Gatekeeping or Guidance:The Role of ICON

ICON is a systems-approach pedagogy where the delivery and assessment are mediated through a set of algorithmic functions— a complex database system. This provides an interesting case study in scholarship of teaching freshman composition classes. Contrary to the general practice of teacher grading their own batch of students, ICON offers a dynamic selection of grading students’ papers: an instructor receives assignments for grading of students other than one’s own batch.

In this situation it might be relevant to mention the concepts of process and product in composition teaching. I will use the notion of process to identify the teacher-student interaction in class; and, will use the idea of product to identify the teacher-student interaction through ICON.

Process: The idea of process could be understood in this respect from what M. Jimmie Killingsworth mentions in his fascinating essay “Product and Process, Literacy and Orality: An Essay on Composition and Culture.” According to him, process is a generalization in history of composition, what orality is in history of culture (Killingsworth, 1993). As such, we may equate process as a more interactive, personal, decentralized and dialogic in the Bakhtinian sense of the term. I see a role of a classroom instructor situated in the pedagogy of process, where the instructor is also a teacher. It is a personalized and active pedagogy of exchange within the classroom community. The students are encouraged free-thinking within the intellectual precincts of the moments spent inside the class.

Product: However, the face of this relationship changes immediately with the role of instructors who do not meet these students in class. The document instructors are more instructors and graders and graders than teachers. It is in this relationship that the idea of orality is inverted to the idea of “literacy.” Here the exchange of ideas is reduced to the delivery of norms as defined by the composition literacy. It in way “decontextualize[s]” ((Killingsworth, 1993) the concept of learning— from the individual and critical context (inside the class) to standard and limited context within the demands of freshman composition. ICON, thus disadvantages the facilitator role in the instructors who grade the students. Also, the amount of time-spent with a student over ICON is limited to short period of grading that particular assignment, which is hugely less than the instructors who spent an hour and twenty minutes each week with the same student. ICON perpetuates a centralized approach to grading, both in terms of following a standardized grading structure as well as in using the a common interface for suggestions.

Wriiting Center, I would say, is a process-centric approach that imbibes the basics of New Rhetoric. It is more one-on-one pedagogical approach rather than the passive “banking” approach.

To situate ICON in the whole debate of grading, error and socialization, I would say that the approach is in a way passive. It is perpetuating the idea of gatekeeper more that it is demonstrating the role of a guide/coach. ICON being technologically nuanced, echoes Bloom’s concern with revision as a function of getting better grades (by following the strict standard of formatting texts, by navigating the pages through correct clicks, and submitting the assignment within a set time to avoid penalty) rather than an exercise to polish drafts. ICON facilitates a meatball surgery so that the student is ready to submit his or her paper by the deadline of the next cycle.

Thus, ICON readjusts the socialization process of instructors (CIs & DIs): both teach, inform and communicate with students, but the nature is vastly contrastive.