Computers
and Writing Conference 2001Deadline for Submissions: May 15, 2001
| Jill K.
Anderson, Mott Community College
Susan Antlitz, Illinois State University Wendy Warren Austin, Edinboro University of PA (Morning only) Cheryl E. Ball, Michigan Technological University § John F. Barber Barbara Bird, Ball State University Jennifer L. Bowie, Texas Tech University Kim R. Brewer Christopher Carter, University of Louisville § Sharon Cogdill, St. Cloud University Thomas A. Copeland, Youngstown State University § Janet Cross, California State University, Northridge § Angela Crow, Georgia Southern University § Eric Crump, Interversity § Michael Day, Northern Illinois University § Chidsey Dickson, Georgia Southern University Bradley Dilger, University of Florida § Douglas Eyman, Kairos § Tari Lin Fanderclai Janet Garrard-Willis, Saint Louis University Kathleen Gillis-Barnhill, Texas Tech University § Sibylle Gruber, Northern Arizona University Lori Hughes, Texas Tech University Megan Hughes, Saint Xavier University § James Inman, Furman University (Afternoon only) § C. J. Jeney, Missouri Western State College Chris J. Johnston, University of California--Santa Barbara Woosung Kim Ginger Kirk, Idaho State University Michael Knievel, Texas Tech University (Afternoon only) |
Rob Koch, Jr.,
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
§ Steven Krause, Eastern Michigan University Virginia Kuhn, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (Afternoon only) Carrie A. Lamanna, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign § Susan Lang, Texas Tech Charles Lowe, Florida State University Sebastian Mahfood, Saint Louis University § Barry Maid, Arizona State University Maureen Murphy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Sara P. Pace, Texas Woman's University Kristine L. Potter, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Jessica Reyman, Southern Illinois University Jeff Rice, University of Florida Rich Rice, Ball State University Katherine J. Robinson, Texas Woman's University Ida Rodgers, Texas Tech University § Ray Rodrigues, University of Texas at Brownsville Julia Romberger, Purdue University John F. Ronan, University of Florida (Afternoon only) Paula Rosinski, Michigan State University § Rae Schipke, Central Connecticut State University § Cynthia L. Selfe, Michigan Tech. (Clemson University) Victoria Sharpe, Texas Tech University § Greg Siering, Ball State University Laura L. Sullivan, University of Florida § Janice R. Walker, Georgia Southern University Joyce Walker, The Center for Writing Studies, University of Illinois John Paul Walter, Saint Louis University |
Not available
For a teaching/research internship I am planning for Fall 2001, I will attempt to examine the relationship between building and the writing process, with a particular eye toward how building in the MOO may help students to think about their paper topics in new or different ways. For example, it seems logical that describing rooms and objects could help students to better visualize scenes concretely, therefore encouraging them to use more sensory details, description, and dialogue in a narrative paper assignment. For more abstract topics, I want to examine how translating a topic from MOO to paper might encourage a better understanding of global revision strategies, as well as attention to differences in audience and purpose. My research will primarily be descriptive and ethnographic, using open coding.
Specifically, I will address the following
questions:
In order to assess how students use
the MOO in their coursework, several types of data will be valuable. The
following is a list of four main data categories that I will use:
I just completed an ethnography of my research writing class which is held in a computer classroom. I am expected to teach the students to write a typical research paper, but having just finished my dissertation on hypertext research papers, I not only had them do the traditional paper kind, but had them complete a hypertext one, too, so I was implementing my own "suggested pedagogical strategies." I also was able to get a small grant to help with the funds, which I used to pay a research assistant and to buy a copyrighted critical thinking skills test, which I used to give my students a pre-test and post-test. I do not have the final results back yet, but the class is finished, and I was able to interview 16 students, some of whose work can be seen on the web. My main question about this research study is not a typical one? What the heck is a undergraduate research assistant supposed to do that is actually supposed to help you cut back on the work, rather than increase it? This was my first research study besides my dissertation. I would like help on how to legitimize it more, since it is an ethnography of my "own" class and is naturally filled with a great deal of bias.
