration into the fabric of the work--and faculty are expected to author things individually, at least in the humanities. Nowhere else in the world works that way anymore. Students are often taught obsolete models of authorship as individual genius--unless you plan to publish novels, you need a more collaborative model!

--Michael Greer

The following discussion is excerpted from an asynchronous conversation in WebBoard with one of the professionals who was invited to participate as an "expert" in a particular on-line field. Since the professor did not participate in these discussions, it was up to the students and the professional to "collaborate," by asking questions and engaging in a conversation about the readings for the course. Although there were several individuals who participated in this discussion, the dialog is formatted similar to a conversation between two individual speakers. I am encouraging readers to look beyond the traditional view of a text that bows to the rules of composition, and to see “pluralist texts/collaborated authors” (Vielstimmig 97).

 

What do you see as the strengths of the way each side conducts itself in the area of publishing? Does an online journal like Kairos show that the academy has innovative and creative models in place that merely need to be followed?

 

  
 

It's one of the longest running and most influential online hypertext journals in the field of comp scholarship, as far as I know. An editor in a commercial publishing house would want to ask these questions: who reads this? How big is the audience/market? What kind of business model would allow us to make this work economically?

 
 

How many journals and publications do you think are truly online as opposed to those that are both online and in print? Also, how do you feel about Sosteric's insistence (in his article we read for class, "Electronic Journals: The Grand Information Future?") that there is no real need for marketing for electronic/online journals since there are search engines out there to lead you to them?

 

  
 

One question, however, I can answer firmly--Sosteric is naive in the extreme to suggest that online publications do not need to market or promote themselves. Search engines are themselves often influenced by ad-buying power anyway, and many folks do not know how to use them effectively. Most people go to AOL or Yahoo and link from the top page only. There are many excellent online publications that simply don't get noticed. Even the best webzines often have little more than a cult following. Everyone has learned the hard way in the past year that the old rules of economic gravity still apply in an online environment. You need to build a great site, and you need to promote the heck out of it. In the world of commercial magazine publishing, it is said that only one of five new magazines survives beyond the first year. I suspect that ratio is even lower in the online world.

 

  
 

One question everyone still wrestles with is about what medium is best: how do you decide what to print in a book, versus put on a DVD, versus put on a web site? How do those media reflect and enhance different kinds of forms, genres, and messages? Many "e-books" for example are really just printed books delivered electronically (via adobe acrobat). The medium is still the same in essence as paper. Static. We are at the very tip of the iceberg in terms of the technologies of engagement and interface with different kinds of multimedia experiences.

 

  
 

Perhaps it's our definition about what a book is that needs to change. When you speak of interactivity, I immediately think of children's books with pop-up pages, and other touchy-feely features. Since we are so used to the idea of books and information being presented in certain formats, perhaps it's a matter of time -- when the next generation (those who grow up with the internet and elaborate video-games with superb interactivity) devise different forms.

 
 

I have something from a Frida Khalo exhibit some time ago -- anyway it is like a book, but it opens up like a chest with a small book inside and postcards and it is decorated with charms and ribbon. Is this the kind of stuff you're talking about?

 

  
 

Actually the idea of pop-up and 3-D print books had not occurred to me. It's an interesting way to think about "interactivity" in an analog way, as opposed to a digital or electronic way. I was originally trying to explore the conventional wisdom that says large commercial publishers tend to be conservative in their editorial choices because they are too concerned about sales. There's a good bit of truth in that argument, but there are counter-examples out there as well, I think. Often a counter-cultural innovative text, like, say MONDO 2000, will be re-appropriated and turned into a more mainstream publication, say WIRED magazine. This same process of cultural re-appropriation happens all the time in music: consider the commercial success of rap and hip-hop, which remain nonetheless aggressively counter to mainstream America.

 

Virtual Invention [top]

Informal associations between people play a significant role in enabling creative thinking. Perhaps it is misleading to refer to these as part of a ‘social context,’ if the term implies that such relationships are merely a background in which creative acts of individuals occur. The varied types of collaborations – loose or structured, in pairs or groups, lasting for minutes or years – deserve recognition as an integral part of invention.

