Abstract
I will present pedagogical findings that discuss the intersections between memory and imagination, and the autobiographic transformations that occur when the process of walking is rendered through academic writing. Memory functions as the ground of data for the imagination and the imaginative leaps that translate into material resonances. In my project, I describe the process of “autobiographic research” that my students undertake and compare two class assignments at different universities, The University of Georgia and Georgia Institute of Technology: both assignments have similar methodologies but very different products. My students at The University of Georgia write traditional essays whereas my students at Georgia Tech, because of its multimodal composition program, compose weblogs. My research question, in conversation with Kathleen Ryan’s article “Memory, Literacy, and Invention” (2004) asks, how can autobiographic writing lead to an empirical understanding of the faculty of memory, and how can that experience lead to improvements in composition and research methods, where physical discovery is met with academic research? What are the affordances in a digital composition space, and how can an understanding of object-oriented navigation make us better composers through invention? And in comparison, what are the affordances in a standard research essay?
Research conducted:
- Two separate courses at different universities (UGA and Georgia Tech).
- Experimented with a range of multi-modal autobiographic essays that also included research.
Results/outcomes:
- Rhetorical situations were more diverse for electronic web log submissions.
- Blog submission essays created richer environments for research by linking out to research articles in their natural hypertext situations.
- Blog submission essays had heightened audience awareness since they were being posted in public spaces.
- “Standard” essay submissions contained more straightforward thesis and argumentative claims
- Narratives in “standard” form tended to have stronger centers of gravity and sustained attention to a single through-line
Goals of presentation:
- Demonstrate value of multi-modal assignments in composition courses
- Show differences in the process of invention between the forms of composition undertaken by students
- Demonstrate value of linking autobiographical research with standard critical research (research skills)
Location
Room 2002
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Hussey, Joshua, "Digital Transformations in the Classroom: Walking, Autobiography, Memory Objects Hyperlinked" (2015). SoTL Commons Conference. 104.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/sotlcommons/SoTL/2015/104
Digital Transformations in the Classroom: Walking, Autobiography, Memory Objects Hyperlinked
Room 2002
I will present pedagogical findings that discuss the intersections between memory and imagination, and the autobiographic transformations that occur when the process of walking is rendered through academic writing. Memory functions as the ground of data for the imagination and the imaginative leaps that translate into material resonances. In my project, I describe the process of “autobiographic research” that my students undertake and compare two class assignments at different universities, The University of Georgia and Georgia Institute of Technology: both assignments have similar methodologies but very different products. My students at The University of Georgia write traditional essays whereas my students at Georgia Tech, because of its multimodal composition program, compose weblogs. My research question, in conversation with Kathleen Ryan’s article “Memory, Literacy, and Invention” (2004) asks, how can autobiographic writing lead to an empirical understanding of the faculty of memory, and how can that experience lead to improvements in composition and research methods, where physical discovery is met with academic research? What are the affordances in a digital composition space, and how can an understanding of object-oriented navigation make us better composers through invention? And in comparison, what are the affordances in a standard research essay?
Research conducted:
- Two separate courses at different universities (UGA and Georgia Tech).
- Experimented with a range of multi-modal autobiographic essays that also included research.
Results/outcomes:
- Rhetorical situations were more diverse for electronic web log submissions.
- Blog submission essays created richer environments for research by linking out to research articles in their natural hypertext situations.
- Blog submission essays had heightened audience awareness since they were being posted in public spaces.
- “Standard” essay submissions contained more straightforward thesis and argumentative claims
- Narratives in “standard” form tended to have stronger centers of gravity and sustained attention to a single through-line
Goals of presentation:
- Demonstrate value of multi-modal assignments in composition courses
- Show differences in the process of invention between the forms of composition undertaken by students
- Demonstrate value of linking autobiographical research with standard critical research (research skills)