Tthis is a new media text available at http://www.uiowa.edu/~iareview/tirweb/hypermedia/talan_memmott/index.html. Right now I've got 40-some pages doing reading protocols on what Umberto Eco (Role of the Reader) defines as a Model Reader compared to a novice reader of new media and I'm trying to make connections between the transactional reading theory of Louise Rosenblatt (The reader, the text, the poem) and hypertext/new media texts.
I did my MFA thesis on poetry in an electronic format (see two new media works i've created, including my thesis at http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~ceball).
So, new media, poetry, image/text debate,
hypertext theory, i'm up for anything. But the above is one project I am
over 1/2 done with (at least i feel that far along...), and the new media
text on my home page (above) called Dear Robert Darling, a year in letters,
would be nice to discuss with someone in regards to interactivity and narrative,
etc.
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As we shift to a digital information age, problems are occurring in the writing classroom. Networked writing with myriad links and connections, common on the internet, is a different genre and different media then students are used to. It is even a new genre and media for the instructors themselves. If we are using a new type of text that we, as researchers, instructors, and even theorists, are still "figuring out" how can we expect the use in our classroom to be easy for our students?
Students in classrooms where hypertext is used are often confused. Many students are uncomfortable with the hypertext they have to read. They want better navigation, a sense of completion, and a work that fits their needs/desires. However, many of these same students spend countless hours surfing the web without these same problems.
The purpose of this text is to examine hypertext in the writing classroom through a descriptive longitudinal feminist study with both qualitative and quantitative research. I plan to examine how students interact with hypertext, particularly looking at what makes hypertext so problematic for students, but also look at the benefits. I plan to investigate several possible areas that could affect their interactions including:
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When I bought my first computer, my anal-retentive nature was liberated. Explanations of the English verb system and various points of usage which had existed as handouts in files now took their place on the hard drive, and I began to comment on student papers by typing commentaries so as to leave the margins relatively free for the students to make their own corrections. Comments that I considered good enough to be useful a second time got stored, and before long I had a large body of files from which to select prefabricated comments on a wide variety of issues, some related to a specific assignment and some of more general application.
A table of contents next was developed to organize this material and to remind me of the eight-character name of each file. At present this computer-resident handbook (exclusive of the assignment-specific comments) consists of about 2000 entries. Many of these are nearly identical, having only slightly different emphases so as to apply to certain specific manifestations of a general problem. For instance, mixed idioms are explained in approximately the same way in fifteen separate lessons, each beginning with a different example (the most common mixed idioms). When a student writes "both X as well as Y," I give section SS2a3, but for "between X or Y," I give lesson SS2a8. The lessons are identical except for the initial example. In a paper handbook such redundancy would be out of the question, but when one has the luxury of a computer's nearly infinite space, fine tuning is easy.
At present, I still make print-outs, using macros to make the entries pretty and indicate the seriousness of each type of problem, as well as to keep records of the instruction assigned to each student. This prevents duplication, provides for second lessons from a different perspective, and allows me to identify at the end of the course the persistent problems of each student so as to recommend proofreading strategies and further work on these matters after the course is over.
I look forward to the use of hypertext to add the commentary to the "paper" itself, but my students are not quite ready to have their papers remain electronic throughout the paper-marking stage. Nor am I myself ready for this. I still like the look and feel of paper. But I surely do like the ability to keep my handbook up to date. I revise almost every fifth lesson I assign, and I write new ones as well. The students continue to surprise me with new needs.
I probably won't have a lot to present for GRN but I will be there as a student-peer-facilitator type person. In the past year, since I last presented at GRN :), I haven't advanced my dissertation project in very demonstrable or discussable ways -- mostly doing exams etc -- and since that's pretty much the only game in town for me right now, I can't blow my own horn very much.
However, it's possible that between now
and 16 May I'll be able to crank out some material that needs review --
particularly in the areas where I'm working with gender -- and if that's
the case I'll certainly bring it for discussion.
