Web 2.0 Scholarship: Toward a Manifesto

[I think this wobbles in-between response and polemic/manifesto. Mybad.]

Those of us who have taught writing have, I’m sure, made a particular claim in our writing classrooms, setting down a grand manifesto about how “everyone in the class is your reader,” or something along those lines. What really happens, as most of us are aware, is that really, I, as THE TEACHER am often the only real, responsive reader they ever get, and student peers merely serve as fellow comma-hunters (and usually not very good ones at that!) The situation in academic publishing is much the same—we may have a very limited readership of some of our publications, but by and large, most printed scholarly works go safely—and sadly—unread by the wide majority of the intended audience.

Web 2.0 and near-ubiquitous social networking, on the other hand, doesn’t dramatize the presence of an audience and doesn’t dramatize the process of publication–it provides the Real Thing in the form of that network. Sometimes the audience (an abstraction now even more complicated in a way that even Ede & Lunsford (1984) couldn’t have imagined) is silent, sometimes so loudly and noxiously participatory as to be invasive; sometimes it’s as Aristotelian and distinct as can be, and sometimes–as Christine points out–so blurred between “we/I” and “you” as to be indistinguishable from other rhetorical participants. Sometimes it expects the traditional, and sometimes it is ready for the genre-bending. (I excerpt this clip from one of our group’s MOO discussions: “But it [the analysis and publication of our study results] wouldn’t have to be just graphs – maybe Chris wants to write a poem about his findings, and Kristi wants to do an interpretive dance.”) Web 2.0 may indeed be “whatever” (in terms of Weinbergerian miscellany, not the militant apathy of much of my generation).

I think the grand narrative–and complicating factor–and challenge–for Web 2.0 and social networking is its continual tendency to force reassessment of our ever-more-fluid relationships with texts* and audiences. We want feedback, we get silence or even too much feedback; we want collaboration, we want isolation; we are motivated, we lose motivation; we feel idealism and unbridled utiopanism; we feel cynicism and jaded irony; we feel empowered, autonomous and agency-laden, and we feel lost and unheard in the Babel and deep corners of the Web. It’s a reflection (as Benkler notes) not of a “fundamental shift in human nature” but rather of our already-existing nature as “complex beings, radically individual and self-interested at the same time that we are entwined with others who form the context out of which we take meaning, and in which we live our lives” (376-377). We haven’t changed—as so many critics would decry—the scope of interaction on a social basis has changed. No utopianism. No “electrical sublime.” A simple fact. It’s time to deal with it.

Most recently, Shirley, Kristi, and Monica (along with others) have mentioned the place, the space, the environment of Web 2.0. I really do think that’s a helpful metaphor. Humans haven’t changed, but our space and how we are able relate to, connect to, and make sense of it (that is, how we employ our agency)—as well as who we are able to do all those things with—has.

*that’s “texts” in the most broad and discursively all-encompassing sense of the word.

Scholarly Identity

[Initially posted as a response to this.]

A good point Monica, but a point to which I ask: “Is that enough”?

From our survey of academic use of Web 2.0, I saw again and again that Web 2.0 has a great deal of value to academics for collection, connection, and collaboration—to one open response question on my section of the survey, a whopping 78% of people made some mention of the words (or a closely related concept) connection or collaboration in their response. The only significant followers had to do with doing research (in terms of managing information) and keeping up with the field (also mostly in terms of managing information). A few (maybe four out of this sample) reported that the Internet or online discourse was in some way the subject of their work. But there was no significant claim about using this site for the dissemination—or even creation—of knowledge. It just didn’t factor, because the old print model for creating scholarly texts and academic knowledge (“serious intellectual work” as one blogger puts it)—the monograph; the journal article; the lengthy, sustained, traditionally logically-structured prose essay—is still the dominant paradigm. Even in digital publishing, which is in many cases simply a remediation (and often not a very interesting one at that) of print publication. As Alex Reid argues on his blog, digital digs: “[most digital scholarly works] are pretty much just print texts online, or they are very experimental pieces that operate more like art than scholarship.”

