I started typing this up as a response to the kind writers who responded to my call for collaboration, but it’s become sufficiently involved that it merits a post of its own. Here goes.
First off, Derek really pushes my thinking further in his first paragraph, to the point where I’m like: yes, this can work; let’s see how far we can take this. The only real experience with anything similar to what I’m suggesting has been much like John’s, in a creative writing seminar where part of the class, exhilaratingly, co-created a story via e-mail; a story where even the failed attempts, questions, and asides were incorporated and rewritten into the action. But in this sense, what I’m proposing goes far beyond the universal syllabus John suggests, and while first year composition tends (like pornography) to be fairly recognizable when one sees it, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t vary widely from institution to institution: in fact, both the syllabus and the texts produced at the institution where I got my MFA differed radically from the syllabus and the texts produced at my current institution.
Which brings me to Chris’s wonderful description of the institution as CVS repository, which in a way describes even some of our current practices in teaching writing (the student text is malleable and open to comment by peer and teacher; quite clearly, however, there’s a hierarchy of valuation and authority here), but I have in mind a more radical opening of the authorship and revision of texts, by which students might actively and pluralistically collaborate in both composing and revision.
(The cynic here might rightly ask: why only the students? Why, indeed: if I were really interested in pushing these notions to their limits, I might suggest an entirely open syllabus — one with a vocabulary, certainly; a pinned-down definition of the essay towards which any revisions of the syllabus must contribute — but, yes, it does make me a bit uneasy, the idea of students rewriting our syllabus in flight, as it were. I’d be interested to hear what other folks think of this apparent contradiction.)
As I’ve said before, this would be a fundamental uncoupling of writing from the notion of property, to the point where I might imagine group-authored essays circulating through my institution’s 80+ sections of first-year composition, open to revision and collaboration. This, of course, would necessitate a re-thinking of plagiarism policies (but in a good way, I want to hope, in a way that moves us away from the impulse to accumulate, the impulse to steal; a way that moves us away from an Enron attitude of appropriation and exploitation, and towards an attitude of cooperation and generosity) and grading policies (and, again, I want to hope in a good way; in a way that moves us beyond the exchange-based notions of academic work as payment that are at their worst exemplified in the students who says, “Here’s my paper; where’s my grade?”) that might be described only as simultaneously radical and fundamental.
This, I think, is how what I’m proposing goes far beyond Torill’s teacher-created open-source course materials and towards Derek’s work of “complicated, unprotected origin”. I think, in my response to Passing_Through, I might have offered a few ideas about the theoretical underpinnings to the beginnings of such a project, upon which I’d be grateful for any feedback. Beyond that, though, the link Clancy mentioned offers even more practical possibilities (and, by the way, I’m grateful for the links other folks have offered, as well, and they’re on my plate for tomorrow, right after I finish Feenberg); this project, as I’ve imagined it, might be served very well as a wiki. So the next step for me, in the interests of freeing writing from its commodified attachment to the single-author model of property, might be to set up a wiki. Unfortunately, I’m a babe in the woods with such tasks, and would be grateful for any guidance. I’m on Apache and MySQL here: any suggestions for wiki solutions that are relatively pain-free in their installation?
Again, as an ongoing request: feedback and ideas are very much welcomed. Let’s do this.
“As I’ve said before, this would be a fundamental uncoupling of writing from the notion of property, to the point where I might imagine group-authored essays circulating through my institution’s 80+ sections of first-year composition, open to revision and collaboration.”
This sounds more like what we do in the parts of the education where we teach practical skills, however at a MUCH smaller scale. Volda College has 2000 students, department of media studies have 2-300 of these – sounds like a different world.
Students constantly work in groups and in workshops, presenting their material for each other, comenting on eachother’s material, sharing responsibilities and doing the final editing in groups. They all have responsibility for the quality of the finished work, and we don’t put a name or a grade on it, as long as 1) they worked and 2) they documented the process towards the finished work.
For my students that is a very different process from that of the journalism students. This is mainly because journalists work on their seperate little items and rather monotonous tasks, while public relations groups work for their employer on large, complex tasks. Where journalists become experts of writing articles, public relations students are supposed to be multi-geniouses in the area of communication. And since they can’t exell at all, from research to presentation, a very important part of our trtaining is for them to understand the process of cooperation as much as the process of creation.
This way of working is however, in my case, developed from the demands of the complex task at hand. It is very hard to transfer this to different types of work. The same students, when faced with publishing within the same rules as the journalists, are as teritorial as the journalists. They are a little more easygoing about it, not so driven when it comes to profiling their own name. They know, after all, that for them having a “name” might be more of a problem than a help, and that being versatile and cooperative is more appreciated.
You indicate what you are thinking “goes far beyond the universal syllabus” I suggested. OK, do some mapping of “far beyond.” If you don’t see the project focused on the college writing requirement, do you see it focused on the various writing demands that develop in colleges? If this project isn’t a course, is it a program? Or is it an institutional revolution? [I’ll confess I’m very skeptical of proposals to transform whole institutions.]
What I understood the original proposal to involve would be some several of us trying to use some of this web technology to collaborate on a new approach to the teaching of composition in colleges. The approach would challenge conventional boundaries and see the production of texts as inherently worthy and authorless (in conventional terms).
While a wiki sounds like a good environment to work in, I still need more texture for “far beyond.” Or do you want to wait until you have the environment for the discussion created before we all get engaged in “purpose and audience” colloquy?
John, I’m similarly skeptical of such revolutionary proposals. What I’m suggesting is not so much a syllabus as a way of thinking about writing in the classroom; assignments that require and foster collaboration — so, yes, the “production of texts as inherently worthy and authorless”; texts that could be shared and “open”. Actually, now that I think of it, a syllabus is as good a framework as any to start with, since it lays out assignments, policies, and rationales — so maybe not so “far beyond,” after all.
OK–a wiki-built syllabus for college writing.
I’d love to help with the wiki, but I know nothing. I don’t even know the etymology of wiki. Is it at all related to “wikiup”?
Just noticed this post and the previous one. It is interesting that in an earlier era, nobody would have thought twice about free use and sharing of writings. Intellectual property really is a very strained concept, but we have come to view it as the norm.
I’ve actually been working on a couple of things that are sort-of related to this project. I’ve adapted a Wiki project into a more general content management systems. The core functionality is there, but it needs some detail and polishing. You should also check out Lessig’s Creative Commons organization and their licenses. I also have some notes on a paper I’m starting to work on comparing licensing schemes for sharing code vs. text, etc. I’ll forward you a copy.
Let me know what else I can contribute to your project.
Oops, I see you have a Creative Commons license on your site, I guess you have already looked at those. I don’t see an email address here, drop me a note and I’ll forward the paper.