Comments from student OLRs

I have included a large portion of the observations from Student A, who broke down the observations into the various strands of the course; that seemed a useful way to show the OLR and one of the approaches students can take in presenting their work. The subsequent examples are less exhaustive. I have tried to represent a variety of the kinds of observations and responses one gets in an OLR. Please keep in mind that the writing requirement for observations is quite informal.)

Student A
At the start of the course in Part A.2:
Finally, I have saved the worst for last: my technical skills. Computers are very strange objects to me. I enjoy using them when I have mastered certain things through close observations of other users; but when I have to do something new, I feel very intimidated.

About Reading and Research
I figured out the concept of hypertext today. It can be like a jumble of memories. You know the main idea, the main concept. And you can randomly pick at someone's brain and find a memory. In no particular order. Just like a ramble almost. Like this pouring forth of emotion in a non-chronological order. Kind of like what a therapist might hear. And memories don't always need a timeline. It might even be the order in which someone would remember their own life. A memory pops up here and there and you sit in on it and you read what they're thinking. You piece together their pieces and you slowly understand. The fragments are a mystery at first; complete randomness. And slowly things begin to click and a story forms somewhere in the chaos.

I was reading the Joyce articles and there was a very profound statement in there. Something about hypertext doing your imagination's job by filling in visuals and voices that the reader used to come up with on their own. I thought how sad that was initially. I tend to write by painting with words. I have a visual image in my head and I let other people see it through my words. This is quite challenging and I love writing in this manner. But then I saw how pictures could enhance your words at the same time. They could add more to vague words. You could make words so vague that without the picture there was no meaning, but with the picture there was. Kind of like a title that completes the essence of poem and states the real intention.

About Writing:
I also learned that the structure really says something about the piece (this is within storyspace). It can be a representation of the way things happen in life. Like with my abuse section I put it in a circle to represent the cycle of abuse and making up and abuse again.

I think that the organization of my paper is going good. I had a hard time figuring out how I would put the different concepts of personae shifting together in one paper, but I fixed that by taking out one of the topics and by trying to keep a general theme running through all of the different aspects of personae shifting.
I'm not too sure about some of my grammatical structures right now either, but I'm planning on having Thad read my paper beforehand. He's always good with grammar.

Drawing the maps of links was really hard, but then I thought of an idea. I printed out the text for each box and then I cut it into strips and arranged it all over my floor and found key words that connected and it became a lot easier. Story Space is so much better than html for hypertext. It's much easier to organize with Story Space. I guess I tried to reconstruct a paper version of Story Space, but it was highly inferior to the computer version. Technology is good for writing.

On Collaboration
Today we did a chat discussion in class. I'm used to talking on chats, so it wasn't that weird for me. Anyhow, I didn't know that people in the class actually had ideas, because no one ever said anything, but they did today. It was really cool, because the shy people had neat things to say. It made me a little less wary of group work and stuff. It was also neat how you can hold several conversations on the same topic at once and you can be in all of them at once too. Plus, if a topic dies, then there are two more waiting and there are always new ones coming up. This was with only four people too. It was just neat.

I really liked doing the peer reviews. Getting the feedback was very helpful. Reading people's papers taught me how to see mistakes in my own paper and made me look at organization more closely. It was much easier to see other people's mistakes, knowing that I wouldn't have to fix them. The information I got from other people was also very helpful. I have a lot of work to do to fix this paper, but at least I know which direction to head in now.

We've all been sharing our work with one another in class. It's really neat to see what they've done. They are doing a lot of the graphics and I'm doing a lot of the writing. I guess we're all capitalizing on our strengths. I'm really impressed with a lot of their work. It made me think about my color scheme. I don't want to seem to boring compared to them.

On Technology
I started my OLR today because I had numerous thoughts on my distrust towards computers. For instance, to read the web page I printed a lot of it out first. I wanted to be able to cross stuff off and make notes on the pages. Plus it just felt safe to have a syllabus I could hold and feel. I have this weird paranoia that if a syllabus isn't in your hands they're trying to trick you into forgetting something or doing something wrong. Then I quickly learned that if you print out one pg. then you also have to print out all the links. I just started not printing stuff because it became easier to understand stuff as interconnected networks of links rather than stacks of random paper. I refuse to give up the unit pages though. I have to write on something or it's not a class.

But I was really proud of myself because I figured out how to get people to e-mail me from my page. Plus I linked to the UT web page. I linked to other pages of mine. Then I also pulled a background off of the web, saved it as a "gif" file, and put it on my webpage. Making web pages is so easy with Claris. I love this.