Reid, in another blog entry, asks what I think is a very good question—one related not only to digital scholarship and university education in the 21st century, but to the kind of rupture that the vast changes in individual agency has wrought (changes brought about by social networking’s symbiotic relationship to web publishing). That question: “Is the point of humanities scholarship to participate in the production and communication of humanistic knowledge, or is it to demonstrate a certain level of mastery or academic reputation?”

If the point is the former, then embracing Web 2.0 and the more collaborative and individual agency-laden knowledge construction (at another point, Reid writes about a “collaborative nexus”) it entails is necessary, is indeed inevitable. If that point, however, is the latter, then it’s simply a question of remediating print into digital for the sake of tenure, publication, and economic necessity, and not thinking about this in terms of grand narrative construction or identity negotiation or even facilitation of discourse.

There’s a great deal of talk out there (I’ve also been doing a limited survey of digital scholarship blogs) about “adapting” digital media and being open to new forms of scholarship (see MLA and HASTAC, see just about any digital scholarship blog that you can find). But that may not be advancing the conversation far enough. A new identity of “scholar”—a negotiated one—therein lies part of the answer. “Academia,” as we’ve been referring to it, is in the midst of what may fundamentally be an identity crisis. I think what Dr Kemp wrote about most recently (below), the “continually stated or implied validation of what other people feel and believe, and are saying” lies at about as far a polar extreme to expertise-driven discourse as one can get. It’s a brand new identity, and one which the medieval/modern university isn’t sure how to take on. Humanities scholars have for a long time been trained to be quite happy with the state of aloneness that Elizabeth and many others of us have referred to. Perhaps, however, that is changing…

Academia: Identity, Agency, Emotion

Fear, Loathing, and Digital Maoism

Audio Podcast (approx 5 mins.)

Accompanying graphic

Reassessing Education

Chris challenges some of the statements I made in my previous post and asks whether mere acknowledgment and openness is enough to move academia forward into a place that embraces not only what technologies are available, but the types of things (in terms of social knowing) that such technologies could make possible. My short answer to this question is “no.” It is not nearly enough, but allow me to elaborate a little on this. Chris’s post brings to our attention the tendency for our text-based (or print-based) culture to continue in the ways it’s always done things, and he suggests that such a mode of operation fails to account for multimodal, multidimensional ways of knowing and communicating. In his discussion of how we “adapt” digital media to old print or text paradigms, he argues for a new identity for what it means to be a scholar, and he asks whether the point of academics is to produce and participate in knowledge creation or to demonstrate mastery and expertise?

Chris’s question, I think, gets to the heart of what is going on in academia, and not only in the realm of Web 2.0 and social media. It is a question that represents well the push and pull between more traditional institutional frameworks in which tenure, advancement, occupational success, credibility, and some would argue, fulfillment are predicated on publishing in the text-based, traditional mode and in a manner that clearly invokes the expert paradigm. But some academics are also pulled towards a more idealistic existence, one in which one might consider what it truly means to create social knowledge, socially. This idealism is not rewarded enough in traditional institutional structures, because such idealism—as idealism often will—threatens the status quo and the old way of knowing. When such structures are threatened, so, too, are the participants who benefit from the existing structure. I, personally, don’t believe that most academic institutions are where they should be in terms of embracing not only Web 2.0, but what is possible when students and educators join in a true demonstration of social knowledge creation. Individuals have shown themselves willing to embrace such measures, but these individual motives have not yet aggregated to the point of being able to change the existing structures. People are instead finding ways in which to bring to fruition these new motives in the networked environment.

Christine talks about the ways in which credibility is constructed in this new, networked space and how such credibility is a function of audience feedback. Educators are often immersed in two communities—the traditional institutional community and the digital community. These two communities are at times at odds with one another. Institutions are more often than not built on a top-down model, while networked environments are far more egalitarian. Where the education model has been predicated on a strict top-down model, there is less room for the introduction of egalitarian motives. This tension between communities also creates a demand on academic’s identities, which are in part constructed by those with whom they interact, collaborate, network, and communicate.

