top of page
Recent Posts

Wix is Composition in a New Key


Introduction is taken from a paper written on the epistemological function of Wix in December 2015 by Kendra L. Andrews

In a darkened theater in March of 2004, Kathleen Yancey gave the Chair’s Address to the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). She spoke of a kairotic moment for compositionists and she warned that this “moment right now—is like none other” because “never before has the proliferation of writings outside the academy so counterpointed the compositions inside” (Yancey 297-298). And again, in that same year, Cynthia Selfe, warned compositionists, “if our profession continues to focus solely on the teaching of alphabetic composition—either online or in print—we run the risk of making composition studies increasingly irrelevant to students engaging in contemporary practices of communicating” (72). And yet, that moment (and eleven years) have passed, but the vast majority of the composition field still relies on teaching nineteenth century print literacy skills to twenty-first century learners and writers. Why and how has composition pedagogy inside the classroom remained so disconnected from the technological composing methods already practiced outside of it? What is the disconnect between theory and practice?

Composing in digital modes, specifically through the Wix platform, supports that re-connection between our pedagogy and our praxis. Students can practice composing in ways beyond alphabetic text when using digital platforms. Students can write their essay as a traditional text and then remediate it to be used in an online space. This remediation requires students to make critical choices about the rhetorical situation (purpose, context, audience, genre, appeals, etc.) in order to convey meaning in the way that they intend. They have to make design choices (layout, size, structure, alignment, color, media) that also require critical attention since they create meaning in a digital text.

By using Wix in the classroom, students are given a safe space to practice digital composing and 21st century literacy skills. Once they leave the classroom students will need to use technological composing skills, so it is quickly becoming our task as not just writing teachers, but as composition instructors to include digital praxis in our pedagogy.

Eleven years after Kathi Yancey's Chair's Address, Adam Banks gave his to the same crowd, but with a new cry:

"That crossroads for me is one where we see that we have to embrace technology issues not as part of what we do, but as central to what we do. Technology is what we do, or what we need to do, not just because literacy is always technologized, not just because of computers AND composition, but because of the big picture technological issues that are always brought to bear on all facets of our lives and work."

It's time that we heed Banks' Cry and answer Yancey's question. It is time that we begin to teach digital composition as the new key.

 

Banks, Adam. "Ain't No Walls behind the Sky, Baby! Funk, Flight, Freedom." College Composition and Communication 67.2 (2015): 267-279. Print.

Selfe, Cynthia L. “Toward New Media Texts: Taking Up the Challenges of Visual Literacy.” Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Eds. Anne Frances Wysocki, et al. Utah: Utah State University Press, 67-110. Print.

Yancey, Kathleen Blake. "Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key." College Composition and Communication 56.2 (2004): 297-328. Print.


bottom of page