The Genesis and Future of this project.
A Windows- or Macintosh-based collaborative writing program offering a built-in word processor with basic text-formatting capacities, real-time conferencing, and visual displays of annotations and revisions so two or more writers can work collaboratively using the power of electronic networks. CommonSpace displays text using the visual metaphor of columns. Within "workspaces," users can set up "columns" which are linked to each other and in which they can make annotations and revision-suggestions regarding the text in the linked columns. The comments from one column to another are marked visually by boxes and arrows, and can be further linked by use of different on-screen fonts, formatting and colors.
Users can "conference" by making their machines link to a "seed host" machine anywhere in the world that is connected to the Internet. Because of this choice of conferencing protocols, conferences are not limited to users logged into the same Local Area Network, and users do not all have to be using Windows or Macintosh machines.
Because the Windows and Macintosh versions use the same protocols for file creation and storage, the files are transferable between platforms.
Norton Connect
A program either running as a DOS standalone with the Textra word processor or completely integrated in either Microsoft Word or WordPerfect for Windows (up to version 6.1). Connect splits the screen horizontally into two working spaces. Users can write papers, share files by storing them in shared network space where the files are named and managed by Connect, make comments on each others' texts, and communicate synchronously or asynchronously using a built-in messaging system. This program uses the text-processing and formatting power of Word to its advantage, adding features that automate commenting, give good visual cues to readers regarding revisions and comments, and allow easy file sharing, assignment making and electronic portfolio creation.
Many schools still use the DOS version of Connect. According to Norton, the DOS version has the same features as the Windows versions, but has the added advantage of running the 640K DOS memory.
The Windows version, as of 1997, adds embedding of "hot" URLs and the ability to launch a web browser, such as Netscape or Internet Explorer, from within Connect. It does not appear that Norton will continue pursuing twin development of the Word and WordPerfect versions of the software, but will concentrate only on the Word version. There has never been a version for the Macintosh.
Connect.NET, also released in 1997, supports the full range of
Norton Connect activities, but operates over an Internet connection,
allowing the program to break through the boundaries of the Local Area
Network for conferencing, paper-sharing, and collection/evaluation of student
writing. Connect and Connect.NET are not fully compatible,
however; a course is either LAN or Internet-based, but not both.
Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment
A suite of programs: Write, Invent, Respond, Mail, InterChange and BiblioCite. This program has a built-in word processor (Write), heuristics for developing and revising papers (Invent and Respond), a limited "E-mail" program for sharing large files (Mail) and the best-known synchronous conferencing package available (InterChange). There is also a program for teachers to create their own heuristics and other sub-programs for class management.
The Windows version of the software will only run on 32-bit operating systems (such as Windows 95), but it adds new text-formatting features-a friendlier user interface, and a more visible and useful integration of the program's modules that have been kept out of the DOS versions of the Write word processor. It is still one of the best and easiest to use, and teachers should seriously consider adopting it for writing instruction. DIWE also has the best word-of-mouth advertising and consumer "presence"--people have heard of it or know others who use it and have a strong emotional connection to the software. Having taught with Daedalus for more than five years, I was reluctant to give it up, even knowing how buggy it can be in the DOS version. Because when it works, there is significant magic going on, particularly in the InterChange module.
Aspects
Macintosh-only software for writing and collaborating on papers. One
interesting feature of Aspects is that it allows real-time editing
of a shared paper on the network, so that if student A makes a change to
the paper, students B, C, D (and so on) see the change as it happens. A
significant limitation to Aspects, in addition to its being Macintosh
only, is that conferences may be held with an unlimited number of groups,
but there can't be more than 16 in each group.
Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment for Windows (32-bit only) offers another powerful word processor, with integrated spelling checker, text formatting, and bibliography generation. The Windows version is stable; one nice sign was that, even in first-release, it avoided screen-flicker that had shown up in other programs, such as the beta version of CommonSpace. (This screen flicker also appeared in the early Windows releases of StorySpace, a hypertext authoring program originally available only for Macintosh computers.)
CommonSpace's word processor offers basic functions such as italics, boldface and underline, as well as the ability to create on-screen color effects. It is still, though, a basic word processor; users must export their files to another word processor for text-formatting common to scholarly and academic documents. This is a simple procedure, and seems to work well with both Word and WordPerfect conversions. According to Sixth Floor Media, this was a conscious decision based on many users' dissatisfaction with the overdose of features in high-end word processors. The word processor in CommonSpace is more than adequate for the uses of most writing classes.
