I feel like there is a division between our own and the graphic design program that we need to broach. While I have never personally taken a graphic design course, I had a friend in the program and the issues that Wysocki is expressing are addressed in detail, but not in our writing program. She's right: at no point during my academic career have I ever had the opportunity to take a class that centered around designing a website, or a blog, etc. (The only exception I can think of for this statement is the class for which I am currently writing this topic) No one has ever asked me about what font would best engage my reader to my purpose, but I remember my friend in the graphic design program taking either an entire class concerning fonts and the creation of such, or at least a unit in a class.
We end up with econ majors in our writing classes because their program administrators want them to be able to write well, I feel like the writing students should be encouraged to explore more areas in the digital spectrum of things. We would benefit from taking basic web design courses, or even graphic design courses. It would encourage us to think about the aesthetic elements of our writing and allow us to venture away from the "writing" process while still keeping us in a creative, relevant realm.
I'm not saying that the Digital Rhetorics class is insufficient, merely that we would benefit from more immersion into the graphic realm, even if it meant taking courses that "have nothing to do with writing" (everything has to do with writing... ).
Your post reminded me of what I just said in response to Ian's post. I believe that our culture is shifting towards computerized everything (including writing)... I mean we are blogging for our writing assignments! If this is, in fact, the case, then it is almost a disservice for English majors (lit or writing) to not have more courses that focus on writing in a web format. In my opinion, it is important for us to know how to write effectively online being that it is different from text. People consider and view web text differently than printed text. Not to mention there are so many more choices we CAN make online (we can make our text into videos for example). Before this class, I wouldn't have thought courses like Digital Rhetorics to be relevant to writing majors/minors. It's interesting to think that it is extremely relevant.
ReplyDeleteI think you're spot on in saying that graphic design courses should be included in our curriculum. In fact, I'd even take it a step further. Just like in this class, it would be incredibly important to bring a 'new media' focus into more writing courses. Pushing a view on the effects of the types of writing we work with through all stages of our English curriculum when it meets this kind of 'New Media' would also be an essential component of this hypothetical expansion of our program.
ReplyDeleteThe only problem with this, I suppose, is that then the graphic design program would technically need to integrate more classic writing and style into their work... and engineering would need to integrate more microbiology... and religious studies would need to integrate more film and photography....
On second thought, this could get messy. Maybe that's why the university is compartmentalized as much as it is, leaving it up to us students to choose combinations of those rather rigid types that best fit our needs. I think the best solution may be not unlike what we have now: required, cross-discipline classes like this one, only earlier on and in more majors so that students can be broken out of their bubbles earlier, and realize the options campus-wide that are open to them.