I am replying to another blog post…it didn’t like my long winded reply, LOL! )

Let me first apologize to Donna for taking so long to respond; however, I think these issues are at the crux of my professional identity. I identify as a rhetorician who is interested in the interfaces between technology and humanity. Yes…this is huge, but I think the message above shows how/why!

So, the nitty gritty, some first round response (and we may want to invite the librarian’s to play…this could be a nice long discussion in the CTL’s blog).

Information Explosion
We’ve already been watching this for a while. Educational institutions, including libraries and museums, are no longer the keepers of information. Now that information, especially “facts,” is much more ubiquitous, teaching is not just a sharing of facts and knowledge. Now, as educators, we’ve always known that education is more than facts; however, we are now being smacked across the face with it. At this point, I would argue it is pointless to have students “know” the dates for the American Civil War. Why, when they can get online and find the information within minutes? What is much more important is to train them to critically, rhetorically, evaluate the information to see if it meets their needs.

Information Literacy
This topic begins to get to the point of the original posting, so why memorize “facts” when the information is “at your fingertips”? As Donna pointed out above, the information is not being produced and published by people and institutions we consider authoritative. Instead, this information explosion is occurring because anyone with a cell phone that takes pictures or videos can update the world with multi-modal content. We are not going to stop the “just Google it” paradigm (you know, parents no longer say “look it up in the dictionary/encyclopedia”…it’s now “go Google it”). Instead, we are going to need to train students to think rhetorically about the information they consume:

• Who made it?
• For what purpose?
• In what context?

If students start reading rhetorically, they will then be able to assess whether or not the information is “useful” for their particular situation. If the students knows that she is just “checking a fact” and also knows that Wikipedia is about as reliable as a regular generalist encyclopedia (see http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=1734 and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm) then she can rely on Wikipedia as a “valid” source for the “check the fact” rhetorical situation. However, if she is doing a detailed report on a complex subject…shouldn’t she be checking multiple sources anyhow?

The Changing Face of Knowledge—or what is an “authoritative source”?
Once we acknowledge that the need for information is rhetorically situated, then we realize that what constitutes an “authoritative source” is just as rhetorically situated. The rants and raves against Wikipedia as a valid resource for academic papers is my current favorite point of rebellion. Let’s start with the easy stuff…any academic papers that go into any deeper level of detail on a topic never could reliably cite an encyclopedic source, internet based or not. All along scholars should have been teaching their students to use encyclopedias as starting places for their research. Like any other “academic” resource they include citations that then can send a student to more detailed resources. In other words, the rhetorical situation of writing an academic paper rarely ever allowed encyclopedia entries anyhow…why all the hub-bub?

But, the more fun argument, is to show when a Wikipedia entry might actually rhetorically fit the situation. One of my colleagues and I co-authored an article about the cross-modal narrative structures of contemporary science fiction film narratives. In other words, to “consume” all of the Star Wars or Star Trek narratives, to name the biggies, you have to “read” movies, television, books, video games, lunch boxes, underroos…and that’s only the officially sanctioned portion of the narrative structures. Then, there are the fan produced and published materials that also impact the world and narrative of these huge fiction franchises. For example, you really can’t consider yourself a huge Star Wars fan if you haven’t seen Troops. All of this to get to the point that there really is no easy place to point people to when discussing the various narrative franchises. Whereas most film scholars know to go to the Internet Movie Database, that database privileges information about the film narratives, some television and video game narratives, and has barely any connection to the fandom element. And even the connections across modes are difficult to make in IMDB; it privileges the film. Whereas the Wikipedia pages about each franchise very readily list the various modes of the narrative franchise, and some also highly develop the fandom angle. In our paper, we not only cite, but blatantly told our readers that the best “starting place” to read about any franchise is Wikipedia. Isn’t that ironic though, we ultimately use and refer to Wikipedia in our scholarly article for its original rhetorical purpose, general reference as an encyclopedia.

