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Articles Conference Reviews |
G.25 Theorizing Wiki UseG.25 Theorizing Wiki Use in the Composition Classroom I’m an instructor who uses wikis in the classroom regularly and who has written about pedagogical use of wikis; thus, I was particularly interested in attending this session on theorizing wiki use in the composition classroom. Kerry Dirk began the session with her presentation on “Teacher Authority and the Wiki,” arguing that the field of composition has taken steps to reconfigure the classroom and remove as much teacher-authority as possible. Turning her attention to wikis in particular, Dirk noted that while wikis might play with teacher-authority, we must be critical about them before introducing them to the classroom, echoing Cindy Selfe and Gail Hawisher’s call. In looking at the existing literature on wikis, Dirk asserted that most of the scholarship is exploratory, not theoretical, and unabashedly optimistic. This is where I would disagree with the presenter; certainly one can use particular technologies in the classroom and still be critical of them—adoption does not necessarily indicate unabashed optimism, and much of the theoretical work on wikis collected in books like Wiki Writing balances positive and negative aspects of their use. Dirk closed her presentation by turning to Foucault’s Panopticon as applied to wikis; removing teacher-authority is impossible, she argued, and wikis can be carefully monitored, stifling spaces. To be more productive, wikis need to have explicit instructions in using wikis; the students need to have rhetorical choices while in the wiki and need to be able to make connections beyond the classroom. “As long as we are working within an institution,” Dirk ended, “we are still in charge.” Allison D. Carr next presented on “Public Writing Practices as Disruptive Pedagogy.” Focusing on her own experiences bringing wikis into the classroom, Carr shared how she expected something transformative would happen when her students began writing in wikis—that they would enter a public sphere and people would comment on their writing freely and in intriguing ways. Instead, students didn’t feel publicly exposed—their writing seemed really no different than usual; it just happened to be on a wiki. (Certainly all of us who incorporate technology into our classrooms can identify with that initial feeling of hope—“This will be the one that really works!”) Carr used Pratt’s concept of the “contact zone” and Habermas’ idea of the “public sphere” to ground her discussion of relationships and public writing in wikis, asserting that there is often a troublesome division between public and private writing, with the former being privileged. Instead of simply pushing public writing, we can recast students’ work into something fit for public consumption, consider how to encourage students’ motivation to join a writing community, and reinterpret the idea of a “public” as something that moves beyond a binary and does not necessarily need to be literally public or does not necessarily have to be available online. Kelly Goad of Virginia Tech was unable to present, so there was ample time for questions and answers during the discussion portion of the presentation. I’ll leave the readers of this review with one of the more interesting questions I heard during the Q-and-A—think about how you yourself might respond. Is a wiki really a wiki if it is just in the classroom and no one beyond the classroom reads it? In other words, what makes a wiki a wiki? |