It’s another Wiki Wednesday here at the DRC and we’re introducing a running feature to highlight past DRC Wiki contributors and describe their contributions to our collaborative effort of editing the DRC Wiki. These spotlights bring attention to our editors and to the many different ways to work with the DRC Wiki.
This week, we’re spotlighting the recent work of Jack Hennes.
Jack Hennes is currently a PhD student in the Rhetoric & Writing program at Michigan State University. Previously, he received an M.A. in Rhetoric & Writing and a B.A. in English Studies, both from St. Cloud State University. His research interests include multimodal pedagogy, community writing, environmental rhetoric, and experience architecture (UX). He is also the Assistant Editor of Technical Writing at Writing Commons, an open education resource or college-level writers.
a. When did you begin editing?
I began editing the DRC Wiki in December 2014 so that I could begin sharing my annotations of texts I read in coursework. In the future, I hope to contribute more summaries and links to important material.
b. What was your initial experience like? (What was difficult at first? What did you learn that helped you overcome an initial hesitation?)
It has been some time since I edited a wiki page, so it took a little while for me to reorient myself to the little tweaks necessary to make an effective page with thorough entries. After I posted my writing, I needed to make a few changes to ensure that the writing had the same concise and informative characteristics for good wiki writing. Looking at other entries on the DRC Wiki helped me model mine, and I also found it useful to look at the the styles used in other entries, too.
c. Major Contributions to the Wiki? (What articles/sections did you work on? What kind of content did you add?)
In the Key Texts section, I added an article that features a review of Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres (ed. by Tracy Bowden and Carl Whithaus; 2013). The brevity of the review couldn’t possibly cover the richness of the chapters in this collection, but I hope that it will be a useful page for teachers looking for resources about multimodal pedagogy.
d. Why is this project important (to you)?
The DRC Wiki is a powerful space for students and instructors to build a collective archive of crucial work in the discipline. I believe we should embrace wikis and other simple, yet powerful open access platforms for gathering and sharing resources centered on multimodality, digital rhetoric, and professional writing. In the future, ongoing work on the DRC Wiki could serve as an excellent go-to space for the discipline and beyond.
Want to be a future featured contributor? Sign up to become a Digital Rhetoric Collaborative Wiki Editor today!