Reflections
When I wrote in story space I was forced to take small pieces of my work and make them fit into a larger context. Grouping my work has allowed me to recreate old pieces that I had already written and it has created a new avenue for my creativity. Organizing my second project has also helped; because I specifically tried to make the paragraphs flow and tried to keep a main idea running throughout the paper. Writing for this class has really made me focus on the layout of my ideas, rather than just my raw thoughts. I have never done so much cutting and pasting before. The whole idea of first letting your thoughts spill out on to the paper and then organizing them has allowed me to become a more structured writer.
Besides getting help from other people, I have also learned to do a lot on my own.

Student B

Reading Mothering, and Victory Garden
Today I went to the lab to "read" Mothering. While reading this, I wrote down a brief description of what I had just read and the page I was on, so if I jumped backed to it, I could figure out how to organize it in with the rest of the literature. This is the strangest style of reading I've ever experienced! Reading Victory Garden was also very different than what I'm used to.

Reading "Lord Berleigh's Kiss"
I read "Lord Berleigh's Kiss" this morning at the office. It was interesting how they compared Captain Janeway's holodeck to the current advances in technology. Literature has expanded to "keep up" with the advances by taking on new forms as hypertext and hypermedia.

Project 2
Tomorrow Project 2 is due. At the beginning of this class I was afraid because I didn't know that much about using computers and the web, but now I would much rather work on something related to that, than work on such a formal paper that is required for project 2! I'm beginning to believe that computers make writing a LOT more fun.

Student C
I received some good criticism from my classmates. I now see several things I can do to improve the paper before our final evaluation. I learned as much by reviewing my peers as I did when I received their criticism.

Student D
Hypertext is very confusing to me. It was different from anything I have ever read. After the discussion in class, I now know that I am not the only person in the class that had trouble. Also the course packet readings helped me also to understand what I am trying to do with hypertext. I now understand the purpose behind this style of writing.

While working on project 2 proposal, I learned some new material about the writing and reading of hypertext. The three articles that I read for the project proposal helped clear up the new questions that I had about hypertext.

On the 17^th we used the interchange program. This program allows for people to talk to each other within seconds. It was very helpful with my project because I could get other people's point of view on the subject of traditional writing vs. hypertext. This also helped in narrowing down the subject for my project.

Student E

At the start of the course (Part A.2):
As far as computers go, I understand most of the very basic functions and things that computers can do. I can type with the best of them, but when it comes to understanding how to program stuff and how to perform extensive programs, I am a retard. Hopefully after finishing this class I will understand more about how to use computers as my friend, and not to dread the thought of the Internet.

Observations
I started to work on the storyspace project 1. This is very interesting yet confusing to me. I'm not really getting the hang of these computers yet, not that I've just now found out the class codeword and basic assignments. I don't know how I will be able to keep up with this class. I feel lost!!!

Student F
At the start of the course (Part A.2):
As far as my background is concerned, I was born in Guatemala, so my first language was not English, but Spanish. I never did learn Spanish grammar. Prior to this class, my experience in reading was minimal. To be very frank, I only read when I had to.

Observations:
Today the Storyspace project was due. I'm not sure if I did it right, or if my narrative even made sense. I myself would your this program to do outlines. I got more of an understanding after I checked out the Storyspace web-site at www.eastgate.com/Storyspace.html. This site explains how people in different fields use Storyspace. Some examples are in mapping, hypervideo, classrooms, research, and cinema.

I just got finished taking a look at Victory Garden. The Bad thing about it was that someone had already told me what the Story was about. I think Story is more useful to organize and outlines instead of the use to create stories. I had trouble with Victory Garden just mainly because I was just clicking without actually reading what was really going on. I just wanted to see what was at the end. In over all I liked Victory Garden more that Mothering, mainly just because I didn't understood the poems and literature of mothering. Also I knew more how Story Space really works compare when I first tried it with Mothering.

My greatest fear upon signing up for this class was doing the homepage part. I guess it's just sitting down and fooling around with the tool bars. I'm actually starting to enjoy this class. The cool thing is that I'm seeing the progress I have acquire as the days go by.

Student G

At the start of the course (Part A.2):
As a goal for this class I would really love to become more familiar with web creation and most of all give as much effort as possible to improving my creative writing skills. If both of these things can be accomplished, along with the rest of the curriculum, I will feel very successful.

