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Melinda
Turnley, New Mexico State University, Contextualized design: Teaching
Critical Approaches to Web Authoring Through Redesign Projects
Abstract: Web-based curricula should encourage students to make
situated design choices. Rather than simply privileging technological
imperatives, instruction should integrate technical proficiencies
with rhetorical analysis, medium-specific concerns, and consideration
of larger cultural contexts. Redesign projects offer rich opportunities
for pursuing these pedagogical principles. Reflecting on student examples,
this article explores redesign as a method for teaching critical engagement
with technology and contextualized web authoring. Through research
and revision of an existing web site, students employ rhetorical approaches
and gain more complex understandings of web development. Redesign
projects also slow the pace of web instruction and provide students
opportunities to develop situated strategies and reflect critically
on their authoring choices.
Kristie
Fleckenstein, Ball State University, Faceless students, Virtual Places:
Emergence and Communal Accountability in Online Classrooms
Abstract: A pedagogical problem growing out of virtual classrooms
is the temptation to act without communal accountability, the reciprocal
commitment among individuals to maintain the health of their interconnections.
Drawing on an ethnographic study of a fully online composition class,
I argue that teachers can encourage accountability within virtual
sites by conceiving of the online classroom as an emergent phenomenon.
The relationships and activities among language, physical reality,
and interpretant provide the matrix out of which place organizes itself.
This ecological orientation provides local and systemic strategies
for fostering communal health. I begin my exploration of online place
by describing the value of complex systems theory and emergence for
conceptualizing place. Next, I describe the roles of language, physical
reality, and interpretant, pointing out the contribution of each to
the configuration of virtual place and to communal accountability.
Then, I focus on the emergence of place, which reorganizes language,
reality, and interpretant, opening up a new dimension to communal
accountability.
Matthew
Barton, University of South Florida, The Future of Rational-Critical
Debate in Online Public Spheres
Abstract: This paper discusses the role of blogs, wikis, and online
discussion boards in enabling rational-critical debate. I will use
the work of Jürgen Habermas to explain why wikis, blogs, and
online bulletin boards are all potentially valuable tools for the
creation and maintenance of a critical public sphere. Habermas' story
ends on a sad note; the public writing environments he argues were
so essential to the formation of a critical public sphere failed as
commercialism and mass media diminished the role of the community
and private persons. Unfortunately, the Internet will likely suffer
a similar fate if we do not take action to preserve its inherently
democratic and decentralized architecture. Here, I describe the integral
role that blogs, wikis, and discussion boards play in fostering public
discussion and ways they can be incorporated into college composition
courses.
Ellen
Strenski, Caley O'Dwyer Feagin, Jonathan Singer, UC Irvine and University
of Southern California, Email Small Group Peer Review Revisited
Abstract: Attention
to email exchanged among a small group of student peers supercedes
discussion of networked computer labs and is distinguished from research
on collaborative classroom work in general, on online peer tutoring
in writing centers, on email communication in online professional
writing courses, and on online discourse in general. Email peer response
within small groups is different from larger-scale, one-to-many computer-based
communication tools (CBCT) on class mailing lists, bulletin boards,
blogs, and wikis on the one hand and smaller-scale, one-to-one email
exchange between an individual student and a peer tutor on the other
hand. The benefits of assignments that require small groups to respond
electronically and asynchronously to each other's drafts are analyzed
and illustrated: rhetorical/thematic, discursive/environmental, technological,
logistical/time management. The practicalities of students' exchange
of drafts, deadlines, and other guidelines are explained and illustrated
in typical student email responses and model instructor handouts.
Susan
Kirtley, Western Oregon University, Students' Views on Technology and
Writing: The Power of Personal History
Abstract: As scholars, writers, and teachers, I believe that we
should try harder to understand students' perspectives on the use of
computers in their academic work. This article begins to provide a sense
of students' perspectives on questions of technology, thus presenting
a fuller picture of the context within which we teach. Drawing on a
variety of methods, including a survey and the writings of a small group
of students enrolled in a Writing and Technology course, this article
expresses some of these stories generally hidden from an instructor's
perspective and reveals that, despite what the media might tell us,
students are not as prepared to utilize technology as we might assume.
Furthermore, the student narratives suggest that English departments
and writing programs can play an important role in assisting students
who are unfamiliar with computer technologies, helping them to gain
the computer literacy they need to succeed at the university.
Dene
Grigar, Texas Woman's University, Report on the 6th International Research
Conference: Consciousness Reframed: Qi and Complexity
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