Despite pervasive discussion of composition
classrooms as ideal forums for teaching students how to use their writing
to participate in and pay proper dues to communities of discourse, most
of the actual writing in such a class is a solitary endeavor. While students
may engage in lively discussion regarding potential topics during class-time,
most to do their writing in the relatively monological framework of the
isolated dorm room. Thus, while instructors may employ collaborative rather
than hierarchical learning paradigms in their classrooms, their models
will not easily extend to the students' written work. Rather, instead of
viewing their writing as an act of participation in the discourse community,
students may understandably continue to see it as part of a competition
with other students vying for the "A." As much research has illustrated,
computer use can, at least to some extent, extend the classroom community
into the solitary space as students participate in bulletin board and e-mail
discussions, instant Messaging, and other helpful distance communication
activities. While such activities do further the collaborative learning
model in which I am interested, they for the most part function outside
of the actual writing. My research looks at ways computer use in the classroom--such
as in a CAI lab--may further reify collaborative learning. Thus far, I
have investigated ways in which some such activities help sustain a sense
of community while simultaneously asking students to be responsible for
reader-centered prose and collegially-minded analytical response. I am
interested in pursuing my research further, finding new theoretical information
as well as new ideas for particular activities within the classroom. My
excitement at the prospect of participation in the Graduate Student Research
Network stems in part form the fact that I am relatively new to the community
of CAI research, and would benefit greatly from suggestions others may
have for me.
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I have a lot of interests...it's just trying
to come up with a good dissertation topic. I am interested in looking
at the use of computers in and out of the classroom and something with
the Writing Center. . . . It's still in the working-out stages...very
early!
As a pre-service teacher I have been assigned to a Chicago Public High School for my student teaching experience next fall, so this research proposal is less pure research and more authentic pedagogical thinking on my part. It is my belief that utilizing MOO technology will improve the literacy lives of my students as they experience the ownership, playfulness, and text-rich nature of the MOO. Unfortunately, as we all know, public schools are currently experiencing a push toward standardization of curriculum and methods; a push that belies the fact that non-traditional methods can work well in many different school settings and undervalues the teacher's role as an education professional. Because of these institutional forces and my position as a new teacher working with an experienced master teacher, I believe that selling MOO technology and the alternate pedagogy it supports will be a challenge.
My research, then, is directed to anticipating and meeting this challenge. I would like to conduct in depth theoretical research on MOO technology and its uses in the classroom, as well as find individuals who use the MOO in their classrooms and other educational settings and learn from their expertise on MOO pedagogy. Primarily, I will focus on the how and why of using the MOO in the high school classroom, consideration given to both my personal development in technology and pedagogy and the rhetorical situation of "selling" these methods to my Cooperating Teacher, University Supervisor, and school administrators.
Research in this area will be part of my
continuing efforts in using the MOO. I am currently a co-administrator
of the Saint Xavier University MOO, and I have helped devise and implement
plans for online clinical experiences involving pre-service English teachers
and high school writers.
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This hands-on presentation demonstrates
that query based collaboration strategies are transferable from the real-time
writing center environment into the virtual online tutoring chat room environment.
The strategies remain the same regardless of the
medium. Excerpts from three online synchronous
tutoring sessions are analyzed according to the transactions negotiated
by the tutor and the tutee based upon the tutor's queries and the tutee's
responses. The transcript analyses depict three levels of
tutor-time success, demonstrating that
the same problems exist online or in the writing center with tutees who
range from active engagement to hostile resistance. The query and collaboration
strategies remain constant, however. The focus of this presentation asserts
that dynamic interchange between tutor and tutee facilitates tutee-generated
text that is often transportable into the tutee's writing project precisely
because that text was generated in writing in response to the tutor's questions.
A description of the strategies for knowing which kinds of questions are
needed to help the tutee generate usable text is also included.
This project is in a fairly early stage—it is my dissertation, but I’m still trying to find useful sources and connections. I have a general outline of the document but much to consider.
