Welcome to the Special Issue

[video transcript]

Some Context

1985
Digital Trends

The Internet is a teenager (16 years old).

Microsoft Windows 1.0 launches.

The first .com domain name is registered.

The Commodore 128 debuts, offering 128k of RAM.
Scholarly Threads

Kate Kiefer and Cindy Selfe call for scholars to submit manuscripts to Computers and Composition, then 3 years old, on issues of computer-aided writing and reading instruction; software development; computer use in writing programs at various levels; legal, moral, and ethical issues connected with using computers in writing programs; and discussions of how computers affect the form and content of written discourse.


Three articles in the first of two issues of Computers and Composition published in 1985 focus on the computer interface and students experiences within it. Another article reports on a study by Bruce Appleby and Steve Bernhardt about teachers using computers in their collaborative writing efforts. The final article in the first issue, by Deb Holdstein and Tim Redman, argues that some word-processing software may “actually hinder writing/rewriting processes.

The second issue published in 1985 includes articles exploring writing-specific software and ways teachers could mark papers and keep records on their computers. Arthur Daigon publishes a poem titled “The passionate programmer to his love,” which reads, in part:
    You would log and I would load
    In a user-friendly, graphic mode
    If/then you read me, let me know.
    Use a modem (baud rate: Low).

1995
Digital Trends

The National Science Foundation (NSF) discontinues NSFnet and replaces it with a commercial Internet backbone.

Iomega distributes high-capacity “Zip” drives.

The web is 5 years old, and the dot com boom officially begins.

Amazon was founded; eBay was founded.
Scholarly Threads

Three issues of Computers and Composition  are published this year, including 29 original research articles and a good selection of book reviews, announcements, and two poems

Issue 2 in 1995 is a landmark publication—a special issue on computers in the writing center.

Across all three issues published in 1995, there is rich evidence of a sustained and growing conversation about technology professional development, exploring issues of how college instructors can engage in the computer-mediated classroom and writing center, of how to engage high school students in collaborative writing via computers, of counteracting homophobia in the networked classrooms, of selecting among the best options and best practices in online writing labs or OWLs, and more.
2005
Digital Trends

Twitter launches.

YouTube is born; the first video, “Me at the Zoo” is uploaded.

USB drives replace any other physical storage media as the most popular way to save files.

Google hires Vincent Cerf, DARPA veteran and Internet founder to help them move on their journey toward free and open information.
Scholarly Threads

Four issues of Computers and Composition are published. Computers and Composition Online is 2 years old; Kairos is 8 years old. 2005 features ofComputers and Composition Online include pieces by Collin Brooke on blogging, with a  response by Steve Krause. Angela Haas produces a recommendation piece on how to make online spaces more native to American Indians. Shawn Apostel and Moe Folk publish a webtext offering website evaluation criteria, and Sonya Borton produces a piece calling for multimodality in personal narrative composition. 

Print journal articles anchor our attention to multimodal composing, with pieces by Gunther Kress, Marilyn Cooper, Ron Fortune, Anne Frances Wysocki,  and others. A special issue focuses on second language writers in digital contexts. Other articles explore e-portfolio systems and teaching writing online.

Cindy Selfe and Gail Hawisher begin the project that eventually becomes the Computers and Composition Digital Press (CCDP), which publishes its first title in 2007.
2015
Digital Trends

The White House, fueled by President Obama who is committed to making his administration the “most open and participatory” in nature, hosts 93 active petitions on a range of issues, with the most popular at more than 319,000 signatures.

Exploding Kittens—“a card game for people who are into kittens and explosions and laser beams and sometimes goats”—ends as the most popular KickStarter campaign to date, raising more than $8.78 million in one month.

Facebook hosts more than 1.39 billion active users, 82% of whom are outside of the U.S., uploading more than 400 million photographs per day.

WordPress users produce more than 61 million new posts and generate more than 56 million comments monthly.

Writers craft more than 500 million tweets per day.
Scholarly Threads

The first issue of the print journal published in 2015 (volume 35, number 1), includes John Gallagher's argument for web templates as rhetorical means, and Casey Boyle's work situating technical "glitches" as that which can render "*apparent* that which is *transparent* by design" (p. 13). 

Lavinia Hirsu presents a search engine study through which she argues that a search engine can function as "an important technology for writing and circulating new identity scripts and for changing cultural patterns" (p. 34). 

Other articles in the first issue of 2015 address computer-based writing assessment, text chat support for writing, a review of the Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN), and Facebook use among first-year writing students.

Computers and Composition Digital Press (CCDP) has published 10 projects and won five national awards for born-digital work.

