Electronic Communities in Writing Instruction:
A Beginners Guide

Intro

Teachers

Students

History

Texts

Structure

It may be tempting to give students an electronic forum and turn them loose with little or no guidance. While occassionally great things may result from this, it's generally best to provide enough structure to keep students from becoming too confused. While some instructors may argue that confusion is good for students, too much confusion can merely create frustration, hostility, and shut down the learning process.
Most first year students do not arrive as fully formed independant scholars. Depending on their previous education, they may be used to teachers telling them exactly what to do and providing very rigid rules. They may have been punished for bending those rules and discouraged from creatively reshaping assignments to mesh with their own interests and needs.

It's generally more effective, then, to tell students up front that exercising some freedom, initiative, and creativity is part of their assignment with the electronic forum. If you don't provide specific prompts or assigned topics for "journal posts," directly instruct students to write about their own interests and thoughtful responses to class materials. Let them know that at first this may be confusing and different than what they are used to, but explain why you value these aspects, and how it fits with your overall pedagogy and goals for the course.

With my own first-year writing classes, I've found that providing partial structure enables me to enjoy the best of both worlds. I used to leave students on their own to generate and maintain discussions, specifying only that they were required to write three messages each week, but found that this elicited a continuous chorus of messages saying "I don't see the point of this" or "I have no clue what we are supposed to be doing" even after explaining the uses of the bulletin board in class. This type of confusion is mostly unproductive and better options exist.

I have found that providing students with a written (not just spoken) list of uses for the bulletin board, giving them a list of possible topics, and assigning weekly "topics" has eliminated student confusion about the use of the forum. It's also interesting to note that no one has had to actually use the list of suggested topics (its existance seems to be enough).

The weekly topics I "assign" provide a comfortable amount of structure and direction for students, but are still broad enough to require initiative from class members. For example, one week the required posts were "Write a message about the paper you are working on. Use the other two to write responses to other people's posts, or to mention any other comments or questions you may have." I'm not really telling them what to do, but at the same time I've made my expectations very explicit.

This type of structure is more important at the beginning of the semester when students may be overwhelmed by the new school, new pedagogies, and new ways of thinking about writing. After a few weeks, they will begin writing posts more independantly once they know each other better and have seen for themselves the value of writing to their peers online.

Feedback for Your Course

Types of Forums (Listservs or Web Bulletin Boards?)