What is one assignment you will include in your syllabus assignment that uses collaboration and/or technology and/or other things Yancey, Selfe, Breuch, Bruffee, or Shaughnessey have discussed?

This past week, the curriculum was focused on revision. I thought what better way to discuss revision than to have a real, working writer (who isn't me and thus has a different kind of authority) come into the classroom and discuss his or her own revision processes. This would lend a whole new credence to the idea of re-envisioning over merely editing. 

Mark Keats, a second-year Ph.D. in Fiction, came and spoke to my students about a video essay he did last year. We started by watching the video essay and then he showed us the original drafts of his text-only essay and how it progressed into a video. He was meticulous in first describing his "global" and "local" edits to the actual text - that is, explaining to the students how a piece has to work as a cohesive whole (global) and also on a sentence level (local). They really latched onto this terminology and I loved seeing them explore the idea of a piece of writing being like a puzzle in which all the pieces must click into place, but also be their own entity. Then, they absolutely loved getting to see how he chose the images to accompany his words, how much work went into lining them up with the music, and how the overall effect was achieved.

I bring this experience up in light of this week's question because, based on my experience with Mark this week, I would definitely want a video essay to be part of my curriculum in a composition classroom. I think students are much more attuned to the concept of video on a day-to-day basis and much more, if not at least equally, accustomed to watching videos as they are to reading text. Having them create a video essay with Mark's ideas about text, revision, and alignment in mind would be very exciting. It could also help some students who perhaps aren't as strong at expression find an outlet for their creativity.

I also think it's valuable to allow students multiple outlets for "research," which would certainly be part of the creation of a video essay. Searching for images, whether personal ones or stock photos to support their argument in an analysis, can be a very reflective and generative process. Timing those photos to one's recorded voice also takes an entirely different kind of precision. Also, research like this can be more comfortable for some students who are not as at ease in the classroom or with the traditional strictures of writing. A computer lab or library or trove of newspaper articles and photos that relate to their topic (as my syllabus would be topic-centric) can be a safer space for certain students than the hubbub of class, as put well by Selfe & Selfe in "The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones": "These spaces, it has been noted, have the potential for supporting student-centered learning and discursive practices that can be different from and - some claim - more engaging and democratic than those occurring within traditional classroom spaces." (p. 6)

Lastly, I would like to assign a video essay because the format appeals to me. Certain technologies elude me and I would struggle to grade them, but this one feels fresh and also applicable, so I would have an easier time as a teacher engaging with the results.