Classroom Schedule

What advice would you give to a first-time CWC instructor, particularly one who may not be comfortable with the technology? To what extent do you think they can expect the technology to be enabling in vital and exciting ways?

Mike Arnzen 
     As I tell my students in my syllabus, the computers in the classroom are intended to supplement -- not dominate -- the class, in much the same way a blackboard does. And just like you don't want to turn your back on students and simply write on the board all hour, teaching in the CWC should not mean facing the monitors (or the projection screen) for too long. Instead, the students should face each other. Turn the chairs inward -- centripetally -- so that a circle is formed. Tighten the circle by making everyone scoot in . . . separating students from their "stations" and huddling together as a class always catalyzes discussion, and I make this circle at the beginning of every hour, before I even take roll.

Turn to the computers when it's time to spin issues centrifugally, out into the "real"/"virtual" world of the internet, or when it's time to write independently.

Ken Wright
      I would tell teachers to keep in mind that Wr121, 122, and 123 are writing classes first and foremost. We are not involved in teaching computer use except for certain things that serve the composition pedagogy, such as how to be a member of a class listserv (something teachers can easily learn to set up during the Fall Conference). Therefore, I think teachers best serve their students, themselves, and the pedagogy if they always stay within the circumference of their own technological expertise. As a term progresses teachers can, and will, learn more about using the technology, and they can then incorporate that new knowledge into their classroom practices. I would caution new teachers against thinking that they may not be giving their students enough instruction in using the technology, because doing so could distract them from teaching writing, and, as said, teaching writing is the first priority.

There are, though, several things, each fairly easy to learn, that teachers with not a great deal of technological expertise can do with the technology to enhance the teaching of writing. First, type up prep-notes or reading notes and use the projector to project them onto the classroom wall. Doing so allows students to view far more of a teacher's thinking than he or she could possibly reveal via chalkboard. (It forces me to compose far more detailed notes, for I don't want students to see my usual abbreviated chicken scratchings.) In teaching students to think critically about texts, we, if we are honest, are really asking students to approach readings the way that we do (that is not to say we want them to think like we think). Projecting our notes models our approaches, and that is something we can't possible do to the same extent on a chalkboard.

Second, using an email discussion list to which students are required to post, say, two reading responses a week can energize a writing class in two ways: one, it expands discussion beyond the time constraints of classroom meetings, and, two, it allows said posts, because they are stored as email messages, to be brought into the classroom and projected on the wall for further discussion. This activity often, because of the amount of discussion, eases for students the transition from germ-idea to essay. It also provides students with a record of the thinking process of the class as a whole, and that can lead to the formation of a tighter community.

Third, the word processor that is loaded onto each computer, Microsoft Word, can be used to give students a greater role in designing the peer review procedures of a course. Once students have been taught to save their essays in the necessary format for Word, they can then exchange disks and open up a copy of each others' essays to read for critiquing. Giving students a lot of latitude as to just how they form their responses--printing the essay and responding by hand, responding on-screen within the text using a different font, responding on-screen at the end of the essay, or a combination of all methods--seems to give students a greater feeling a control over the process than they might achieve in a traditional classroom. One caution, though, the first workshop will be rough. Disks won't open. Printers won't print. Some students will get very frustrated. But if teachers and students stick with it, I think they might be pleased to see that in subsequent workshops an atmosphere of deep collaboration develops.

Can you talk a little about the ways you have made use of the technology in the classroom; what, in general (or specifically), has worked for you? Can you characterize times when the technology has obstructed your teaching?

Ken Wright
      For me the most valuable things are email discussion lists and the peer critique process in the computer classroom. Setting up an email list is easy. Instructions can be found on the Computers and Writing home page. Usually I try to get all my students subscribed to the class's email discussion list during the first class meeting. On that first day I arrive at the classroom early, and I grab the first one of my students to arrive and show him or her how to log on to the discussion list. Then I have him or her teach the next person or persons to arrive, and those people teach the next, and so on. So from the first day, we begin building a collaborative community. Of course, some students won't have their account numbers handy, and other things will go wrong, but the process of community formation will begin nonetheless. Also, by having students do something on the computer right away, a teacher can demystify the machines for students who are not familiar with computers.

My procedure for postings to the list are fairly simple. Students are required to make two postings a week of at least two screens in length. The first posting of a week is to be a response to a reading or to something that was discussed in class. The second posting must be a response to a fellow student's first posting for that week. I set a time by which all postings must be posted, and I think it's important that teachers set a posting-time that allows them sufficient time to read postings before class. While reading them, I mark those I wish to project in class, making sure that throughout the term the students receive equal time. In the classroom during, say, the discussion of a reading, I may project several students' postings in order to encourage further analysis. Or I may have the students form groups, open one member's email account, and choose for discussion two or three postings that are not from their group's members.

