Computers and writing is a sub-field of college English studies about how computers and digital technologies affect literacy and the writing process. The range of inquiry in this field is broad including discussions on ethics when using computers in writing programs,how discourse can be produced through technologies,software development,and computer-aided literacy instruction. Some topics include hypertext theory,visual rhetoric,multimedia authoring,distance learning,digital rhetoric,usability studies,the patterns of online communities,how various media change reading and writing practices,textual conventions,and genres. Other topics examine social or critical issues in computer technology and literacy,such as the issues of the "digital divide",equitable access to computer-writing resources,and critical technological literacies. Many study by scientist such have shown that writing on computer is better than writing in a book
The Conference on College Composition and Communication is a national professional association of college and university writing instructors in the United States. The CCCC formed in 1949 as an organization within the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). CCCC is the largest organization dedicated to writing research,theory,and teaching worldwide.
The term composition as it refers to writing,can describe authors' decisions about,processes for designing,and sometimes the final product of,a composed linguistic work. In original use,it tended to describe practices concerning the development of oratorical performances,and eventually essays,narratives,or genres of imaginative literature,but since the mid-20th century emergence of the field of composition studies,its use has broadened to apply to any composed work:print or digital,alphanumeric or multimodal. As such,the composition of linguistic works goes beyond the exclusivity of written and oral documents to visual and digital arenas.
Digital rhetoric can be generally defined as communication that exists in the digital sphere. As such,digital rhetoric can be expressed in many different forms,including text,images,videos,and software. Due to the increasingly mediated nature of our contemporary society,there are no longer clear distinctions between digital and non-digital environments. This has expanded the scope of digital rhetoric to account for the increased fluidity with which humans interact with technology.
Composition studies is the professional field of writing,research,and instruction,focusing especially on writing at the college level in the United States.
Kairos:A Journal of Rhetoric,Technology,and Pedagogy is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering the fields of computers and writing,composition studies,and digital rhetoric. It was established in 1996,and was the first academic journal to publish multimedia webtexts.
Vectors:Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular was a peer-reviewed online academic journal published by the USC School of Cinematic Arts. It was established in March 2005 and covers the digital humanities,publishing work that "cannot exist in print". Vectors is recognized as an experimental precursor to the digital humanities,producing and publishing a range of highly interactive works of multimedia scholarship. Comparing Vectors with more traditional digital humanities publications,Patrick Svensson notes that,"Vectors,on the other hand,is clearly invested in the digital as an expressive medium in an experimental and creative way". The journal's last issue was published in 2013.
Rhetorical velocity is a term originating from the fields of Composition Studies and Rhetoric used to describe how rhetoricians may strategically theorize and anticipate the third party recomposition of their texts. In their 2009 article "Composing for Recomposition:Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery" in Kairos:A Journal of Rhetoric,Technology,and Pedagogy,Professors Jim Ridolfo and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss provide the example of a writer delivering a press release,where the writer of the release rhetorically anticipates the positive and negative ways in which the text may be recomposed into other texts,including news articles,blog posts,and video content. It is similar to having something go viral. Author,Sean Morey,agrees in his book "The Digital Writer" that rhetorical velocity is the way in which a creator predicts how the audience will make use of their original work.
The study and practice of visual rhetoric took a more prominent role in the field of composition studies towards the end of the twentieth century and onward. Proponents of its inclusion in composition typically point to the increasingly visual nature of society,and the increasing presence of visual texts. Literacy,they argue,can no longer be limited only to written text and must also include an understanding of the visual.
A digital studio provides both a technology-equipped space and technological/rhetorical support to students working individually or in groups on a variety of digital projects,such as designing a website,developing an electronic portfolio for a class,creating a blog,making edits,selecting images for a visual essay,or writing a script for a podcast.
Multimodality is the application of multiple literacies within one medium. Multiple literacies or "modes" contribute to an audience's understanding of a composition. Everything from the placement of images to the organization of the content to the method of delivery creates meaning. This is the result of a shift from isolated text being relied on as the primary source of communication,to the image being utilized more frequently in the digital age. Multimodality describes communication practices in terms of the textual,aural,linguistic,spatial,and visual resources used to compose messages.
Andrea A. Lunsford is an American writer and scholar who specializes in the field of composition and rhetoric studies. She is the director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) and the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of English Emerita at Stanford University. She is also a faculty member at the Bread Loaf School of English. Lunsford received her B.A. and M.A. at the University of Florida and completed her Ph.D. in English at the Ohio State University in 1977. Lunsford has served as Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC),as Chair of the Modern Language Association (MLA) Division on Writing,and as a member of the MLA Executive Council.
Kathleen Blake Yancey is the Kellogg W. Hunt Professor of English at Florida State University in the rhetoric and composition program. Her research interests include composition studies,writing knowledge,creative non-fiction,and writing assessment.
Cheryl Glenn is a scholar and teacher of rhetoric and writing. She is currently Distinguished Professor of English and Women’s Studies Director at Pennsylvania State University.
Jonathan Alexander is an American rhetorician and memoirist. He is Chancellor's Professor of English,Informatics,Education,and Gender &Sexuality Studies at the University of California,Irvine. His scholarly and creative work is situated at the intersections of digital culture,sexuality,and composition studies. For his work in cultural journalism and memoir,Tom Lutz,founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books,has called him "one of our finest essayists."
Cynthia "Cindy" Selfe is an author,editor,scholar,and teacher in the field of Writing Studies,with a speciality in the subfield of computers and composition. She is Humanities Distinguished Professor Emerita in the English Department at the Ohio State University where she taught from 2006 until her retirement in 2016. Prior to that,she taught at Michigan Technological University. Selfe was the first woman and the first scholar from an English department to win the EDUCOM Medal for innovative computer use in higher education.
The WAC Clearinghouse publishes peer-reviewed,open-access journals and books,as well as other professional resources for teachers and instructional materials for students. Writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC) refers to a formal programmatic approach within contemporary secondary and higher education composition studies that promotes the importance of writing in classes outside of composition.
Dene Grigar is a digital artist and scholar based in Vancouver,Washington. She was the President of the Electronic Literature Organization from 2013 to 2019. In 2016,Grigar received the International Digital Media and Arts Association's Lifetime Achievement Award.
Ann E. Berthoff was a scholar of composition who promoted the study of I.A. Richards and Paulo Freire and the value of their work for writing studies.
Carolyn Rae Miller is SAS Institute Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric and Technical Communication Emerita at North Carolina State University. In 2006 she won the Rigo Award for Lifetime Achievement in Communication Design from the ACM-SIGDOC and in 2016 the Cheryl Geisler Award for Outstanding Mentor,the Rhetoric Society of America. She is a Fellow of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (1995) and of the Rhetoric Society of America (2010). Her “groundbreaking and influential article”on “Genre as Social Action”is foundational for Rhetorical Genre Studies. Three of her articles have been identified as essential works in Technical Communication.
