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Design
The design
of the project derived primarily from my experiences in trying to introduce
my students to the creative use of electronic researching and writing
over the previous year.
1) Although
I had set regular research and evaluation exercises (internet and
library) for my students since Fall 1996, I sensed that students,
despite their apparent keyboard and web-searching skills, were still
at sea in evaluating electronic research materials. Writers, for example,
were citing other students' personal home pages, including posted
essay assignments with clearly visible low grades, and commercially
or politically biased materials as 'reputable' research sources.
2) In
Spring, 1996, I converted the fourth essay in my English 207 (Literature
and Society) into a small-group, collaborative web-based research
project. While rich in Java icons, 'cool' backgrounds, original graphics,
and nifty navigation buttons, the projects plummeted in textual analysis,
research creativity and basic spelling and copy-editing. Yet I did
not want to abandon the project. The potential for publishing as an
incentive to quality work remained. For example, an academic working
on the Auschwitz survivor, Charlotte Delbo, enthusiastically complimented
one student, "Who are you? This is a wonderful site." Also,
as the web-project assignment at GMU is jumping from Computer Science
into other disciplines, I wanted to try to equip students for this
newer form of college writing as early as possible.
3) I
was finding that students' thinking and verbal creativity evidenced
in class work and journals was not crossing over into formal writing.
I hoped the writing medium shift in part of the class might stimulate
creativity which would spill over into conventional writing assignments.
The Group
I worked
with a group of forty students, spread over two sections. Originally
designed as courses linked to the Comm department's Introduction to
Media Literacy, the two sections 'unlinked' due to low registration
during the summer. Nearly two-thirds of the students had registered
specifically for the link; the remainder registered because the sections
were among the few 101s open late in the registration period.
Thus, the
sections' composition was not quite the usual random registration for
101 based on schedule, time of day, etc. The linked component pulled
in both high-achieving and ambitious students wishing to specialize
in Communications, and students grasping at the link to ease their transition
into college work. However, the grading fell as 7 As, 21 Bs, 8 Cs and
4 Not Completes, which varied very little from the averages for other
101s I had taught (two sections linked, two not), which suggests that
the final make-up may have been as 'typical' as any other GMU 101 registration.
The Set-up
My priorities
for the computer component of the class were the equalizing as far as
possible students' access to sophisticated computer equipment and the
integration of computer work as intensively as possible into thinking,
researching and writing work a whole. If the students mentally separated
'computer' classes from the 'composition' component then the potential
value of the class would diminish. I thus decided that the execution
of the assignments, as well as my introduction to them, should take
place in class time.
This allowed
me to:
- accommodate
the wide range of computer abilities in the class (keyboard terror
to web-authoring experience)
- respond
to questions on the spot
- offer
ongoing individual guidance
- monitor
progress (including catching those with problems as they fell off
the edge of the assignments)
- set
as high standards as I could (and certainly much higher than most
students thought they could reach) to make the assignments as constructively
challenging as possible.
I also
tried to reinforce the integration of computers into thinking, writing
and research by using the medium of web and hypertext to teach by:
setting
assignments which involved entering URLS, navigating sites (including
opening relevant links), printing, taking notes, cutting and pasting,
saving on disc or otherwise permanently retrieving and storing information
from web sites
writing
all class assignments for these sections as hypertext,
linking students electronically to research
and information materials, examples of assignments, and to further
reading
Finally,
I required no web page at the end of the class. I wanted to emphasize
that the planning, researching, and writing of the project should precede
the intensive (and probably much more immediately gratifying) sessions
with Adobe Photoshop et al. To that end, I asked students to turn into
hypertext an essay they had already written (paper #2 - intensive analysis),
rather than requiring a new project. In
retrospect, the set-up of the classes emerged as the most critical component
of the project. My presence kept most students focused on the assignments,
and several were gratified (and sometimes incredulous) that I had researched
and written web-based assignments 'just for us.' That good-will proved
critical, I think, during the hardest part of the course, the internet
evaluation.
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