--Karen Burke Le Fevre Invention as a Social Act

On-line course discussions offer writing instructors a chance to shift classroom dynamics. In Dr. Webb's WVA graduate seminar, students had the opportunity to collaborate with each other as well as with other "experts/professionals." In these spaces, we contributed to the course's content and direction. The only constraints were time and a minimum amount of participation that was required of each one of us. I valued these discussions because I felt that there was always an opportunity to push the conversation in new directions. In this way, our weekly (a)synchronous discussions in WebBoard had a different character from the expert discussions.

"Collaboration ... heightens the sense of connection among collaborators: the individual disintegrates as the writing group integrates" (Vielstimmig 95). In our expert discussions the class members would band together often unknowingly. Many of our talks centered around a comparision of our experiences in the academy versus the private sector. In the discussion I incorporated excerpts from, the conversation immediately centered on a comparison of academic on-line journals like Kairos to other e-zines and journals. Students were always curious about how the private publishing, and editing worlds viewed the kind of work we do in the university. "Does an online journal like Kairos show that the academy has innovative and creative models in place that merely need to be followed?" This question is important because it demonstrates how the graduate students in our seminar were interested in discovering/inventing models for and with publications like Kairos. This links to another comment further down the discussion, "Perhaps it's a matter of time - when the next generation (those who grow up with the internet and elaborate video-games with superb interactivity) devise different forms." Unknowingly, the dialogue followed our common concerns as graduate students and future faculty and professionals. We shared our doubts about what technology can do for us, and reflected on the best ways to utilize these tools for the future. Frequently, we would bring up points about our frustrations with the academic models - and asked questions about how the private sector worked differently.

>I once taught a writing course

>at Georgia Tech that used Sim

>City as a central text and

>learning tool. Many city

>governments use it, and I have

>seen several urban planning

>grad programs do so as well. I

>love the idea of simulations

>or virtual environments as

>learning spaces. That

>potential has yet to really be

>tapped into. What are you

>waiting for? (wink)

Here, the expert is egging the students on to implement some of the ideas that have been tossed around. This scenario acknowledges a very fluid power dynamic at work in WVA - for the professional has become a mentor to the students. Needless to say, the collaboration gave us an opportunity to connect with the world outside the academy and to get a "feel" for alternative ways to use our skills.

 

Collaborative Discourse(s) [top]

The tone of the expert discussions differed from our weekly class meetings on-line, where students appeared more concerned with fulfilling course objectives and receiving recognition from the professor. Additionally, the small group discussions had their own flavors. I know that my group preferred to use Blackboard and use the chat format in real time. These were rapid discussions where we could really riff off each other's words and ideas. In each space within the on-line class, we co-created unique texts. In Vielstimmig's piece "Petals on a Wet Black Bough" they suggest the idea of "pluralistic texts/collaborated authors" (97). The article points out that "like collaboration... the digital venue welcomes collective personae" (97). I purposely removed any identifiers of individual authors in the excerpt that I provided in this paper, for my goal is to erase the need to see the authoring as a result of individual contribution. If we focus on the variety of texts that co-collaborators can produce and the fact that knowledge is produced socially - then students will see the value of their collaborative effort.

The very fact that Teryl, Zachary and I felt comfortable in approaching our professor and asked her to become our co-conspirator is revealing. I have shown you the narrative of our on-line discussions -- the artifact of our experience together on-line - with the hopes that you will imagine yourselves to be part of yet another collaborative effort. How can our changing notions of language and community in on-line environments continue to shape the way we engage each other?

 

Sources [top]

Cubitt, Sean. "Cybertime: Towards an Aesthetics of Mutation and Evolution." in Penny Florence and Nicola Foster eds. Differential Aesthetics: Art practices, philosophy and feminist understandings. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000.

Ede, Lisa, and Andrea Lunsford. Singular Texts/ Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990.

Lax, Stephen. "Information, Education and Inequality: Is New Technology the Solution?" in Stephen Lax ed. Access Denied in the Information Age. New York: Palgrave, 2001

Le Fevre, Karen Burke. Invention as a Social Act. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.

Jones, Stephen G. Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety. London: Sage Publications, 1997.

Scholder, Amy. Interaction: Artistic Practice in the Network. New York: Eyebeam/Atelier, 2001.

Vietstimmig, Myka. "Petals on a Wet Black Bough: Textuality Collaboration and the New Essay." in Passions, Pedagogies and Twenty-first Century Pedagogies. eds. Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe. Logan: Utah State University Press; Urbana, Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English, 1999.

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