Digital Humanities and the First-Year Writing Course

Stanley Fish tries, in his article, to reduce courses to certain contents. He does not want theses courses’ content to go in multi linear directions that serve multiple aims. He focuses on getting the basics, but I think that the basics are different from learner to another according the potentialities and abilities. He is right to certain extent, and, of course, he defends his point of view in his original article. I feel that such reduction puts pressure on educators when setting up their syllabi where they become restricted through specific guidelines that limit creativity in generating unrestricted lesson plans. The arguments of the panelists agree on specifying certain contents to certain courses. It is true that sometimes the “content is always the enemy of writing instruction”, in composition courses as they argue, but I have a different standpoint; the school, or even university’s, syllabus needs some kind of innovation and modification to meet their new expectations. I would suggest the introduction of certain courses that provide certain kind of contents. Prerequisites courses can serve this idea and can be part of the solution; setting up extra intensive courses for specific purposes always has a considerable impact on learning. I still believe in incorporating technology to any suggested change or upgrading to the syllabus in any educational situation. That is because this incorporation has a great effect on us as graduate students, so I expect the same and more for undergraduates or students at school levels. Visualization in education is the next step that technology should influence education to transcend it into the next level. Digitalizing humanities, I guess, allows computing for computers and writing. And as we noticed in the article, a very high percentage of educators are employing technology in humanities disciplines and courses, including compositions. I am worried how to extend that innovation in education to include many other parts of the world that still lag when it comes to that process. This makes me think about the validity of Fish’s thoughts when it comes to apply them onto the other parts of the world or even on the second language learners in the United States.

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