What is it like to actually use College Writing Online in the classroom? In this section, I would like to address practical concerns teachers may have about using CWO. How much knowledge of computers and the Internet do you need to use this webtext effectively? What technological demands does it make of students? What are the practical advantages of using a webtext? In the last section, I describe a student's experience going through a project step-by-step.
       The first matter I will address is whether you need to teach in a computer lab to use CWO effectively. I have used the webtext in a variety of settings, from classrooms with no computer and projection system to fully-equipped computer labs. My experience teaches me that while I can teach CWO in a traditional classroom, a computer-lab, or at least a SMART classroom (i.e., a single networked computer and projection system) makes it much easier to teach. There simply is no substitute for a projection system. When students ask, "How do I log in to CWO?", having the ability to show them directly is a critical advantage. Furthermore, since I believe that student texts should constitute the majority of the class reading, being able to display student work for (positive) criticism is essential.
       My college's Audio/Visual office offers a portable computer projection system for use in traditional classrooms, but the setup can sometimes be distracting (it usually takes anywhere from 5-10 minutes to setup the equipment). Furthermore, other instructors or guest-lecturers may make desperate, last-minute demands of the A/V office, so the equipment is not always available. Backup lesson plans are always necessary in case, for whatever reason, the equipment is not available or functioning correctly. I can recall many classes when, besieged by questions from my students, I had no means of accessing or displaying the Internet in order to answer them. Of course, these incidents seemed to magically occur on critical days--as you may expect, the class before some phase of a project was due. A large part of this problem would have been alleviated if I had owned a laptop computer. For the most part, though, the process was smooth and much easier than I expected.
       Teaching with CWO without the benefit of a projection system is challenging, but not impossible. I could, for instance, print out pages and use them to demonstrate important procedures (how to log in to the book, how to edit a wiki, and so on). At critical junctures during the semester, I led the class on a "field trip" to the campus library where computers were available to all students. There, I could ensure that students could perform the basic functions, even though the environment of the student computer lab was noisier than a classroom (and, I could not lecture.) I found that I could offer to meet with individual students in one of the campus' many computer labs if they were still having problems using the book or its resources. One solution I found teaching CWO in a traditional classroom was to break up the week into "Classroom Days" and "Computer Lab Days." On the latter, I would spend the class time in the computer lab, helping students with particular problems and answering technical questions. This turned out to be a good approach, because many students were shy about asking computer-related questions in front of their classmates.
       Still, despite these difficulties, working with a webtext and online writing environments is a worthwhile endeavor. CWO is full of interactive heuristics that enable students to plan, develop, review, and revise their projects online. CWO also introduces teachers and students to an exciting new online writing environment called the wiki. The students in my class did all of their drafting and reviewing online in wikis, which are simply web-pages that anyone can edit (though my wiki requires a username/password first). Students can view and review all of their colleagues' work from their home computer. I choose to keep the wikis of former classes online, so students have a sizable archive of older projects available for their consideration. Another nice feature of wikis is that they store all editions of a particular page, so that compositionists can review a project at each drafting stage.
       Students seemed to find CWO's interactive tools, like the document planner, the most helpful. Moxley describes the document planner as "a living document. It's a snapshot of a fluid process. As you write, your ideas about audience, purpose, media, context, voice, tone, and persona will change, becoming clarified." Students are expected to revisit the planner at various stages of their writing process and update it as necessary. When they are ready, they can submit the form via e-mail to themselves and their teacher. Other tools help students manage their work, discuss readings, or collaborate with other writers in group-projects.
       In every case, my students grew comfortable with CWO after being guided through one project. The system is intuitive for the most part, and Moxley's efforts to create a unified and coherent interface were successful. The most mysterious problem I faced all semester was solved by asking students to switch to Internet Explorer on their home machines; for some inexplicable reason, America Online's internal browser was not parsing the pages correctly. Afterwards, I faced no other major technical problems with CWO.
       Now I would like to discuss the steps involved in working through one of CWO's Projects. The Project I assign first is Autobiography. Students begin by reading the "Introduction," which contains, like the introductions of all the other projects, a rationale for doing this kind of writing. Why should a student write an autobiography? Moxley explains, "As we age, we invariably wonder who and what experiences shaped us. One of our most elemental impulses is to define and explore the self. We try to understand who we are and who we can be by examining how we respond to different situations and people." The next step is the "Overview of the Project," which identifies the "Rhetorical Situation" inherent in the genre and asks students to perform Rhetorical Analyses on various online readings. For "Autobiographies," some of the readings are the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, and some blogs from witnesses of the World Trade Center disaster. Students are provided a questionnaire to guide them through their rhetorical analysis. Incidentally, this questionnaire can be automatically e-mailed to the class instructor. The next step is "Analyze Key Features," a section which breaks down the project into Focus, Development, Organization, and Style. While these four qualities are included in each project, they vary widely from genre to genre. For example, in the Style section of "Autobiography," Moxley urges students to use dialogue "to show rather than tell," and provides examples of such dialogue from Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda and a brief story by Charles Darwin. After a student has become familiar with the genre and its conventions, a teacher may wish to assign readings. Each project contains a large number of potential readings; "Autobiography" includes 42. When the student clicks one of these readings, the screen divides into two windows--the right being the reading, and the left being a "Critical Reading Questions" form, which the student may complete and submit electronically for grading.
       The next section is "Guidelines and Sample Topics," whose most prominent feature is a series of heuristics to guide the student in choosing and contemplating a topic. One of the heuristics for Autobiography is, "Has anyone ever let you down? In retrospect, have you been able to understand why the person failed to fulfill your expectations? Have you ever known anyone who chose a difficult career path or lifestyle? How has your experience with this person influenced your life and career goals?" These heuristics are an excellent way to respond to the oft-heard student lament, "I don't know what to write about!"
       The last step is "Helpful Tools and Resources," which, in the case of Autobiographies, features a Life Map, Student Examples, and Peer and Self Evaluation forms. The Life Map resource takes students through a tour of colorful "life maps" drawn by students and oral historians. Moxley writes, "Using visual language, life maps are a form of shorthand. Each image is saturated with personally meaningful stories. For example, you could draw your neighborhood where you grew up, perhaps drawing pictures of your friends' homes, your school and church." Entertaining activities such a this one help liberate students from the crushing attitude that composition must be dreary.
       By this point, the student should be well on his or her way to drafting a good autobiography. However, the student (or teacher) may wish to visit the Message Board attached to the Autobiography project. Students and teachers can collaborate with anyone else using CWO. Perhaps a teacher in Alaska has produced a series of handouts or additional heuristics to guide students; she could post it here for the benefit of all. A student from Kansas may have a question; conceivably, posting the question here could start a long threaded discussion.
       The emphasis on interactivity and collaboration help separate CWO from print textbooks. With CWO, teachers can easily monitor and archive students' work as they progress through the heuristics and reflective exercises. In other words, teachers would have more information at their disposal when evaluating their students' work than an outline and two drafts. With CWO, a teacher could intervene at any stage of the student's writing process.