The current nature of hypertext research in computers and composition studies: An historical perspective

Computers and Composition

13, 69-84 (1996)

The Current Nature of Hypertext Research in Computers and Composition Studies: An Historical Perspective SCOTT LLOYD DEWITT The Ohio State University at Marion

Although the professional literature makes numerous claims concerning hypertext’s influences on the acts of reading and writing, few of these claims are supported by carefully designed empirical research studies. This article investigates the historical nature of hypertext research in the field, presenting on argument for conducting empirical research in the area of hypertext and student leorning. A representative/illustrative history examines selected literature published between the years of 1987 and 1994. Summary and analysis show that, for the most part, this literature does not move beyond asserting “opportunity” and “potential” when describing the use of hypertext in the writing classroom. The outhor proposes a theoretical and pedagogical agenda for researching hypertextuai instruction in the composition classroom.

classroom empirical

learning research

pedagogy

composition

pedagogy

hypertext

information

representative

history

cross-disciplinary system

writing

vs. facilitation

instruction

To conduct an unformed debate about how electronic technology can-and writing

instruction effectively, we must gather two kinds of information,

cannot-serve complete two

kinds of scholarly tasks: we have to look to the past to review what we have learned through research completed in the last ten years; we have to look to the future, the l99Os, to set forth a continuing scholarly agenda. By examining questions that must still be answered and by exploring ways in which we might begin to gather needed information, we avoid the danger of using electronic technology haphazardly. We avoid making decisions without carefully considering the

issues affecting our students and ourselves. (p. -Gail

2)

E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe,

Evolving Perspectives on Computers and Composition Studies: Questions for the 1990s

Educators and researchers continue to celebrate the roles that hypertext plays in composition studies, contending that hypertext adds new dimensions to how we view the acts of reading and writing and how we define a written text. Yet, proposing a monolithic compositionist vision of hypertext has been, from the start, difficult, if not impossible. Compositionists, taking their leads from fields as diverse as data management and retrieval, Iibrary science, instructional technology, and information processing, have

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Marion Campus, The .

Ohio

State

should be sent to Scott Lloyd Dewitt, Department of English, University, 1465 Mt. Vernon Avenue, Marion, OH 43302. e-mail:

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eagerly explored this new technology in their classrooms and have taken their pursuits in many different directions. For example, teachers use hypertext interactively and presentationally to illustrate difficult-to-grasp writing concepts to their students (Douglas, 1992; Guyer, Seward, & Green, 1994). In many cases, teachers use hypertext as an instructional tool that aids students in the production of traditional, printed texts, where hypertext, then, becomes an instrument that allows students to work through various instructional tasks (Dewitt, 1992; Di Pardo & DiPardo, 1990; Joyce, 1988). Where pedagogy has been influenced by current literary and critical theory, teachers ask students to read hypertexts, using both the electronic texts and their students’ multiple readings as a pedagogical framework for course design; often students author hypertexts as their major “writing” projects (Moulthrop & Kaplan, 1992, 1994). As researchers and teachers encourage various integrations of hypertext and writing instruction, ultimately they may disagree on the best use of hypertext in the composition classroom. However, all of their applications, in one way or another, have “hypertextualized” composition instruction, and those working in the field will find it difficult to deny that hypertext can and will alter the many pedagogies they currently espouse. Hypertext provides a significant resource for teachers who wish to integrate theory, pedagogy, and technology. By its intersection with the very nature of reading and writing connections and transactions, hypertext offers help to students in bringing together the acts of reading and writing, both cognitively and contextually. Typically, as compositionists integrate new, emerging technologies with their teaching, they become increasingly interested in studying how computers have changed how we teach and how students learn. As with other research in the field, such inquiry in computers and composition espouses a multitude of approaches that are philosophical, rhetorical, and/or empirical in nature (Lauer & Asher, 1988, pp. 3-7). Lauer and Asher (1988) argue that “to privilege one method of inquiry” or “to encourage individuals to choose among the modes of inquiry, maintaining literacy in only one” results in an “unfortunate and simplistic” view of research in the field (p. 7). Our aim, then, is not only to see worth in various “designs appropriate for their own situations” (p. 3) but also to value a completeness of research in the field. To date, we have a wealth of theoretical discussions on hypertext deriving from philosophical and rhetorical research. Scholars’ initial writings on hypertext have explored issues such as textual authority and the privileging of print media, as well as theorized about cross-disciplinarity, intertextuality, narration, and post-modernism. Furthermore, reported research that is writing-classroom-based exists; however, most is informally designed and anecdotal. But as much as we value their role in the field, theory and teacher narratives do not represent the comprehensive picture of research we regard so highly. Thus far, compositionists have not complemented the current body of hypertext research with systematic studies of actual writing classroom practice. We read many claims regarding “what students can do with hypertext” with an emphasis on “opportunity” and “potential.” But in the end, we see only a sparse tendency towards carefully designed empirical research studies-where research questions and research methodologies are explicitly stated and collected data analyzed, as well as where student experiences are revealed, and pedagogical agendas exposed-that seek to discover the influence of hypertext on students’ writing and learning. In an area that has grown at such a phenomenal pace, it is surprising that so little empirical research has been reported on the use of hypertext in the context of the writing classroom.