So perhaps the full measure, the fully realized benefits of social media and social knowing must occur apart from traditionally modeled academia. I do believe that academia will change, but perhaps not as quickly as Chris, myself, and others would like. This causes me to consider the viability of earlier experiments with this same type of alternative educational environment. Perhaps we need something like a Black Mountain College. Black Mountain College was a fully experimental, fully interdisciplinary college with a philosophy that was heavily based on the work of John Dewey. Even though its existence was brief, it produced scholars and artists who would later become highly influential. “Black Mountain College inculcated an informal and collaborative spirit” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mountain_College), and aren’t these exactly the types of adjectives we’ve used to define our new peer-produced rhetorical space?
Submitted by Monica Wesley

Kristi’s Third Post

Taking the rhetoric of personal agency from an idea to the nuts and bolts is an interesting transition. While looking at the use of Web 2.0 technologies by educators, we began using the social bookmarking site Diigo (www.diigo.com). In addition to other functions, Diigo allows its users to bookmark a location, and apply annotations to a document. Then, future users viewing the same material will not only see the information on the web, but also the annotations.

Example:

In an article Connectivism that I have bookmarked on Diigo, Siemens (2004) states “Connectivism also addresses the challenges that many corporations face in knowledge management activities. Knowledge that resides in a database needs to be connected with the right people in the right context in order to be classified as learning. Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism do not attempt to address the challenges of organizational knowledge and transference.”

When logged into Diigo, I see the above section highlighted and that a comment was posted in May 2009 stating “This, seems to me, to be about culture. We do learn in a culture, in an environment. This is the first time that I have read where the culture itself is learning. It reminds me of John Steinbeck and his theory of group dynamics in The Grapes of Wrath. Although Steinbeck seems to say that the environment has a “mind” of its own, connectivism seems to be saying that this “mind” can be harnessed and integrated in individual learning, in fact needs to.”

So, five years after this article was written, users are still able to collaborate and continue to brainstorm among each other in order to further develop the author’s thoughts and ideas.

In our survey of Web 2.0 in academia, I focused on the personal use of Web 2.0 for respondents. In the comments, many users indicated that although they used social networking sites, they limited their use due to the loss of privacy. Some respondents did not know what Web 2.0 technology was. One of the most important findings of this survey was the lack of definition of the use of Web 2.0 technologies within academia. In Monica’s post, she discusses “…the negotiated space in between [opposing viewpoints on the use of Web 2.0 technologies in academia] where values can be found.” In uncovering this definition, this middle ground allows for the flexibility inherent in the developing uses and definitions of Web 2.0 in academia.

When using Web 2.0 technologies, our survey respondents by far (88.4 percent), indicated that they were most likely to use them for long-distance social networking. Similar to what Shirley noted in her post about companionship and has been documented previously, this sort of use is common and popular. In the respondents that appreciated the benefits to Web 2.0 technologies, this connectedness remained one of the key benefits to using Web 2.0 technologies in personal lives.

Blogging was also a popular tool for personal use. One respondent noted that “Certainly, this means that there will be many other voices to be heard, but part of writing, part of becoming persuasive with language, is rising to the top and getting your voice heard. This is one major reason I incorporate blogging into my first year writing curriculum, because it gives my students some perspective on audience.” I think this audience ties back to personal agency. The approach is not simply writing, but finding means to be heard. Through this, students may develop a better understanding of the meaning behind being heard.

Elizabeth’s one-way rhetoric poses an interesting research situation. By being half of the social exchange and limited interactions within the users, it is difficult to determine what sort of picture will emerge. In our survey, multiple respondents indicated that they used online dating sites, even if they did not find other forms of Web 2.0 technology useful in their personal lives. The desires for connectedness and socialization are strong. When looking at our social character historically, it seems only natural that we would integrate Web 2.0 technologies in order to meet and connect in the most basic of ways.

