“Digital Invention: A Repository of Online Resources for College Composition Instruction”

by Mary K. Stewart | Xchanges 10.2/11.1

The Next Step

We need to develop more media rich online invention resources.

Like Gunther Kress (2003)’s argument about the nonlinearity of digital environments, Matthew Gold (2010) argues for nonlinearity by analyzing the horizontal rule. Gold says this tag is representative of linear reading and writing, and while it was popular in the early days of the web, designers now see it as archaic — the internet is a visual and interactive space and can do much more than linearly present information.

The same can be said for the online invention resources I discovered throughout this project. I found linear, text-based definitions and instructions for activities, which I am now linking to from a text-heavy, linear website. This website is not any more interactive than the static invention resources found on writing center websites.

The lack of interactive resources prompts the next step of this project: We need to develop online invention resources that mirror the kind of invention that happens naturally in digital environments. A tremendous amount of tinkering, remixing, and play happens during digital composition. Why not bring those same concepts to the writing classroom? Why not let students tinker and play as a method of generating, developing, and organizing ideas for a paper?

I am not suggesting that we discard existing invention resources — as I argue throughout the site, exposing students and teachers to many and varied invention strategies is important — but we need to add interactive options. Most arguments for introducing digital literacy to composition classes focus on allowing students to create multimodal projects; if we’re going to allow a multimodal end-project, then we also need to teach a multimodal process. By creating interactive invention resources, we can take the first step toward engaging activities that foster skills necessary for both paper-based academic writing and multimodal composition.

If you have an idea for an interactive resource, or are already using one in your classroom, please share by emailing: mkstewart at ucdavis dot edu