For my project, I am considering the ways in which the humanities—specifically, English Studies and English departments—are defined in relation to technology and then questioning the often traditionally antagonistic relationship based on a reconsideration of humanism. I argue that the oft-perceived discomfort surrounding technical communication’s and computer-based composition’s positions in English Studies are less a simple matter of technical communication’s and computer-based composition’s relationships with technology and/or industry being inimical to the mission of English departments and more a matter of how we articulate humanism and define the humanities. Specifically, the institutional tensions arising from technical communication programs and computer-based composition initiatives in English departments arise from the philosophy of humanism and how it is interpreted in the humanities as a disciplinary frame. Technology and business came under increasing scrutiny in the postmodern humanities; as we gain perspective, it may be time to reconsider their intersection and how humanism colors them—and vice-versa. A closer look at humanism suggests that humanism, and thus, the humanities, cannot easily be defined as opposite technology.
Technical communication and computer-based
composition, with their similar emphasis on pragmatism (not oversimplified)
and
techne, become a crucial part of a humanities-based
education when we consider humanism in a more robust sense and refuse to
limit it to a simple ideological stance
that, in light of postmodernism, seemingly must position itself against
anything technological or technical. Humanism as a philosophy calls
for a pragmatic application of technology, and revisiting this critical
component can help us envision not only where technical communication and
computer-based composition belong in the contemporary humanities curriculum,
but also why placement in this curriculum is so important.
I’m interested in considering how humanism
has “shown up” in computer-based composition and composition in general.
Questions that intrigue me include: What is humanism? How is computer-based
composition “humanistic”? What about technical communication? Where
do these fields of study belong in terms of academic classification?
What does it mean to be a part of the humanities? How can the humanities
be a site of pragmatic enactment and more than ideology?
This is my Dissertation proposal, which
I presented at Denver -- It's a best practices guide for writing teachers
in the MOO.
Issue to be addressed:
Composition is a universal requirement
at UWM as well as at most universities and, increasingly, technology is
present in composition classrooms. However, the best ways in which to use
computers are not always obvious to first year teachers since they have
the potential to either help or hinder communication and learning.
Using electronic text may promote classroom interaction but the logistics of teaching in a computerized classroom are often difficult to negotiate technical breakdowns; inaccessibility to discussion forums (such as password glitches), lack of an adequate number of terminals, often arise and hamper learning. In the context of first year composition, effective use of electronic text may also offer students continual opportunities to practice writing and can be employed to bridge the gap between oral and written prose, between home dialects and academic prose. Furthermore, if students are more engaged with classes when they are accountable and communicative with their classmates and when the teacher is familiar to them, then the use of technology may facilitate such engagement.
Objectives:
During the 200-01 academic year, I will
endeavor to integrate the following goals into my teaching. The first semester,
I will teach two sections (25 students each) English 102: Introduction
to College Research and Writing (a second semester required composition
class); the second semester I will teach one class of English 102 and on
section of English 230: Writing with Style, a writing intensive course
also capped at a twenty five student enrollment.
Many feminist organizations use the Internet
as a means of communication, but are not working actively to increase the
presence of women online. The Internet and the World-Wide Web are
still used as communications tools in the same way as telephones, telegraphs,
and traditional paper mail. The paper attempts to expose the dangers
of treating the Internet as a neutral mode of
communication and advocates a form of
online cyborg activism that will work to secure the Internet as a usable
space for women.
So far, I've done some review of the literature and plan on completing my prospectus for the dissertation by the end of this summer. I would be able to bring a ten page research proposal to C&W which is the expanded version of what follows:
When using freewriting for invention, basic writers often cannot, as Peter Elbow advises, simply write without stopping to think about it. Even fluent English speakers sometimes struggle with the mechanics of writing, unable to transfer thought to the page with the freedom that freewriting implies. Current work in education with learning disabled students suggests that speech recognition software offers the means to minimize these difficulties; by creating text at the rate of everyday speech without handwriting or typing, writers can avoid many pitfalls which typically plague their writing processes. Indeed, John E. Reece and Geoff Cumming's study, "Evaluating Speech-Based Composition Methods: Planning, Dictation, and the Listening Word Processor," concludes that the speech-based composition of young students using a listening word processing (which allowed students to see the results on the screen as a typist transcribed their speech in the background) produced better text than those students composing using standard dictation or normal typing on a computer.
