Leave the room!: teaching writing beyond the four walls of the classroom

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the benefits and drawbacks that arise for students, teachers, and members of external communities in extra-classroom writing assignments. My research included both local communities and online communities, where students collaborated with community partners, participated in intercollegiate discussion boards, and joined online communities of their own choosing. In order to assess the impact of extra-classroom writing assignments on student engagement and rhetorical sensitivity (the ability to recognize and critically examine writing tools and rhetorical situations and one's position(s) therein) in extra-classroom writing, I observed students in multiple rhetorical situations, used short questionnaires, and interpreted student-(co)authored texts according to an ethnographic research methodology¿one specifically suited for the study of extra-classroom writing, based on the action-reflection cycle central to Deweyan educational philosophy. Ultimately, I argue that rhetorical sensitivity obtains when students view their writing from multiple standpoints and that engagement ensues when students perceive a ¿real¿ exigency for their writing, with limited teacher monitoring or surveillance. I conclude by arguing that extra-classroom assignments hold potential for student engagement and increased rhetorical sensitivity to the degree that students perceive such assignments as serving some function other than meeting a teacher's requirements. Creating such a sense of rhetorical exigency is challenging in the context of required writing classes where assignments are typically made and monitored by the teacher. However, teacher surveillance in local community writing can be reduced if institutional support for service learning substitutes for monitoring by the teacher. In this sense, I challenge Ellen Cushman's recent claim that the teacher-researcher is key to sustaining community service writing. In my recommendations about online communities, I employ Michel Foucault's and Johndan Johnson-Eilola's theories of power to explain that some level of surveillance is always present on the web, but that teachers can reduce students' sense of being monitored by choosing technologies that foster less constrained participation and by inviting students to participate in online communities of which the teacher is not a part.