Composing infrastructure: Programmatic values and their effect on digital composition.

摘要

This project investigates the factors that influence the decisions instructors in Florida State's English Department make about using or not using digital projects in their classes, and specifically how influential the English Department's composing infrastructure is on those decisions. The English Department's composing infrastructure includes material factors---such as computers and composing software and spaces like the Digital Studio and Computer Writing Classrooms---and immaterial factors---such as communities of practice and outlets for assistance with digital technologies.;To investigate these factors, I performed a case study with eight participants who represent the English Department's three major programs (Literature, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric and Composition) and two major faculty categories (teaching assistant and full time faculty). By collecting the instructors' curricula vitae and some of their course materials (syllabi from 2005 to the current semester, and assignment sheets), I was able to determine what types of digital assignments they gave their students. Afterwards, I conducted two interviews with the instructors to find out more about what factors influenced their decisions about including, or not including, these digital projects in their classes.;This study found that, in Florida State's English Department, the most influential factors on these decisions in are the instructors' communities of practice and their personal experiences with digital composing. The communities of practice that the instructors belonged to, both in and outside of the university, can both encourage or discourage the implementation of digital projects based on the community's perceptions of such projects. The instructors' personal experiences with digital composing---including digital compositions done by instructors academically and personally---also play a role in these decisions. Instructors who have a system of support that encourages the use of digital projects, and provide pedagogical models to base their digital assignments on, are more likely to include digital projects in their own classes.