“Embracing Digital Literacies: A Study of First-Year Students’ Digital Compositions”

by Bay VanWagenen | Xchanges 10.2/11.1

Methodology

Much has been written about students’ various digital practices. Erin A. Frost (2011) suggests the power of this generation of digital natives to be “catalysts for change in the future of the web” (p. 27). Jane Mathison Fife (2010) notes the “sophisticated rhetorical analysis [students’] employ” on Facebook (p. 555). However, less has been written that explores in greater depth the rhetorical knowledge we assume students have in their digital compositions. My IRB-approved case study of seven first-year composition students investigates students’ digital, online writing practices to discover the kinds of knowledge these students employ when composing online.

I based my analysis on Anne Beaufort’s (1999) study of the five knowledge domains writers draw upon in expert acts of writing. Beaufort’s model emerged from her ethnographic study of four individuals’ transition from academic to professional writing. In College Writing and Beyond (2007), Beaufort presents a curriculum based on this five-part schema to encourage transfer of learning for students (p. 17). The five domains are: discourse community knowledge, which encompasses the four remaining domains; writing process knowledge, an understanding of how to move toward the completion of a writing task; subject matter knowledge, a familiarity with content important to the discourse community; genre knowledge, an awareness of the rules and norms of particular genres; and rhetorical knowledge, a grasp of the purposes and audiences in a particular rhetorical situation.

I interviewed students and collected samples of their self-sponsored, digital writings to learn whether students engage knowledge in Beaufort’s domains. Interviews and writing samples were transcribed, then coded using Beaufort’s five categories. The interview questions asked students to describe memorable digital compositions, and to reflect on the reasoning behind the text, medium, genre, and content of their digital, online writings. The writing samples collected were several months’ of public, online compositions from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, online forums, blogs, and other digital mediums. This broader look at students’ digital writing practices allowed me to examine the many purposes, audiences, and genres that are in play when a student is writing and publishing online.

Participants came from a large, urban university in the Western United States. The primary participants included three females and four males ranging from 18 to 20 years of age. All participants were currently enrolled or had just completed English 1A, a one-semester composition course. Three of Beaufort’s knowledge domains — discourse community, rhetorical, and genre knowledge — dominated the collected data. Based on my findings, I argue that studying and appreciating students’ self-sponsored digital literacies can help build bridges to academic literacies and help students grow as writers.