Competing Literacies and the 21st Century Research Paper

As I teach writing during this transitional period from print-based knowledge and teaching processes to digitally mediated varieties, I have become keenly aware of competing literacies that are now in play: print-paradigm literacy, and digital literacy. 

I think that college students should be getting trained to succeed within their current context, and that context is not primarily print-based -- not anymore. A the same time, I recognize that traditional print-based ways of thinking and producing knowledge remain valuable. And the pragmatic reality is that most teachers of writing are going to continue to expect traditional academic writing for some time to come. 

How do I reconcile these competing literacies? How can we connect traditional academic writing to the ways knowledge is meaningfully produced and shared in the digital age? What should the research paper become in the 21st century?

Transcending the College Research Paper

The standard college research paper is quickly outdating and must be substantially overhauled for the digital age.  

The communication and critical skills that such assignments have been designed to produce are ever more necessary today, yet the research paper, as a genre, artificially and unnecessarily confines how students conceive of, conduct, and present their research. It sustains print-based modes of literacy and inquiry that are out of sync with those modes of learning, collaborating, and communicating that have emerged with the new media. The college research paper is an instrument of pre-digital literacy, a legacy format that can and should be transcended.