Kairotic Design: Building Flexible Networks for Online Composition

• Intro
• Design Process
• Instructor Perspectives
• Student Perspectives
• Implications
• References

• Intro
  • Premises
  • English111
  • Methods
• Design Process
  • Starting Assumptions and Assets
  • Dissonances
  • Space Decisions
  • Kairotic Design
• Instructor Perspectives
  • Making Space Work (Lance)
  • Making Space for Collaboration (Renea)
  • Party Time at Burke's Place (Ryan)
• Student Perspectives
  • Initial Nervousness and Uncertainty
  • Interacting Online
  • Agency in the Timing of Learning Activities
  • Challenges
• Implications
  • Principles of Online Course Design
  • Rethinking Traditional Writing Instruction
• References

English 111

To fully understand our design process and the perspectives of the instructors and students, it is helpful to know more about Miami University’s first-semester composition requirement, English 111, Composition and Rhetoric.

English 111 offers students a rhetorically grounded, inquiry-based introduction to writing both in the academy and in the broader civic sphere. The curriculum consists of five major assignments (or "inquiries" as we term them). Students compose the following projects:

1. Self-Inquiry / Rhetorical Reflection: Reflective narrative about their own rhetorical practices.
2. Rhetorical Analysis: Rhetorical analysis of a print or digital text.
3. Public Issue Argument: A research-based argument about a public issue.
4. Remediation: Transformation of the argument from the previous essay into a digital or multimodal text for a new audience.
5. Self-Inquiry / Final Reflection: Reflective argument about student’s own writing and rhetoric through analysis of selected writing collected in an e-portfolio.

For all inquiries, when turning in their composing projects, students are also required to submit a "Writer's Letter," an analysis and reflection written for their instructor about their experiences researching and writing the inquiry and their perspectives on their project. For inquiry 4, the remediation project, this "Writer's Letter" is required to be more extensive.

For more about the English 111 course, see a pdf of the English 111 Description and Outcomes.

Integration of digital technologies

Prior to 2006, digital technologies were integrated into a handful of English 111 sections as individual instructors chose to have students compose in and with wikis, web-authoring programs, and blogs. But this integration was haphazard and involved fewer than 10 percent of the more than one hundred sections of English 111 we offered on the Oxford campus each year. Starting in 2006, we offered some digital sections of English 111 taught in laptop or hard wired classrooms, raising the percentage each year as classroom spaces were available, as curriculum was revised, and as instructors received training. However, these "digital sections" of English 111 were regarded as special or unusual, not the norm for the class.

Starting in fall 2011, English 111 became fully digitized, in two respects: (1) for the first time, all sections of English 111 were offered in laptop or computer classrooms, thus making it much easier for instructors to integrate digital technologies and also making it so that program-wide we could require a digital composition project (inquiry 4, the remediation project); and, (2) the overall curriculum was redesigned to make "digital writing" one of the key foci and outcomes for the course. The learning outcomes were revised by both layering considerations of writing technologies into existing outcomes (e.g., "Reflection, meta-cognitive awareness: Students apply concepts and terms from the field of rhetoric/composition to reflect critically on their own composing practices and rhetorical decisions, including decisions about the technologies used in the production and reception of their writing") and in the creation of an entirely new outcome:

Digital and Multimodal Rhetoric

Students effectively produce, share, and publish their writing using digital tools for production, editing, commenting, delivery, and sharing of files.

Students demonstrate critical awareness of the unique affordances and limitations of diverse writing technologies and modalities of communication, both digital and non-digital.

To meet these outcomes, all English 111 instructors were prepared to lead discussions with students about writing technologies in relation to composing and research process and in relation to methodologies of rhetorical analysis.

Throughout English 111, students regularly use computers in class to invent ideas through writing, to conduct and critically evaluate online research, to respond to the work of peers, to engage and record the results of collaborative small-group discussion, to complete revision exercises, and to reflect on their learning and composing processes. Much student in-class writing occurs within the blogs and discussion boards of our Sakai-based course management system (which has been branded "Niihka" at Miami University). The majority of 111 teachers also choose to supplement Niihka with free web-writing applications such as Google Drive, WordPress, Twitter, and Wikispaces. In addition to having students write with computers in class, many teachers in our program also have students do informal digital writing for homework and turn in first and final drafts electronically.

Although students employ digital tools for writing throughout the 111 class, their most intensive engagement with digital composing usually comes during inquiry 4, the remediation inquiry. Some instructors choose to require students to work in a particular medium, while others leave the choice open—making reflection about medium choice itself a central outcome of the inquiry. Students tend to compose multimedia texts using free software: iMovie and WeVideo for video; Audacity and Garageband for audio; Prezi for presentations and collages; WordPress, Wix, or Google Sites for web writing. The remediation inquiry is always accompanied by a substantial reflective essay in which students reflect about their rhetorical choices and how these were influenced by the unique constraints and affordances of mediums, modalities, genres, and the kairotic moments in which they were composing.

Thus, given the extensive digitization of the 111 curriculum, the program and the specific instructors were well-positioned to move into teaching fully online courses in the summer of 2012.