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WebCT and Blackboard, two of the most popular platforms for web-based distance learning, promise to do much of the work for educators. According to the leader of one WebCT training session I attended, these platforms are desirable because they provide two services: 1) they free instructors from some of the less-glamorous work of teaching, grading, and record-keeping; and 2) they give us an almost god-like control and surveillance capability. No longer do we have to tend to the doldrums of the brick-and-mortar classroom—lugging our books and Xeroxed handouts to class, maybe up three flights of unforgiving stairs to the fourth floor of some beautiful but poorly heated or air-conditioned old academic building; no more filling our bags with student papers till they’re over-flowing, rushing from the room so that the instructor scheduled to use it next can start putting notes on the board. No more standing in front of a room full of students; getting irritated if some don’t appear to be paying attention--or, even worse, when others show up late and interrupt us. Of course, to expect that any format for teaching will be the great panacea that ends all of the challenges associated with teaching is pretty unrealistic, and perhaps even imprudent, since it implicitly advocates for a pedagogical approach which values time-saving automation and ease over meaningful engagement. To whatever extent that we might want to enjoy the potential advantages of convenience and power afforded by Content Management Systems (CMS) like WebCT, we need to ask ourselves and “our” technology how we can retain the pedagogical integrity of our classes, especially for those which require an intensive writing component. Two of the most important questions that all web-based course designers should be asking ourselves implicitly interrogate the relationship between technology and writing pedagogy:
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How can we choose a combination of technological tools that will maximize learning?
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How can we choose a combination of technological tools that will work with us rather than for us? Because these questions determine to a large extent what our priorities are in designing writing courses with integrity, they are essential to the success of the web-based course design process. Indeed, because the way we answer these questions is critical in determining so many other choices we make in the process of course design, these are questions which should be asked both at the beginning of any course design and periodically throughout the development of the course. Choosing a set of technological tools that will maximize learning involves first finding out who the target audience for the course is and then investigating what their experiences with available technological tools are. This can be done through surveys and by asking those who manage enrollment for the courses. By getting good information through whatever means possible, a course designer can help ensure that student learning is not impaired by lack of access or lack of understanding of involved course technologies. At WVU, our web-based writing courses are restricted to adult learners who have been out of school for a year or more. Before I had the opportunity to survey students enrolled in these courses, I found out from our Office of Extended Learning that I could safely assume these students would have access to technology at least as old as the average public library in the state of Choosing a set of technological tools that work with us rather than for us can be accomplished by keeping in mind during the design process that the goal of that process is not to find technological tools to teach the class for us. While it would certainly be nice to find ways to reduce redundancy and use course technologies to be more efficient, instructor ease and automation should not be the top priority. Rather, an approach to course design which facilitates instruction (rather than doing it for us) is more likely to be a course design which will facilitate learning as well. It would not be pedagogically sound, in other words, simply to turn over writing instruction to the integrated tools offered by WebCT or some other CMS. Using tracking programs to determine grades for participation, for example, rather than actively engaging with and reading student writing on bulletin boards sets up a model of student engagement which values quantity over quality--a model not conducive to student learning and satisfaction with the course. The instructor's priority should be choosing available tools that will facilitate sound writing pedagogy and, as a consequence, student learning. As I discuss in other parts of this web-text, this does not necessarily mean finding technologies to replicate or translate the on-site course experience—that would reduce the web-based course to a “less-than” derivative or imitation of face-to-face courses instead of playing to the unique potential for text-based learning that might otherwise exist. Rather, choosing tools to make sound writing pedagogy possible means carefully considering what is needed to allow the instructor to interact with the class and facilitate interaction among members of the class. Moving composition classes online, in whole or in part, makes many faculty nervous since, as Chris Anson has addressed, "much of the anxiety about teaching writing over the web stems from the concern that distance learning is, in effect, independent study. This anxiety stems, in part, from the prevailing notion that students learn to write well by reading and writing with each other, responding to each other’s drafts, negotiating revisions, discussing ideas, sharing perspectives, and finding some level of trust as collaborators in their mutual development."