Ronda’s Second Post

One measure of agency we used for instructors in higher education came in the form of a question about partcipants’ comfort level with Web 2.0/social networking tools. We posed the question in terms of personal use, instructional use, and professional/scholarly use. When asked to rate their comfort level with the use of Web 2.0 technology for instruction, over 86% participants rated themselves as moderately to highly comfortable, while less than 14% said they were comfortable only to a limited degree. This was true for both females and males, though the ratios between moderate and high degree of comfort were roughly inverted.  Moderate comfort was indicated by 52.5% of women and 27.3% of men, whereas high comfort was 35.6% for women and 59.1% for men (see chart below).

Q15I-Comfort MvsF.png

So much for numbers, right? It’s a snapshot. We must avoid exaggerating the importance of these statistics with a small sample size, but it will be interesting to see if the stereotypical “confident male” and “somewhat tentative female” trends continue when we reopen the survey during the launch of our website. I’m sure there will be plenty of room for gender studies in this rich field.

To enhance the agency of our participants and, thereby, the value of our data, we supplied an open-ended “comments/other” section for most questions asked. Not surprisingly, we found their comments more fascinating (and perhaps more revealing) than the numbers.

Some instructors said they felt comfortable with the technologies but were concerned or doubtful about students’ openness to them. One said students “rarely take me up on the offer” to use digital alternatives for creating and submitting assignments. Another expressed excitement at incorporating online tools in the classroom as early as 2000 only to “pay for that in evaluation forms,” which s/he attributes to student resistance.

Still others are concerned/defensive about the notion of “friending” students on FaceBook and fear having their agency/privacy wrested from them in this arena, dreading the idea that this type of social networking with students might become compulsory.

Despite the fears and concerns of some, others tout positive experiences with encouraging multimodal assignments that incorporate YouTube and other media, engaging students in critical discussions and opinion pieces on the pros and cons of social networking.

As so many us in this class have said already, the agency (and level of comfort with any socio-technological innovation) lies not in the tools but in ourselves [butchering the Bard yet again]. To what degree to we need to feel “comfortable” in order to feel we have agency? How much does individual attitude affect personal agency, regardless of context, rhetorical situation, audience, etc.?

Submitted by Ronda Wery

Kristi’s Second Post

Privacy and identity are major issues that we will continue to confront in Web 2.0 and our interaction with it. Julie indicates that, for her, the benefits to this social sharing outweigh the loss of privacy and sharing of identity. I agree, although I think that there are many Internet users out there that do not find this benefit great enough to participate in the mass data sharing that is occurring.

In our research project in the use of Web 2.0 in education, many respondents discussed their concerns about privacy and this interaction between professional and personal relationships. Most users that felt this way used Facebook (if at all) for only “professional” interactions and information sharing. I find this thought process limiting in the available knowledge sharing and use of tools such as Facebook. It reminds me of Prensky’s warning to educators in 2001 that, “our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.”

It has been noted repeatedly that the future jobs for the students being educated today do not even exist. Because of this and many other reasons, educators must find a way to interact with and understand Web 2.0 technologies. As noted by Selwyn (2008), Web 2.0 created an environment of a “read/write web, where users can easily generate their own content as well as consuming content produced by others.” In order to refine this collaborative process, educators closing the door on Web 2.0 technologies need to reevaluate their purpose in the classroom. By at a minimum allowing a discussion, educators as well as students will create a better understanding of the value and costs in this knowledge building.

Rather than limit interactions due to the loss of identity and privacy issues, educators should be creating a means of understanding for their students, as well as ways to use this system to their advantage. As Julie indicated, this understanding is a work in progress, and open discussions with students is another way of moving forward for both the students, as well as the educators. The scope is taken outside of a single classroom, to a worldwide collaboration. In a 2008 publication by the University of London on web use and growth, the researchers noted, “We should not just ask how the web can change education, but how education can change the web.” In a Web 2.0 environment, the opportunities are available.

Submitted by Kristi Dunks

Kristi’s First Post

In Weinberger (2007), he notes that “Everything is metadata and everything can be a label” (p. 104). As users discover and define their agency, this “everything” is theirs to take as well as to create. The curious aspect to the stories we now tell is that they are not restricted by requirements. Two users can tell the same story in completely different ways, and readers can then uniquely interpret the data. The dissonance does not devalue the information, but creates more fodder for the filter.

