WHITE PAPER DIGITAL LITERACY AND COMPOSITION IN THE PROGRAM FOR WRITING AND RHETORIC AT THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO-BOULDER ON ISSUES OF SUSTAINABILITY Molly LeClair INTRODUCTION
Digital media composition is an engaging way to speculate about, argue over, and propose solutions to sustaining life on earth. We might think of sustainability as protecting bristlecones in the Great Basin, maintaining bridges in San Francisco, supporting small towns between Duluth and Grand Marais along Lake Superior, or charting viable business plans for institutions of higher learning. All of these concerns address the universality of sustainability. In this paper, I am defining and examining the study and practice of sustainability in a setting in which teachers and students are gaining mastery in an automated, high-speed, and multidimensional digital environment. In the broadest sense, sustainability is the endurance of our human endeavors through education, problem solving, and practice. Sustainability is using natural and manufactured resources in a way that maintains and prolongs the earth’s environment, an ecosystem that depends on balancing the earth’s diverse inhabitants, the water cycle, the exchange of atmospheric gases, and the process of decomposition that returns nutrients to the soil. Now that indisputable evidence from the scientific community exists—that human activity and invention are exhausting our finite supply of natural resources, polluting a diminishing supply of fresh water, infecting the soil necessary to grow food, and living more or less unsustainably—we cannot simply accept entropy as our 21st century definition of fate, or accept that our daily activities are tantamount to an irreversible degradation of energy and physical processes. Instead we must ask questions. How are we going to wean ourselves from carbon-based energy and monitor our consumption of renewable energy on local, national, and global levels? How can we reduce waste? How are we going to capture and apply energy? How will we redefine the phrase “quality of life”? Then we must embark on solutions. We may not be able to reverse entropy, or unscramble the egg, but we can find ways, as Filippo Brunelleschi did in 15th century Florence, to make an egg stand upright on a flat surface. We have made great strides as citizens to protect our air and water supplies. We have come a long way from tossing beer bottles and gum wrappers from automobile windows along the highway. Without doubt, however, we have overburdened global cycles with our industries and material demands, and we are obligated now to explore economic, political, and social remedies to ecological problems, to restructure our lifestyles towards sustainability. The encouraging news is that renewable energy is available in our environment, and our planet’s ancient ecosystems and space travel provide alternative paradigms of sustainable applications of energy. We might think of it this way. The same generative processes that characterize our bodies—adaptation,
DIGITAL LITERACY AND COMPOSITION Molly LeClair -2balance, repair, regeneration, and regulation—can be appropriated in addressing issues of sustainability. FOCUS QUESTION How is the Program for Writing and Rhetoric’s focus on digital literacy and composition on issues of sustainability relevant to the flagship goals of the University of Colorado-Boulder? CLAIM The Program for Writing and Rhetoric’s focus on digital literacy and composition will help transform the University of Colorado-Boulder into a leading model of sustainability studies and practices for the 21st century. PROOFS
• In expressly designed composition courses, students will discover, investigate, research, and write in various modalities, concentrating on environmentally sensitive development and sustainability in academics, administration, efficiency, energy, food, purchasing, transportation, and waste management.
• Further, collaborating with key partners at the University and within local commercial and nonprofit enterprises, composition students will present findings in multimodal formats to address economic, environmental, and social sustainability.
