“Click Here”: Teaching Composition through the Creation of on-Line Magazines

Abstract

In recent years, I have taught a number of writing and literature courses in which my students, as part of their final grade in the class, contributed to the creation of on-line magazines. In the process, the students transformed their various compositions into hypertext documents linked to both a main “home” page and a variety of external locations that, in turn, positioned their writing within a community (or network) of electronic texts. Using my experiences of this project as a touchstone, I examine the potential benefits and pitfalls of teaching writing through the creation of on-line magazines. Specifically, I address the ways in which the creation of on-line magazines impacts how instructors envision their curriculum, as well as the extent to which these electronic publications problematize traditional conceptions of what it means to “create,” “read,” and “analyze” a text.