Desktop Pedagogies:

Web-Based Conferencing and Writing Instruction

notes from an OCTET Brown Bag Faculty Presentation made by

Pat Day (English Department) and

Jan Cooper (Expository Writing Program)

General observations about using Alta Vista Forum (AVF--the web-based conferencing software presently in use at Oberlin College)

• AVF is what we're using now, but the technology used for these things may change in the near future; we use "AVF" as a shorthand label for a couple of kinds of web-based activities: electronic discussion and and an electronic drop-off location for more formal paper assignments
• this isn't distance learning--it's more a way of regrouping what we're already doing in face to face based courses
• even if it isn't really a radically new, different pedagogy, still using AVF isn't automatic; you need to think through how you use it
• not all students are going to like it, and it's not appropriate to all situations
• doesn't substitute for face2face activities; instead it forces you to think in new ways about how you use older forms of certain activities like discussion

Using AVF for electronic discussion--Pat described how he does it and how AVF has taught him new things about discussion.

• This is a good example of how the electronic form forces you to think differently about a face to face format--Pat identifies five models of face to face discussion:
  1. "Kingsfield." The discussion leader is an interrogator, asking the students questions and telling them whether they are right or wrong, correcting their thinking or method. The tone ranges from "reasonable" to "stand and deliver."

  2. "Socratic." The discussion leader actively guides the discussion through leading questions, summary, and synthesis; the students' discovery of ideas is managed more or less invisibly.

  3. "You know my methods, Watson." The discussion leader sets up a method for discussion and a way of approaching the material, then supervises the students' application of that system, correcting when necessary, maybe summarizing at the conclusion.

  4. "Summer of Love." The discussion leader acts as a manger or facilitator, working with the questions, responses, and ideas the students bring in to help them develop a discussion.

  5. "Why did we all do this so differently?" The discussion leader gets students to talk about what their ideas and thoughts were, then gets them to explore the different assumptions behind them, then pursue the meaning and implications of such differences.

• characteristics of electronic discussions:
  • not a chat room; sequential not simultaneous, therefore students find it somewhat discontinuous. As a result the teacher has to give it a clear focus from the beginning
  • is undirected compared to face2face discussion, as there's no facilitator (it tends to go better if you don't intrude once a thread has been launched); this also necessitates articulating a clear task for an item
  • also gets more raw stuff churned up because it's not facilitated; it's always in process
  • best if used in beginning or middle of a process involving several activities
  • Pat uses AVF discussions as mid-process, reflective discourse; Jan uses AVF discussions as early-process, exploratory discourse

Using AVF for drop offs for more developed drafts of papers--Jan described how she uses it with Pat adding in

• enables us to devise ways to talk about writing before it's completed, to talk more concretely about the whole process one might go through to produce a finished piece of writing and the different sorts emphases a writer might be concerned with at different stages
• enlarges the students' sense of audience for a piece of writing; breaks down assumptions students make about the idiosyncrasy of individual teachers' responses
• enables us to do things we've been able to do fairly easily before by xeroxing, but makes distribution much easier (turns over more of the responsibility of distribution to the students instead of secretaries, etc.)
  • whole class peer readings by the whole class, small groups, or in pairs
  • comparisons of several drafts of the same assignment are accessible to everyone in a class (e.g. to peer tutors as well as the instructor)
  • small group writing projects
  • follow up assignments that draw on the variety of class members' responses to earlier assignments

Conclusions

• practical considerations of using this technology
• it's particularly well-adapted to the hurried up meat world realities of Oberlin (e.g. using Reference desk in Mudd as exchange place for drafts, etc.)
• this creates a lot more reading and writing--needs to be taken into account when planning the course
• it's a form of reading/writing that we as teachers don't need to be intervening in as much as we do other forms; a lot of the discussion you can use in class, but you won't need to participate in other than setting it up
• grading; discussions should probably be CR/NE; dropped off papers can be dealt with the same way you'd deal with any paper
• privacy issues
• AVF may require one class of training in how to use the technology; later forms may or may not require this
• both e-discussions and e-drop offs seem to do 2 things:
  1. gets students to believe they can talk to each other in public about difficult issues

  2. shows how a group of people can use an exchange of messy, tentative discourse to work through to conclusions that are more thorough, complicated, and polished

  3. if you want activities in your class in which you observe nothing but students producing finished thoughts, AVF is not so useful, but if you want to give them activities that will move them toward such thoughts in concrete discussible ways, it is

   

presented in Wilder 115 at Oberlin College on Tuesday, October 28, 1997

sponsored by

last updated 20 November 1997

by Jan Cooper

Expository Writing Program

Oberlin College

send comments or questions to pat.day @oberlin.edu or jan.cooper@oberlin.edu

http://www.oberlin.edu/~exposwrt/ewp_info_faculty/desktop.html