Rhetoric and Technology – ENC 6421

Week 4: Pedagogy lens f2f – Prompt 2

I believe the use of class time to teach students how to use communications technologies is justifiable whenever the knowledge of those technologies is integral to the curriculum and/or will result in improvements in the writing methods available to students.  As illustrated in Dr. Moxley’s article on the technology implemented by the writing program in order to facilitate collaboration among first-year composition teachers, while there can be some resistance to the implementation of new technologies, often the technologies, once embraced by the users, produce benefits arguably worth the hassle of initial complications.  Moxley mentions that the technology used in the composition program allowed for improvement of the writing curriculum as well as development of countless resources for instructors and students.  Mauriello, Pagnucci, and Winner’s article also illustrates the way in which technology can provide beneficial features for the students.  This article argues that “the benefits of Web writing seemed to outweigh the problems” (413).  They point out that publication of student writing on the web boosted the students’ “self-esteem as writers” and increased the students’ sense of “ownership” of their writing (413), as well as addressing issues of “voice, audience, and purpose” in a new way (411). 

However, as both Moxley and Mauriello’s articles describe, the benefit of using technology must be weighed against the cost of sacrificing valuable in-class time in order to instruct students (and additional time to instruct faculty) on the features of the technology and how to use it.  Both Moxley and Mauriello mention that there is a danger of discouragement – that frustration with learning the technology can lead to an apathy toward that which the technology is intended to facilitate, whether that be student writing or teacher-authored content.  As Moxley states at the conclusion of his article, the overall beneficial result of technology implementation depends largely on “how much time” can be spent to prepare it and to train people to use it.  The Mauriello article argues that the writing benefits of technology in the classroom are well worth the cost, however, they admit that they are “deeply disturbed by the displacement of other writing work caused by teaching HTML as part of a composition course” (416).   A balance must be found between the benefits of the technology (the end result) and the amount of time which can be afforded to instruct students to use that technology.  Mauriello’s article suggests that some composition classes be specifically web-based, so as to allow for students to make their own choice as to whether they participate in a technology-heavy curriculum or not (417).  Perhaps another answer would be to offer out-of-class training sessions for students to master the necessary technology.  However, that also requires extra time commitment from both teachers and students, and time is in short supply.    The fact remains that if the curriculum necessitates the use of technology to facilitate learning, then some in-class time will inevitably need to be devoted to teaching students to use those technologies; the question is whether the technologies being used provide benefits great enough to justify the use of class time for training. 

–C.Crawford