• Finally, composition students from across the curriculum—in the humanities, business, and sciences—will take the lead in sharing their mastery of digital literacy skills to others in describing, analyzing, and arguing concerns of sustainability. ________________________________________________________
The Program for Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) is in a unique position to create opportunities for writing students to engage in leading-edge research and scholarly work to make a tangible difference in the world. Students can apply their knowledge and creativity locally, regionally, nationally, and even globally in efforts to evaluate, interpret, investigate, monitor, oppose, and safeguard human endeavors that impact the planet, thus gaining a sense of personal and global citizenship. Digital literacy has been defined earlier in this paper as the ability to discover, classify, comprehend, evaluate, and create information using digital technology. Multimodal composition, in contrast to traditional composition, includes still and moving
DIGITAL LITERACY AND COMPOSITION Molly LeClair -3images, animation, film, music, sound effects, web pages, podcasts, and social networking and file sharing sites to present rhetorically sound narratives, descriptions, analyses, and arguments. The PWR has focused on curricular reorganization and teaching methodologies to explicitly address issues of global concern and advancing technologies. First-year writing students, aside from developing a practical and reflective understanding of their writing processes and strategies, will be introduced to globallysignificant themes and different interpretive perspectives. Assignments will have students contributing to Web-based resources such as blogs, wikis, websites, and interactive networking forums. The upper-division curriculum has been redesigned with a new set of courses that link it more directly to discourse communities and civic audiences: Civic Engagement, Identity Politics in the Contemporary U.S., Globalization and Difference, Interpretation and Aesthetics, Contemporary Debates, Arts and Visual Culture, and Sustainable Communities. Sustainable Communities, then, might consist of multiple sections, each with its own distinctive approach to the course’s theme. The course description reads: Through sustained inquiry into the role of language and rhetoric in creating and maintaining our environment and our communities, students will practice both advanced forms of academic writing and the application of rhetorical knowledge to applied genres relevant to civic discussions about environmental and communal sustainability. The course emphasizes rhetorical approaches to analysis and argument and their practical application in current civic discussions. Taught as a writing seminar, the course places a premium on rhetorical knowledge, digital literacies, and substantive, thoughtful revision. The PWR will avail itself of the University’s investment in powerful technologies, campus facilities, and library collections to advance opportunities for discourse, both in physical and virtual spaces. With a vigorous emphasis on technology-enhanced learning, research, and writing, the PWR will promote incentives for students to enroll in professional master’s degree programs, with special employment goals in mind. In December 2009, a Fiscal Program Support Clerk at a Colorado Veterans Affairs Medical Center, won the first of President Obama’s Securing Americans Value and Efficiency (SAVE) Award for federal employees. Nancy Fichtner had an idea to save money and improve performance, proposing that veterans be allowed to take home unused portions of their medications dispensed during their hospital stay, medications that would otherwise be thrown away. More than 38,000 federal employees submitted ideas to improve government efficiency. This story suggests that good ideas are out there, as Andrew Carnegie said, "to do real and permanent good in this world." The story challenges us to bring of our learning, experience, and skill to bear in developing and sustaining our environment and communities. ________________________________________________________
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Sustainability is an issue of local and global urgency from which no one is exempt, least of all institutions of higher learning and allied communities with vital human resources. After the Copenhagen Accord in December 2009, in which world leaders acknowledged the certainty of climate change and the need for emissions reduction, yet utterly failed to exceed corporate and special interests, the commitment to sustainability education is more pressing than ever. Follow-up news reports indicated that local sustainability initiatives will stimulate national participation. Collaborating with key partners at the University and within local commercial and nonprofit enterprises is a logical outcome for CU students. The University of Colorado at Boulder fully recognizes that focusing technical skills on understanding environmental issues will be required for students to succeed in their personal and professional lives. The goal to incorporate experiential learning opportunities into students’ education again intersects with aims of the PWR’s writing courses: students engaging with faculty, staff, alumni, business leaders, community members, and government officials to raise awareness of communal and environmental sustainability. The City of Boulder, of course, is a veritable center for clean technology trends, and practical and sustainable living skills. Many Boulder restaurants make use of wind power and recycle cooking oil into biodiesel fuel. Boulder residents can view their monthly electrical and natural gas consumption online, and have smart meters installed to calculate their carbon footprint. Boulderites ride bicycles to work, use eco-passes for public transportation, carpool, drive hybrid cars, install solar panels, capture wind power, harvest rainwater, tend honeybees, use T-8 florescent light bulbs, grow cold season vegetables year round, compost, practice zero-waste through reduction, reuse, and redesign, abhor pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and hormone-tainted meat, and pay taxes on hard-to-dispose of materials. With ninety research centers, institutes, and laboratories contributing to CU’s interdisciplinary strength, writing students have a variety of opportunities