The conclusions set forth in the book are based on the data from the Transitions and the New Teachers Studies.The Transitions Study, performed during the 1993-94 academic year, is based on the observations of four experienced teachers teaching the same introductory composition courses in a traditional and in a computer-supported classroom. The data collected came from student surveys, student and teacher interviews, student reports, observations of class sessions, entries from the teachers' logs, and records of electronic exchanges between students and teachers.
The New Teachers Study explored the challenges that new teachers face when starting to teach in a computer classroom. The study began in the fall of 1995 when three teachers who had not taught writing before were asked to teach in a computer-supported writing classroom. The data came from interviews with the teachers both at the beginning and at the end of the semester, observations of actual class session, and the teachers' learning logs. Since the primary goal of this study was to better understand the challenges that new teachers face when starting to teach in a computer-supported writing classroom, no students took part in the study.
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