Architexture, Infrastructure, and the Rhetoric of Design | Computers & Writing 2014 Rusty Carpenter | Eastern Kentucky University | [email protected] Dànielle Nicole DeVoss | Michigan State University | [email protected] Andy Frazee | Georgia Institute of Technology | [email protected] James P. Purdy | Duquesne University | [email protected] David Sheridan | Michigan State University | [email protected] Douglas Walls | University of Central Florida | [email protected] Purdy, James P., & DeVoss, Dànielle Nicole. (In process). Making space. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press / Sweetland Digital Rhetoric Collaborative. CHAPTER 6 Digital Composing as a Distributed, Emergent Process: Technology-Rich Spaces and Learning Ecologies David Sheridan This chapter looks at a small technology-rich teaching and learning environment called the Language and Media Center (LMC), located in Michigan State University's new Residential College in the Arts and Humanities (RCAH). I begin by summarizing current conversations on living-learning communities (LLCs), on learning spaces, and on writing centers. While these conversations rarely intersect, they share a number of salient themes, especially an emphasis on the role that social connections play in facilitating learning. I then turn briefly to conversations on networks and ecologies. Finally, I examine the experiences of one RCAH student who visited the LMC as she worked on a series of related compositions. This student's experience, I argue, reveals a composing process that is distributed across a range of human and nonhuman agents. Tracing the activities of this student reveals the presence of a larger, learning ecology. The LMC participates in and helps to nurture this ecology. CHAPTER 7 From the Ground Up: Shaping Community, Collaboration, and Multiliteracies at Georgia Tech Rebecca E. Burnett, Brandy Ball Blake, Andy Frazee, Karen Head, Diane Jakacki, Chris Ritter, Nirmal Trivedi, & Christopher Weedman This web text discusses three dynamic Writing and Communication Program spaces that serve the entire Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) campus: the Laptop Classroom in the Skiles Classroom Building (Skiles 302), the Communication Center in the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons, and the Stephen C. Hall Building. These spaces—which encourage both community and collaboration—are not just any spaces that our program happens to be using; these are spaces deliberately designed by us and for us. Working with the Writing and Communication Program throughout both the planning and design stages, the designers and architects were particularly concerned about the match between the physical spaces and our philosophy, our pedagogy, and our research practices. Representatives of our program also worked with interior designers, landscape architects, and information technology experts in determining details. This chapter focuses on physical and digital affordances that contribute to the Writing and Communication Program’s core philosophies of rhetoric, process, and multimodality; we also offer, however, implications and conclusions flexible enough for readers at a range of other institutional contexts to consider and apply. CHAPTER 8 A SPACE TO PLAY, A SPACE TO COMPOSE: A Model for Creative Collaborations and Composition Practices Russell G. Carpenter and Shawn Apostel This chapter situates the Noel Studio for Academic Creativity (Noel Studio) at Eastern Kentucky University (EKU) as a new space for composition and pedagogy. As its name implies, creativity influences the Noel Studio’s design. In turn, the Studio's design is intended to enhance the creativity of its visitors by breaking from traditional writing space models and integrating areas to foster multimodal invention practices. Employing student interviews as our primary method for understanding the role space plays in the composing process of college students, we trace the journey of composition as students move from room to room, from one form of technology to another, and as they research, brainstorm, collaborate, write, revise, seek feedback, and polish their communication projects. Furthermore, our chapter features student narratives explaining how the Noel Studio’s space enables creative expression and how that experience translates into stronger composition projects and more robust student experiences. CHAPTER 13 The Infrastructure of Space: Expanding Writing Classroom Activity into the Extracurriculum Douglas Walls and Leslie Wolcott In this chapter, we leave the space of computer lab classrooms to build on the idea of hacking space (Walls, DeVoss, & Schopieray, 2009). We explore ways of hacking the virtual space of classrooms—even those situated with little to no technology. We consider how “digital objects” can allow students and their work to shift and move through the physical walls of their assigned classrooms. We also propose a combined use of institutional and non-institutional virtual spaces simultaneously, where “kitchen tables” or their software equivalents become both within and outside of the university and the classroom–at the same time. We frame this discussion of shifting and complicating classroom walls through ActorNetwork Theory, a particularly useful way to reconsider Ruggles Gere’s kitchen tables as objects that generate activity around them. We suggest that digital tools can act as the same kind of activity-generating objects, but only if—and when—networks of people and activities around those objects exist in a way that invite opportunities for meaningful writing work to be done.