The Current

THE HYPERTEXT

Nature

EXPLOSION

of Hypertext

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Research

AND COMPOSITION

STUDIES

Integrating hypertext into currently existing writing curricula exposes a number of theoretical problems and pedagogical concerns that deserve attention. First and most obvious is that hypertext is fairly new to composition studies. And when new technologies are introduced to existing curricula, not only are theoretical problems exposed but researchers find both new and existing theories in flux, reshaping and reformulating, integrating and synthesizing. Computers and composition studies is experiencing this seeming disarray because of what may be referred to as the hypertext explosion, a sudden, high-volume emergence of hypertext in the field. This is not to imply a negative into connotation of disorder, confusion, or mayhem. Instead, current investigation hypertextualizing composition instruction is innovative and exploratory, and the many questions we are raising in the field are, in fact, encouraging discovery and inquiry. This state of the profession can be best exemplified through a brief, representative/ illustrative history of the integration of technology in the teaching of writing and of the role hypertext plays in this history. This history does not delve into technically oriented literature of information presentation, human-computer interface, and user navigation (Cantor, Rivers, & Storrs, 1985; DeRose, 1989; Foss, 1988; Kahn, 1989; Parunak, 1989), nor does it include work published in cognitive psychology and educational theory (Neilsen, 1990; Spiro & Jehng, 1990) where empirical research is indeed being reported. Instead, intended to contextualize and forward an argument as well as to illustrate the convergence of hypertext and composition studies, this history is constructed with works that not only are well known and cited by those in computers and composition studies but also are visible and accessible to those new to computers and writing communities.’ Although many instructors had been using computers as a tool for teaching writing for quite some time, a special interest group, “The Fifth C: Computers,” met at the March 1983 Conference on College Communication and Composition (Selfe & Kiefer, 1983). Computers and Composition, dedicated specifically to the use of computers in the teaching of writing, was first published in November of the same year. Early on, for the most part, research published in the field of composition and computer studies focused on uses of computer-assisted instruction, word processing, and document design. Later, as

‘Like all writers of history, I have made deliberate choices in how 1 present my record and what I hope it represents. First and foremost, I chose to focus on research conducted in the field of composition. I recognize that composition’s rich scholarly background is due, in part, to its willingness and its enthusiasm to explore research in other disciplines. Also. I recognize that teaching and learning take place in settings outside our school’s classrooms. However, a research study’s design, approach. setting, participants, and presentation directly influence its outcomes. Whereas research conducted on hypertext and writing in, for example. a corporate business setting is telling and deserves serious consideration by compositionists (often because it is conducted by compositionists), I don’t believe that it should be necessarily regarded as analogous to research conducted, for example, in a first-year college writing course; nor do I believe that the results of such studies should be necessarily accepted as undeniably transferable. Second, we cannot ignore visibility and accessibility of published research. Again, compositionists’ investigation of other disciplines is key; much of what we know about hypertext we learned from across the disciplines. But much of this research is not highly visible or accessible to compositionists eager to begin inquiry into hypertextualizing writing instruction. For example, while researching this article, I used a major research institution’s library and statewide online interlibrary loan system to locate the ACM’s Proceedings of the Hypertext Conferences ‘87, ‘89, ‘91 and the European Conferences on Hypertext. My own cumbersome and, at times, unsuccessful efforts locating these materials help to secure my position here.