How does our fodder tell the story? Benkler (2006) talks about individuals creating “proliferations of strands of stories and a means of scanning the universe of potential stories about how the world is and how it might become, leaving individuals with much greater leeway to choose, and therefore a much greater role in weaving their own life tapestry” (p. 175). Personal agency allows users to power to create, combine, and delete, whatever information they choose.

LM’s comment about virtual identities being a subset of an individual’s “true” identity provides a glimpse of how individuals are changing through Web 2.0. As we have discussed through our class sessions, these identities are becoming less distinct or subsets of one another, but are becoming one in the same. Blog discussions about medical conditions, students interacting after class through on online textbooks, photo sharing and tagging among family members, and interacting with strangers using social bookmarking sites, are all ways we are using our identities. One of the real powers of Web 2.0 is its ability strip away the distinction between “true” and “online” identities through user independent input and the power of personal agency.

Submitted by Kristi Dunks

Rhetorical Polarities and Positioning

Dan discusses the ways in which descriptive polarities (i.e., real vs. unreal) might be used to define or describe various Web 2.0 technologies and notes, too, that such rhetorical or philosophical pairings are highly subjective. While subjective, such rhetorical tactics are not without utility. These rhetorical strategies are often short-term measures to help us easily classify those things, which are confusing, misunderstood, or complex. Often these word choices infiltrate the ways in which we seek to understand the world around us. Sometimes, this metaphorical polarity is mirrored within the primary communicative relationship of the classroom. In this type of communicative activity, the educator sends out a message (or a narrative) to students in a manner that presumes a linear (mostly one-way) communication experience. But this simplistic communication model doesn’t account for the things that occur in more complex and, often more effective, communication interactions—interactions in which noise, interference, recipient, and channel also impact the message. In the realm of social media, this channel includes Web 2.0 technologies, and these tools absolutely impact and modify the message, while also influencing the sender and recipients. In this more complex communicative environment, forced polarities that classify things and individuals as “either/or” are not altogether productive.

The results of our survey of academics indicated strong opinions at both ends of the spectrum, including unbridled enthusiasm and outright dismissal. However, we recognize that these extremes over-simplify the complexity that actually exists when it comes to acceptance levels of Web 2.0 within academia. For the purposes of defining a rhetoric of personal agency, I don’t believe that it is in the extremes of this continuum where we will find the useful means of incorporating Web 2.0 into the academic environment and thereby, increasing agency. Such extremes are often skewed. Instead, it is the negotiated space in between where value can be found.

While what I’m about to discuss next was, in part, a result of the ways in which the survey language was structured and only applies to a subsection of the survey, I was surprised by how little mention was made of students in the questions I analyzed and their use of Web 2.0 and social media. In my section of the survey, relatively little attention was given to the possibility of using these tools for the social creation of knowledge within the classroom, with students. Responses were instead focused on how “I” (“I” being the educator or respondent) used these tools. Very little attention was given to the ways in which the agency of students might possibly change within these new environments or what they might gain from the incorporation of this new technology. For me, this seems to be merely an extension or variant of the expert paradigm—only telling the story through the educator’s viewpoint or lens. When those respondents who affirmed that they believed Web 2.0 technologies could contribute to the creation or expansion of knowledge were asked in what ways this could occur, only one respondent acknowledged that it would facilitate the relationship with the student (“meet the students where they’re at”). All other responses were educator-centric, focusing on facilitating collaboration, knowledge creation, dissemination, research, and networking in a way that primarily supported the educator.

Further exploration, such as what we are conducting in this class, will certainly help to clarify the ways in which social media can be used to facilitate academic discourse and learning, among all of its participants. We do, however, need a greater recognition of the multiple voices and narratives that exist within the classroom, and I believe that Web 2.0 and social media can facilitate this recognition. For Web 2.0 to be more fully integrated into academia, we need to explore practices that ensure these multiple narratives intersect and inform one another more productively.

Submitted by Monica Wesley, August 1, 2009