Special Issue Overview

What has changed over the past 30 years during which the CIWIC and now DMAC institutes have been held is the technological and digital landscape, and the ways in which we’ve oriented ourselves to it as scholars and teachers. What hasn’t changed in these 30 years is our continued theorizing of writing instruction and explorations about how we can best support and facilitate writing instruction vis-à-vis these technological and digital landscapes.

What hasn’t changed is our need for robust, flexible technology professional development, where we can lean on one another and learn from our different institutional, scholarly, and pedagogical contexts and approaches. Where we can share stories and best practices. Where we can share a coffee—or a margarita—and continue to shape our know-how. 

For this special issue, we have deviated from the online journal’s typical framework of Theory into Practice, Professional Development, Print to Screen, and Virtual Classroom. Although these are both functional and robust categories, we found as we began structuring this special issue that most of the work slid across these categories.

Colleagues from Columbia College Chicago, in "CIWIC/DMAC: An Ecology of Influence at Columbia College Chicago," describe the impact that their institute attendance over the years has had at their institution. Together, the voices, stories, and stances present, as they put it "rheto-technodiversity" that manifests as a wecology.  In the introduction to their piece, Ames Hawkins, Suzanne Blum Malley, Corrine Calice, Jonn Salovaara, Ryan Trauman, and Pegeen Reichert Powell over an eloquent frame for the collected pieces, each of which addresses, in various ways and through various means, notions of openness and issues of insider–outsider dynamics. The piece closes by claiming the importance of questions and continued question-asking, and offers the metaphor of hospitality as one to help us chart answers.

Hospitality is, although not often enough acknowledged or discussed, one of the hallmarks of CIWIC/DMAC. Shaping and supporting hospitable spaces where participants can live, play, and work during the intense two weeks of the institute is a significant part of its success, and of the ability of participants to take full advantage of the activities of the institute.

Michael Harker and Matthew Sansbury, in "The Digital Literacy Narratives of DMAC: Developing Contexts, Experiences, and Identities," hone in on two literacy narratives of DMAC affiliates, both curated at the Digital Archives of Literacy Narrative (DALN http://daln.osu.edu/).

Harker and Sansbury richly frame the two narratives with a discussion of literacy narratives as they exist and are enacted more broadly in the field of rhetoric and composition. The literacy narratives of Joseph Harris and Melissa Ianetta are shared and discussed by the authors. Harker and Sansbury conclude by drawing from the narratives to argue for continued creation of and work with literacy narratives and with spaces like the DALN, through which we can share and curate literacy narratives.

“Making the Case: DMAC as Professional Activism” argues that the institute levels the playing field, and graduate students and senior scholars, novices and experts work and learn together. Harley Ferris suggests that the institute provides an important, necessary space for exploration and growth, and focuses on how to capture and bring back to our home institutions our newly formed ideas and approaches. Ferris orients his recommendations for doing so around pedagogy, production, and practice.

Debra Journet articulates the components of her piece as articulated argument, participant response, and extended example. In her composition, she first shares her understanding of learning and narrative. She then illustrates, with interviews of DMAC sessions and participants, components of narrative learning, which she identifies as sense of an ending, pleasure of making, and narrative desire. In her final part, she shares a case of a particular DMAC instructor and participant working together to creatively problem-solve.

Rik Hunter, Alanna Frost, Moe Folk, and Les Loncharich, in “Like Coming in From the Cold: Sponsors, Identities, and Technological Professional Development,” offers what the authors call "collective and curated reflections" of their experiences participating in different iterations of CIWIC/DMAC. Constellated around materials collected from various offerings of the institutes are seven videos, in which the authors discuss securing funding, bringing new knowledge back home, developing sustainable technology professional development, and situating and theorizing technology professional development. The webtexts offers a rich, multivocal, and variously illustrated presentation of CIWIC/DMAC experiences and take-aways.

Trey Conatser employs a variety of visualization and analysis tools to "keep track of DMAC" and to visualize influence across space and time. Opening with a video introduction to both DMAC and to his larger study, Conaster shares interviews with DMAC 2014 participants and staff. He moves from the video into a rich--and, as he describes it, "high altitude"--view of the institute and its impact. He focuses on 2006 through 2014, and models data of participant work in various insightful ways.

And Beyond

Complementing this online special issue is a special issue of Computers and Composition that offers articles also focused on technology professional development and CIWIC/DMAC from a range of authors reflecting on their experiences and offering multimodal views of technology professional development from a range of perspectives and institutions.

The legacy of CIWIC/DMAC is written within these webtexts and across the pages of the special print issue. This legacy prioritizes the human in work with technology and digital media. It exemplifies best practices and thoughtful theorizing of the teaching of composition. It offers flexible, nimble models for us to implement at our institutions, allowing us to magnify, carry on, and pass along the lessons and practices of the institutes.

To the special issue...