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the technology became more accessible to both teachers and students, researchers began to look carefully at network-supported writing facilities, at collaborative writing, and at the political implications of electronic writing instruction. But studies in technology outside composition studies were following a new direction, one that promised to recast computer use from multiple perspectives. In 1987, Jeff Conklin wrote “Hypertext: An Introduction and Survey,” an article still cited as a definitive research base for those needing background information on hypertext. His work provides readers with a brief history of hypertext, simple definitions, vivid examples, and a survey of practical hypertext applications. Also, Conklin argues the importance of “hypertext as experience” that emphasizes or highlights the “user.” For example, Conklin asserts that no matter how clear the definition of hypertext, a reader will probably still never gain a clear understanding of the concepts of hierarchical organization, dynamic linking, and associative branching without the experience of working with hypertext. Conklin stresses, the reader who has not used hypertext should expect that at best he [or she] will gain a perception of hypertext as a collection of interesting features. In fact, one must work in current hypertext environments for a while for the collection of features to coalesce into a useful tool. (pp. 17-18) Soon after Conklin’s survey was published, journals and publications in the fields of academic computing, database management, electronic library research, and educational technology published numerous articles on hypertext; all promised a technological breakthrough that would open the door to new ways of organizing, accessing, and using information and, in fact, new ways of representing human thought and its processes (Baird, 1988; Bevilacqua, 1989; Byles, 1988; Carr, 1988; Howard, 1988; Jonassen, 1988; Kearsley, 1988; Shneiderman & Kearsley, 1988; Smith, 1988). These initial claims brought quick attention to hypertext and its possible convergence with composition studies. Described applications of hypertext began to evolve from the system to those who use the system. On the surface, the connections between hypertext and composition studies were clear. The qualities that different writers ascribed to hypertext closely mirrored some of the basic theories and practices of composition: Constructing knowledge and making meaning, like writing, are complex, nonlinear processes that take place in collaborative, social settings; inquiry requires hierarchical cognitive processes; there is a need for individualized instruction that is not bound by rigid rules; students need to make connections between multiple texts while creating their own texts. Whereas Conklin’s (1987) survey provides information specialists with general, defining material on hypertext, two writers are instrumental in providing those in computers and composition studies with an initial foundation of hypertext’s application to our field. Joyce (1988) distinguishes two types of hypertext, a distinction he asserts must be identified before hypertext can facilitate pedagogically sound reading and writing instruction. The first type, exploratory hypertext, is used for the conveyance of information: “Exploratory hypertexts encourage and enable an audience. . to control the transformation of a body of information to meet its needs and interests” (p. 1 1). The audience of an exploratory hypertext navigates through a pre-existing network of linked material while creating a knowledge structure. The second type, constructive hypertext, moves beyond hypertext as “delivery or presentational technology” (p. 11) as the audience is given scripting and authoring responsibilities:

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Scriptors use constructive hypertexts to develop a body of information which they map according to their needs, their interests, and the transformations they discover as they invent, gather, and act upon that information.. .Constructive hypertexts require a capability to act: to create, to change, and to recover particular encounters within the developing body of knowledge. (p. 11) Hypertexts, both exploratory and constructive, enable users to draw on vast amounts of information stored in some database form; what is key to hypertext is the way in which this information is linked. Exploratory hypertexts-prepackaged databases that provide access to information intuitively and associatively-do not allow the user to add to the information in terms of constructing text or links. Constructive hypertexts, though exploratory in nature, allow the user to add to and reconfigure a nonfixed structure. Important to note is that Joyce’s (1988) research was published in a journal that typically did not focus on composition studies. Before its demise, Academic Computing centered on uses of computer technology in various fields of academic study and administration. Like Conklin’s (1987) survey, Joyce’s research made important contributions to what some compositionists knew about hypertext but that was not necessarily evident to many in composition studies. But Joyce, unlike Conklin, is in the field; he clearly writes from and to the field of composition studies, with his work grounded in audience analysis, coherence, cognition, reading and writing transactions, and rhetorical forms.’ Slatin’s (1990) College English piece was the first to appear in a mainstream English studies journal reaching a wide audience of scholars and teachers. Slatin’s research fuses the theory and literature of hypertext with the theory and literature of reading, positing a “basic point. . . [that] is almost embarrassingly simple: Hypertext is very different from more traditional forms of text” (p. 870). Slatin uses this comparison of hypertext and traditional text as a means of structuring his argument, a mode that typifies early research in composition and hypertext. Most useful to those in composition studies is Slatin’s (1990) extended exploration of sequence, prediction, and coherence. Reading texts, in traditional reading acts, necessitates sequence: The reader’s progress from the beginning to the end of the text follows a route which has been carefully laid out for the sole purpose of ensuring that the reader does indeed get from the beginning to the end in the way the writer wants him or her to get there. (p. 871)

Sequence is of paramount importance for a writer as he or she devises “a sequence that will not only determine the reader’s experience and understanding of the material but will also seem to the reader to have been the only possible sequence for that material” (p. 872). Hypertext disrupts, to a certain extent, our notions of reading: Memory is utilized in tandem with the machine; meaning is constructed still by making relationships, but indefinite choices are possible; connections are made both cognitively and electronically; and all electronic links are audience based. In the end, Slatin concludes, a comparison of reading traditional texts and reading hypertexts strives to reconceptualize “coherence.” As scholars reviewed the claims and promises made by Conklin and Joyce along with intriguing questions raised by Slatin, it was no wonder that computers and composition ‘At the time, Joyce was professor of language and literature and coordinator of the Center for Narrative and Technology at Jackson Community College in Michigan.

