Composition in context: A study of first-year writing, American History, and technology within a media-rich interdisciplinary learning community

This study critically evaluates the processes and outcomes of a linked course learning community combining first-year composition, American History, and media-rich technology at an urban research university from 2003--2006. As an integral part of the writing class students created multimodal texts based on history content, concurrently writing in traditional and hypertextual formats. Research questions of epistemology, ontology, and axiology guide the study and interrogate the processes of learning, the nature of learning, and the value of learning outcomes. The study further questions whether those outcomes create arguments for how future first-year writing courses might be conceived and executed.; Qualitative and quantitative data demonstrate the efficacy of infusing the first-year writing class with disciplinary content to create positive learning outcomes in the writing class and the content-area course. The study's mixed-methods research approach, integrating the social sciences and humanities, offers a model for assessing learning processes in the first-year writing class. Presenting a rich, descriptive portrait drawn from short answer surveys and focus group interviews, the study supports qualitative data with quantitative data from multi-item scaled surveys from linked and non-linked students. Results show linked students became more confident in their abilities to write and conduct research at the university level while learning a new multimodal literacy. They reported actively engaging in writing they perceived as meaningful and, as participants in a learning community, an increased sense of academic identity and comfort within the university setting, both predictors of persistence. Comparison of iv history grades between linked and non-linked students show linked students performed significantly better than non-linked peers in the content course.; Theoretical frameworks of social constructivism and activity theory make the processes of learning in the linked class setting more transparent. The study illustrates the value of activity theory as a descriptive heuristic for understanding student learning processes in writing classrooms. The linked classes are graphically represented as dynamic activity systems transforming over four academic years, from student and faculty perspectives. Activity theory further demonstrates how students appropriated available tools from the classes---historical texts, art, literature, film, and computer technology---to affect outcomes beyond the writing classroom.