Response:
Scholars write and publish essays, and do research, *as a response* to real life situations, to the needs of various stakeholders, and *in response* to the work and writings of other scholars. To agree or disagree is a kind of response-- but there are more kinds of response which are possible. Evaluation is kind of response-- how *useful* is this idea or this new research? Proposing counter-arguments is a kind of response. Or simply positioning yourself, or your situation, with regard to their work (in other words, how applicable is their idea to the situation at hand?) is also a kind of response. It is also a kind of response to critically question a text, its conclusions, its reasoning, its assumptions, or its information. There are, of course, other ways to respond as well.
This is also part of what we do here, in our online course with the texts being produced in D2L. We can ask for essays as responsesto discussion, ask for discussions as responses to essays, as well as askingfor discussion postings as responses to other discussion postings. All three genres of writing can be thought of as forms of "response."
Recursivity:
Where "responding" asks students to position themselves in relation to a given text, "recursivity" is a processof making use of that text, in part or in whole, to produce another.
Scholars do not just stop at "responding" to other scholars work-- they go beyond that to "make use" of their work. This means actively re-working previous scholars ideas and scholarship into new forms, to apply them to new situations, or to refine them to improve them, or to correct past oversights. There are a number of specific ways that we can recursively "make use" of previous texts. When we are working with our own previous texts-- we call this process "revision." But when working with someone else's ideas, we also have to be respectful of their original work, and the original context of their work. This means explaining what their ideas were, and giving thorough context and explanation of their work.
But then our process of "revision" can begin, as we show through "critique" where their ideas need to be refined or modified in order to be more useful or accurate. Our "revision" can include applying their ideas to something new-- giving them a new "use" which the original author had not envisioned. We can also "revise" these texts by re-interpreting them using new or different ideas to make sense of them. These are all recursive activities which allow us to create new insight, knowledge, or understanding about something in the world.
While scholars recursively use sources to create new knowledge through writing, we also recursively use texts here in D2L for our course.
These texts can include published texts, earlier essays written by students themselves or by others, the student's own blogs or discussion postings, or other student's blog or discussion postings. Class discussions are texts. That means they are raw material that can be later revisited and revisedinto new discussions and even into new essays. Online Discussions are written records of the class's thinking on a particular issue or subject at a given time—and as such are useful artifacts for consideration as texts in their own right, and can help students make explicit for themselves what the class has thought and done, and how it has changed. They are also source material that can be cited and used like any other source.
So both scholarly or academic writing, and the writing we are doing here in D2L, are activities which involve "response" and "recursivity."
These ideas should help us understand our course texts, our sources, as well as what we ourselves are doing in our research this semester.
As you write about your research sources-- ask yourself-- in what way am I being responsive to their research and their ideas? In what way am I being recursive?
