Electronic Communities in Writing Instruction:
A Beginners Guide

Intro

Teachers

Students

History

Texts

Development of Pedagogical Uses

At first, the computers were mainly used in ways that did not promote much interaction amoung students, such as to run programs that focused on style, spell-checking, and practice-drill exercises.

The uses of computers in processes-based classrooms in the 70’s and 80’s were mainly related to word processing (the ability to cut, paste, and rearrange, rewrite, print, and share multiple copies of text with class members, which was either not possible or terribly inconvenient with typewritten or handwritten texts). At about the same time, educational theory was making a shift toward collaborative learning, and issues of peer interactions, locus of authority in the classroom, and active participation began to be more carefully examined.

Joan Tornow describes the origin of interactive electronic communities in writing instruction at the beginning of Link/Age by recounting the use of ENFI (English Natural Form Instruction) in classes taught by Trent Batson at Galludet University. The networked computers used synchronous (“real time”) electronic discussion which allowed deaf students to fully participate in class discussions.

Around the same time (roughly 1983-5), instructors and graduate TAs, (such as Fred Kemp) were teaching in computer labs at the University of Texas and lamented the lack of interaction. After being exposed to the collaboritive theories of Kenneth Burke and Kenneth Bruffee (“Colaboration and the ‘Conversation of Mankind,’” 1984) several graduate instructors who were looking for ways to make their computer teaching more innovative heard Batson present at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) and began implementing synchronous discussions in the labs (Tornow).

In 1989 Kemp founded Megabyte University, a listserv for writing and rhetoric teachers and since then asyncronous discussions (listservs and bulletin boards) have also been used in writing classes.


Issues and Rationales for E-Communication in Classes

References