Origins

The DWRL began in 1985 with the acquisition of twelve IBM microcomputers as a result of a Project QUEST grant to the University of Texas at Austin. English department faculty member Jerome Bump and his graduate students later arranged for the machines to be moved from the University Writing Center (housed in the English department) to vacant space in the basement of the Undergraduate Library. This space was deemed the Computer Research Lab (CRL) and marked the beginning of the research into computer-based writing at The University of Texas at Austin.

In fall 1986 Bump offered a graduate seminar on rhetoric and computers, which he co-taught with Lt. Col. Hugh Burns. Burns, who worked in the Intelligent Systems Division at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, had written the first dissertation in what became the academic field of Computers and Writing. Graduate students in this seminar sought to advance Burns's efforts to explore how the computer could serve less as a “teaching machine” and more as a constructive partner in dialogue with student-writers.^[2] Theoretically, this work aligned well with the emerging “process” model of writing instruction, and Burns's presence lent national credibility to the group. Burns coined the name of the new Computer Research Lab.

Participants in the newly established lab dedicated their efforts to finding alternative models for the writing classroom. The lab's first local area network (LAN) allowed computers in the lab to be linked to one another, as well as to machines in an adjacent instructional room. This arrangement eventually enabled colleagues from the English department to teach first-year English courses in the CRL's first "computational classroom" as Bump and his graduate students called it.

Early products

Graduate student Fred Kemp's software Idealog focused on invention or pre-writing, while his colleague Paul Taylor's Descant assisted revision. Other students, moving away from the “process” instructional model that underpinned these two, developed programs of their own that prioritized social interaction. These included Locke Carter's In-Class Mail and Paul Taylor's Forum5. Even though the programs emerged from different theoretical assumptions, they could be used together.^[3]

They also supplied the foundation for the most notable achievement of the lab's formative years, the Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment (DIWE), a suite of applications that integrated elements of the writing process. DIWE included four major modules: Invent, Respond, Mail (an asynchronous, internal messaging system), and InterChange (a conferencing system that allowed for synchronous—real-time—interaction among students and instructors). Several scholars went on to praise InterChange, in particular, for its capacity to transform the dynamics of a writing classroom.^[4]

Focus on Digital Pedagogy

In January 1989, under the leadership of director John Slatin, the lab's staff began to assemble an archive of pedagogical texts—materials associated with the lab's attempts to conduct writing instruction in computer classrooms—and co-hosted the sixth Conference on Computers and Writing.

Slatin wrote a funding proposal that increased the university-wide visibility of the CRL, eventually establishing computer labs and networks and disseminating new DIWE software across departments on UT-Austin's campus. Funding for additional labs and multimedia hardware also tightened the ties between the CRL and the English department and, later, the new Division of Rhetoric and Composition (which, upon its creation in 1993, assumed administrative oversight of the CRL).^[5]

The lab's institutional growth continued with the hiring in 1994 of faculty member Margaret Syverson, trained in Computers and Writing, and the recruitment of additional graduate students. Syverson directed the rechristened Computer Writing and Research Lab from 1994 to 2004.

From 2004 to 2008 Clay Spinuzzi directed the CWRL. In 2004 the CWRL hired current systems administrator D. Hampton Finger, who facilitated the lab's switch to Drupal for its web content management. This shift allowed for greater accessibility and made personal Drupal installations available for instructors. As a result of a university pilot program using WebXM to ensure web accessibility, in October 2006 the CWRL lowered its webpage's structural accessibility violations from 3100 pages to zero.

During 2004-2005, the CWRL created a workgroup model in which workgroup leaders assemble small teams to work on particular projects, allowing for greater continuity from year to year. From 2006 to 2008, the CWRL pursued outside partnerships. The lab redeveloped and rationalized archives of English and rhetoric exercises in a system called eFiles, and developed viz., a blog about visual rhetoric.

Research initiatives

• Gaming Pedagogy - The group is researching the potential and applicability of a games in the classroom, whether those be tabletop games, educational games, commercial video games, or games made by independent groups and will publish an eBook to showcase their findings. They are building on the work of the Immersive Environments group, which has explores the intersections among gaming, pedagogy, and virtual worlds and which designed and implemented two games in the rhetoric classroom: "Rhetorical Peaks and "Battle Lines".
• Audio Video Research - Now in its second year, the ARVG group is creating an audio podcast series spotlighting intersections of rhetoric and technology. The 2011-12 group collaborated with the Undergraduate Writing Center on the WRITE series—videos that feature writers at all levels talking about their writing processes—as well as a prototype for an online tutorial series.
• Currents in Electronic Literacy - In addition to soliciting, editing, and publishing the annual issue of the DWRL's e-journal Currents in Electronic Literacy, members of the group research digital publication platforms and optimization strategies for mobile viewing.
• Visual Rhetoric - In addition to producing the DWRL's award-winning visual rhetoric blog, viz., the Visual Rhetoric group have collaborated with the Harry Ransom Center (HRC). The group will engage with the HRC's collections and exhibitions to extend their research in visual rhetoric.
• The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (TheJUMP) - This group publishes TheJUMP twice annually and serves as a resource for other DWRL members on issues of accessibility and undergraduate publication.

Products of past initiatives

• "Battle Lines"
• "Rhetorical Peaks" - an interactive video game for rhetoric and writing instruction.
• "Where Media and Pedagogy Meet": A map of sites of online discourse in digital humanities and rhetorical pedagogy.
• Oral history lesson plans
• viz. social tagging work via the STEVE in Action project, in partnership with the Blanton Museum of Art - a study of how students write about abstract art.
• viz. image maps for the Harry Ransom Center - an interactive tour of the HRC exhibitions and the viz. blog.
• Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment - a suite of collaborative tools designed to run on a local area network, helps students develop their skills in writing and critical thinking.
• The Learning Record Online - a portfolio-based method for accounting for learning in complex systems.
• White papers