[4] Indeed, because flexibility is considered one of the main positive distinguishing characteristics of e-learning, many online degree programs emphasize the independence allowed and the flexibility to work at your own pace as key selling points. California National University, for example, advertises on its homepage that students can “design programs that fit [their] lifestyle[s] with our self-paced online courses.” However, there are ways of creating courses which strive to provide students with extensive opportunities for interactivity while still retaining the flexibility that often makes e-learning valuable to students. We needn't choose between flexibility and interactivity, independence and community. To create web-based writing courses that are dynamic in this way, we need to consider how to negotiate the relationship among available technology, specific student populations, and the writing process. The use of video conferencing software might seem to be a great way of addressing issues of interactivity that would more closely approximate an on-site course experience but not if students can not afford it or will experience a great deal of frustration trying to learn to use it. As I noted earlier, my web-based courses were designed primarily for non-traditional students with different access issues than our on-campus students, and so I needed to be especially sensitive to such practical concerns. With or without this consideration, however, and regardless of whether or not the consideration stems from practical or theoretical concerns, every writing course makes an argument about the relationship between writing technologies (computer software programs, web-based communication tools, etc.) and the technologies of writing (stages of the writing process, interactive feedback during the process of writing, etc.). Most on-site writing courses which require that students use word processing programs to produce drafts of papers teach students, among other lessons, that "official" writing requires the use of computer technology in document preparation. The website for Texas Tech’s “Interactive Composition Online” (ICON) argues that its hybrid course design—because it also uses multiple instructors to respond to and grade student writing--shifts the pedagogical focus from "classroom instruction" to "document instruction" and "dramatically improves the objectivity and professionalism of the commentary on student writing." The fact that this pedagogical shift is enabled by a technological course support system might suggest to students that technologically-facilitated writing emphasizes product over process. The reality is that our choices about course design reflect our pedagogical values; and our courses, whether we intend them to or not, communicate these values to students. This can present instructors with the task of working through some contradictory impulses: As a web-based course designer and scholar of technology and writing, for example, I am critical of the technologies I require my students to use, but in practice, it has been my job to help my students become more adept users of the technology so that they can earn a degree and maybe, as a result, a promotion or new job, all the while juggling work and family. Consequently, my highest priority in designing the web-based writing courses has been to make the students' experience with the involved technologies as seamless as possible. This transitional seamlessness is two-fold: I want students to be able to transition from on-site learning environments to the web-base environment as smoothly as possible, and I want students to be able to transition among the various web-based course technologies as smoothly as possible. Ideally, students will become so comfortable with the involved technologies in a web-based writing course that they will find their virtual classroom no more distracting than any physical classroom in which they have been students. If my goal had been to introduce students to new technologies or to design a slick virtual class with lots of bells and whistles, I might have been less concerned about my students’ lack of technological adeptness, figuring that they would just need to do whatever it would take for them to bring themselves “up to speed.” The use of such technologies would be appropriate, in other words, if doing so matched the goals of the course for my target student population—for example, to give students new exposure or practice with newer technologies. In my case, however, doing so would have forced me to sacrifice some pedagogical goals that were important to me. For my student population, creating a non-threatening course environment with technologies they could understand and would have reasonable access to needed to be a high priority. For the most part, the adult learners enrolling for early pilot courses reported being anxious about taking a course online because of the technological adeptness and technology (modem speeds are still an issue for some students) they imagined they would need simply to get to the course content. The technologies I chose for these courses would need to be, therefore, simple technologies that the students would a) have access to and b) quickly come to be literate with. My goals in this regard were selecting technologies that would work with the needs of students, which are multiple. By keeping the technology as simple as possible, I was able to provide for their busy schedules and still allow them to have access to me and other students. For this to happen, interacting with the instructor, course content, and other students needed to be as seamless as possible. In my efforts to work towards seamlessness, then, I adopted a low-tech/high-usability approach to designing the courses and providing tech support to each of my students. Although my goal in course design was seamlessness, I neither sought to deny the fact of mediation, nor recreate (via the web-based tools) the on-site course experience. Rather, as the next node will demonstrate, I attempted to choose a set of technological tools that could work with my instruction (not in place of it) and, perhaps more importantly, to allow the course goals to lead the process.
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©2006 Catherine Gouge |