In what way is RAP a collective study?

Since Wikis are networked and interactive, offering possible modifications of individual intention (see related iFAQ), it became interesting to think of RAP as having a collective author. This super-author might link to Keats more than to Shelley, say, or highlight more verbs in poems than adjectives, or decline to connect poems by women to poems by men.

In some ways the instructor shaped RAP collective identity by issuing specific requirements, such as the weekly posting assignment. Even so, posting tendencies emerged that were worthwhile pondering as a class and could be framed as the expression of this group of students. This discussion attracted elaboration; this poem went unlinked; this author attracted biographical elaboration; this entry was cited often by other entries; etc.

There are other Wiki engines out there that would have given us much more of a statistical breakdown of collective activity, but we had to abandon one such program due to coding instability.

The sheer novelty of the technology shaped class dynamics. Collectively, students could think of themselves as akin to the two generations of writers they were studying - likewise riding a wave of changes in publication and distribution, and likewise dependent on the (shifting) recognition of (unsettled) peers. Cooperation and group identity seemed natural reactions to a strange new world of networked writing. For more rumination along these lines, see What's Romantic about the Romantic Audience Project?.

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