This is not your mother's education: The need for hypertext writing in first-year composition

This dissertation proposes that writing teachers should include hypertext genres into their pedagogies as a way to help students transition more effectively into workplace writing. Specifically, texts within first-year writing should become more like those generated in the workplace---fluid mediums within an interactive, collaborative, and symbol-laden framework. This idea is a well-established practice for sub-disciplines within English studies such as technical communication, writing-across-the-curriculum, and computers and composition. However, for many first-year writing programs, work genres, or those that can pertain to work, such as hypertext, are still a thing of the future since many programs have not officially included these writings in portfolios or general graded assessments.; This dissertation has four chapters. Chapter One focuses on the socio/technology trends that affect the lives of students generally. This is followed by a discussion of the textual (as literate) representations of school and work writing and the effects of technology on both, and general processes that shape school and work texts and their representations.; Chapter Two is a review of the literature surrounding some concepts of and writing processes associated with social perspective theories at school and work and the relationship of these theories to the nature of hypertext writing. This review helps clarify how hypertext can develop some important functional competencies and critical literacies applicable to school and work.; Chapter Three is a proposed curriculum that possibly links hypertext in first-year writing to the work writing and other discourse communities students may encounter.; Chapter Four makes a call for teacher training. Specifically, I discuss the political and social roadblocks to training and recommend concepts that should guide English practitioners in overcoming these hindrances as well as establishing effective teacher training programs.