The main downside of an email list is that some students will wait until most of their peers have posted in order to mine from them ideas for their own posts. How one deals with that depends on how one decides to grade postings.

The peer-critique process using the word processors operates more or less like this: students are required to bring in the first version of their essays as files on disks, saved in the format necessary for Word to be able to open them (the format depends on the word processor they us outside of class). I form them into groups of three or four, they exchange disks, open each other's essays, and save those essays to the desktop. (Essays must be saved to the desktop or the disk cannot be removed to be handed to the next person. This sharing process can also be done through the composition server, but I've found, because the server can go down or because mistakes are easily made with the server, that using disks makes it easier to rectify errors.) Once the essays are saved, the students then begin reading each others' essays following my guidelines for critique. From that point on, however, the actual structure of their responses becomes their own to formulate. A typical workshop, once students have become familiar with the technology, will look very chaotic. Students will move about the room printing essays they've responded to, helping other students, even those outside their groups, with their writing, pointing out to a peer something they've found on the Web that supports or contradicts that peer's assertions, and generally engaging in the process of communication in far a more active manner than in a traditional classroom. The act of creating the structure of the workshop, rather than having it created by a teacher who puts them in little circles of desks as in a traditional classroom, engages the students more deeply into the processes of communication.

The downside of peer critiques in the CWC are disks that don't open. There will likely be one or two students in a class whose disks, for some reason, will never open in the computer room even though they open everywhere else. It is a good idea, though it uses a lot of paper, to require students to always bring a hardcopy of their essays to class.

The technology has never really obstructed my teaching. One must be very flexible because things break or don't work the way that they are supposed to. It is a good idea to NEVER enter the classroom with a lesson that depends so much upon the technology that you will have nothing to do should the technology fail. When things have broken, I have either returned to the traditional method of delivering instruction, moved on to something else, rearranged the schedule, or made the technology the subject of discussion.

One problem arising from the technology is that some students will allow it to distract them from listening to the teacher or to their peers, but that problem can be minimized by setting ground rules during the very first class. New teachers will find that after the first week of class, students will start to arrive early to check their email before class begins. This activity can easily expand into class time as students read and respond to messages. My procedure for dealing with this problem has been to announce at the beginning of each class: "One minute warning. Finish the message you're on and close down your email account." The students get used to the pattern, many of them after a few weeks will even begin to log off of their accounts as class time approaches, and it is seldom that I have had to ask a student to log off his or her email and join the class.

Mike Arnzen
      Teleological issues aside, always remember that technology is a means to an end, not an end in itself -- this an ethic we should teach students in the classroom. As with any medium, the technology in the classroom always threatens to pacify, obstruct, and silence conversation. At the same time, it can activate, enhance, and amplify student work and critical thinking -- if used with a purpose. Always treat the tech as a communicative medium, not an entertainment factory or a frustrating object that you (or they) need to master. Sometimes using technology is like learning a new language, and as language teachers we should teach the tech the same way. Accentuate the positive to students: shrug off technical errors, don't try to be the master of the domain . . . but don't be mastered by it either. Strive for learning. And remember that we can always talk and we can always write by hand; technology is just an extension of this, really.

Specifically, mandating e-mail discussion lists and providing a web page has worked wonders for my classes (whether in the computer classroom or not). E-mail gets students talking through writing -- they come to see writing as an interactive dialectic with a reader. The web gives students a way to catch up if they missed a day, or can be used as a springboard for research. The web page also treats writing as a form of publication, so I always post student work . . . if only e-mail list conversations. In the CWC, I also try to have the class read on- line materials from the web while in the room, and I usually assign a paper about internet issues. Although the room is facilitated with Commonspace chatting/peer editing software, I like to teach students how to use the "TALK" command on UNIX (since they can use this to chat anywhere on the internet, not just in the classroom) to discuss issues one-on-one. They like it.

Does your approach to class texts (e.g. what reader you will use) change when you consider CWC versus a more traditional classroom? To what extent do you make computer technology a critical context for your writing courses (whether in terms of discussion or writing assignments)?

Mike Arnzen
      The intersection between education and technology is always a "meta-issue" in the class, so I usually make educational tech the third essay topic. A lot of frustrations or surprises come up in this paper -- but I make it the third essay so that they can have an experience (of the class up to that point in time) to draw on for evidence. I suppose ed. tech. could also be used as a topic for the reflective essay (though this might take away from their discussion of their individual writing process)

Ken Wright
      I don't choose texts depending on the type of classroom. What we teach is argument, of course, so any text in either setting can be analyzed for its reasoning processes or lack of such. We now have the Hawisher/Selfe text with essays on technology as an option for Wr121, and it would seem to make intuitive sense to use that text in the CWC. But I'm sure a teacher could just as easily use it in a traditional classroom to set up a term wherein our culture's approaches to technology are analyzed by the students. As for the extent to which I "make computer technology a critical context for [my] writing courses," please see my answer to the next question.

