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08/15/2004 Archived Entry: "thesis tester"

I respect the folks I know who run the MSU Writing Center. And I've always liked how they have worked to integrate new media into writing center activities. But this thesis tester component (and much of the video-based instruction) of their online presence is problematic. Echoing Kitzhaber's misunderstandings of technology as programmable writing machines fixated on drills and fill in the blanks, this Flash-driven device does little but repeat the problematic assumptions writing instruction makes when it confuses the digital with referentiality and the thesis.
Now if MSU folks wander over here - please take no offense. My observation is a critique, but not personal in anyway. With all my investment in composition and new media, I have to note how this is not a new media site for students you have built. It is for the web person who made the site. The attractive interface was made by someone with good media skills. But asking students to fill in an online thesis template is not new media at all. Notice the discrepancy here? The center gets to work with new media; the student doesn't....
Of course, the other major issue here is that there is nothing really "analytical" (as the module professes itself to teach) about the thesis. Quite the opposite. Providing a fill in the blank generator proves that by itself. The thesis is a formula best mastered when little thinking is applied. Its construction guarantees nothing regarding "good" writing, or at the least, writing which challenges an audience in any shape or form. A thesis generator perpetuates some of the worst features of composition studies; the proliferation of formulas and templates without regard to either technological innovation or why these items were created in the first place (often in response to labor issues or cultural capital issues).
What is composition's fascination with the thesis? And why does a writing center with very smart folks - and good web folks as well - fall back on the thesis when instruction takes place? Are we doomed to butt up against the reality of new media forever by clinging to outdated modes of instruction? And heaven forbid – what if we drop the thesis issue altogether? Then what? Will it be Armageddon all over again (yo Yogi!)? Or will we wake up finally from this bizarre slumber of a 100 years, rub our eyes, and say: hey, this isn’t really how writing works, and this isn’t what’s going on around us?
Yeah right. Exile pedagogy, here I come for real. No one digs a critic.

Posted by B @ 08/16/2004 10:29 PM EST