Consequently, in the fall of 2001, I plan
to conduct a teacher research study of a basic writing class in which students
will practice "freespeaking"--the application of freewriting principles
to the generation of text using speech recognition word processing. To
date, Reece and Cumming's simulation of speech recognition word processing
is the best classroom research I have found in composition studies evaluating
this technology. Consequently, on the one hand, I want this study to provide
a detailed account of my students experiences using speech recognition;
the results may provide a roadmap for other teachers to follow. On the
other hand, while I hope that I will find some positive benefits to using
this technology with basic writers--either in positive changes in their
attitudes toward writing, preference for using freespeaking over freewriting,
or increased content during invention work--I realize that there are too
many unknowns involved in bringing this into the classroom to formulate
hard and fast hypotheses. Even though the study will make use of entrance
and exit surveys of students, most of the study will therefore be naturalistic
and hypothesis generating, relying on notes from transcriptions of full-class
meetings and one-on-one conferences with students to create thick descriptions.
It is possible, too, that the write up may be limited to three or four
individual case studies
One of the central tenets of my studies lies in developing pedagogical tools to facilitate the learning of students who experience cognitive barriers that preclude their learning at the same rate or level as their non-learning disabled peers. My research over the last few years has led me to develop an understanding that extracognitive factors such as home-language and culture exacerbate the learning process of students already hampered by learning disabilities. I've done research on this while working as a substitute teacher in Ft. Worth during grad school; then, I spent a year working in Special School District in St. Louis County in learning resource rooms. I spent the following three years teaching developmental English to students in Belleville, St. Louis and St. Charles. These classes focused primarily on learning disabled students who came from a variety of backgrounds, though not all of the students in these classes were learning disabled. Because of my interest in the culturally and linguistically diverse population, I found myself working extensively with the LEP students who communicated a significant portion of the time outside the class in Ebonics and wrote their paragraphs and journals in the same dialect in which they spoke with various degrees of success at modern standard English. In some cases, I had students who were successfully able to code-switch in speech, but whose grammatical and syntactical written English indicated LEP status.
This led me to pursue an alternative idea to a student's actually being learning disabled in spite of his or her label. On the basis of extracognitive factors interfering with the learning process, I found cases where people have actually been misdiagnosed early in their education (leading to later preconceptions by educators who treated the label instead of the child) as learning disabled. The adjudication of Diana vs. the California State Board of Education in 1970, concerning "Spanish speaking limited-English proficient students who's [sic] placement in special education classes for the retarded had been based on standardized IQ testing in English," and which ordered "that determining the intelligence of children who are unfamiliar with the test's language or the culture that underlies the test items amounts to discriminatory assessment and decision making practice" gives one instance of this.
There are, in addition to their being concomitant with linguistic differences, some cultural differences in the way people think that interfere with the learning process of those who find themselves culturally outside the institution that is instructing them. Hispanics (and Blacks) who came of age in a different cultural paradigm than that of the white standard, for instance, might find it difficult to adjust to the task of literary interpretation or rhetorical analysis on the same plane as the insti tution expects of them, and teachers sometimes have a tendency to look upon difference as deficit. That problem is amplified when learning disabilities are actually involved.
My proposal, therefore, is to demonstrate
how web-based programs can facilitate the writing process of college-level
students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds by relying
on multiple-intelligence theories that help the instructor craft the assignment
around the varying learning styles of his students without lowering his
or her standards for assessment.