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studies quickly subscribed to the apparent benefits of hypertextualizing classroom instruction. Consider how the Conference on College Communication and Composition (CCCC) reflects the profession’s growing interest in hypertext. In 1988, of those concurrent sessions indexed under “Computers and Instruction,” none was about hypertext. In 1989, 16% of the sessions indexed dealt with hypertext, and in 1990, 18% were clearly about hypertextual applications in the composition classroom. The most significant increase then came in 1991 with 31% of those concurrent sessions indexed under “Computers” focusing on hypertext and hypermedia.’ As interest in hypertext continued, the field of composition studies was introduced to four major and influential works that reinforce and continue to shape what the profession knows about hypertext and its applications. All of these works, published in 1991-1992, consist of transdisciplinary theoretical discussions that conclude with a call for future research and the integration of hypertext into English studies:” Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing, by Jay David Bolter (1991); Hypermedia and Literary Studies, by Paul Delany and George P. Landow (1990); Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, by George P. Landow (1992); and Evolving Perspectives on Computers and Composition Studies: Questions for the 199Os, an anthology edited by Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe (1991) that includes essays on hypertext by Henrietta Nickels Shirk, John McDaid, Catherine F. Smith, and Stuart Moulthrop. What rests at the very core of this current literature on hypertext and composition studies is change: changing roles of readers and writers; shifts in authority and privilege; modifications in defining the acts of reading and writing; reconceptions of the essence of text; and repositionings of students, teachers, and theorists of written communication. Embraced by the field, these current works approach hypertext through the lens of composition scholarship. And because of this perspective, these texts form a research base for those beginning an investigation into hypertext and composition studies. Therefore, these works’ common points and shared themes become important to study. .

All four works place great importance

on an historical perspective

of hypertext.

Because all these works consistently accounted for hypertext’s historical background, we can make a number of assumptions. First, these writers believe that concepts of hypertext are still new enough to most readers to require this history. Second, these writers believe that a chronological evolution is important to a thorough understanding of what hypertext is today.‘ This history begins with Vannevar Bush’s 1945 article, “As We May Think,” ‘This information was obtained from paht CCCC programs. First. using the “‘lbp~ Index to Concurrent Sessions,” I counted the total number of papers indexed on the topic of .’Computers and Instruction.” Then I reviewed those paper titles and looked for presentations that clearly focused on hypertext and composition studies. I did not attend all of these presentations and can only presume these numbers on the basis of the CCCC programs and the descriptive nature of the papers’ titles. “I certainly do not wish to assume that these writers did not become interested in or begin their research in hypertext until the year 1991. In fact, most had been working with and conducting research on hypertext systems before Conklin’s 1987 article. My point is simply to present a chronological history of hypertext and composition studies as evident in the published research and to argue that these works have become increasingly accessible and read by those in the profession of composition studies ‘For an historical account of hypertext within the fvzld of English studies. bee Yankelovich, Meyrowitz, and Van Dam. “Reading and Writing the Electronic Book,” and Yankelovich. “From Electronic Books to Electronic Libraries: Revisiting ‘Reading and Writing the Electronic Book,“’ both in Delany and Landow‘s Hvprrrt~vl~r trnd Litwarv

Strrdks.

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Research

moves to the 1960s and 1970s with Douglas Englebart (1963, 1968, 1973) and Ted Nelson (1974, 1984), and continues through Conklin’s 1987 introduction and survey. Bolter (1991 f, however, places hypertext in an historical perspective not only in terms of the work of Bush, Nelson, Englebart, and Conklin but also in terms of written communication, past, present, and future. Consider, for example, how Bolter incorporates an historical perspective of written communication when he discusses Derrida’s theories of central text, marginal text, and textual boundaries: When Derrida speaks of marginality

or of the text as extending beyond its borders, he is

in fact appealing to the earlier technologies of writing, to medieval codices and printed books. The scribes of the ancient world made relatively little use of the margins of papyrus rolls; the invention of the codex allowed for larger and more accessible margins. The margins of a medieval manuscript often belonged to the scholarly reader: they were the readers’ space for conducting a dialogue with the text. The margins defined a zone in which the text could extend into the world of the reader. And during generations of copying, text could also move from the margins into the center, as glosses from readers made their way into the text itself. In the age of print, marginal notes became truly marginal, part of the hierarchy of the text that only the author defined and controlled: eventually they became footnotes and endnotes. When deconstructionists play upon the dichotomy between the center and the margin, they are assuming a written or more probably a printed text, which naturally favors the center over the margin. In general, whenever the theorists set out to reverse a literary hierarchy, they are assuming the technology of printing (or sometimes handwriting) that generates or enforces that hierarchy. (pp. 162-163) Bolter realizes, language when provides

.

rightly, that he cannot ignore this historical discussing the convergence of critical theory

a rich context

perspective of written and hypertext, and he

in which to study it.

