Assignment Author
CWRL Assignment DatabaseContext of Assignment
Although not the explicit concern of this assignment, my interest in designing it is to give students the opportunity to think about the highly technologized, post-industrial environment of the classroom and the virtual realities it offers from an environmental perspective. Thus, other assignments that I would offer following this assignment would be:
-a rhetorical analysis argument in which students evaluate the technologically-aided classroom according to its ethos, pathos, and logos appeals from an environmental standpoint. (The technologically-aided classroom is typically a highly regulated, uniformly designed space. It expresses very stable conditions (for the sake of the equipment)—sealed or no windows, constant temperature, rectilinear space, relatively permanent, durable, inorganic chemical plastics (wall paint, floor coverings, furniture, computer ware).
-a proposal argument that asks students to research the history of the hardware that UT updates its classrooms with, what happens to obsolete computers, etc., what component of computer hardware is considered toxic or “hazardous chemical” waste, and to propose solutions to the problem of computer industry waste.
-a definitional argument that asks students to define “ecological language” in the context of a given digital environment.
Pedagogical Goals of the Assignment
Skill
Students will be introduced to principles of ecocomposition vis-à-vis an exercise in evaluating visual rhetoric and web site design. Most rhetoric textbooks cover both of the latter two skills. (I use Faigley and Selzer’s text Good Reasons, which devotes a chapter each to Visual Design (Chapter 12) and Web Site Design (Chapter 13).)
Rationale
The assignment aims to i) encourage students to think about the differences between digital spaces and physical (so-called real) spaces or the advantages and disadvantages associated with each; ii) give students the opportunity to think about digital environments in the larger context of a local, physical environment that these digital spaces represent or stand in for or are supported by, iii) encourage students to learn more about and make use of a campus site or institution or organization that they wouldn’t otherwise know about or visit.
Assignment Description
Duration
Approximately four weeks. The first part of the assignment asks students to evaluate the visual rhetoric of a web site home page and the web site as a whole of a campus organization, institution, facility, or other entity. The second part of the evaluation argument involves one or two ‘field’ visits to the physical site (that maintains an active website). Students will compare their experience of the physical location of the organization of facility to their experience of the virtual location.
Quick Tips
For this assignment, the teacher may want to choose a campus site that he or she has some professional or other interest in. Teachers could choose, for example, the Student Union, or the Jack Blanton Museum of Art, or the Texas Memorial Museum, or a student organization such as the Campus Environmental Center (CEC).
I chose for this assignment the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (HRHRC) since I work as a docent there and am familiar with many of the other docents, with several of the HRC staff, with the security guards at the front desk, and with (oftentimes) the curator of a given exhibition. Thus, I can help students with regard to setting up personal interviews with these people who can tell the students about the HRC’s history, purpose (rationale for existing), etc.
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Definition of terms
Ecocomposition
Broadly speaking, ecocomposition or environmental writing (sometimes called nature writing) refers to writing that takes place in a given physical environment and actively recognizes or responds to this physical environment. It is based on or funded by ecological principles. The term “ecology” (“knowledge of the home”) was coined in 1866 by a German zoologist, Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel defined the term as “the investigation of the total relations of the animal both to its inorganic and organic environment, including above all, its friendly and inimical relations with those animals and plants with which it comes directly or indirectly into contact.”
Ecocriticism
Since Haeckel’s time, the term ecology has come to have a wide range of meanings and applications outside of the discipline of zoology, including in the discipline of ecocriticism or environmental criticism. Ecocriticism refers to the study of literary and other texts for the “environmental imagination,” or environmental concerns. Ecocritics read texts for “the total relations of the animal both to its inorganic and organic environment” in the context of non-human animals as well as human animals and according to the belief that humans share space with the non-human communities of a given environment and don’t have the right to dominate the given environment.
Digital Environmentalism
The term ecology has seen widespread use in the area of digital technology and design. Digital environmentalism refers to the study and designing of digital spaces according to ecological principles or values. The digital environmentalist is not necessarily interested in or motivated by environmental issues (i.e., humans’ impact on a given environment that is made up of both human and non-human species). Nonetheless, his or her application of natural ecological principles implicitly creates respect for such values as organic (as opposed to inorganic) behavior, heterarchical (as opposed to hierarchical) organization, etc., decomposition and regeneration (as opposed to composition or generation).