Page 35 - Composition in Convergence The Impact of New Media On

4 CHAPTER 1

top-down educational model that focuses mostly on grades, test
scores, and teacher perceptions, then any classroom writing activities
that move beyond this paradigm will be met with students' attitudi-
nal resistance or cognitive dissonance. All too often, these reactions
are discovered in instructors' student evaluations at the end of the
term. A recent anonymous response written in a course evaluation
from one of my College Composition II classes indicates the potential
problem for some students who find public writing and the abandon-
ment of the banking concept of education discomforting:

Some would say they [our writing classes] are not as productive as I
thought [they were] because they [other students] are used to, and find
comfort in, a traditional (boring) classroom. I'm sure sometimes
classes went against Dr. Penrod's lesson planbook [sic], but I found ev-
ery one productive (fall 1998 semester, brackets mine for clarity).
This student aptly points to the difficulties some of his or her peers
may have with a writing classroom that responds to technological
convergence. The current-traditional or purely process-based com-
position class, or a writing class focused solely on meeting expecta-
tions for state writing assessment exams, read as a "boring" writing
classroom by this student, has set opportunities for the students'
composing processes. Productivity in the traditional writing class-
room is defined by many students, professors, and programs as how
many words or pages are churned out, how efficient those words or
pages are in relation to a real or perceived template for good writing,
and how those words or pages are legitimated by an instructor's
grade. Composition's convergence with technology transforms this
older notion of productivity. In this particular composition class that
I taught, "productivity" became redefined as students interacted
with their ideas through the use of computers and different media
forms (both print and electronic) as they wrote about their views for
and with others. Instead of students imitating a model for good
writing, the students' online interactions were used to establish
benchmarks for what good writing was within the contexts of
different course assignments.
I found it telling that in the evaluation, this student mentioned
my having a lesson plan book to guide my daily actions in the
classroom. (I do not use one. I do have a syllabus, but points of
flexibility are built into the course design to accommodate an ex-
tra day of discussion, research, or writing whenever needed.) The