All four works, although avoiding nutshell definitions breakdown of the elements of “what hypertext is.”

of hypertext,

include

a

Smith (1991) points out that “when you ask what hypertext is, you often are told how it works, rather than what it is or does” (p. 226). This is because, she says, hypertexts have been described in terms of a “system” or an “application” (for example, all these works refer to hypertext as an “information system”). In the field of composition studies, we need to begin looking at hypertext as “facilitation” (p. 225). Smith describes the elements that make up hypertext as: . . . . .

virtual worlds, or the projection by a user of complex mental spaces, malleable intellectual gestalts dynamism, or continual reworking of the mental spaces, alteration of the gestalts human engagement, or a human thinker machine situatedness, or a computer system as a setting of activity connectivity, or system links (pp. 225-226)

Bolter (199 1) refers to reading and writing in the electronic medium as topographic, an act that requires charting of relations of symbols and signs (p. 25). He also grounds his definition of hypertext in the space in which writing takes place. Landow and Delany (1991) systematically classify four types of hypertext. The first consists of chunks of texts and graphics that are electronically linked. The second is made up of metatexts where

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small parts of interdependent tasks are linked. The third results from a hypertextualizing of material originalfy written in book form. The fourth “puts a classical linear text, with its order and fixity, at the center of the structure.. _[while the user] links various supplementary text to this center, including critical commentary, textual variants, and chronologically anterior and later texts” (p. 9). The text in its original form is connected centrally to other texts, giving the original a new context. Whereas all these current works focus on implications of moving from a print-centered use of text to an electronically centered use of text, each avoids defining hypertext in terms of what it is not, or more specifically, how it is not like a book. .

Allfour works acknowledge or codified.

that hypertext includes elements that have yet to be named

However, these unnamed or uncodified eIements exist largely because, to date, research describing the experience of reading and writing in an electronic space is occurring in a print medium. Landow (1992) explains: Writing about hypertext in a print medium immediately produces terminological problems. . . when trying to describe a textuality neither instantiated by the physical object of the printed book nor limited to it. Since hypertext radically changes the experiences that reading, writing, and te,xf signify, how, without misleading, can one employ these terms, so burdened with the assumptions of print technology, when referring to electronic materials? . . . Terms so implicated with print technology necessarify confuse unless handled with great care. (p. 41) He provides two examples: describing a hypertext as an “electronic book,” and describing one who explores a hypertext as a “reader” (pp. 41-42). The term book does not allow for the understanding of the “virtual text or. . . a physical embodiment of it” (p. 41), and reader fails to acknowledge that someone “has the opportunity of reading as an author; that is, at any time the person reading can assume an authorial role and either attach links or add text to the text being read” (p. 42). This difficulty becomes more evident as Landow (1991) addresses the problem of that which has not been named or codified in terms of a new rhetoric for hypertext. Consider, for example, how he must make a distinction between reader and author in his first five “rules for authors” of hypermedia: Rule 1. The very existence of links in hypermedia conditions the reader to expect purposeful, important relationships between linked materials. Rule 2. The emphasis upon linking materials in hypermedia habits of relational thinking in the reader.

stimulates

and encourages

Rule 3. Since Hypermedia [sic] systems predispose users to expect such significant relationships among documents, those documents that disappoint these expectations appear particularly incoherent and nonsignificant. Rule 4. The author of hypermedia materials reader to think and explore.

must provide devices that stimulate

the

Rule 5. The author of hypermedia must employ stylistic devices that permit readers to navigate materials easily and enjoyably. (pp. 83-86)

Landow makes distinctions not only between readers and writers, those who are using the system, but also between the acts of reading and writing, what those who are using the system are doing in the system.” %andow (1991) claims that he is restricted by “page-bound discourse” when describing use of hypertext systems (p. 81). 1 argue that Landow’s definitions of reading and writing as separate and distinct acts, as well as a

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All four works speak of a “convergence” of hypertext and composition studies as they embrace contemporary literary theory, including the works of Derrida and Barthes, postmodern perspectives, and theories of intertextuality.

In other words, these writers argue that critical

theory, written communication, and the technology of hypertext are moving toward a union, tending toward one point of common interest. The work that most obviously makes this point is Landow’s (1992) Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology. Landow argues that those working in critical theory and literature and those working in computer technology are converging, although “working often, but not always, in ignorance of each other” (P. 2): The many parallels between computer hypertext and critical theory have many points of interest, the most important of which, perhaps, lies in the fact that critical theory promises to theorize hypertext and hypertext promises to embody and thereby test aspects of theory, particularly those concerning textuality, narrative, and the roles or functions of reader and writer. (p. 3) Landow

and Delany

in 1991 point

out that the

deep theoretical implications of hypertext converge with some major points of contemporary literary and semiological theory, particularly with Derrida’s emphasis on decentering, with Barthes’ conception of the readerly versus the writerly text, with postmodernism’s rejection of sequential narratives and unitary perspectives, and with the issue of “intertextuality.” In fact, hypertext creates an almost embarrassingly literal embodiment of such concepts. (p. 6)

