Week 6: Response to Travis's Extended Analysis

(Click for Travis's Extended Analysis)

Travis,

I find your research compelling, as I had never considered this aspect in terms of teaching or in terms of technology.  I think it would be excellent to implement the idea of usability into a composition class, because, as you observe, this would give students the opportunities to learn from a medium that they interact with on a daily basis.  I think you indicate a great point for consideration when you discuss the ease of digesting information in relation to the ways in which the texts are formatted.  I think, by teaching students to recognize these aspects of presentation, teachers would be able to make a strong connection back to literature.  I think it is very interesting that you mention chunking, as this is a technique that we use in poetry to delay or hasten thoughts/ ideas (you might check out Ellen Bryant Voigt’s The Art of Syntax).  By teaching students to recognize how web pages effectively communicate, capture attention, or set a tone, I agree that teaching composition would tie in nicely with this. You also mention that usability and user thinking are important aspects of constructing and conveying meaning; I wonder how we might alter some aspects of usability to cater more specifically to composition. I think that, taking it a step further, it would be interesting to have students read from a few web pages (each designed with different levels of effectiveness in terms of communication), and then to have them write a response (in which they identify audience and purpose or summarize) to the text.  Then, have students compare their responses directly with the web page’s design and have them note certain aspects that drew their attention, or made finding information easier.  I then think you could, easily enough, reapply this to literature.