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by Wini
Wood, Director of the Writing Program
Imagine a classroom in which the students speak 95% of
the time and the instructor speaks only 5% of the time. Imagine
a classroom in which every student speaks, in which every
student offers handfuls of substantive comments during the
course of a class period, in which students respond to each
others' ideas, prodding their classmates to produce evidence
to support their claims, extending and disagreeing with each
others' ideas. Imagine a classroom in which everyone is speaking
at once, all the time--except the conversations are being
held in writing, on computers. It is a classroom in which
cacophony reigns, but the cacophony is contained entirely
within electronic space, accompanied by the clacking of keys
and not-so-occasional murmurs and chuckles.
Lynne Viti, Assistant
Professor in the Writing Program, teaches Women and Law in
Founders 121, a networked classroom.
This
is the Daedalus classroom, a classroom in which discussion
is held through computers linked by software called the Daedalus
Integrated Writing System. The most powerful and innovative
component, Daedalus Interchange, allows for a written conversation
to unfold in the real time of the classroom at an unusually
rapid rate (some classes generate as much as 40 pages of
text in a single class period). The transcripts of the class
conversations can be printed out and assigned as readings
for the class; in writing classes, students are asked to
locate ideas in the discussion that can be developed into
fuller theses for their papers. Or they can be asked to locate
competing strands within a conversation, and then to develop
papers that accommodate point and counterpoint.
The Daedalus system was adopted for use in Writing 125
classes two years ago, and since that time nearly half of
the Writing 125 instructors have taught classes in the Writing
Lab. Several have transformed their teaching styles to accommodate
this mode of instruction. What Daedalus allows--nearly constant
talk and writing by students in class--is especially effective
in a course where the goal is not teacher performance, but
rather, student performance. As several students pointed
out at the end of a Writing 125 class last spring, they remember
the tone and movement of an entire discussion better when
they have the Interchange transcripts to review. In an oral
class discussion, they said, they only write down what their
instructor says; in Daedalus discussion, they come to value
the comments of their classmates--and their own comments,
as well. They frequently leave class after a Daedalus discussion
with ideas well in hand for the next paper assignment.
In a survey done by the Writing Program a year ago, we
found that over 90% of the 268 student respondents perform
nearly all of their writing activities--from composing through
proofreading--on the computer. Given the rapid transformation
computers have effected in our writing habits--and the increased
amount of revision we now expect of writers--it makes sense
to teach writing with, through, over, and around computers.
Other Daedalus components allow instructors to carry out
other typical writing classroom activities via computer,
from the exchange of drafts for peer editing and revision
to the construction of a bibliography.
But above all, the Daedalus writing classroom--or more
broadly, the networked writing classroom--helps student writers
learn to manage intelligently the wealth of ideas and information
now available to us over the network. The library staff now
routinely uses the networked classroom to help Writing 125
students learn to do research for their papers from remote
databases. The campus-wide information system (CWIS) now
has a Writing
Program page that provides helpful tips for writing papers
to all students at Wellesley, as well as pointers to writing
and grammar resources developed at other campuses. Altogether,
a student learning to write in a networked classroom learns
how ideas developed in conversation with her colleagues,
together with information and facts generated by the larger
community, can be selected and elaborated by the individual
working at her own computer to construct her own knowledge.
And that new knowledge--her writing, her ideas--can then
be returned to her community for further elaboration and
comment. In this way, students begin to participate, quite
naturally, in ongoing academic conversation.
For more information, contact Wini Wood, Director of the
Writing Program, at x2407, or by email (wwood@wellesley.edu).
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