Observations:
This proposal was very hard to write. To read all of the articles and then outline them took a lot of time and effort. I am having a hard time with pinpointing exactly what I can use and what I can't. This, I am guessing is a skill I need to improve on. I think I did a fairly good job of research but not so good a job of extrapolating the information. I felt very frustrated and overwhelmed with five highlighted articles and no direction. I used the advise in class to write down main points of each author but I still felt overwhelmed by my inability to choose what I need and don't or who is really saying what. I have noticed that I have a very hard time reading these articles. Most of the time I think an author has a certain viewpoint but it is actually completely the opposite. This was what I found in the first article I read. I was so confused by the the middle I wanted to quit. I need to get over that.

Student H

Reading Judith Kerman's Mothering (in Storyspace)
I find that the reading is very difficult. The ideas seem to be scattered and have no "process" behind them. Also, the content seems to very "deep" from the writer's point of view……it's almost as if we are seeing inside their thinking. I'm wondering if the intent is to just leave the reader frustrated? Maybe leave them thinking……did me!

So far, my interpretation of hypertext is that it allows flexibility and connections to other pieces of information.

I thought it was interesting sort of evaluating ourselves in the areas of: reading, writing, speaking and listening, and technology. When I read and write, I have a tendency to evaluate myself when I'm doing it. However, actually thinking about it and writing down what I thought was something I had never done before.

I thought I would go back and try to read "Mothering" again and see if I could understand it better given the information I learned from the articles, as well as, what I've learned in class. I felt I could read it better given what I know hypertext is about. I could now understand why she has such random thoughts. I guess like the material has been telling us, it is up to the reader to make sense of it……takes a lot of practice though, at least with Mothering. I also went back and looked at some links that had some hyperdocuments on them. I think I could appreciate more what the author was trying to do and I was able to understand them a little bit better the second time around. It is still kind of tough with some authors.

Project 2 Proposal
I have decided to talk about how hypertext changes both reader and writer and requires a much more in-depth commitment from both. I'm not sure if I will stick to this proposal completely. I might take this idea at a different angle in the actual paper. I have a lot of ideas running thru my head but I really think it would be good to focus on how the reader and writer are affected by this new medium called hypertext.

Student I

At the start of the course (Part A.2):
As for my computer skills, there is not much to say. I am taking this class to learn more about this machine that is taking over our lives (as my parents would say). I want to learn more about the Internet, and how to write my own web pages. I am both excited and apprehensive. I don't have much experience with computers.

Observations:
I went to the CWRL labs and worked on Storyspace. I understand a little better. My story doesn't make sense but neither did Mothering. I modeled what I did after that. I wrote just how I was feeling about things. Mothering seemed like just someone's feelings as she was existing.

I got Victory Garden today. It is making more sense to me than Mothering did, probably because I'm more familiar with what was going on. I just keep following the same links. That is the traditional way to read a book and is what I am used to. Iíím scared to click on a link because I don't want to get lost. I guess I need to open my mind up here and not be scared. Who cares if it makes sense, right?

Well I turned in my paper last Thursday. I was so relieved to have it done finally. We took home our peers papers to critique. Now we have to rewrite the papers some according to what our peers said. That kind of sucks. This week we are focusing on our midterm OLR. It is due on Friday. I'm having a lot of trouble with it because we have to convert it to hypertext and put it on our web page. I have no idea how to do this. My classmate, Aalok is going to help me out. Thank God for him. I have the organization down, just getting it on the web page is the hard part. I wish things like this was explained to us more. Instead, we have to figure it out on our own.

A response to the course:
Participation and collaboration play a large role in this class. Not only is it essential for me to ask for help when I need it, but sending e-mails, adding links to the addlinks page, and sending responses to each other all play a part of the learning experience. The students are all in this together and even though we are all on different levels, we all must stick in it together in order to benefit. I hope to see more of this through out the rest of the semester, especially with the forth project.

This class is intimidating first coming into it. You do have to work hard and keep up with what is going on in order to be successful.

Student J

I honestly dislike the amount of self-exploration that is required for this class. However, the lack of guided instruction and over-abundance of forced, sink or swim, discovery has developed my confidence and independence in my use of Storyspace and Claris Homepage. I'm sorry to note that my confidence and independence have grown at the cost of my knowledge and understanding of the material covered in this class.

Comments from the anonymous Course Evaluations

At the end of each semester, UT and the English department provide anonymous evaluation forms for the students to complete. These forms include a section for additional comments; the following comments come from those forms. Obviously, not all of the students chose to write comments, because all but one of the comments are included here. The exception was an inappropriate commentary about the institution itself and did not address the nature of the class or my teaching.

Student e-mail reaction:

I want to say thanks for the class. I know that I had my share of complaints, but most of them stem from the lack of brain stimulation in other classes. It had been a long time since I truly had to think and work in class. It's easy to look back and say that I enjoyed the class.