In some ways the CommonSpace word processor, focusing as it does on the production and annotation of text, without concentrating much on the various formatting options offered by a full-blown word processor, reminds me of the original Daedalus environment. In DIWE's early days, and even in the program's manuals, the designers made the claim that their environment was about the production of text, rather than its formatting and manipulation. Similarly, CommonSpace focuses more on the production of text to be annotated, and the mechanics of annotating that text. Teachers of writing know that computers have brought back the rhetorical category of delivery, which fell out of high regard toward the end of the nineteenth century; word processors, with their desktop and web publishing abilities, have brought delivery back into a role of some importance.
It is probably worth noting, too, that the latest version of DIWE adds significant functionality to its word processor: bold, italics, underline, justification options, etc., while maintaining, through its built-in heuristics, the original emphasis on getting student writers more comfortable and fluent in the production of text. I wouldn't be surprised to see CommonSpace gradually add more and more text-formatting ability.
This is a feature of greatest interest to teachers using the programs for teaching the writing research papers, or to professionals using the programs for collaborative writing.
Many scholars use these bibliographic database managers in conjunction with more powerful database programs, such as Access, and software manufacturers should probably be aware of their popularity as note-taking and research-tracking devices. Since CommonSpace has potential uses outside the classroom as a tool for collaborative research and writing, it would be useful to add some kind of bibliography manager, or built-in compatibility with Citation or Endnote.
Daedalus' real-time conferencing--the InterChange module--moves quickly on appropriately configured networks but can be buggy and slow at times, particularly in the DOS environment. In both the Windows and the DOS versions, users can enter their text in an input window and view conference messages simultaneously in an output window. Similarly, CommonSpace puts input and output in adjacent columns, but also threads the discussion by marking text as new topics and replies. It would be useful if the text were also marked to indicate "read" and "unread"--something which Connect offers, as does DIWE when users are messaging using the Mail module, rather than InterChange. The threading in CommonSpace can be distracting--requiring users to scroll back and forth to keep up with different threads. Furthermore, the only way to send messages is by clicking on an arrow icon. I have yet to see someone "get" that without explanation; the natural inclination is to hit "Enter/Return" and expect the message to be sent.
When I've seen CommonSpace conferencing used locally and over Internet connections, it has been visibly slower and clunkier, even graceless, when compared to Daedalus or MOO sessions. At this point, I can't really imagine using CommonSpace conferencing rather than MOO or even E-mail, given its relatively slow and counterintuitive interface.
Norton Connect automatically routes group comments to members of workgroups. It also has a class-wide private messaging system for users to communicate outside their workgroups.
CommonSpace uses a 1993 spelling checker engine by WinterPark Software; DIWE for Windows uses Merriam-Webster dictionary and thesaurus databases, circa 1990-91.
For normal student writing, any of these is probably sufficient for spell-checking, especially if students are taught to add words to the database that do not appear as correctly spelled, but in fact are.
For grammar-checking, the issues are much more complex. The available grammar checkers are simply not capable of making subtle distinctions based on semantic and syntactical cues that are recognizable to people but not to machines. Even using a powerful combination, such as Editor 5 3 with Grammatik, users must still be competent and critical in their analyses of the grammar-checker's analysis of their texts. Some research has indicated that students must be educated in the careful and critical use of grammar checkers-their promise as tools to remove some of the drudgery of composing has not been borne out nearly as much as the invention, annotation and revision powers of word processors and networked program has been. So, to some extent, not including a grammar-checker is a plus for a program that is intended for use in the classroom.
Because the heuristics called Invent and Respond come packaged with DIWE, they save a lot of teacher time in developing an environment in which students self-pace their learning and writing. Teachers who want to build heuristics by using the Question Sets and Libraries feature of CommonSpace or the various assignment and paper forms of Connect must take extra time to build specific prompts for their own situation. This is about the same amount of time it takes to prepare a paper handout, though, and can be re-used or edited from semester to semester with ease.
In the long run, building their own prompts gives teachers more power and flexibility-and DIWE does offer its own Prompts builder module in which teachers can create their own heuristics. But having a built-in set of writing and revision prompts eases the burdens felt by teachers who are new to teaching with technology and allows students to begin interacting with the software at a relatively sophisticated level right away.
In CommonSpace's method, the questions exist within the document. In DIWE, the prompts are a series of dialogue boxes that can later be made into a single document. In Connect, a set of questions might be a single assignment or a series of assignments, the answers to each of which are posted separately to the program's shared network space, creating a new draft for each of the questions-and-responses. DIWE's method divorces the heuristic from the troubled waters of the "paper" represented by the writing screen--a definite advantage. CommonSpace's method creates and instant outline or chronology of the problem-solving process, but at the same time forces those solved problems into a linear "set" that, I suspect, may lead students to leave their answers in that linear format, making the teaching of revision a little more difficult.
