Abstract:

"Cooking Up a Multi-Vocal Essay" records and grows out of a graduate seminar on Computers and Composition. The project offers no single argument, but synthesizes relevant literature and re-presents classroom discussions about the possibilities for, and limitations on, teaching and writing MVEs.

When we began this project in the fall of 2000, none of us had any real idea where we were going. What we did know was that we wanted to create a multi-vocal essay of some sort. We looked at multiple online and print pieces by Kathleen Blake Yancey and Michael Spooner, better known as Myka Vielstimmig, to try and develop a foundation from which to begin. Our piece, "Cooking Up a Multi-Vocal Essay: Dinner Conversations About Teaching and Writing MVEs," is in part influenced by the design and structural elements from the pieces we studied; the rest has been a collaborative leap of faith. We have written, re/written, re/vised, and begun again to reach the level the piece is currently at. The reality of this genre is that there are few models to follow, no templates to fit into, and few if any rules to direct the creators. The door stands wide open; this is at once wonderful and terrifying to those of us who live by "the rules" of Composition.

During the brainstorming sessions, we decided to break the piece into four dinners as the class ran over the dinner hour, and we had been taking turns bring a meal for everyone. We each chose an area of interest: Kevin chose genre and pedagogy, Dayna chose active learning, Lynne chose collaboration, and Mary chose gatekeeping and access. It was then our responsibility to assign the readings and lead the discussion for that night. The four Cooked Meals are from those evenings. In addition to taped transcripts of the conversations, we also e-mailed, fast and furiously at times, to keep the discussions going through the week. Many of those are available and some messages are quoted in the individual Meals. In creating the MVE, we tried to achieve multivocality by incorporating sections from the transcripts in our individual pages, using e-mail dialogue, quoting sources, and re/presenting each person in their own voice throughout. Although there is a template for the frame of each page, we also created a multi-designed project in that each person created his/her own page to fit not only their topic but also their style of writing and aesthetic sensibilities. The MVE is not for the faint-hearted, but it has been a wonderful learning experience, has provided real collaborative learning, and has required more of us as writers than any 8 " x 11" sheet of paper ever could.

The menu at the bottom of each screen allows you to choose a transcript or a cooked meal; the email conversations and works cited (academic conversations) are also linked at the top of most screens and the bottom of all screens. The main menu is not this page, but the first page of the project.