Towards Dialogical Student Publics: An Emancipatory Approach to Networked Writing Tools in the Classroom

• In Event: Aided, Inspired, Multiplied: Web 2.0, Collaborative Writing, and Social Reading (Online Session)

Abstract

(https://web.hypothes.is/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Towards-Dialogical-Student-Publics-2.pdf)

Nietzsche famously observed that “our writing tools are also acting on our thoughts.” In the 21st century we must ask how they are also working on our freedoms. During the past decade, learning management systems and popular networked information technologies have played an increasingly important role in the production and transmission of student research and writing. In the best cases, these tools have enabled educators and students to transform the individualistic, grade-driven practice of student writing into socially-engaged, participatory practices that advance the goals of education and democratic knowledge production all at once. Paradoxically, however, these liberatory tools simultaneously (though subtly) impose oppressive conditions in that they prohibit users from understanding the mechanisms that mediate their participatory practices and transforming these mechanisms to better suit their needs and values.

These oppressive conditions (both in the classroom and in everyday life) contribute to the shaping of a passive user public, whose discourse is vulnerable to networked manipulation (such as the proliferation of “fake news” demonstrates), and whose data is denied from them as it is used to advance corporate interest rather than public interest and public self-understanding. While these circumstances are complicated, Paulo Freire’s notion of dialogue, a practice that aims to critically understand and transform one’s world, enables us to approach student writing as a practice that might meaningfully work towards the emancipation of networks.

As an illustration, I will point to Social Paper, an in-progress, student-designed collaborative writing platform I co-founded at The CUNY Graduate Center, which offers a small step forward for the creation of dialogical student publics. I will describe how using free and open source writing software in the classroom -- The CUNY Academic Commons -- stimulated a critical inquiry into the ways software mediates how students produce, value, and share writing. This critical inquiry led myself and co-founder Jennifer Stoops to design a plugin for The CUNY Academic Commons that would allow students to network and discover student writing across courses and semesters, as well as build community through social mechanisms like comments, follows, activity feeds, and notifications. In addition, we thought it was important to further cultivate non-proprietary open source writing tools that wouldn't impose data surveillance on their users, and in turn, would remain open for further development by students.

Author

• Erin Glass, University of California, San Diego