“Infrastructure and Composing: The When of New-Media Writing” by Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Ellen Cushman, and Jeffrey T. Grasbill

DeVoss, Danielle Nicole, Cushman, Ellen, and Grabill Jeffrey T. “The When of New-Media Writing.”  College Composition and Communication. 57.1 (2005): 14-44.

In “Infrastructure and Composing: The When of New-Media Writing,” authors Danielle Nicole DeVoss, Ellen Cushman, and Jeffrey T. Grasbill apply infrastructure theory to the conditions that exist on campuses in regards to the challenges and roadblocks that are faced by instructors and students when producing multimedia in the classroom. This is a practical article that demonstrates the challenges faced by Ellen Cushman in her course that revolved around student multimedia productions. Cushman is another one of my favorites, so it was very beneficial to read about her issues with multimedia labs and information technology specialists at her own institution. Because of regulations and restrictions that were in place, she is able to point out the innate infrastructure that is formed around new media studies.

One of the principles of infrastructure theory is that the infrastructure is invisible until it breaks down, as was the case in Cushman’s multimedia writing class. Infrastructure is necessary, but sometimes we must restructure the systems in which we work (and ask our students to work) in order to effectively incorporate student-produced new media texts into our classrooms. This restructuring can be frustrating. Cushman, after running into server/space limitations and software malfunctions in her multimedia class at Michigan State, had to negotiate with staff members outside of her department in order to make crucial changes within the infrastructure of her classroom and institution. Without these changes and Cushman’s advocacy of the use of new media, her multimedia writing course would have been a failure.

This article reminded me of the dead ends I faced when working with the multimedia lab at Kennesaw State. Inevitably, instructors are going to be faced with these sort of infrastructure problems when incorporating multimedia in their classrooms in this way. This article applies the concepts of infrastructure theory to the challenges of using new media in higher education. It is useful to learn from Cushman’s experience and to also to consider how we might overcome some of the difficulties we face in our own institutions.