Deconstructing Rhetoric

So, my dissertation chair is on board with my collection of ideas. Now it’s time to take this to the next level and start moving from the overall view of these five random topics into a more specific focus. I’m working (a bit loosely) from Wayne Booth’s excellent chapter in The Craft of Research. I always teach this Booth’s approach when I teach research-based composition, so why not use it for myself, right?

A Few Words on the Topic

Currently, the topic I’m working on is social bookmarking, multiliteracies, and research based composition. I’m feeling that somewhere in this vast topic, I’m going to be emphasizing some  Reader Response and a chunk of Foucault, but that’s not an official part of the topic (I think that will go more towards my theory base.)

My Claim

Teaching social bookmarking in research based composition helps students to find more extensive research in a short period of time and aids instructors in teaching multiliteracies advantageous to students outside the classroom (both in every day life and their professions).

Connecting the Dots

All of the aspects that I’m considering do connect, even though saying this comes only recently. I’m going to work around this in a seemingly odd way, but it’s the best way to show this link.

Foucault

Foucault’s arguments about power (and government having the power) help demonstrate that material contained in libraries and behind library firewalls in the databases represent the acceptable knowledge to the university faculty. Professors stress the need for “scholarly” writing. However, since the Internet has expanded, this definition also needs to be revised. Students need to be able to look at what is scholarly but not behind the powerful walls of the university databases. Will Richardson has many articles published in scholarly journals that professors would deem “acceptable” scholarly material. However, a post from his blog would not be considered “scholarly” by many of these same professors because it does not appear in a specific journal. Using Foucault’s theory of power relations helps me to demonstrate the necessity for allowing students more leeway in using sources from the entire internet, not just those coveted in the ivory tower.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is the crux of my argument. It’s the application that allows all of the components of my argument to fit together. Anybody can use social bookmarking and establish ethos through the lists they create. Many scholars in various disciplines are using social bookmarking and have lists that are readily available to the public. Students see other users who have bookmarked their scholar’s work and what else these users have bookmarked that may relate to their own research. Students can also look through the social bookmarking sites to see if the scholar uses this feature as well. A quick venture through Will Richardson’s blog and I can see that he uses Delicious. This means that I can also see Will’s bookmarks and see what he finds important in the latest news and scholarship. This can also give a student new directions for research and, often, this research is much more current than journal articles stored in the databases. Other times, this information may be kept in a database the student’s library does not subscribe to, so the information may not come up in a quick search through the databases. (For instance, looking through my university’s WorldCat brought back nine articles for au: “Will Richardson,” while the free web version of WorldCat brought back over 20 articles that were useful to my research. I found the free WorldCat through a friend’s bookmarked article on Diigo.)

Multiliteracies

Teaching social bookmarking in research-based composition also opens the door for instructors to teach students the multiliteracies Selber argues are pertinent to educating today’s students.

Functional

Social bookmarking has already proved itself in the realm of “functional technology.” Teaching this technological skill in the classroom would allow the students to learn a technology that applies not only to their academic lives, but also to their personal and professional lives as well. In addition, instructors have the ability to teach another functional literacy–RSS feeds (by teaching students to subscribe to the RSS updates for the lists they are working from so they are aware when lists are updated without having to check back every day and see if new information has been added.)

Critical

Social bookmarking also teaches critical literacy skills. Students will not only have the opportunity to question why the university is opposed to Internet based research, but also whether they will continue to use social bookmarking. Students will have to look at both the academic and the popular view of social bookmarking, Internet sources as research and a host of other available criticial literacies.

Rhetorical

Social bookmarking also teaches specific rhetorical skills that students will carry over into the evaluation of websites they consider for their research. When we allow students to consider a website in their academic research, we require them to look rhetorically at the website itself. This lesson readily carries over into the teaching of social bookmarking. Students will have to ask themselves if certain users are trying to persuade them to see a topic in a certain way (Does the user bookmark any of the opposition sites, for example).

The Bigger Picture

But social bookmarking does not exist in a vacuum and I am not teaching students how to research–they begin learning this in junior high school.  I have to consider that my topic draws from years of research-based composition pedagogy, collaborative learning pedagogy, and technology and research pedagogy.  Even though social bookmarking has only been around for a few years, it plays a role in a larger context and cannot be examined alone.

However,  social bookmarking cannot be ignored in teaching research. My students are quick to point out that everything they do on the Internet can be classified as research. Many of my students have their own social bookmarking accounts. So if they already know how to use the site, we  have to teach them how to use the sites in an educational way. Otherwise, these students will continue to see a divide between the way they “surf the internet” at home and “research” at school.

Motivating the Question

In short, I am studying social bookmarking because I want to find out where this tool can enhance student research abilities in order to help research-based composition instructors understand how to student learning can be enhanced on many levels through this simple addition to pedagogy.