Wikicomp is a project that aims to allow scholars in rhetoric and composition to remix existing articles from College Composition and Communication. It describes its mission in this way:
We all know that composing is a collaborative process. But until very recently, our scholarship has been frozen in fixed products attributed to “authors.” Using Wiki technology, Wiki-Comp aims to make visible the networked realities of writing and knowledge-production, thereby opening new space to imagine and enact composition’s future. By remixing classic articles from “C’s,” and making them freely available to reshape for our current moment, we hope to show how writing and thinking in the field of Composition happens.
In this project, you will work in groups to remix one of two CCC articles:
Trimbur, John. 2000. "Composition and the Circulation of Writing." CCC 52: 188-219.
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. 2004. "Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key." CCC 56: 297-328.
In keeping with our method of "drilling down," both of these articles are cited in Shipka's Toward a Composition Made Whole. But in addition to serving as the central text of our final unit, Shipka's book also presents us with a framework for this final assignment. In chapter four, Shipka argues that a "mediated activity-based multimodal framework" presents a unique composition pedagogy that avoids the pitfalls of courses that focus on "the acquisition of discrete skill sets, skill sets that are often and erroneously treated as static and therefore universally acceptable across time and diverse communicative contexts" (86, 83).
When composing, Shipka suggests, students should be afforded the opportunity to determine the product, purpose, processes, materials, and conditions under which their product will be experienced. We will be putting this approach to the test as we remix these CCC articles. These remixes can take any form, as long as they do what Shipka asks. In groups, you will remix the article by determining what you want to create (this may or may not involve text), the purpose of your composition, the processes and procedures you will use, the materials necessary, and the conditions under which you'd like the audience to experience that composition. During the planning stages, you must "come up with at least two ways of addressing or solving the problem" (92).
In addition to creating your remix, I will ask each group to compose what Shipka calls a statement of goals and choices (SOGC). The SOGC should do the following:
- Address the three sets of questions listed on page 114 of Toward a Composition Made Whole
- "List all the actors, human, and nonhuman, that played a role in helping [you] accomplish a given task" (114)
The SOGC will count for half of your grade, and there is no minimum or maximum word-length requirement.
When evaluating these projects and their accompanying explanations, I will be looking for the following:
- Does the project represent careful and detailed engagement with product, purpose, process, materials, conditions?
- Have you chosen the representational system that best suits what you wanted to accomplish?
- Does the project demonstrate a rhetorical sensibility that is attuned to rhetorical situation and audience?
- Does the project demonstrate that all members of the group have worked through a meaningful revision and design process?
- Does the project build upon, extend, and reimagine the article in a meaningful way?
- Does your SOGC present a detailed explanation of your goals, choices, and collaborators (human and nonhuman) according to the questions laid out by Shipka?
- Have you followed the rules of engagement
