Program Features

It is very difficult to comprehend how any networked program works without actually doing it, hands-on. However, the CONNECT Web site does a superior job not only of describing the program, with schematics, screen mockups, and text, but it encourages teachers to download a demo linked to the Norton server to try out the program as both a teacher and a student. I could not describe it any better. Readers accustomed to Daedalus or CommonSpace will find Peter Sand's comparison of the three programs particularly useful.

Accessibility
One of the biggest issues any teacher faces in choosing a computer program for classes is accessibility. Students use many different wordprocessing programs and often have fragmented and limited access to any linked computer system. And university systems and public computer availability vary widely, yet no class can function adequately and fairly unless all students have reasonable and timely access. CONNECT has addressed these issues better than other programs; even MAC users can write and insert text-saved files into the class network. CONNECT.Net, with its Internet access, is a giant step in resolving this issue, though it still must depend on WORD and its frequent (and buggy) updates. Now classwork is not limited to computer centers, or even to the physical university itself. Indeed, different classes could access a CONNECT class, even though they may meet at different times and places. One of my colleagues, for example, yielding to his students' demand for CONNECT discussions (they had already mastered the program in another class), set up CONNECT assignments and discussions outside of class successfully.

The Split-Screen Design
Although CONNECT is a collaborative environment, what you see are two separate screens--a top, read-only window is for the assignments, other student papers, and a student's graded paper; a bottom window is a normal word processing screen where a student writes her own paper. Additional windows can pop up to show group comments and private messages. Finally, another box opens up when one wants to write a comment or a message. Obviously, this can slow down the reading, and gives a sense of clunkiness as opposed to the flow of a Daedalus Interchange-type discussion.

Sometimes the split-screen environment becomes confusing to novices, especially when there are hidden screens, and the half-sized writing space at the bottom might encourage some students to pay inadequate attention to their writing (although it can be made full screen easily enough). However, having the assignment, the papers, and comments visually united, or at least stacked in windows, contributes much to the collaborative process of reading/writing/responding that many teachers want.

Also, I feel that it is important for a student to have her own "writing space" which cannot be "violated" by teacher or student. Even when the paper is graded, the original is intact and the marking is in the annotations. Several students have told me how they resent teachers marking on and in their papers so perhaps I am sensitive on this point. Students also complain of their comments getting ignored in a swift Daedalus Interchange session. Slowness and learning how to deal with multiple windows seem to be a reasonable trade-off.

Grouping
A class can easily be broken down into workshop or discussion groups for different assignments, and this is a valuable feature of the program. However, students cannot view the work done in other groups (although the teacher can) and changing group members after they have been established, especially if you change the total number of groups, can cause problems. You can change before setting up an assignment, but not on-the-fly. There are ways to get around this by setting up different assignment slots or setting up ad hoc groups in the instructions for an assignment.

Grouping works very well when I have good attendance. The problems occur when I have set a group of 4 or 5 students and only two students show. I can't reset the groups easily. With continual drop-outs especially in the community college setting, regrouping is a necessity for the ordinary composition classes. I like to set a lot of group projects to develop leadership in my first composition class. Each student in the group becomes a leader for an assignment, and is responsible for posting the assignment, rewriting it if needed, and getting members to contribute to the project. When groups change, the leader and the group may become separated electronically. Because Connect cuts off previous assignments from the original group from view if you are regrouped, it is difficult to work with electronic conversations (discussions) unless I copy and paste them to the leaders. I've worked around all these problems because I've wanted to. A less dedicated Connect user might not have. --Cathy Stablein

Connect solves many of my challenges as a teacher--even the little ones, like getting students to work with a new group of students when workshopping essays. In the classroom, students tend to want to work with the people they are already comfortable with. Connect allows me to arrange students into new groups for each essay, and because I do this "behind the scenes," it rarely becomes an issue with students. --Charles Hannon

Anonymity
All Connect windows, discussion, paper and private messages, carry the author’s name by default. The teacher may choose to let the students use pseudonyms or no name rather than their own names (although she always knows who is actually writing). I only use this feature for evaluations; I feel it is important for students to take full responsibility for what they say, and the computer environment is impersonal enough. Naming has never caused any problems, and in fact, students make a point of referring to each other by name in their comments. However, many teachers do like this option:

Pedagogically speaking, I like the anonymous aspect of group discussion. I think my students do a great job of diving into discussion (mainly because the readings I assign are about current topics that interest them). Unlike regular classroom discussion, which is often awkward and punctuated by long uncomfortable silences, on-line discussion is much more frank. Instead of looking someone in the eye and saying, "I disagree with you," students can disagree online and be relatively anonymous. This makes for discussion based more on critical thought than on impressing the person sitting in the next chair. --Kris Bigalk

Synchronicity
Any assignment stays active, meaning that students can post an original or a revision, as long as the teacher so decides. This means that the class could be very asynchronous and stretched out, with students doing assignments at will, although this would probably be very awkward and kill any sense of discussion. On the other hand, classwork can be done within a certain period of time, not just limited to the class period, and that can be very useful, as students can participate fully even if they are unable to be online at the same time. With CONNECT.Net--and home access for many students and teachers--the advantages of some asynchronicity (such as writing when you are most alert) can be used.

