1 of 7

Digital, Experimental, Participatory

Stepping into the radical trajectory of classroom writing

Stephanie Bell, PhD

Writing Centre Director & Assistant Professor

Writing Department, York University

3 of 7

The potential for technologies to enhance educational experience depends on educators’ understanding of how theory and practice and learning goals converge with technology in the classroom. (Depietro, 2013, p. 183)

The multiliteracy writing center has become an agent of curricular change. (Balester, 2012)

4 of 7

New media projects have the *potential* to transform classroom writing

5 of 7

The process of designing new media writing projects has the potential to engage teachers in the notions that...

Writing is generative (see Newell, 2006)
Writing tools enable, constrain, extend, articulate, elaborate consciousness (see Brooke & Rickert, 2011; Tinnell, 2017; Smith & Wargo, 2017)
Genres, locations, purposes also shape thinking (see Bawarshi, 2003)
Writing can transform classrooms into communities of practice (see Wenger, 2011; Arroyo, 2013)

6 of 7

Becoming centres of

new media writing & writing-enhanced digital pedagogy

Reposition

Frame new media projects as writing
Identify writing centre as part new media writing studio

Retrain

Develop (& own) expertise on new media writing tools, practices, processes audiences, communities, cultures, rhetorics, laws, ethics...

Reprogram

Offer tailored support (workspace, instructional resources, technology) for new media writing

“Writing has evolved with composing technologies and media, and we must evolve, too, because we are in the writing business. A radical shift in the way that writers communicate both academically and publicly necessitates a radical re-imagining and re-understanding of our practices, purposes, and goals.” - Jackie Grutsch McKinney, 2009

7 of 7

Possible approach -

Create an online space dedicated to new media writing and writing-enhanced digital pedagogy, where we can collaboratively create and curate:

Resources for writing specialists

Tutor training/PD
Curriculum ideas, designs
Policy statements
Research on the impact of our work on new media writing
Share & develop collaborative programming opportunities
...

Resources for instructors

Assignment design worksheets
Supporting student writers
Creating equitable, inclusive projects
Assessing new media writing
...

Resources for student & faculty writers

Using digital tools to learn
Rhetoric, argumentation, dialogue in networked communication
Style, diction, persona
Ethics, laws, civility, empathy, cosmopolitanism
Embodied writing in online communities
Advice for producing public-facing scholarship
...