Digital studio
A digital studio provides both a technology-equipped space and technological/rhetorical support to students working individually or in groups on a variety of digital projects, such as designing a web site, developing an electronic portfolio for a class, creating a blog, selecting images for a visual essay, or writing a script for a podcast.
History/theory
Overview
Digital Studios, and places with different names but similar objectives, have arisen in response to the need for resources dedicated to improving students' interactions with digital technologies for rhetorical ends. Digital Studios have often been theoretically and administratively linked to writing centers, which are sites where students can seek assistance with their text-based projects. The academic term that has been used for this kind of site is multiliteracy center. Besides having a multimodal focus, Digital Studios also make a departure from the writing center model in allowing students the freedom to work in the Studio without one-on-one interaction with a writing tutor.The rise of technology
Computer literacy in popular culture
As early as 1983, computer literacy was being hailed in The New York Times as the "new goal in schools." As computer technology became more ubiquitous, as the world wide web became more popular and accessible, and as the teaching of computer skills became official US policy with the enactment of the "Technology Literacy Challenge" by the Clinton Administration in 1996, educators across the disciplines began to investigate with renewed vigor the role of computer technology in the curriculum as both a means and an end.Scholarly interest in "multiliteracies"
The same year that President Clinton initiated the "Challenge," the New London Group issued a call for scholars of literacy pedagogy toThis account for new text forms, combined with a similar account for "increasingly globalized societies," the NLG called "multiliteracies."
Technological literacy in rhetoric and composition
Two years later, during the 1998 CCCC Chair's Address, Cynthia Selfe addressed professionals in the field of Rhetoric and Composition with an objective similar to that of the NLG, arguing that as a field, composition scholars had "paid technology issues precious little focused attention over the years," which lack of attention she called "dangerously shortsighted." What was needed, Selfe claimed, was for teachers to "pay attention" to "how technology is now inextricably linked with literacy and literacy education in this country." Selfe's call ceremoniously if not officially marked the beginning of a new scholarly interest in what Selfe called "critical technological literacy":Scholars who took up this call included Barbara Blakely Duffelmeyer, who conducted studies involving the incorporation of "critical computer literacy" into first-year composition.
Communications across media, inside and outside school
The years following Selfe's address saw more rapid advancements in mobile technologies, social media, and Web 2.0, creating even more new venues of composing for teachers to pay attention to. In her own CCCC Chair's Address in 2004, Kathleen Blake Yancey cited these new venues in her argument for a "new curriculum for the 21st century," one that would bring "together the writing outside of school and that inside." Such a curriculum, she said:A professor at Clemson at the time of her speech, Yancey also argued for the creation of an undergraduate major in composition and rhetoric. She soon moved to Florida State University, where she helped to establish a new major in line with the one she argued for at CCCC called and also helped to open the FSU Digital Studio.
As teachers and administrators across the country looked to incorporate more digital technology into their curriculum, the need for spaces for digital composition and for support with the innumerable digital composing platforms became apparent. A Digital Studio is one such space.
Link with writing centers
With the need for support for students who would engage with digital writing and multimedia projects, professionals involved with work in writing centers began to draw comparisons between their traditional work—assisting students with alphabetic texts on the page—and a new kind of work: assisting students with their multimedia projects on the screen. John Trimbur predicted in 2000:Later, just months before Yancey delivered her CCCC Chair's Address, Michael Pemberton, writing in the Writing Center Journal, asked:
Pemberton also surveyed the forty-year history of how "writing centers viewed new technologies," observing that "the relationship between writing centers and computer technology has been, overall, only a cordial one." Pemberton's article is evidence of the continuing discussion among writing center professionals about the need for support for students' digital creations, support which they saw as analogous to work in writing centers.
In 2010, a collection edited by David Sheridan and James Inman, Multiliteracy Centers: Writing Center Work, New Media, and Multimodal Rhetoric, was published. Many of the chapters therein cite the above Trimbur and Pemberton quotes as they work to explain the exigence for the collection, the instances in which multiliteracy centers have been established, and both theoretical and practical analyses of potential futures of such work.
'Studio' vs. 'center:' a break from the model
The conflation of digital studios and writing centers into multiliteracy centers is helpful in some respects, e.g. that administratively the two may be managed in similar ways and staffed by the same people. In other respects, it has been said to be better to separate them into two distinct kinds of facilities. The very choice of naming a "writing center" or "digital studio" by either title, for instance, ought to be informed by what kinds of student-activities are expected to take place there. Gresham and Yancey, in their recounting of the design and establishment of the Class of 1941 Studio for Student Communication, explain:Gresham and Yancey also recount their discussions with the architects who helped design and build the physical space for the studio:
For Gresham and Yancey, a writing center is a place for individual students to seek help from individual writing tutors with print-based texts. A studio model creates opportunities for collaboration among students with or without tutor-involvement for many different kinds of projects in many different modes.
Sites
FSU Digital Studio
The mission of the :Student work in the Digital Studio
Students engage in many different types of projects in the FSU Digital Studio:History
The FSU Digital Studio opened in the fall semester of 2008. The Studio is open during the fall, spring, and summer semesters—as long as class in session. The Studio is open on weekdays.Current iteration
The FSU Digital Studio is currently housed in the Williams Building, operated in conjunction with the , and aims to serve students and faculty from all disciplines. The Studio is open five days a week and is staffed by Graduate TAs from the English Department.Staff
The FSU Digital Studio has seven staff members in the Spring 2011 semester, all of whom have varying levels of expertise with a variety of software and applications, including Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Powerpoint, Prezi, Movie Maker, Vuvox, etc.Facilities
HardwareSoftware