Dorwick discovered that, in spite of requiring all potential students to meet with him before registering for the course, students still required a large amount of training in the individual software packages (IRC using a Microsoft client available as a Java applet at http://chat.microsoft.com on Netscape and Internet Explorer Browsers 3.0 and better) and First Class (http://www.oftarc.com). As a result, he had to require students to attend face-to-face for the first month of the semester, longer than required by his syllabus for reasons of community growth and getting to know the students as individuals.
More importantly, both Dorwick and his students (13 entering first year students and 1 ESL graduate student) had to struggle with making the conceptual switch necessary to rethink the classroom as a synchronous space -- what did participating in a virtual class mean, especially for freshman students who are already struggling with being newly independent, and what did it mean for the teacher no longer able to assume that his students would be available at a particular time, if not a particular place?
Finally, Dorwick will explore some of the implications for asynchronous learning in the first year composition course -- is this, in fact, an appropriate environment for beginning university students, or should we limit our course design to virtual but synchronous pedagogies?
Presenter: Keith Dorwick
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Target Audience: Intermediate