{"id":12926,"date":"2016-08-20T19:00:41","date_gmt":"2016-08-20T23:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/?p=12926"},"modified":"2023-11-15T15:57:44","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T20:57:44","slug":"drc-fellows-end-of-year-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/2016\/08\/20\/drc-fellows-end-of-year-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"DRC Fellows End-of-Year Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paula Miller<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the 1970s, freelance journalist Ralph Lee Smith referred to the internet as an “electronic highway,<\/a>” and through the 90s, we called the internet the “information superhighway,” a place to link humans with knowledge on just about every topic imaginable. Since those exciting early moments, the ways we conceive of the internet has shifted, and while that information component is still strong, we’re living in an era of community-driven digispace, with human-centric tools (the writing studies tree<\/a>, rhetmap<\/a>) and meeting places (Twitter<\/a>, Reddit<\/a>, Snapchat) that are empty without their communities driving them. There are even those digital phenomena that encourage us to create new community in “meat space” such as Pokemon Go and Meetup. The Internet is a constantly re-imagined makerspace, made by the communities that inhabit it.<\/p>\n

In my 2014 intro video for the DRC, I said that the internet was obsessed cats.<\/a> This is still true. After two years working with the DRC and some thought, I want to build on my statement: The internet is obsessed with cats and community – and so is the Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative (at least the community part). Community has been the focus of the past year, and as I finish out my final year with the Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative, I reflect on our journey since I joined the group in the Summer of 2014.<\/p>\n

\"Kittens<\/a>
How I like to imagine my #DRColleagues when we’re collaborating remotely.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every summer, when the new cohort of fellows comes on board, we meet and talk about what we want our focus for the year to be. During my first year, our goal was to embrace more of the multimodal principles we espouse in the blog and encourage our students to consider in their own compositions. Despite being digital media scholars, we were raised in a text-privileging world, so making this deliberate move expanded the kinds of compositions we offered. As a result, we incorporated more video interviews and conversations, debuted our wikiquest game at Computers and Writing, and made more deliberate moves to consider how text and design play into our work. I was excited to spearhead the Google Hangouts on Air, a feature that allowed me to sit down and broadcast interviews with scholars working in the field.<\/p>\n

During the second year, our focus was on our community. As we considered how to redesign the site, we thought about how we hoped our community might use it, and decided to focus on navigability for scholars and teachers. Throughout this year, we’ve had many conversations about how scholars and teachers can both engage with and contribute to the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative. In addition to our blog carnivals, which have focused heavily humans (we hosted one on makerspaces, one on K-12 writing, and one on cripping digital writing), we added a digital lesson plan feature to give instructors models for how to use the site in our classroom. Our wiki Wednesday posts featured reflections from instructors who incorporated the DRC Wiki into their classroom. Almost all of our features connected with how the community engages with the site, and how this engagement creates the site and the community.\u00a0 I\u2019m thrilled to have been a part of this group for two years, and I look forward to returning in a guest capacity as a blog carnival contributor, editing the wiki, and helping further develop the resource library.<\/p>\n

Jenae Cohn<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I think of the work I did with the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative over the last two years, I tend to think less about what’s actually produced on the site (though all of that’s good stuff and you should totally explore our robust archives) and more about what gets produced\u00a0off\u00a0<\/em>the website. I realize talking about the labor that goes into a website’s production is not at all what the genre of this kind of “reflective post” is supposed to do (a blog’s “year-end round-up” typically means highlighting the great accomplishments of the year, linking readers back to our stickiest content, which all makes perfectly good sense).<\/p>\n

However, as I complete my two years with the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative, what truly stands out to me most is the concept of the “collaborative” that has built up this space and all of the efforts to build partnerships that have happened behind this website’s pages.<\/p>\n

So! In the spirit of producing digital rhetoric on this site – and in the vein of reflecting on the work BEHIND the work that I’ve found most meaningful here at the DRC – I implore you to discover…<\/p>\n

“3 Surprising Facts about the DRC!”<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We pretty much always partner on our projects. <\/strong>You may notice a number of single-authored posts around here and\/or blog carnival round-ups that are single-authored, but the efforts of pretty much all of the initiatives on the DRC are collaborative. In particular, the Makerspaces Blog Carnival might have been my initial suggestion, but it was the work shared among me, Paula Miller, Brandy Dieterle, and Neil Simpkins that actually made the awesome posts in that blog carnival appear. Countless e-mail threads are the evidence of tremendous communicative efforts to get posts edited, to stay in touch with authors, and to ensure that we stayed on track with our theme and our vision. Last year, I didn’t get the chance to work on a Blog Carnival, so I really appreciated the opportunity during this academic year to see how scholarly voices around a particular topic can come together to create the rich tapestry of a conversation. Again, that could never have happened without the support of my fellow fellows (redundancy intended!).<\/li>\n
  2. We look for a lot of feedback. <\/strong>Each post on this site is polished<\/em> and that has to do with the fact that we’re some conscientious academics here (this… might not be so surprising). I don’t think I’ve ever composed anything for the DRC that has not been vetted by at least one other fellow. This may be standard practice for a web publication, but I think what’s unique about the DRC is the group’s constant striving to create and share content that is reflective of our values, interests, and scholarly ethos. We want the work of our community – computers & writing scholars and enthusiasts – to be, you know, reflective of the brilliant conversations that make up the world of our work.<\/li>\n
  3. We value our audience – a lot. <\/strong>We never want any of the content from the DRC to exist in a vacuum. What excites us most is knowing that our work is going out into the world and starting other conversations and projects. Part of what made our presentation at the Computers & Writing conference this year so eye-opening was learning about how the site already has a presence in some college classrooms and how many more folks were interested in thinking about how they could powerfully use the content to support their teaching. We know our audience loves their students and wants to help generate a digitally literate populace (and yes, I drop the big “digital literacy” concept here, acknowledging that it necessarily stands in for myriad things!). Therefore, every time our group met, we considered what our readers might want to read and how they might want to get here. There’s always work to do to engage our audience (yes, you, the person reading this right now!), but this year, we were thinking a lot more about how to get people to take what’s on our site and run with it!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    OK, maybe these facts weren’t so “surprising” after all, but living through my experiences as a graduate fellow with the DRC, I was constantly surprised by the spirit of generosity that defined the authors and other fellows working on this site. I can’t express enough how valuable it was to be involved in a professional network beyond my institution – as I was finishing coursework and dissertating! – and to see the energy and enthusiasm tapped into the kinds of informal conversations about digital rhetoric that make being a compositionist so exciting. As a graduate student, it was easy for me to feel like my world was small. The DRC expanded that world and helped me see that the concepts I learned inside the walls of my classes could reach others beyond those walls. Now that I’m no longer a graduate student (I’m an Academic Technology Specialist at Stanford University), I hope to take with me the skills I gained here to communicate and form connections with other institutions and continue fostering conversations and, yes, even “surprises.”<\/p>\n

    Nathan Riggs<\/strong><\/p>\n

    This last year went by fast<\/em>. Faster than I remember fast being fast. During my tenure as a graduate fellow at the DRC in this hurried year, I learned more than I could possibly write\u2014about myself, about my (hopeful) profession, about the DRC and about the world alike. If I had the time\u2014and let\u2019s be clear, none of us, neither writer nor reader, ever actually have the time\u2014I would write every detail, carefully poured over to ensure the illusion of completeness. But I don\u2019t, and you don\u2019t, and so we are left with mere fragments\u2014but good ones, I think!<\/p>\n

    So here is a short, and woefully incomplete, list of four things I\u2019ve learned and experienced with the DRC in the last year:<\/p>\n