Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
347787 | Computers and Composition | 2013 | 13 Pages |
Using the ecological theories of writing proposed by Marilyn Cooper's “The Ecology of Writing” (1986) and Margaret Syverson's The Wealth of Reality: An Ecology of Composition (1999), this article describes a multi-step assignment sequence designed to engage online first year composition students across the ecological breadth of their writing and learning environments. The goal of the project is twofold: enriching students’ writing processes with a sophisticated understanding of the social situatedness of knowledge and rhetoric, we can simultaneously create high-functioning learning communities in an otherwise disembodied online learning space, not by upgrading our technological tools but by pedagogically guiding learners toward ecological and productively collaborative interactions with one another.
► Online composition technology often presents writing as a disembodied and isolated activity. ► Composition theory posits that writing is complexly social, even ecological, and should be taught thus. ► Composition's best practices have long included productive intellectual collaboration. ► We present an assignment sequence for an online class that fosters ecological collaboration.