Form, Part I

"Genre (form) and purpose (function/content) shape each other,
develop and work together. Genres and their conventions are not just empty forms
or containers that we simply fill up with our writing ideas
and information, genre theorists would maintain.
Rather, 'genres shape and help us recognize our communication goals,
including why these goals exist, what and whose purposes they serve,
and how best to achieve them' (Bawarshi 339)."
--Cora Agatucci, Cyber Rhetoric (3): Web Genres and Purposes (2000):
URL: http://www.cocc.edu/hum299/lessons/rhet3.html
[Work Cited: Anis Bawarshi, "The Genre Function." College English 62.3 (Jan. 2000): 335-360.]

So now imagine yourself a college student used to the traditionally closed forms that structure academic study, research, writing. You may then be able to appreciate that opportunity to harness the multimedia capabilities of internet technology, to learn and to express what you have learned through the "invitingly open form" of web-authoring, would be intensely seductive and exciting. So it was for our Humanities 299 students. Hum 299 instruction began with hands-on practice in the operational basics of FrontPage2000, thus unfolding the multimedia capabilities and possibilities of web-authoring technology and communication. Our Hum 299 students were encouraged to experiment with webpage design and layout, and quickly became enthralled by these capabilities and possibilities. Our students eagerly invested hours and hours outside class--conducting web research on topics of genuine interest to them, integrating graphics and manipulating visual elements in their webpages.

The excitement generated by students' research discoveries, experimentation and growing proficiency in web authoring was heady stuff for all of us. But, as end-of-quarter deadlines too quickly approached, one important concern began to mount centered in whether Hum 299 students would be able to finish the textual content of their websites. (10-week quarters are indeed short!)

Cora concedes . . . that I could have significantly reduced student time invested in trial-and-error experimentation, in discovering and creating form, had I imposed web templates and specified genre (not to mention had I assigned topics rather than left them to student choice and discovery through exploratory research). Given the brevity of a ten or eleven-week quarter and minimal course prerequisites, perhaps I should have been more prescriptive.

For example, Voices from the Gaps offers an excellent model for structuring contributions to a multicultural website:

"Contributing to Voices from the Gaps," Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color, (Dept. of English and Program in American Studies, Univ. of Minnesota)
URL: http://voices.cla.umn.edu/projectintro.html
See also New Author Submission Form
URL: http://voices.cla.umn.edu/submission.html

But Cora chose not to because . . . Hum 299 was an experimental special topics course, and an important part of the experiment, for me, was to see how students, given certain general parameters (i.e. principles of Cyber Rhetoric), would work out for themselves the creative tensions of form and content, and the sometimes competing demands of topic, purpose, audience, genre.

Kathy's view:
Listen to Kathy's comments, or read the text version that follows:
I tend to value form, up front,
as a way of getting started, of enabling myself to create whatever it is I have to create. This is a topic about which Cora and I have had many rich discussions over the years: my view that it is helpful to students to highlight form bumps up against her sense (roughly stated) that a concentration on form can repress creativity, exploration, expression, and now, multiculturality. I guess I think that, without form, Gene Kelly would just have been a guy splashing in a puddle; it's that curb that makes the memorable image of singing and dancing in the rain.

I do think Cora and I end up in the same place, more often than not, but the fact that we come at this key topic from different corners has led to one very specific difference in relation to this project, and it's that issue about which I'd like to provoke comment from those who view or attend our presentation.

I have proposed the use of optional web templates for HUM 299| (or for the web-writing class we have also considered as an outcome of this project). Some students would choose to start with the empty canvas, but others might choose to work from a selection of simple templates (the same sort of choice Power Point provides users). It seems to me that such templates would make the work seem less overwhelming for some students, thus widening access and enrollment. An obvious template might allow for the menu to be entered as a column on the left, with space for a graphic, and space for text along the right.

In my judgment, a good 60% of academic websites end up following such a form anyway, including those produced for HUM 299.
Having a workable way to succeed might allow the less graphically creative of our students to experience early success as publishers on the world wide web.

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URL of this webpage: http://www.cocc.edu/ASA/form.htm
Last updated: 06 November 2001
© Kathleen Walsh and Cora Agatucci, 2001
Central Oregon Community College