What advice would you give to the instructor faced with the decision of whether or not to teach HTML in a ten-week writing class? Do you feel it is appropriate? Necessary? Could you offer a brief explanation of your goals for requiring students to construct Web pages/sites? Generally speaking, how successfully do you think these goals have been met?

Ken Wright
      First off, I would not teach HTML in Wr121 and probably not in Wr122. Writing 121 is where we teach the basics of our rhetoric, and it is hard enough to get that across without adding any extraneous lessons. In fact, I have lately begun to question the value of scheduling Wr121s in the CWC, for I've found that teaching the structures and theories of enthymematic reasoning leaves little time for anything else. Writing 122 offers similar problems. However, since I approach Wr122 as an intermediate rhetoric course, it seems appropriate to include assignments that require students to analyze the rhetorical structures of what's presented to them on the World Wide Web. Still, I'm not sure teaching HTML would be appropriate in Wr122.

Where I have taught HTML is in Wr123, but I must qualify what I mean by "teaching HTML." Simply teaching HTML as a skill students need to learn would be as inappropriate in a writing course as it would be in, say, a history course. But teaching HTML as a small part of an essay unit during which students research the rhetoric of the WWW and then write essays critiquing the same is, I think, appropriate.

My reason for having students in a Wr123 course research and write about the WWW is because, baring a tremendous reversal, it will become an ever larger part of all our lives. And being that what's presented on the WWW, the texts and images, arises from the rhetorical choices made by web page composers, the WWW is a highly appropriate subject for analysis in a writing course. I also wanted to teach web page analysis because, over the past few years, I've noticed that my students attach an undeserved mystique to what's presented on the WWW, and, also, because there is a great deal of unexamined, and just plain wrong, information on the WWW. (For example, I once found Cicero and Quintilian listed as Greek rhetoricians on a major university's composition page.)

The basic structure of the WWW unit is as follows: Students were required to read several essays discussing methods of analyzing the WWW, some of which exist on the WWW. They next, in small groups, had to pick a web page from a long list of pages provided by me (these pages ranged from extremely conservative to anarchistic), critique their chosen pages using what they had learned from the readings, and present that critique to the class. They then, individually, had to choose some aspect of the WWW to research and write an argumentative essay about just like the research essays they had written earlier in the term. Finally, they were required to create a simple web page.

The web page portion of this unit could be left out with little or no harm to the rest of the unit. But I felt that my students should experience the rhetorical activity of choosing how to present themselves on the WWW. And if they were going to critique the WWW, they should at least know a little about what goes into creating it. Also, I hope the page might prove useful to them when they hit the job market some years down the road. (After seeing the pages, I also hoped their tastes in colors would be come a bit more, well, drab.)

The web-page requirement was quite simple: they were to create a page that, for the most part, reflected their academic interests and, to a lesser extent, their individual interests. In doing so, the students had to make links to five other web pages, three of which must relate to their majors, insert one image, and have a link to their final reflective essay for the course. The handout explaining to the students the HTML code necessary to create the page, to link to other pages, to insert images, and the gladstone commands needed to set up the required directories and files on their Internet accounts was less than a page long. It took less than one class period for all the students to have their pages up and running. All other work on their pages, finding the links and image, were to be done outside of class except for time I set aside at the end of two class periods near the term's end. I did give them the URL for a WWW site where they could download and print out a brief manual detailing more advanced uses for HTML, but should they decide to use that manual to "spruce up" their pages they were instructed that they would have to do so on their own time.

So, finally, my suggestion to "the instructor faced with the decision of whether or not to teach HTML in a ten-week writing class" is don't teach HTML. I don't. It's not what we're about. I merely gave the students a handout which they typed letter for letter into a file on their Internet accounts. That is not to say that many of my students did not learn a lot more HTML than I provided, but they did so on their own.

