Safia El Wakil, American University in Cairo
Daniel J. Martin, Rockhurst University in Kansas City
Last Modified: September 19, 2002

Introduction

This is an account of the challenges and successes of an international collaboration spanning three semesters--fall 2000, spring 2001, and fall 2002. The two of us met between presentations at Computers and Writing 2000 in Ft. Worth, Texas, where we discovered our mutual interest in setting up an international discussion forum connecting the students in Safia's composition course at American University in Cairo and Dan's composition course at Rockhurst University in Kansas City. Exchanging e-mails in the summer of 2000, we began to plan our project.

It soon became obvious that we were embarking on new territory. Neither of us had ever combined classes in an online forum, and in the scholarship of composition and rhetoric the area of cross-national discussion groups is relatively under represented. Naturally, a multitude of questions came up. Some we had to answer before we could start our discussion. For instance, how many students should be in a discussion group? Others we have tried to answer over the course of our project. For example, how should we prompt students to get the discussion going? Still other questions, especially those about how to assess the rhetoric of these discussions, continue to perplex us.

The questions roughly divide into two concerns that structure this web text: first, those that shed light on our collaboration as instructors, to which Safia has paid particular interest, and second, those that focus on our students' learning, especially about audience, which Dan has tried to explore. Despite these separate initial interests, this is a true collaboration in which each of us has had a great deal to say about both concerns. What follows will be what we have called the "core text," in which our words speak together. Within the core text we have placed links that extend our collaborative voice as well as links that provide separate commentary, where we feel our individual voices must emerge, not always to register our differences, but often because particular ideas or words originate with one of us or display an individual perspective in some way. Most importantly we think our collaboration is enriched by our being able to speak together at times and at other times solo.