LAUSR

Abstract This study, a qualitative examination of students’ experiences within an online writing community, frames human-computer interaction (HCI) as a dialogic negotiation of users and systems within networked publics. It demonstrates how an interface-level examination of these interactions, particularly at moments of glitch and error, reveals their impact on the landscape and design of educational online writing communities, puncturing the technological transparency that permeates HCI. Using a micro-ethnographic approach, this study draws from screen capture recordings, questionnaires, observations, and visual-elicitation interviews to construct two cases that demonstrate the significance of interface-level interactions in shaping the networked public square of an educational online writing community, re-framing conceptualizations of both student and system “error.” By encouraging readers to look at (rather than through) the interfaces mediating students’ interactions with online writing communities, this article shows how interface-level interactions emerge from and fold back into complex dialogic systems with implications for the teaching, research, design, and analysis of educational online writing communities.