The PIT Journal

Over the course of the fall semester a group of people--undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty--have been working on an online journal. We want to create new mixings of readers, writers, texts, responses, teaching, and learning by collaboratively developing an online publication for undergraduate scholarship. Our initial group was awarded a curricular innovation grant through the Center for Faculty Excellence. We've put together a set of courses that will link assignments and activities with the journal. First year writing courses that participate offer insights into rhetorical concerns and composition pedagogy. Literature courses will feature sustained writing activities and professionalization opportunities. New media classes will extend the modes of review and presentation in helpful ways.

We have also recruited a core group of student editors and developers. We are working on a manifesto, for me a personal credo. I'd like the journal to bring an open source, collaborative mentality to the paper development process. I think of the boiled-down version of the response to the question so often put to the compositional arts: what do you teach? Reading and writing. So the credo is be both reader and writer. Participate by reading, responding, furthering the development of something started by another. If you bring a paper, read a paper. If you read something offer feedback, add a tag, leave your mark.

We're also taking the development of the associated technology to be an opportunity to experiment and teach. We're gathering a group with mixed skill levels. We're investigating and participating in the social and technical networks required to develop the project. We're thinking about how platforms and processes can emerge in terms of teaching approaches. Figuring out how social groups might be configured on- and off-line to participate in the project.

There still is much to do but it looks like we are fast approaching take off velocity.