A Review of College Writing Online
Joe Moxley
NY: Longman, 2003
http://ablongman.com/cwo
Review by Matthew D. Barton
University of South Florida
What is College Writing Online?
CWO is not a typical composition textbook; it is a dynamic and interactive
webtext. Is CWO an effective pedagogical tool? Does it help students learn to
write? I have found CWO effective, and here is how I have incorporated it into
my teaching. Joe Moxley's College Writing Online, available as a Web
site or as a Blackboard-integrated version, offers an authoritative webtext to
replace print-based composition textbooks. Many compositionists specializing
in computers and writing have wanted to do away with their textbook altogether
and replace them with a plethora of public domain webtexts, but found their
administrators wary of anyone teaching a class without the sound ethos of a
reputable textbook. Think what we may of expensive print textbooks, at least
they have passed through the filters of professional academics.
Reviewing this book has been difficult for me simply because of the
many directions I could take it. How does one review a book with 2700 files,
10,000 links to resources, 500 links to readings, and "talkback features"?
Even the payment method (subscription by the year rather than permanent
ownership) is new. Certainly the most innovative features of CWO involve its
nature as a webtext – CWO enables collaboration like nothing before it;
indeed, students and teachers can build learning communities around the
chapters in the same way that popular support sites for software have done.
Before I discuss these features, though, I should describe the webtext from a
more general perspective.
CWO is split into six sections: Projects, Strategies, Research,
E-Media, Grammar Resources, and Readings. An instructor can pick any one of
these sections to build a course around, and Moxley has provided very thorough
sample syllabi and guides to help. The Projects section includes 13 writing
projects.
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These Projects are laid out in seven parts: (1) Introduction, (2) Overview of the Project, (3) Analysis of Key Features, (4) Readings, (5) Guidelines and Sample Topics, (6) Helpful Tools and Resources, and (7) Messageboard. All of these sections take advantage of CWO's Internet environment, offering a multitude of links to representative Web sites or articles to help students grasp whatever concept is being discussed. Often these examples are shockingly diverse. For instance, in the Process Project Overview, students are asked to visit sites describing pencil manufacture, yoga postures, and software usage. The "Analysis of Key Features" section asks students to consider the focus, development, organization, and style of their writing as it relates to the project at hand. The "Helpful Tools and Resources" section feature interactive exercises such as peer-review or self-evaluation forms; students are asked to complete these forms and e-mail them to each other, themselves, and their teachers. A recurring theme in CWO is the need for students to reflect on their reading and their writing; this is encouraged by a variety of forms and mini-projects sprinkled throughout the webtext, any of which could be assigned and evaluated by the teacher. These elements demonstrate Moxley's conception of writing as a highly-recursive process.
The Strategies section can be integrated into a projects-based syllabus or taught independently. Strategies included in CWO are Understanding Writing, Thinking Rhetorically, Managing, Inventing, Collaborating, Organizing, Designing, Revising, Editing, and Publishing. Most of these strategy guides feature interactive exercises. For example, "Collaborating" includes forms to help students evaluate individual contributions to collaborative projects. The Managing strategy strongly encourages students to write regularly, log their work, and constantly reflect on the experience. The Publishing strategy, in addition to providing information related to traditional publication, also offers a variety of online publishing ventures, such as Yahoo! Groups and Wikipedia, where students could potentially deliver their classroom writing to a wide audience.
Each Project and Strategy features a "Message Board," and all users of the book (students and teachers) are invited to submit comments or replies that will then appear on the board for all other users to see. The potential of this feature may not be clear at first, but if we project to a time when CWO has a large, supportive community, we can imagine the Message Board becoming the most important part of the webtext. Imagine hundreds of compositionists using the space to compare notes, share links, or even just to vent. Eventually, these archives would become mines of information. As I mentioned earlier, these communities have evolved around many commercial and open-source software sites, such as Dreamweaver Support Forums or Sun Microsystems Star Office Forums. These company-supported sites connect users and experts for the purpose of collaborating on problems or ideas. Also, CWO links to two important wikis managed by Moxley that invite all users to edit or contribute: Writingwiki.org, which can potentially serve as an archive for student work or articles/notes from teachers; and Grammarwiki.org, which has the potential to become the world's first community-managed English grammar resource. The willingness of Moxley to "share authorship" with his readers says a lot, I think, about his vision and his work.
The webtext is sold via subscription; that is, students pay $25.20 for a year's worth of access. Students can either buy the book directly online or purchase an "Access Code Card" through the college bookstore. To prevent students from sharing their codes, CWO prevents purchasers from registering their access code more than once. The registration process is quick and easy, and, considering the average composition textbook is somewhere around $65, relatively painless.
Even though the interactive features are what excite me the most about CWO, I doubt that anyone would evaluate a college textbook without recourse to familiar criteria such as usability, comprehensiveness, innovativeness, and expense. Others may, as I have, attempt to divulge its theoretical presuppositions and determine if these are generally acceptable to the field. For obvious reasons, I have focused on the practical elements, since these are what is most likely to be at question in any discussion of a textbook, but especially one that breaks with the tradition of print publication.
Practice
College Writing Online is not a traditional print-based textbook
scanned and dumped onto the Web. Notice the yellow tabs running across the top
of the page and the table of contents scrolling vertically. This navigation
system (or the SEARCH feature) makes for quick access to any section of the
webtext. In addition to the navigation feature, CWO offers a number of other
interactive features, such as electronic templates, and message boards. There
are also links to wikis and blogs housed at the author's server. These
interactive features are what I find most appealing about CWO.
One of the boasts the publishers make about CWO is that it has more
readings than any other textbook. What this means is that it contains an
extensive annotated bibliography of Web sites and online documents that are
not housed at CWO. Readers are invited to submit links or suggestions for
readings. Of course, anyone who has surfed the net soon realizes that its
content is in flux, and a page available yesterday may be altered or
altogether unavailable today. The short of it is that a reading you assign for
Monday may be unavailable all weekend – thus the need to have alternate
assignments available.
Practically speaking, CWO does not presuppose much knowledge of
computers or the Internet. Anyone comfortable using a Web browser should not
have difficulty with CWO, though some of my students using America Online have
reported odd difficulties. Students will find Internet Explorer to be the best
choice for browsing CWO.
Theory
CWO is designed to be compatible with diverse pedagogies, and is grounded in
rhetorically-based projects and strategies. Teachers can either focus on
Projects, Strategies, Research, Readings, or E-Media when preparing their
course syllabi. Let me admit here that the names of the projects may sound
disturbingly familiar to teachers chary of modes-based pedagogies: "Subjects
and Concepts," "Causes and Effects," and "Processes," for instance. The
Strategies can best be described as Expressionist, Peter Elbow style, with an
emphasis on good writing habits and positive attitude ("The Believing Game").
Since the teacher can easily manipulate the Readings and subjects of class
discourse, I see no reason why a cultural studies approach would not work with
CWO.
Thoughts
CWO is a vast webtext, with countless internal links and threads. Thankfully,
the navigation system keeps readers from getting overwhelmed or bewildered.
Overall, my students seemed to enjoy the webtext, even if they occasionally
had problems finding assignments or correctly submitting forms. Almost all of
their problems so far have been on their end, usually involving AOL or a faulty
Internet connection. Still, most students are experienced enough with
computers to know that the unexpected often happens.