Internet Literacy and Consulting

Reading the articles about the different forms of literacy left me with a conflicted opinion. I do agree that it is important for students to develop different forms of literacy as technology continues to change and the Internet becomes more and more prominent in our society. However, it sometimes seems to me that teaching these things should not be the responsibility of the Writing Center. It just seems extremely unfair to me that an instructor would assign a student to make a web page, for example, in a class that really has nothing to do with web authoring. If the instructor expects something specific in this area, then they should be prepared to teach it to students, and not judge on aesthetics that Sheridan suggests writing centers should help students with. Aesthetics and arrangement should only be important in a web authoring-centered class, where the students would obviously be studying it already.

However, I myself am not extremely Internet-savvy, and even after taking two introductory courses on web design/authoring, I still lack confidence in my abilities and struggle to remember different procedures in CSS, as well as in design software like Photoshop or Dreamweaver. Had I realized MSU had a more technological help center, I'm sure I would have gone. But another issue that Sheridan points out is that if there were two separate centers, one for writing and one for more multimedia consulting, students would probably skip a trip to the writing center and only go to get help with the multimedia aspects of assignments. I agree with this assumption, if only because when I was in my web authoring courses I didn't think I "needed" help with my writing, and I'm sure I only would have sought aid with the technical aspects of these courses. Despite this, if demand for technical consulting consulting continues to grow, I think some responsibility needs to be shifted to teachers. They should give the students in-depth explanations of techniques they expect in assignments, and provide more availability to help students outside of class. This is where writing center could enter, by setting up sessions with web design instructors and instructors who wish to incorporate web pages into their classes, just like the meetings between writing consultants and writing isntructors described in Stock's article on the origins of the MSU Writing Center. When the digital consultants understand the teachers' desires for their students, they can set up workshops and help the teachers learn more effective teaching techniques so students can gain competency in a complicated and expanding field.