Bolter (1991) highlights the way that, for example, Barthes was instrumental in the “postmodern attack on the traditional view of the literary meaning” (p. 161), and that deconstructionists were responsible for one of the most extreme responses from traditionalist humanists as privileged, traditional texts were called into challenge. The concept of the electronic text, paralleled with critical theory, is promising to have the same effect on departments and faculty who still view the addition of technology in composition studies as intrusive, who place privileged value in the printed text, and who have narrow definitions of the acts of reading/writing, of the roles of reader/writer (Bolter, 1991). 9 All four works value investigation of the general political effects that hypertext will have on written texts, on the acts of reading and writing, on reading and writing instruction, and on a literate culture.

For example, historically, a linear print form has been regarded as a “privileged form of reason itself” (Landow & Delany, 1991, p. 7). Bolter (1991) predicts that the “idea and the ideal of the book will change: print will no longer define the organization and presentation of knowledge, as it has for the past five centuries” (p. 2). “The Work” as a bound, fixed volume is devalued; “the text” as “recursive, allusive web of correspondence” becomes focal (Moulthrop, 1991, p. 255). Bolter also adds that reading and writing hypertexts will “threaten the definitions of good writing and careful reading that have been fostered by the technique of printing” (p. 2). For example, as good readers interact with a text, they “continually shift the center,” and hypertext becomes an “infinitely re-centerable system need to acknowledge reading and writing connections role in the distinctions he is forced to make.

and transactions,

play an equally if not more significant

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whose provisional point of focus depends upon the reader, who becomes a truly active reader in yet another sense” (Landow, 1992, p. 11). McDaid (1991) suggests that because our teaching is grounded in assumptions of traditional, linear print-media, we must begin to ask questions about our practices in classroom instruction. We need to rethink how we teach processes, we need to explore new conventions for teaching reading and writing, and we need to develop new means of evaluating student reading and writing (pp. 219-220). Moulthrop (1991) contends that the integration of hypertext and composition studies will be cause for political conflict in academic institutions where we all know too well, the work of rhetoric and composition teachers is often regarded as ancillary or irrelevant to the main currents of intellectual discourse.. . Changes in the technology of writing offer to uproot this dismal order.. As hypertext and other electronic writing systems are adopted in academia, course. will be open to change. (p. 259)

the social

structure

of dis-

And finally, as hypertext promises to change society’s ideals of literacy, it becomes crucial, as Bolter (1991) says, to investigate the political implications of who has control of hypertexts, who has access to hypertexts, and the ethical implications of both (pp. 232-233).

THE IMPORTANCE

OF EMPIRICAL

RESEARCH

We know that the teaching strategies we bring to a classroom to make students better writers must continually be informed by theory and pedagogy based on current research in the teaching of writing. As well, we need to learn to critically view how we integrate technology into writing curricula. The previously cited research provides us with a strong foundation for making connections between existing theory and the technology available to us, thus building new theories of teaching writing. When hypertext applications are described in current research, they are often tied to student learning. But, more often than not, we find ourselves reading detailed descriptions of technological systems and little about actual student learning. To avoid this disparity, as Smith argues in 1991, we must learn to negotiate between hypertext as information system and hypertext as facilitation (p. 224). Hypertext as information system exists as a body of text to be searched, restructured, and reconfigured; users can gain a wealth of knowledge from texts they encounter. Hypertext as information system, then, positions the application as exploratory in nature, a place where text is managed and retrieved (Joyce, 1988). Although users can access information associatively, intuitively, and hierarchically according to their needs, hypertext as information system foregrounds the system over the user. Hypertext as facilitation, on the other hand, foregrounds users and users’ experience over system (Smith, 1991, pp. 224-225). Facilitation views hypertext in the context of use, as a space where students make relationships and activities that feed into and enrich other learning processes. construct meaning, Hypertext as facilitation, then, positions itself as exploratory in nature but, more importantly, positions itself as constructive because its application adds to and enhances learning experiences (Joyce, 1988). Therefore, the challenge for effective application of hypertext in writing instruction becomes achieving and maintaining a balance of hypertext as information system-a space where a body of information exists-and hypertext as facilitation-an application used to feed into and enrich writing processes. When we reach this balance between hypertext as information system and facilitation,

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conducting empirical research on hypertext and student writing becomes a reasonable extension in our research agenda in hypertext and composition studies. Consider, for example, the range of questions asked in the collection of essays on hypertext in Hawisher and Selfe’s (1991) Evolving Perspectives on Computers and Composition Studies. Shirk (1991) asks: What will be the impact of the continuing individualized knowledge made possible by the application of hypertext composition studies specifically? (p. 195)

and collaborative learning and on education in general and on

McDaid (1991) asks: Are the predicted (P.

social and cognitive impacts of digitality borne out in actual practice?

