A group of folks who are revising the technology section of the WPA Outcomes Statement. The version linked here is from 2000, and I wasn't able to find a more recent version. The one from 2000 didn't even have a technology section, so to have one at all is an improvement. The draft in progress is publicly available for comment, and several people have left comments and posted about it at their own blogs. Readers seem to agree the most on the problematicity of this statement:
(1) Schools and students who have access to technology are more likely to have the prescribed knowledge or skills than students who have limited access to technology. By imposing a set of outcomes related to technology, we are making school harder for those who are lower in the socioeconomic spectrum of society and consequently have less access to technology.
I agree with the general consensus that this part comes off as a lot of hand-wringing. A better approach would be to acknowledge the problem of access briefly by advocating open source courseware and content management systems, recommending them as an alternative to proprietary software and a positive step toward closing the digital divide. Some of us are working on a position statement on open source courseware, so please let us know what you think. I'd also like to hear other thoughts about the technology section of the outcomes statement.
More at WPA-L
There's more discussion of the statement at WPA-L. In the archives, you can look for messages with the subject line "Re: Computer Literacy Plank on Outcomes Statement." CultureCat
speaks to mediocrity
Other than what other bloggers have already commented about regarding the lack of technological literacy which the choice and use of the particular web publishing platform demonstrates, my biggest gripe with the statement is that it is a rather medicore set of goals. To echo Collin, the outcome items currently listed in that draft should have been the goals of ten years ago. For this document to be effective, it should take the best of what's being done everyhere right now and provide something that gives us *all* something to aspire to.
For instance, if we've learned anything from the MySpace discussions of late, students need to develop strategies for writing for the public Internet. Collin mentions requiring a social software component. I'm also surprised that the term "new media" isn't included in there somewhere (or are we now moving past that term?)
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Charlie | cyberdash
Proposed WPA Guidelines
I've posted some extended comments on my own blog at:
http://zircon.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/2steves/archives/2006/07/10/001357....
The crux of the gist: Writing is going through the early stages of an explosive transformation, with important implications for how almost every course in the university curriculum is taught. (For an analogy, think about how teaching and assessment would change across an entire university if, magically, students in every major could still read but were unable to write. Written communication is key to college level learning.)
Digital forms of writing open up opportunities for teaching, learning, and assessment that complement and extend the opportunities created by narrative text. It's time for colleges and universities to reconsider what kinds of writing skills first and second year students should master. The reason isn't just graduation skills: it's equally important to create options for redesigning courses across the curriculum.
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Stephen C. Ehrmann, Ph.D. Director of the Flashlight Program for the Study and Improvement of Educational Uses of Technology
Vice President, The Teaching, Learning, and Technology Group
One Columbia Avenue Takoma Park, MD 20912-4635
Another site for the existing OS
The current OS is available as a WPA Position Statement: http://wpacouncil.org/positions/outcomes.html
Re: the current discussion about adding a "technology plank" to the current OS, I wonder how we could make available a broad range of possible statements about this issue and let faculty / programs pick and choose and mix to create a statement that fits their local situation(s)?
What I fear will happen in all this discussion is that someone(s) will finally agree on ONE statement to include in the Outcomes document and that the rich and interesting and useful discussions now taking place will be lost / forgotten.
Seems to me that instead of ONLY one succinct statement about technology outcomes (I'm willing to grant the usefulness of a primary statement, I guess, but not an ONLY), I'd rather have access to a space that collects the myriad ways that our profession is thinking about this issue. All of these views could be considered "approved" or "professionally sanctioned" in some way. Then I can be responsible for constructing my own statement for my local situation and still represent it to administrators, others as a view of our profession?
As it is now, I might be able to tag most of the conversation--blogs, email archives, etc. But what if this were being done intentionally, by all of us, in one space?
Too idealistic?
glenn blalock