Web Rhetorics

Workshop
Computers & Writing 2011

Kristen Moore &

Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder
Agenda:

I. Overview of a Web Rhetorics Approach

a. Our rationale: a heuristic and a
heuretic
b. Brainstorming Session: on
Networked Thinking
II. Institutional Assessment
III. Building a Web Rhetorics
Assignment
a. Choose an Assignment
b. Work on activities based on
heuristic and local constraints
IV. Sharing Session – online or in
person

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Networked Thinking:
Without getting into the specific kinds of websites and technologies employed, can we identify
some features intrinsic to a “Web 2.0” logic? It may help to consider how Web 2.0 is supposedly
different from Web 1.0, or it may help to think of the practices in which our students are often
involved.

What are the challenges and benefits to developing a implementing a web rhetorics pedagogy?
(that is, a pedagogy that focuses on engaging our students in the logics of a Web 2.0 world.)
What challenges to these implementations have you seen, heard, or read about?

As teachers, we have been looking for a pedagogy that’s constructed around Web 2.0
frameworks that is not securely linked to Web 2.0 technologies. In other words, the web
rhetorics pedagogy we develop here hinges on the logic of Web 2.0. We use “web rhetorics” to
acknowledge the need for a pedagogy that integrates digital literacies, ideological analysis, and
production, but shies away from the focus on specific technologies, one mode of composing,
and/or a linear model of thinking and teaching. We think such a pedagogy is more sustainable
than those that dance with “in-the-moment” technologies, sometimes (not always) ignoring the
principles upon which the technologies have been developed. A Web Rhetorics pedagogy helps
students engage with the mentalité of Web 2.0 but can be utilized through a wide range of
technologies – or virtually no digital technologies at all.

Web Rhetorics Heuretic:

Heuretics is the logic (or drive) underlying heuristics that takes theory as a starting point for
invention, or as Gregory Ulmer claims, it asks, “based on a given theory, how might another text
be composed?” (p. 5).

Heidegger explains that “the essence of technology is by no means anything technological” –

which is to say that technology is not bound by its material forms – and we mistake the essence
of technology if we only see it as bits, bytes, hard drive space, monitors, and so forth.
Technology is defined by its ability to enable different encounters with our environments. Simply
put, we find the essence of technology in nothing explicitly technological, but instead in the
multiple ways that technologies order, represent, and provide forms of structure, however
intense, for the technologies we encounter. If we take Heidegger’s point to heart, then one
objective a Web Rhetorics pedagogy must be to encourage students to see the ways in which
technology creates worlds for them.

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Web Rhetorics Heuristic:
Web Rhetorics Composing Practices Classroom Applications
Materiality Medium is seen as constitutive; Students create using a number of
Things are not things. materials; students reflect on
technologies/applications with which
they write; students consider, write
(about) and compose (about) artifacts
and objects.
Collaborative Authorship is collaborative; end Students compose using Wikis, blogs;
(Participatory) products are shared, always in flux, students learn about creative
Design and continually built; mastery is commons; students create mashups
mythical; audience is known. and remixes; students help construct
and create class assignments,
practices, etc.
Discursive Texts are created through linguistic, Students compose visual essays,
Multimodality visual, aural modes. webtexts, podcasts; students read
aloud, incorporate music into texts,
and expand their understanding of
“text.”
Networked Logic Texts occur from everywhere and Students create texts with a nonlinear
nowhere at the same time; texts have structure; students consider
multiple sources and unfold spatially arrangement spatially and linearly;
as well as temporally. students consider research as a
recursive, iterative design process.

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Institutional Assessment:
The purpose of this handout is to surface some of the institutional and personal constraints you
face within your localized context.

1. What kinds of hardware/technologies do you have available on a day-to-day basis? What

kinds are available with some negotiation?

2. What kinds of software do you have available on a day-to-day basis? What kinds are
available with some negotiation?

3. What kinds of hardware/technologies are you comfortable working with? What kinds would
you be more comfortable working with if you had some help?

4. What kinds of software are you comfortable working with? What kinds would you be more
comfortable working with if you had some help?

5. Are you encouraged to incorporate multimedia or digital projects by your administrators?

6. How much flexibility is there in your curricular design?

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Assignment Building:
For this part of the workshop, you’ll be asked to take an assignment or project you would like to
revise into a Web 2.0 model. While you’re certainly free to focus on an assignment of your
choice, we also offer several general assignment types that you could continue to develop.
Possible assignments: Research Project, Literacy Reflection, Rhetorical Analysis,
Collage/Mashup/Juxtaposition.

Step 1: Choose an assignment or project. You can pick from the short assignment list
above or work on a project you feel is important to you.

Step 2: Once you have chosen to work on a certain assignment, we’ll focus ourselves
into groups of three or four, where we’ll spend about 15 minutes or so going working on
two of the foci from the Web Rhetorics heuristic.

Step 3: In groups, we’ll develop digital and non-digital activities and assignment features
that correspond to the Web Rhetorics heuristic and modify these activities and
assignment features to your own institutional situations.

Assignment: 1: Kristen 2: Ehren

Digital Non-Digital Digital Non-Digital
Materiality: Students employ Students create Students employ Final versions of
Dreamweaver to mock up layouts InDesign in the white paper
create websites. with paper and envisioning the are meant for
pen. project, print production,
critiquing the held to print
As they engage As they engage software as it is standards, and
with with used. are bound as a
Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver, final copy.
they reflect on they reflect on
the process of the process of
working online working online
vs. with pen and vs. with pen and
paper paper.
Networked Logic: Create a website Create a poster Students Students manage
based upon the or map of perform group their in-person
research project, sources, authors, work through meetings
where ideas are and ideas that Google Docs, through meeting
linked among demonstrate the Doodle, and notes, emails,
one another as way knowledge establish a and conferences
well as to ideas circulates and is research wiki with the
outside the text. shared. that encourages instructor;
nonlinear revisions are
research developed in
methods. situ.

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Assignment Building:
For this part of the workshop, you’ll be asked to take an assignment or project you would like to
revise into a Web 2.0 model. While you’re certainly free to focus on an assignment of your
choice, we also offer several general assignment types that you could continue to develop.
Possible assignments: Research Project, Literacy Reflection, Rhetorical Analysis,
Collage/Mashup/Juxtaposition.

Step 1: Choose an assignment or project. You can pick from the short assignment list
above or work on a project you feel is important to you.

Step 2: Once you have chosen to work on a certain assignment, we’ll focus ourselves
into groups of three or four, where we’ll spend about 15 minutes or so going working on
two of the foci from the Web Rhetorics heuristic.

Step 3: In groups, we’ll develop digital and non-digital activities and assignment features
that correspond to the Web Rhetorics heuristic and modify these activities and
assignment features to your own institutional situations.

Assignment: 1 2
Digital Non-Digital Digital Non-Digital
Materiality:

Networked Logic:

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Heidegger, Martin. (2008). “The question concerning technology.” In David Farrell Krell (Ed.),
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Ulmer, Gregory L. (1994). Heuretics: The logic of invention. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins UP.

Wysocki, Anne Frances, Johnson-Eilola, Johndan, Selfe, Cynthia L., & Sirc, Geoffrey. (2004).
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