Yancey "Remixing" Comp/Rhet

Reference

Yancey, K. B. (2009). Re-designing Graduate Education in Composition and Rhetoric: The Use of Remix as Concept, Material, and Method. Computers and Composition, 26(1), 4-12. doi:10.1016/j.compcom.2008.11.004

Topic

In this article, Yancey focuses on how Florida State University “remixed,” or redesigned, their graduate program in composition and rhetoric to focus more on multimodal composition models and opportunities. The emphasis of this change is not in ‘reinventing the wheel’, but updating it to respect traditional scholarship and values and adjusting them to address new generational developments, needs, and uses.

Research Questions

There is not a definitive research question stated. However, through a historical lens, Yancey implies that the need to reinvent the program was largely due to a stall in enrollment and recruitment of graduate students and faculty.

Methodology

Again, a specific methodology was not presented. Yancey looks at the history of her program and outlines the changes and decisions made to reinvent FSU’s Rhetoric and Composition program. She begins this historical narrative in 2005, briefly looking back at the events a couple years prior, and noting the developments of the program through 2007. Occasionally Yancey provides anecdotes from her own or her colleagues’ pedagogical choices and even describes student projects that were characteristic of the “remix” notion of the program. However, how she chose to collect this information (whether by document analysis, interview, or observation) is not provided.

Results

Yancey finds that her program has become more successful because new technologies were introduced within the original framework of composition and rhetorical studies (rather than off sets or as new, unrelated knowledge) giving graduate students the opportunity to use traditional frameworks to try new multimodal approaches.

Author’s Interpretation of Results

Yancey notes that the current changes can inform program development in three ways: first, the “program has benefited …from programs that have come before”; second, the programs “specific emphasis on technology, culture, and literacy as also benefiting from earlier generations” whom “developed computer classroom pedagogy course that help contextualize and forecast” their focus; and third, they “will need to change as [they] become one of the earlier generations” and contemplating how to “build that consideration into existing models” (11). Thus “re-seeing” and “remixing” needs to be built “into the model” (11).

Suggested Further Research

Specific to FSU’s program, Yancey provides questions to be considered in upcoming years [the following are quoted directly]:

• Do we review program components annually and make incremental changes?
• Dow we stage a retreat when the entire program is reviewed and changes are suggested?
• Do we do both?
• In each case, what do we need? Who will be involved and why? (11)

Critique

Yancey does a fine job in explaining the evolution of FSU’s Rhetoric and Composition program between 2005 and 2007. However, this research could have been much more concrete had there been information about the change in enrollment, quantitative research showing how many theses and dissertations approached rhetoric and composition using digital tools or emphases, or interviewing students about if the opportunity to incorporate such technology into scholarship was a deciding factor in their choice to study at FSU. Perhaps this is an opportunity for future study when more time has passed and a larger sample can be studied.

Furthermore, considering this article was submitted to a journal intended for students and faculty studying composition and, seemingly, digital components, I would have expected Yancey to discuss more overtly the implications for graduate study in Rhetoric and Composition on a larger scale. A reader could certainly make such leaps, but comparing and contrasting graduate curricula could have been an interesting study in how the field is working with new developments in computers, rhetoric, and composition, and how to prepare graduate students for ongoing change.