Re-embodying Online Composition: Ecologies of Writing in Unreal Time and Space

摘要

Using the ecological theories of writing proposed by Marilyn Cooper's "The Ecology of Writing" (1986) and Margaret Syverson's The Wealth of Reality: An Ecology of Composition (1999), this article describes a multi-step assignment sequence designed to engage online first year composition students across the ecological breadth of their writing and learning environments. The goal of the project is twofold: enriching students' writing processes with a sophisticated understanding of the social situatedness of knowledge and rhetoric, we can simultaneously create high-functioning learning communities in an otherwise disembodied online learning space, not by upgrading our technological tools but by pedagogically guiding learners toward ecological and productively collaborative interactions with one another.