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Purdue University

Decentering the writing program archive: How composition instructors save and share their teaching materials

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

<p>This dissertation decenters the writing program archive through research on instructors’ digital archives. Artifacts of composition instruction are no longer saved to print archives alone; rather, digital technologies expand the locations where artifacts of writing pedagogy can be archived and accessed. The following archival ethnography, focused on a community engagement writing course in the Introductory Composition at Purdue (ICaP) program, finds that many digital archives of composition are hidden to outside researchers or not sustained (which are theorized as either “abandoned” or “pop-up” archives). At the same time, some pedagogical materials are publicly visible by virtue of personal web spaces and social media. Instructors interviewed for this study often lack best practices in digital records management and preservation, leading to wayfinding challenges in the short-term and potential digital ephemerality in the long-term. This study concludes with a set of recommendations for helping instructors to follow more effective personal archival practices, by drawing upon the motivations for and challenges of personal archiving as expressed in their interviews.</p>

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Level thesis:degree_level
Dissertation
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
English
Year
2016

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Nall, Stacy Olivia
Contributors dc:contributor
  • Jennifer Bay
  • Richard Johnson-Sheehan
  • Shirley Rose
  • Patricia Sullivan
  • Irwin Weiser

Subjects

dc:subject × 10

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:docs.lib.purdue.edu:open_access_dissertations-2012

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Purdue University
Base URL
docs.lib.purdue.edu/do/oai/
Last updated
2026-07-24
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Nall, Stacy Olivia. Decentering the writing program archive: How composition instructors save and share their teaching materials. Dissertation thesis, 2016. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_dissertations/820