219)

Moulthrop

(1991) asks:

from the text’s existing or default How might readers rationalize their “departure” structure should they decide to pass from an “exploratory” to a “constructive” role, becoming writers and scriptors themselves? (p. 268) Smith

(1991) asks:

What research methods best inform us about both sides of the mind/machine interaction? empiric observation? ethnographic description of particular hypertextual writing and reading events in context? system-recorded, statistically analyzed transcripts of actions performed in the computer while reading and writing? combinations of these methods? (pp. 241-242) questions not only represent the diversity of investigation occurring in hypertext and composition studies. They also suggest an eagerness to investigate an area these researchers believe to be instrumental (and unavoidable) in the field’s future: empirical research and student writing within the context of the composition classroom. Reviewing these scholars’ research questions reveals that fhey share an interest in the future of careful, thoughtful research design on hypertext and writing instruction in the context of student learning. In fact, all their questions could serve as points of departure for in-depth research into hypertextualizing composition studies. The occasion exists to make the current body of literature on hypertextualizing composition studies more complete by conducting empirical research-research that would ask specific questions, that would employ a clearly stated and carefully executed research design, and that would articulate the findings in hopes of both answering existing questions and asking new ones. These

AN EMERGENCE

OF CONVERGENCE

Two recently published research studies illustrate the general research agenda I advocate. Whereas much of what Moulthrop and Kaplan (1994) and Guyer, et al. (1994) report is grounded in anecdotal evidence, their research goals, procedures, and outcomes are clearly articulated and strongly supported by pedagogically based experimentation. These researchers provide a context for their experiments, they articulate the philosophy of teaching they bring to the experiments, they describe the technological environment where students are working, they use real writing students as participants, and they

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recount “what happens” in the classroom. In other words, both studies foreground contextual elements on which the researchers’ conclusions ultimately rest while using student experience to build a theory of hypertextual pedagogy. Moulthrop and Kaplan (1994) describe an experiment that takes place in a “onesemester course. . . for first-year students, intended both to introduce them to literature and to fulfill a composition requirement” (p. 255). They ground their study in the politics of course design, specifically in the chosen text, Reading Texts: Reading, Responding, Writing (McCormick, Waller, & Flower, 1987), a book that stresses reading against written texts, that is “genuinely centered on the reader” (p. 226). Moulthrop and Kaplan criticize the text because it directs the “reader toward a strictly limited goal-the production of a traditional academic paper” (p. 226) and includes what they call “standard assignments” (pp. 226-227). However, their own reading against the text’s agenda leads them to create a hypertext application where students are introduced to constructive hypertext fictions after participating in a traditional introduction to their literature course. Moulthrop and Kaplan follow one student throughout his encounter with constructive hypertext, offering a complex, poststructuralist reading of his attempt to resist a multivocal, inter/intratextual hypertext: In this medium, there is no way to resist multiplicity by imposing a univocal and definitive discourse. Hypertext frustrates this resistance because, paradoxically, it offers no resistance to the intrusion. The medium omnivorously assimilates any structure raised within it. Writing can try to build distinctions and hierarchies, but the qualities of hypertext as a writing system ultimately subvert these constructs. (p. 235)

Although the student’s goal was unattainable, Moulthrop and Kaplan, as teachers and researchers, praise the attempt: “Judged on his own terms, he may not have succeeded, but the limits of his achievement are enlightening” (p. 234). Guyer et al.‘s (1994) “anecdotal inspection of the. . application of one experiment with hypertext and developmental writers in a computer-mediated classroom” (p. 3) presents three different papers connected by multiple threads that run throughout: collaboration, feminist theory of learning, computer-enhanced writing classroom design, and hypertext. (I hesitate to look at one section of this article in isolation; I find that a complete understanding of any one voice is completely dependent upon the other twe the writers’ intent, I’m sure. For the purpose of this article, however, I am mostly concerned with the third paper in which Green describes the use of hypertext in the classroom.) Similar to Moulthrop and Kaplan’s (1994) study, their experiment looks at one class in isolation but is concerned with interaction within that class-specifically that of a group of four students. Students enrolled in a developmental writing class worked with a constructive hypertext to explore similarities and differences inherent in business writing and poetry. Students were able to annotate an initial STORYSPACE document, Poememo, that consisted of primary texts to be studied (a memo and a poem), a description of the hypertext, and an assignment. Green concludes that using hypertext to compare seemingly different texts led people to think about the contexts in which we write: who we are as writers; whom we perceive ourselves writing to; under what conditions, about which subjects, in what way, and how much we write. These issues are the stuff of composition courses, yet they are of a fluid nature. (p. 18)

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In the end, hypertext was used not only as a space where students conversed about reading and writing but also as an instructional tool to illustrate difficult-to-grasp reading and writing concepts.