to make their mark. They might write and defend an honors thesis, conduct a senior project, compete for PWR writing prizes, construct a set of interdisciplinary activities through the Colorado Undergraduate Academy, or amass a portfolio of work related to sustainability. As CU’s 2030 mission statement says, many Colorado community leaders believe the state will be operating in an increasingly global economy, that natural resources management will dominate Colorado’s concerns, and that renewable energy will be a leading economic and technological focus. Digital literacy in the 21st century will be key to students’ participation in community dialogue and involvement. Using the same skills they use for written discourse—synthesis, interpretation, evaluation, speculating about causes and effects, and argument—they will engage in digital literacy and composition as simply another realm of critical thinking. As CU-Boulder prepares to expand the Residential Academic Programs (RAPs), ranging in topic areas from the natural sciences, liberal arts, international interests, business, and global leadership, students will have more opportunities to meet and work with community organizers, government representatives, and private industry and nonprofit leaders. And as CU-Boulder develops an action plan for outreach to promote
DIGITAL LITERACY AND COMPOSITION Molly LeClair -5real-time virtual learning environments around the state, made possible by technological advances, composition students are again poised to engage in entrepreneurial efforts, and aid communities in economic development and sustainability efforts. ________________________________________________________ Composition students from across the curriculum—in the humanities, business, and sciences—will take the lead in sharing their mastery of digital literacy skills to others in describing, analyzing, and arguing concerns of sustainability. University of Colorado students, from Leeds to the Engineering Center to ATLAS, are generally at ease in digital environments. They are mildly bemused by chalkboards and overhead projectors when their teachers might just as easily provide video streaming in PowerPoint presentations. They are the digital natives, after all, fluent on their iPods, iPads, Blackberries, Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook. Who knows what devices are in store for us by 2030? One may choose to present your proposal in electronic form. Again, styles of presentation have proliferated with the advent of technology. Once you have written a proposal, you might present an online version of it, as Brendan Koerner did in “Power to the People: 7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now.” Or you might create an entirely visual argument, as John Paget did in “Built to Last.” General proposal guidelines remain the same. The audience must understand the situation as it exists, the reason(s) for change, and the proposed solution. Following is an article by Brendan Koerner’s, featured in Wired magazinei and also onlineii, proposing “ways to fix the grid.” The grid refers to the electrical power we use for light, sound, computing, heating, cooling, cooking, refrigerating, and so on.
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Figure 1: To fix the grid, “we have to give … stakeholders new reasons to turn on, engage, and transform.”
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/17-04/gp_intro Following is John Paget’s short film Built to Last, winner of the 17th Congress for New Urbanism competition. CNU is an international organization promoting sustainable and walkable neighborhood development. Paget’s film, a visual argument complete with evidence, proposes that cities be designed to eliminate sprawl, conserve energy, reduce traffic, promote accessibility to businesses, schools, parks, and shops, and generally foster community amity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGJt_YXIoJI
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Figure 2: “WHAT’S THE GREATEST THREAT TO OUR PLANET?” “John Paget’s Built to Last, CNU Video Winner” http://www.buffalorising.com/assets_c/2009/05/cul%20de%20sac-thumb-298x298-2926.jpg
CONCLUSION A green convergence is imminent. The City of Boulder is a national leader and pioneer in municipal and county sustainability initiatives. The University of Colorado at Boulder, nationally known for its sustainable practices and initiatives in academics, administration, efficiency, energy, food, purchasing, transportation, and waste management. is prepared to meet new challenges in interdisciplinary approaches to education and research, interactive and visual ways of learning, advanced information technologies, and quests for new energy sources. The Program for Writing and Rhetoric is incorporating into the curriculum multimodal composition courses to add channels and layers to public and civic rhetorics on topics of global concern. CU students, a generation of cyberspace and digital natives, are poised to be active partners with professors and community leaders in interpreting and solving problems facing the 21st century. The semiotic landscape is changing, and pedagogies along with it. Addressing an assembly in Washington in 1867, Sojourner Truth said, “I am for keeping the thing going while things are stirring.” And things are stirring.
DIGITAL LITERACY AND COMPOSITION Molly LeClair -8SUSTAINABILTY RESOURCES Center for Science in the Public Interest http://www.cspinet.org/ Community Coalition for Environmental Justice http://www.ccej.org/ Earth First! http://www.earthfirst.org/ Earthsave http://www.earthsave.org/ Engineers Without Borders http://www.ewb-usa.org/ Grassroots Recycling Network http://www.grrn.org/ Indigenous Environmental Network http://www.ienearth.org/ Institute for Community Economics http://www.iceclt.org/ Institute for Local Self=Reliance http://www.ilsr.org/ International Development Exchange http://www.idex.org/ International Forum on Globalization http://www.ifg.org/ National Renewable Energy Laboratory http://www.nrel.gov/ Natural Resources Defense Council http://www.nrdc.org/
DIGITAL LITERACY AND COMPOSITION Molly LeClair -9New Society Publishers http://www.newsociety.com/ Ruckus Society http://ruckus.org/ Student Environmental Action Coalition http://www.seac.org/ Union of Concerned Scientists http://www.ucsusa.org/ i
Brendan I. Koerner, “Power to the People: 7 Ways to Fix the Grid, Now,” Wired Apr. 2009, 76-87.