Connect is not available for the Macintosh, and, according to Norton, is not going to be. But the conversion of Macintosh Word files to Windows and back again is fairly reliable without significant loss of formatting. This means that files created and responded to in Connect can easily be shared across platforms without loss of formatting, but that users cannot use Connect's macros or Word/WordPerfect annotations features to mark up a file on both platforms.
DIWE versions can only share files as text (.txt), which means that students who do their writing exclusively with DIWE for a course will lose any formatting they've put into their Write documents when exchanged with other word processors or across platforms. In addition, only students logged into the same LAN can participate in InterChange discussions, Mail file-sharing, or other DIWE activities.
Connect also uses the most teacher-centric metaphors and phrasing--"collecting," "grading," " returning"--to describe the sharing of files on the network. DIWE, on the other hand, uses a much more process-pedagogy, and pedagogy-of-peers (teacher-students in the class with student-teachers) protocol. CommonSpace pretty much ignores the question in favor of simply making available file-sharing capacity.
CommonSpace compares two documents and displays them side-by-side, with a comparison column between them. In the comparison column, users can have a display of the changes of they've made, marked as replacements, deletions, etc., or a "composite" of the two drafts, with strikeouts through deleted words and underlines beneath additions.
But this does not add anything that is not already present even in MS-Word or WordPerfect (and thus Connect), both of which have for years allowed users to compare versions of drafts with redline, strikeout, and so on, added to highlight changes. In fact, because the CommonSpace screen quickly becomes cluttered when users are presented with three or more columns, I prefer the simplicity of the Word or WordPerfect comparison, which collapses both drafts into one, visibly displaying changes in the manner of a hand-marked manuscript. I find it useful to see the information as CommonSpace displays it, but, especially when using the "composite" feature, I also find I have to hunt around more to find changes. The major word processors also make their changes and displays in color, which CommonSpace does not.
CommonSpace's integrated version of Anne Raimes' Keys for Writers is among the strongest of the online handbooks that I've seen. Connect also has a handbook, Writing Essentials, written by Dawn Rodrigues and Myron Tuman, that is available online; DIWE has none, in keeping with its more handbook-liberated pedagogical assumptions. The St. Martin's Handbook is much more powerful and useful--in the sense that it has more, and better, content--but it is also a stand-alone and very slow. In comparison to other programs, the online handbooks of CommonSpace and Connect are about equally useful, equally full in coverage, and similar in balance between discussion of process and mechanics; the Connect handbook may be a little stronger in explicit teaching of grammatical form, presentation of useful checklists for all stages of the writing process, and explanation of writing process. Connect's ability to embed hypertext links to handbook sections is much more powerful and user-friendly. The CommonSpace handbook appears a little stronger in speed of access, and in presentation of MLA/APA format. The FAQ approach to MLA is very helpful; in general the Keys to Writing text is clear and concise in ways other online handbooks are not.
When I teach with Connect, I make direct links from student texts to relevant portions of the Online Handbook by mouse-selecting an icon from the teacher version of program, then selecting the relevant passage in the Handbook; the program inserts a hypertext link represented by a bitmap of an open book. When the student double-clicks on that icon, she goes directly from the sentence she wrote to the handbook rule and then back again, mimicking the most effective offline methods for teaching editing and mechanical correctness. Since the handbook links are automatically inserted, this is much safer--less prone to typing error--than the method CommonSpace uses, in which users can either type or cut and paste link-titles. Sure, cutting and pasting is nearly foolproof, but it also requires more keystrokes.
Because the wording of the procedure for making Help Links in CommonSpace
seems unclear, it took me a long time to discover the correct method for
making a Help Link. Frankly, if a geek like me has trouble, it is probably
not going to be clear to people just learning to use computers. Perhaps
the Table of Contents--which is the source of Help Links--ought to be at
the beginning of the Handbook or more clearly the source of the Help Links.
Now that I know what I'm looking for, it seems easy; finding it
was inordinately difficult. To be fair, when Help Links are made correctly,
they open much faster than either the Invent/Respond module of DIWE,
or the Online Handbook in Norton Connect.