Electronic Portfolios (EPFs) are increasingly
being used in composition classrooms in an integration of two recent reforms
to classroom practice, the use of computers in the classroom and the use
of writing portfolios. This study seeks to locate a basis for the integration
of a third practice: collaborative learning groups. While on the surface
the construction of an individual writing portfolio seems to be an individual
activity, collaborative peer groups are commonly used as an audience for
and a feedback mechanism for EPFs. A further challenge presented by the
use of EPFs in the composition classroom is to discover what, if any, collaborative
activities aid the acquisition of knowledge identified as necessary to
create an effective portfolio. Current composition pedagogy and theories
of knowledge suggest that cooperative interactions, especially among peer
groups, facilitate learning. This pedagogy is also informed by constructivist
notions of teaching and learning in which knowledge emerges out of activity;
students learn not by what they are told, but by what they do (Vygotsky;
Bruner) and that knowledge itself is socially constructed (Mead; Berger
& Luckman). This research project uses Computer Assisted Content Analysis
to discover the effect of peer collaboration activities in the acquisition
of skills and knowledge identified as being helpful in creating material
for electronic portfolios. A further analysis will focus on the (above)
effects on learning in face-to-face vs. computer-mediated collaboration.
I have an
interest in studying the effects of using voice recognition software programs
(such as Dragon Speaking Naturally) on
the writing process. What are the
benefits/problems encountered when composing orally? What kinds of
unique prewriting activities do writers engage in that are not applicable
to handwriting or typing? What does oral composing do to the drafting
and revising processes as well? And in a narrower sense, I am also
particularly interested in how these programs are being used by college
faculty/students with disabilities. At the 2001 4Cs in Denver, Johan
Slatin and Cindy Linden presented papers dealing with their experiences
as composition and rhetoric faculty with physical impairments. Both
touched on the voice activated technologies they have implemented and hinted
at some of the more aggravating aspects of relying on them. However, their
commentary was largely experiential. Thus, although experience is
certainly a central starting point of research in this area, it also shows
that there is a gap needing to be filled by further inquiry informed by
a specific methodology. I feel that studying the use of voice activated
software as a writing tool (especially by writers with disabilities who
have no other means of composing) could yield some important insight into
studies of the writing process and also open up a dialogue on orality as
the vehicle for creating what ultimately ends up as a printed text.
URL: Available at http://www7.twu.edu/~g_2pace/
My project focuses on my work with specific computer technologies in both an initial “required” composition graduate internship program and the subsequent extended one. Some examples will illustrate my mentor's and my collaborative writing and editing efforts and allow me to elaborate my explanation of what I assumed technology would do, as well as demonstrate how I learned to use technology most constructively today. By sharing the ways I envisioned our use of computer technologies and also the reasons behind some of the refinements we’ve made over the past couple of years, I hope to encourage further interest in and more research on the benefits and possibilities of integrating technology with internships in the field of composition studies.
I believe that computer technology has,
in many ways, offered several benefits similar to the intimate and personalized
instruction found in ancient mentor relationships, despite the obstacles
present in our fast-paced, congested, modern learning environments.
In addition, computer technology has introduced something new— that distance
(physical and mental) and time provide the necessary constructive reflection
on and consideration of how we compose and teach. Ultimately, I am eager
to hear the various perspectives from my colleagues and peers who, I am
certain, will contribute further insights and new ideas concerning
the mentor-graduate student relationship
and computer technology.
In this presentation, I will challenge the usefulness of the author-reader-text triad as a heuristic for finding meaning in writing, namely in professional and online contexts. I will argue that value can be found in the negotiation of meaning itself, in the relationships in a network of writers, readers, publishers, social and political influences, in which a distinction between them may not be recognizable, or even relevant. By integrating collaboration into all stages of the writing process, and extending the traditional genres of study to a variety of media that require multiliteracies in critical thinking, writing, creating, and sharing information in new ways, we can encourage our students to reconceptualize their relationship to their texts.
