Changing Medium, Transforming Composition

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Figure 1: Class Corpus Home Page

Knowing only that they had registered for a first-year writing course, my Spring 2013 students walked into the first class meeting to discover that they had signed up for “Codes: An XML-based Composition Course” (Figure 1). Although most at the time weren’t familiar with extensible markup language or even its acronym (XML), all could infer its nature as some kind of coding language. Popular media often represent code as profoundly illegible to the point that one can “read” it only as an aesthetic object (think of the vertical crush of green symbols that ostensibly constitute the virtual world in the Matrix franchise). My course, however, argued that XML facilitates hyper legibility in the writing class. XML is a deeply rhetorical language, and it presents an opportunity to teach writing as a metacognitive, iterative, and collaborative process.

Code Appendix for “Changing Medium, Transforming Composition”

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Appendix A: Selections from Major Assignment Markup Schemes

Primary Source Analysis

In at least one paragraph match evidence (details) from the primary source with the interpretations you draw from them:

<seg type="ev_interp">

<seg type="evidence">evidence (details) from the primary source</seg>

<seg type="interpretation">interpretation based on corresponding evidence</seg>

</seg>

Tag all research questions at the end of the PSA with unique xml:id identifiers:

<seg type="research_question" xml:id="surname_rq_#">research question</seg>

Tag a moment of the PSA when you complicate the seemingly obvious:

<seg type="complication">text here</seg>

Tconatser on Journal of Digital Humanities

Changing Medium, Transforming Composition

Code Appendix for “Changing Medium, Transforming Composition”

Appendix A: Selections from Major Assignment Markup Schemes

Primary Source Analysis