In fact, for users familiar with Windows conventions, none of these programs offer significantly increased learning times to students and teachers. But most teachers and students are not yet necessarily familiar with Windows conventions. Additionally, first-year students who buy new computers to take to college are often using more sophisticated machines--with Windows 95 pre-installed, for example--than they are using on campus. In this scenario, students and teachers have to negotiate the pitfalls of different file opening, saving and closing protocols, as well as the possibility that Windows 3.1 and 95 versions are incompatible. Connect addresses version-compatibility problems by providing in the student manual a program interface for Word 7 so that students who use Word 6 on campus can use Connect at home seamlessly. Similarly, the Windows version of DIWE offers just enough power that users could conceivably only work in Daedalus to produce papers, but if teachers required footnotes or endnotes, or other special formatting, then the student would have to save the Daedalus file as text (*.txt), open it in another word processor, and format the entire document again.
These are not difficult tasks, and most experienced computer users do them all the time without much thought. But they do add psychological hurdles to the teaching process--particularly if the students are encountering computers for the very first time, as they still are in many poorer or rural areas of the country.
From my classrooms and workshops, I can make some unscientific, anecdotal observations as well. In the case of CommonSpace, the visual metaphors of columns, linked annotations, and so on, may not offer as much of a hurdle to new and computer-literate students and teachers as they do to mildly computer-literate students and teachers. People in that middle area, familiar but not expert with Windows or Macintosh conventions, seem to find the radically different conception of the "workspace" and "column" difficult to understand, at least at first. There appears to be (anecdotally) some confusion regarding the differences between "windows," "workspaces" and "columns."
Commonspace: send email to commonspace-
request@within.com.
Write subscribe in the subject line.
You can write anything you want in the body of the message.
Connect: send email to maiser@English.as.ua.edu.
Leave the subject
line blank.
In the body of your message, write subscribe connect.
DIWE: send email to listproc@daedalus.com.
Write
SUB in the subject line.
In the body of your message, write: subscribe teach
<yourfirstname> <yourlastname>.
CommonSpace, for example, very usefully replicates certain conditions good teachers try to create: instantaneous, visible response to the specific language of a text produced by another writer, shared response to written texts, and clear connections between commentary and original text.
But it also makes it easier for teachers to replicate in the electronic environment those features of offline teacher commentary that are most damaging: the removal of control over the student text from the hands of the student and into the hands of the teacher, the overemphasis on teacherly authority that is even more powerfully displayed in the teacher's more capable manipulation of the electronic environment, and so on. This is not an idle comment. During demonstrations, CommonSpace makes teachers' heads literally turn and watch in fascination because it, at a basic level, replicates and improves on something they work very hard at: marginal commentary.
But not every teacher is good at marginal commentary, or trained in effective commentary, particularly in electronic environments.
The column metaphor CommonSpace uses is double-edged: on the one hand, there is the valuable, visible response of text to text; on the other hand, there is the very real danger that the collaborative document thus produced will obscure individual contribution. In the case of a jointly authored essay or book, such a result is desirable. When training students to survive under the hostile conditions that prevail in most school-based writing situations, this can be a danger. One way to downplay this would be to set response columns so they are smaller and use a different typeface than the original, emphasizing their difference.
Another would be to follow the Daedalus example and advocate a particular pedagogical stance of openness and student-centeredness, of a radical refiguration and redistribution of power and authority in the classroom, organized around a process approach to the production of texts.
DIWE has always included a discussion of open classrooms and student-centered pedagogy in its user manuals. The manuals describe why the program initially included very few text-formatting options (on the grounds that the program was for text-production, not formatting, a-la word processors), and make clear statements about the power of networked classrooms to distribute authority and responsibility among all the members of the class, rather than allowing it to reside within the teacher. This is pedagogically sound and hip composition theory, and it encourages most new users to find their own way to use the software, while focusing their attention on ways to use it that have been proven to help both students and teachers run better writing classrooms.
Connect, on the other hand, includes in its manuals examples of classrooms that run from "teacher centered" to completely open. But the software itself is more teacher-oriented, using the metaphors of "collecting," "grading" and "returning" to shape the interactions of teachers and students, and reserving many of the program's most powerful features for teacher access only. In some instances, this may allow uncertain teachers to retain a crucial level of control in their own classrooms. Still, this is only training-by-manual, and I doubt whether it has too much effect on what goes on in most classrooms after the first semester of electronic teaching, when instructors often gravitate naturally toward more open acceptance of the distributed learning environment encouraged by networks.
In the long run, teachers will do fine with any of these programs and students will have opportunity and stimulation to both write more and write better so long as both groups remember something simple which Dona Hickey of the University of Richmond said once during an Epiphany Project workshop--and which, for some reason, caught my ear:
3 Available from The Academic Software Library or The Modern Language Association of America.
4 James L. Collings and Elizabeth A. Sommers, eds. Writing On-Line: Using Computers in the Teaching of Writing (Portsmouth, NH: Boynton, 1985): i.