Textual ownership in this age of digital
production, in which all texts are copies situated in context, and the
boundaries separating writer and publisher, writer and reader, content
and expression, and information and commodity are becoming increasingly
indistinct, and concepts of intellectual property and laws governing copyrights
are changing, composition and communication theorists now understand authorship
as a cultural construct. In the classroom situation in which students
are asked to embrace collaborative writing situations for the purposes
of exchanging knowledge or responding to each other’s work, but are nevertheless
still composing alone and being evaluated individually, collaborative writing
in the classroom has remained a largely autonomous act that supports notions
of individual ownership of text and commodification of ideas. Andrea
Lunsford has recognized this roadblock in composition studies: “
. . . for I believe now that they [new conceptualizations] signal not a
challenge to the old ideology of authorship but rather its appropriation
for different and largely commercial ends.” By developing new methods
to evaluate writing, and encouraging students to find value in the negotiation
of meaning, sharing of ideas and dynamism of the discourse situation that
they are themselves engaged in, we can eliminate the idea of the student
as “other,” and writer as solitary genius/ creator/ author.
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This idea is in the very early and abstract
stages of development. I am interested in looking at the various ways in
which politicized
individuals, political organizations,
or activist organizations use online spaces in order to promote their particular,
possibly extreme
position on issues. To that end, I have
decided to look at a couple websites involved in the Northern Ireland debate.
Although I have no track record as a predictor, I predict that educational officials and accreditation agencies will be demanding proof from educational administrators that web-based courses offer an equivalent-to-classroom-quality educational experience to the students who take these courses. My concern is that if teachers do not take the initiative in designing appropriate assessment tools that inappropriate assessment tools will be imposed on them. Designing assessment tools for writing classes will require different approaches than for courses that involve the transfer of facts. Writing cannot be effectively taught by simply requiring students to learn the rules of grammar and punctuation. Teaching writing effectively requires student-teacher interaction. It cannot be, like many web-based courses, a matter of students reading something and then spitting back answers on an electronic form.
Yet we have no heuristics to follow to
design appropriate assessment tools--tools that would also provide accreditation
agencies and educational officials that the courses offer a quality educational
experience to the students. Therein lies my problem: what heuristics
would help us design assessment tools? We don't want one-size-fits-all
assessment measures but we need them to be broadly applicable so that we
can test them and be assured of their validity and reliability. But before
we can even design heuristics, don't we need to come to some consensus
about the values of the stakeholders involved? There. I'm stuck at this
point.
Using the discourse theory of James Kinneavy,
this project is working toward developing a rhetorically sound pedagogy
for creative writing workshops that builds upon and in some aspects moves
away from the traditions started by the Iowa Workshop. In particular,
the discourse of online creative writing communities and workshops may
serve as a starting place to help define the parameters of the discourse
of this particular subset of writers. This project also intends to
look at the emerging use of hypertext and how that is influencing
the conversations concerning writing process and practice in creative writing
communities. Stage of completion: This project is still in its early stages
(there has been a seminar paper written and some discussion with members
of our department, but that is all).
This project deals with MOO essay construction, the preliminary aspects of MOOing needed to prepare FYC students for writing in the MOO, and the attendant forms of assessment needed to succesfully complete a MOOssay. Completion is far far away.
This project studies computer-composition cultural artifacts (textbooks and handbooks) and theoretical lore (articles and edited compilations) and argues – based on the anxieties they reveal about students; the assumptions they make about teaching writing and textuality; and their rhetoric of technology – that teaching writing in digital environments still tends to discipline students as modernist subjects in need of some type of empowerment (cultural, social, or personal). While composition technology promises to liberate the passive student subject by shifting it into a more active, rhetorical, and historical space, such technology is also fraught with contradictions capable of defining the subject in rather traditional ways. For example, arguments that computer-environments permit “multiple student voices” or “multiple subject positions” to emerge still ultimately rely on the notion that there are particular voices or subjectivities students can actually have or inherently occupy: they may now be multiple or shifting, but students nonetheless can come to identify and know them in the modernist sense (and use them to achieve the empowerment of “true sight”). Instead of focusing on the ways in which technology can help improve student writing, the discipline is replete with the rhetoric of loathing for student incompetence, the rhetoric of fear over what may happen to students as a result of their inadequacy, and the rhetoric of promise that computer technology can help students overcome their naivety and give them the vision finally to “see” the different types of oppressive discourses and forces which blind and control them. Instead of focusing on the notion of subjectivity – be it authentic and singular or multiple and shifting – I call for a complete jettisoning of the subject in order to make room for more complicated notions of situated authorship in line with ideas of the author as scriptor, compilator, commentator, and scriptor (Eisenstein and Tuman; Rehberger).