POSSIBILITIES

FOR EXPANDED

HYPERTEXT

RESEARCH

Professionals in composition studies who have been quick to accept the apparent benefits of hypertextualizing instruction in written communication can play an integral part in expanding study within the “hypertext explosion” by challenging the claims and promises that hypertext experts have made about the revolutionary impact this new technology will have on how we view what reading and writing are. Hypertext applications included in a great deal of the published literature describe learning opportunities; they do not, necessarily, explain learning experiences. Statements often appear to account for how students learn using hypertext but really focus on the learning potential of this new technology. In other words, many promises made that hypertext (Hawisher, 1989, p. 44) facilitates student learning are, in reality, technocentric projections of “hypertext as information system” that provide opportunities that could facilitate student learning. The groundwork for putting to test the many claims made by those working in hypertext studies already exists. Our current body of research on hypertext proposes a number of recommendations and questions for future research consideration; many apply to student writing and learning. As a researcher involved in studying this published literature, I recognize its importance, for it shapes what we know about hypertext. However, my growing concern rests not with how quickly the profession has embraced the apparent virtues of hypertextualizing instruction in the composition classroom, but instead with how little empirical research is being published on student use of different hypertextual applications in the acts of reading and writing. The combination of a continually growing body of literature on critical theory and hypertext and an undeniable lack of empirical research focusing on student writing and writing instruction in context provides a clear direction for those who conduct research in composition and computer studies, a direction that would make the scholarly pursuits in this area more complete. I propose the following agenda for researching hypertextual instruction in the composition classroom: 1. 2. 3.

to continue to investigate and, thus, better understand the cross-disciplinary influences of hypertext on composition studies; to examine the common threads that bring together hypertext and composition studies, threads that possibly have been lost already in the hypertext explosion; to view critically hypertext’s integration into our curricula by reporting findings from empirical research studies.

If this new, aggregate course of inquiry, then, is to conduct empirical research on student use of hypertext in the context of writing practice, we should not ignore or avoid theories of instruction or research design. Also, we must be sure that the questions we ask lead to a rigorous exploration of how students use this technology throughout their reading and writing processes: .

How should empirical researchers study the ways students use hypertext applications throughout the complex processes of reading and writing? What research designs will best reveal the most useful information about student reading and writing?

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. . . .

. . .

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DEWITT

As researchers, observers, teachers, how can we describe the ways hypertext affects, enriches, and feeds into the reading and writing tasks of our students? In what ways, if at all, can hypertext bridge social and cognitive theories of writing and, thus, create a practice of writing instruction that is interactive? In what ways can an information system that enables associative manipulation of data facilitate learning throughout the processes of reading and writing? In what way do students use hypertext systems throughout the processes of inquiry and problem formulation? In what ways does hypertext influence students’ already developed reading and writing strategies and practices? As writers using hypertext applications, how will our students describe the ways in which hypertext affects, enriches, and feeds into their reading and writing tasks? In what ways do students interact and make meaning with a diversity of differently designed hypertext systems? And what is the best way to study and compare these students’ different experiences? In what ways, if at all, can hypertext enable students to better “see” connections between multiple texts? What is the relationship between how students classify or name links and their experience with a particular hypertext application? How can we as researchers describe and classify the overall designs of students’ hypertexts? How will students describe and classify the overall designs of their own hypertexts? And in what ways do the hypertext systems themselves that students use influence these descriptions and classifications? How do students construct definitions of what hypertext is after using an application?

When we consider how the possibilities continue to grow for computer-supported writing classrooms to be designed with hypertext capabilities, we can see the importance of reading critically the application of hypertext to current theory in the teaching of hypertext and composition instruction means writing. In many ways, integrating rethinking the way we, as teachers and researchers, operate as well as the way our composition studies programs operate. By the ways in which they define their very purpose, composition programs face considerable challenges as they continue developing in a technological age. The combination of a continually growing body of literature on critical theory and hypertext and an undeniable lack of empirical research focusing on student writing and writing instruction in context creates new agendas for those of us who conduct research in computers and composition studies. Scott Lloyd Dewitt is assistant professor of English at The Ohio State University at Marion where he teaches first- and second-year writing, professional writing, advanced nonfiction essay writing, and computers and composition pedagogy. In 1993, he was awarded The Ameritech Faculty Fellowship at The Ohio State University in support of his work that investigates the influence of computer networking on collaborative inquiry 'in the writing classroom. His e-mail address is .

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