Because I teach at a community college, where absences are many and dropping out is like a contagious disease, the permanence of assignments and in-class activities is a big plus. If a student misses class, he/she has no excuse for not making up the work, as all he/she needs to do is pop his/her disk into the computer, pull up the system version of Connect, and check out the in-class activities and assignment messages. This permanence also cuts down on mundane activities such as attendance and "check off" assignments. At the beginning of every class, I tell the students that I will take attendance based on discussion. If they post a message to discussion in the first few minutes of class, they will be counted present; if not, they will be counted absent. This makes for an explosion of discussion from the very beginning. --Kris Bigalk

Synchronous writing and learning forces students to think as a whole group rather than in delayed response to a single person. This is a group conversation, not a one-on-one. There is exhilaration in the push of a button to see "the next comment." Did someone like what I said? Am I on the wrong track? Can I build quickly on what someone has said. Many voices merge into a community of thought. --Cathy Stablein

I often use Connect asynchronously, as an interactive Reading Journal and Class Discussion Forum in literature classes. Often, I will not meet with students on a day that such Journal entries are due; instead, I'll assign an initial response to be due by 20 minutes into the class's normal time, and a second response (to other students' ideas) to be due by the end of the period. If students are pressed for time, I know they can complete the assignment during the regular 50-minute class period. --Charles Hannon

Assignments and "hot URLs"
Most people like to create their own writing assignments. However, Norton also provides assignments associated with four of their composition and literature texts, easily downloaded from the CONNECT site. The teacher may include a sample paper or discussion in an assignment or could put a paper or exam in the student's paper form, allowing them to write on it and then post. Recent versions of CONNECT include "hot URLs" which may be included in the assignment (or in student papers) which link to Web sites. For example, I have placed CONNECT discussions from previous classes on the Web and then asked students to analyze those discussions.

Messaging
The teacher may send messages to the class or individual students and each student can respond individually, a handy feature for private conversations or for providing additional details on an assignment-in-progress. Also students may send private messages to each other, unless the teacher inactivates this function. Public messages are handled with comments. This distinction between public and private can be very useful, especially in a composition class considering rhetorical situations. A person's messages remain on her disk, for future reference. I like to keep the messaging function open during class discussions, primarily because students sometimes want to make comments on a paper which are more appropriately private; very few students have abused this feature, especially since their grade depends to some degree on their participation in the public discussion.

Grading
Grading with CONNECT is done in hypertext format, using the WORD annotation feature, after the teacher collects the papers to his disk. The teacher's menu allows him to insert icons into the paper, either the ones provided by CONNECT or ones he creates himself, which click up comments or links into the selected handbook topic. The student reads the returned paper in his top CONNECT window, with the original below, and can also view the comments as a list of annotations. Reading a marked paper can be awkward, for the hypertext notes appear in very small print and the handbook is a little tricky to toggle with the paper. The advantage for the teacher is that he has unlimited margins for comments and the resources of the handbook for explanations. Do the students read the comments? Sometimes, maybe even usually, but they can ignore them as well as they do on printed papers; it does help that the final comments (and the grade, if the teacher wants to add one) can appear at the end, after the student has scrolled through the comments.

I love the grading features in Connect because after 70 or so student papers, my handwriting gets pretty bad. My students (those who are diligent about reading and responding to my comments) appreciate the embedded text boxes because they can actually read my suggestions. I also find I respond better to student writing, with longer and more detailed suggestions, when I know students will be able to read what I've written. --Charles Hannon

When I first began using Textra, I had students post and then I printed out hard copies for grading. Because I had graded with pen in hand for so many years, I found this transition slow to computer-generated comments, but now, I'll never go back to a paper environment. First of all, the comments are readable--one student had read "vague" as "very good" in a hand-written version. Secondly, now that I've practiced grading this way, I find it much faster. Thirdly, and most importantly for my summer classes that only meet once per week, students can post a paper, I can read it the next day, return it electronically, and they can revise or accept the comments to help them on that paper or the next paper without coming to see me or attending a class.
--Jan LaVille

Writing Resources.
With the Windows versions, students have the resources offered by Word and WordPerfect of an excellent spell checker, thesaurus, and grammar check (such as it is). Even better, the Norton Handbook is always online for reference and may be specifically linked into marked papers. For composition classes, Norton's Writing Essentials can be ordered with CONNECT for a few dollars more.

These resources can encourage the students to write more carefully, especially if reinforced by the teacher. I see this as a great advantage; classes who have done papers in other less supportive environments, particularly in Web forums or email, have taken matters of spelling, word choice, and format, for example, much less seriously.