Williams, Sean D. "Part 2: Toward an Integrated Composition Pedagogy in Hypertext"
From RhetorClick
In his article Part 2: Toward an Integrated Composition pedagogy in Hypertext Sean D. Williams says that writing and rhetoric teachers should rethink the way they decide to teach composition, integrating new media and old media together to produce more effective and collaborative texts. Williams also emphasizes the importance of visual rhetoric saying "because visuals act rhetorically in a text, and outside the classroom "visual images from television, videos and magazines" assault students, instruction in visual rhetoric, like the verbal rhetoric we currently teach, requires that students acquire the skills necessary both to construct and to unravel visuals utilizing technology." We see verbal text before we read it, therefore making visual text an important part of documentation.
Students should be taught to build integrated compositions in hypertext since hypertext allows for a much more detailed web of information to be linked together. Students need to become active developers or "assemblers" of texts instead of just receiving knowledge from their teachers. To compose these hypertext documents, Williams details stages that students go through.
- Planning stage- Students work collaboratively to identify separate positions on an issue...analyze an audience, develop questions they will need to solve the problem, divide work to manage the task more effectively
- Transformation- Students use a combination of sources like the web and print to research the problem. Students should include all possible information and represent it on a separate web page
- Evaluation- Students receive feedback from peers to see how effectively proposed solutions relate to the audience
- Revision- Students improve the document by analyzing reader response from evaluation
Ultimately, Williams believes that an integrated composition pedagogy "overcomes the verbal bias by making old and new expressive and critical resources available to students."
