Schenectady Synecdoche

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September 21, 2006

Outsourcing learning

How much does this sound like the rhetoric of a term paper site?

We at EasyBib understand the burdensome task of composing a bibliography. After finishing a paper, no one wants to go through the process of looking up the many different formats to cite their individual sources. Placing colons in one place, periods in another, and deciding when and where to underline is both confusing and frustrating.

And why am I looking at the rhetoric of EasyBib? Because one of my students, an advanced undergraduate with a humanities major, just talked over her paper with me. I'd graded it down a bit because the documentation was sooo peculiar. Sources in the Works Cited were numbered and presented in the order in which they were mentioned in the text.

Me: What style sheet were you using?
She: Honestly, I was using EasyBib.
Me: Well, yes, but which style sheet did you choose?
She: I don't think they give you a choice. I just entered my data, and they produced the list of Works Cited.
Me: Hmm. It looks as if they're defaulting to the CSE citation-sequence system.

With the student at my side, I open up EasyBib. And guess what: they claim to give two choices, MLA and APA, neither of which numbers entries and arranges them in the order in which they appear in the text. I explain to my very good, very earnest student that I think bibliography softwares are an excellent thing but that they can't be trusted; the writer has to verify that what they've produced is correct.

Then I ask, "What handbook are you using?" She tells me. I pull it down from my shelf and open up to the MLA chapter. She immediately, eagerly, earnestly begins writing down the page and chapter numbers. I show her where the sample Works Cited page is, and where the index to MLA citation is. She's writing, writing. It's clear she'll produce a well-documented paper next time.

And I make two notes to myself:

1. When teaching WRT 205 this spring, be sure to take the students through the use of online bibliography-makers. And their handbooks.
2. This fall, in my undergrad authorship course, give an assignment in which the students analyze the rhetoric of EasyBib, SchoolSucks, and Turnitin, to consider the representations of labor, writing, and teaching in commercial writing and teaching products.

Posted by senioritis at September 21, 2006 11:14 AM

Comments

Posted by: susansinclair at September 21, 2006 04:21 PM