The Inconclusive Conclusion

By affording students the opportunity to:

• develop their own "voice" through extended discourse with their virtual classmates
• use that voice to speak out on topics close to their hearts
• increase their effective use of written communication by learning new rhetorical strategies
• explore various strategies in a "safe," risk-free environment (the virtual writing space/place)
• receive virtually immediate feedback which tells them if their strategies were effective
• communicate with a culturally, philosophically, and educationally diverse audience
• follow hypertextual links to material directly and indirectly related to the course
• explore, at their own leisure, the thousands of knowledge domains available on the Internet
• and do so in the electronic environment which they will undoubtedly use in the "real world"

offering literature courses via Internet listservs and WWW covers many "fronts" at once, thus giving students greater access to educational resources and more opportunities to share, in writing, what they have learned/synthesized/connected than ever before. Yes, there are some limitations, as we have seen, but the benefits undeniably outweigh the negatives. Teaching (or rather, providing opportunities for learning) via Internet e-mail and the World Wide Web is still in its infancy, but for those brave enough to take the leap, there is no turning back .

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