URL: http://www.msu.edu/~rosinsk2(Soon
will have links to dissertation work)
My main research interests are in computer
assisted instruction and distance education, especially in the changing
nature of each. Specifically, I believe my dissertation will be examining
the rhetorical nature of online programs and their effect on both tech
savvy and unexperienced instructors.
In this hypertext, I interrogate the language,
imagery, and ideologies of cosmetics advertisements and related texts.
Hypertext as a form lends itself to unorthodox juxtapositions, particularly
through linkages based on associative logic (e.g., metaphors, puns).
In juxtapositions, particularly through linkages based on associative
logic (e.g., metaphors, puns). In this hypertext performance, I invoke
thefeminist understanding that "the personal is political," combining autobiographical
reflections with an analysis of the discourse and industry of cosmetics.
The personal dimension includes elements from my unconscious (following
in the Surrealist tradition of automatic writing). The political
dimension includes an examination of the political economy of beauty. Both
levels include many kinds of images, such as family photographs, cosmetics
advertisements, images from cosmetics industry journals, and images from
books on makeovers and modelling. These elements are juxtaposed,
sometimes in conversation, sometimes in
"collision," to borrow a term Sergei Eisenstein
uses to describe his method of montage in film. I do not approach
my investigation of the relationships among subjectivity, media messages,
and political economy directly through theoretical analysis, but
indirectly, through associative connections (reasoning through dream logic).
The thematic focus of the work is rooted in my urge to rethink the social--I
ask, through the construction of this polyvalent (hyper)text: can we begin
to invent a materially grounded utopian vision through the lens of contemporary
female beauty?
URL=http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~sullivan/butopia/opening_dream.html
I have chosen to deal with issues of illness,
death, and mourning, because I believe that these types of web spaces force
us to deal with real-world context of online interactions. Studies
which highlight the disembodied nature of online communications or the
formation of strictly virtual communities do not always address the
experience of many web space users, for whom online activity can be motivated
by a sense of exigency arising from particular real-world experiences,
interactions, and events. An exploration of how individuals and groups
use online spaces to deal with issues related to illness, death, and mourning
foregrounds situations where a user's experience online is intricately
connected to that individual's physical and emotional experience in the
real world. This coalescence of experience, on and offline, provides a
rich ground for considering several important research questions: how do
people use online spaces to help tell stories in different ways?
How might these spaces allow for different power relations among community
members, or simply different kinds of communications about the difficult
experiences related to death or illness? How might different kinds
of sites provide different opportunities--for information gathering, storytelling,
and knowledge creation, and how do these activities online correspond to
real-world activities? How do people move within and between different
communities (both on and offline) in order to deal with these experiences,
and how do the storytelling practices of these different communities impact
each other?
In the spring of 2000, I had FYC students reconstruct Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “American Scholar” within Connections MOO. My goals for the project were two-fold. I was interested using a MOO-based essay assignment to divorce my students' writing processes from the essay as genre in order to disrupt their ability to fall back upon unconscious coping strategies in their writing, hopefully leading them to make conscious use of rhetorical strategies we discussed in class. My other goal was to see what MOO-based essays might look like. I’d been struggling with the idea of MOOs as writing space ever since I took the CW Online 1999 workshop “Getting Ready to Teach in a MOO,” and had decided I needed to experience first hand students writing with MOOs to further develop my ideas.
Drawing upon the experience of the “American Scholar” project, I’m currently trying to develop various MOO projects geared towards teaching the rhetorical concepts covered in my University’s two FYC classes, “The Process of Composition” and “Advanced Strategies of Rhetoric and Research.”
Last updated Wednesay, May 16, 2001, at 8:39 am by J. Walker.