How did the WWW assignment workout? The essays were generally good, a couple were outstanding. The group critiques were fine--in fact, they were a lot of fun because many of the groups chose outlandish web pages to critique--and the reflective essays were good as well. The student web pages, however, were another story. All the students but one completed the minimum requirement of five links, one image, and a link to the reflective essay, so failure to follow my instructions wasn't the problem. What was the problem, for me at least, was the appearance of the pages. We had discussed the disadvantages of using, and in some cases mocked the use of, garish backgrounds, small text or text that blends in with the backgrounds, big images that load slowly or numerous small images that accomplish the same thing, images inappropriate for a profession web page, and animated images that distract the viewer, yet nearly all my students did at least two of those things and in a few cases made all of them. I was very disappointed at first because I couldn't see how most of my students' pages would be of any use to them in their chosen fields. (They can always change the pages before they cite them on their resumes, of course.) I still feel a bit disappointed, but I think I understand why the students composed their pages as they did. They were following their teacher's instructions because they've been geared to since the first grade AND they were resisting being categorized at the same time. When I instructed them to make pages that mostly reflected their academic interests as well as, to a lesser extent, them as individuals, they understood "academic interests" to mean that all they needed to do was follow my instructions. Being in our profession is a large part of who I am, so, as one would expect, my web page reflects little but my academic interests. But for most of my students the same isn't the case, so while they met the requirements, they were damn sure also going to make web pages that they hoped members of their generation would find cool. There were two incidents during the unit that support this thought. The first was that my one middle-aged student composed a web page that had a gray background and the minimum requirements. She then moved on to other work. The second was a comment I heard one student make to another while the latter was experimenting with different web-page backgrounds. The student composing the page asked her friend's opinion of her latest background choice, and the friend replied, in all seriousness, "Oh, it's you!" As the teacher, I had the authority to require each student to put his or her "you" on the WWW for all to see, but each student insisted on choosing the "you" she or he wanted to present.

Mike Arnzen
      While I do think it is useful to see the web as a form of publication (with all the responsibilities of writing for an audience), I don't think teaching web page construction is necessary at all, and I've never taught it in my composition classes. In fact, I have serious issues with teaching Web page construction in a composition classroom. It takes too much time away from reasoning and rhetoric and all the things we're supposed to be teaching them to help them become better writers for their other courses and better critical thinkers for the "real" world. How many classes at our university ask term papers to be posted on the web instead of turned in to the instructor? Very few, except for those in the computer sciences, where it is already likely that students have learned HTML in another context. How many editors or CEOs ask writers/employees to submit manuscripts and reports in HTML. A handful. Besides, HTML is a foreign language to some and a natural language already to others; teaching it can divide the classroom. We are teaching language arts, but it would take an entire semester or more to adequately teach the art of HTML language. I think it's best left for students to learn web page construction on their own -- but let them know about the free classes in the ITC (library) and add links to your class home page to help them learn more. You can also offer to help them during office hours (which I always try to hold when the CWC is open for non-classroom use). I also recommend that you be open to having students CONTRIBUTE to the class web page that you yourself write as a teacher (e.g., once I had a student who voluntarily made a "post to the e-mail list" form page for my class web page . . . this was really cool!). Again, the class should be a springboard into this stuff -- not the end itself.

What have you considered to be your biggest challenge in becoming a successful teacher in CWC?

Mike Arnzen
      My biggest challenge is a relatively mundane one: it's hard for me to teach (or speak publicly) while sitting down. I'm a very physical speaker -- I like to pace and keep heads moving and keep students on their toes by "working the room" whenever our chairs aren't in a circle formation. I have a (embarrasingly fascist) theory that the chairs in the CWC are just too damned comfortable -- especially for early morning classes -- and that they make everyone a bit more passive than they might otherwise be (take a look around...who's sliding down their seat, or tilting their chair back like they were on an airplane?). Most difficult hang-up of them all: I like to scribble on the blackboard when there's a point that needs illustrating. It's impossible to do this with effectively with the computers, which always impede spontaneity. But I also understand that my hang-up is simply the result of habits I've formed from teaching in traditional classrooms. So it's a good thing to be shaken up a bit by the new dynamic. One way around the "blackboard" problem is to use the projector screen . . . but it takes a lot of time to set up. One way around the "working the room" problem is to have discussions standing up or break up the class into small groups and work the room . . . little things like that. I also try to hold a few classes in the IMC, since TV/Film technology is just as important as computing tech in our culture. The IMC studios are like the more traditional classroom settings, and I prefer using the monitors in those studios over the CWC's humble wall- projector for VHS tapes and laser discs.

Ken Wright
      Assuming I'm successful, I think the biggest challenge has been to keep the technology from limiting the pedagogy. What I mean is that we have only twenty weeks, counting the two writing class students are required to take, or about 54 hours to teach an extremely condensed version of nearly 2,500 years of rhetorical theory. Every moment spent teaching or fiddling with the technology, assuming it will not be possible to transform all those moments into rhetorical occasions, is a moment that wouldn't be lost in a traditional classroom. So when the technology begins to intrude, if it does, it's time to try and examine the rhetoric of our responses to those intrusions.