All this to get back to the idea of rhetorically reading a resource. What made the Wikipedia resources valuable for my colleague and I was the fact that more people had access to producing the information. In some cases, fans know more than an “expert” that either the production company or the academy has sanctioned as such. The power of Wikipedia, and the “average consumer” construction of content, is in the fact that more people are having input into the construction of knowledge. Much work of feminist scholars, especially feminist historians, is the reclaiming of “knowledge production” by different women in history. Because those women didn’t have access to “publishing” or “saving” their knowledge through the officially sanctioned mechanism (remember, those “educational” institutions listed above, schools, libraries, museums, etc.) their voices did not get to contribute to a more well rounded construction of historical “T”ruth.

By having more people producing and publishing “knowledge” we have a glorious multifaceted description of truth in the making. And once we can acknowledge that truth is culturally constructed, sanctioned, saved, and reproduced, we know that becoming a rhetorical reader is necessary. If we know who said it, why, and in what context…we can better understand the information and work it into our own complex vision of the world (or the topic we are studying).

Teaching in the 21st Century
Therefore instead of being “knowledge” experts, educators need to become “skill” experts. What does it mean to “do” rhetoric? History? Biology? I can look up what family and genus a poison dart frog belongs to; however, do I have the skills to think like a biologist? To do biology? And just as there are certain discourse practices that are privileged in one discipline and not in another, there will emerge a set of slightly differing information literacy practices for each discipline. Of course it makes sense that I’m fighting for the viability of Wikipedia, I’m one of those mushy humanities rhetorician folks, right? And the information literacy practices that will emerge in my discipline will be different than what emerges in physics. But teaching the “skill” of doing something is much more difficult then just “dumping the knowledge.” You can’t just test do a multiple guess test of skills. As “education” becomes more about learning how to “do” something, all of these government sanctioned assessments will become increasingly humorous and frustrating.

The Changing Face of the “Composition” Classroom…or How we Get Back to Donna’s “Digital Content Expanding”
Whereas many would think this information explosion has added a lot of work to composition instructor’s already full agenda, I would argue it has not. Just like we can’t possibly teach students to write for every rhetorical situation, we can’t teach them the specific methods of locating and using sources for every discipline. Instead, and I’m sure you’re getting tired of reading it, all we can do is teach them more generalizable skills, rhetorical practices (our specialty), that they can they apply to help them figure out the specifics of future situations. Translation: I can teach Johnny a set of questions to ask himself about a writing situation. I can teach Johnny a set of questions to ask himself about a researching/reading situation. I can’t teach Johnny how to research/read/write for every situation.

Now, the difference that is occurring is the production of dynamically changing information. It is no longer just about teaching my students to find the author, purpose, and context of the sources they are reading. I need to get them thinking about how these sources are co-authored, and change over time. In other words, show the beauty of Wikipedia by sending them to a page and having them read the “history” and “discussion” pages that provide a narrative of the construction of the entry. The “authority” of this information becomes real!

Similarly, this “digital content explosion” also demonstrates why “composition” instructors will increasingly be teaching multi-modal composition. Do you really think that academic articles will remain so flat and static with the increasing ease in which we can include pictures, sounds, videos, dynamic content, etc.? The written word will not be replaced; however, it won’t be so lonely anymore!

Digital Natives and the Digital Divide—A footnote
Finally, I do want to address the individuals who got halfway through my posting and went “not everyone has access to these technologies.” You are correct; although Educause, among others, use scholars like Prensky to describe how we need to address the needs of our “net generation” student, especially those of us at the community college know that not all of our students are digital natives and many live on the other side of the digital divide. However, I do agree with Neal Stephenson’s prediction in The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer; in Stephenson’s future, the poor are dependent on technology and only the super-rich can participate in more “natural,” “back to your roots” activities. (And if you really want to talk about the future of education technologies, let’s talk about that Primer…but that’s another blog.) And if you don’t buy that, we still do have a responsibility to help our students, even those on the other side of the digital divide, to compete in Friedman’s Flat World. Although I don’t like the term “cater” in The Chronicle of Higher Ed’s article, I do believe that colleges should be professional consultants, like doctors and lawyers—educational consultants—and be just as rhetorically adaptive to our students needs. And just like doctors and lawyers, that sometimes means telling them things they don’t want to hear. Those things might include, be comfortable with technology as well as know how to communicate solely using the written word.

I think that is enough for now…Donna, I hope this is what you were wanting. J

Shelley