Assignments asking students to create and post websites are becoming a more common feature of upper-division courses in technical writing and professional writing, as well as in specialized "computers and writing" and "multimedia" courses. In freshman composition, though, Web writing assignments are clearly the exception rather than the rule. As a new medium for student writing and publication, the Web has rich potential for freshman composition courses; however, significant constraints exist for teachers interested in asking students to write for the Web. At this early stage in the development of a pedagogy that incorporates writing for the Web, it is wise to analyze ongoing experiments in Web writing that are taking place in a small number of introductory writing courses across the country.
My analysis here focuses on three different approaches to combining Web writing and community service: one emphasizes writing skills, another emphasizes community service, and a third emphasizes Web writing and design. In each case, the Web writing assignment is intended to enhance curricular goals; differences in goals, along with differences in student population and institutional context, can be clearly seen to shape the particular features of the Web writing that students do. In other words, the Web writing component of the course is—and, I argue, should be—developed "ecologically," in a manner that is responsive to the influence of such factors as the aims and interests of the teacher, the needs of students, the availability of technology, and the larger institutional context. In the case of community service and Web writing, the needs of the local community being served are obviously a significant component of this ecology.
The Web writing assignments and the resulting student work in the approaches I analyze here differ not only from each other but also from the most ambitious and longstanding project incorporating community service and Web writing: "Going to Class, Getting Online, and Giving Back," a course developed by Alison Regan and John Zuern at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. This is an inspirational example for faculty wishing to integrate community service and/or Web based writing into their courses. However, it would be difficult and unwise to simply replicate the design of Regan and Zuern’s project at another institution. Differences in institutional and community context, student population, curricular structure, funding, and a host of other factors would make changes to the project necessary. In this and other instances of computer-enhanced writing instruction, a "one size fits all" approach is ill-advised. Rather, as I hope my arguments here demonstrate, we can learn much from analyzing what others are doing in order to see what might carry over successfully in the context of our own classrooms.
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