After using College Writing Online for a year, I have found that it challenges my thinking about teaching and research. What I want to do in this section is describe the implications CWO (and other webtexts) may have for the future of composition. To this end, I have set myself a few difficult questions:

1. Why use a webtext like College Writing Online instead of a traditional print textbook?
I have often had this conversation with my fellow compositionists, many of whom are not interested in computers. We might expand the question to one more germane to the field of Computers and Writing, namely, "Why bring computer technology into a writing classroom?" This question has always baffled me because I find it difficult to imagine why anyone wouldn't want to take advantage of all the new electronic tools at the disposal of modern authors, editors, and publishers. I suppose that Gutenberg would have been similarly confounded by questions concerning the usefulness of printed texts. Why some of my colleagues still prefer the old-fashioned approach to teaching writing with pen and paper has long been a mystery to me.
       I suppose the question has more to do with good old American pragmatics than anything else: What practical advantage does CWO offer over printed textbooks, and are these advantages great enough to warrant the trials and tribulations that are a necessary evil of any significant technological endeavor? I posed this question to my students on my forums, and got some fairly telling responses. Most students responded positively, remarking that they would like to use webtexts again in other classes. Negative comments are mostly concerned with the steep learning curve involved in working with an online textbook for the first time. Some of them do not have computers at home, which forces them to spend extra time on campus preparing their assignments.
       The obvious disadvantages of CWO, or, indeed, of any online resource, are the reliability and accessibility of the technology involved. While most modern American students are comfortable surfing the Web and working with e-mail, some students come from families and schools where computers were minimal or altogether absent. I frequently heard the remark from these students that they had "signed up for a writing class, not a computer class." I felt this remark was undeserved, most notably because most modern college courses make use of the Internet in some way, but, in these students' defense, I did find myself spending a large part of class time explaining computer concepts and describing electronic processes. Nearly every question I received at the end of class dealt with some aspect of the technology. Students would complain that they could access CWO fine from a lab computer but not at home, and so on. Others complained that after spending hours completing a form, their work would be mysteriously deleted or cleared before they could submit it. Perhaps the worst of these problems occurred at the University of Tampa, right after the outbreak of a major e-mail computer virus. The network was down all over campus, and was only slowly restored (the restoration took nearly three weeks). During this time, the only students who could properly access the book were commuter students with reliable networking capabilities at home. Needless to say, the situation was frustrating to everyone involved and seemed to make the argument that "we ought to just use a regular book" hard to combat.
       The two advantages CWO offers over traditional print textbooks are collaboration and interaction. No print textbook can build the online collaborative community CWO offers. Also, CWO enables students and teachers to collaborate in fundamental ways; not just by suggesting readings, but also contributing to forums where the chapters and teaching strategies are expanded and discussed. The interactive features of CWO are another advantage. Students can use the interactive forms to practice writing exercises, plan and manage their projects, or facilitate their review process. I found it entirely possible to teach with CWO without using any paper whatsoever; every stage of planning, drafting, editing, and revising was stored and archived online for easy evaluation.
       After using CWO for three semesters, I would not willingly return to a traditional print-based course. Even though I encountered occasional glitches, seeing CWO work the way it was intended more than made up for them. I also feel that we are doing a disservice to students by not exposing them to some basic writing technology. Though a computer course or department can help students learn the "basics," we should, as modern compositionists, know better how to use electronic tools to aid writing. CWO anticipates this need and provides chapters on building Web sites, e-zines, and electronic portfolios.

2. How would you improve CWO?
I have two suggestions here for CWO or future authors of composition webtexts. The first involves publication; I would like to see authors move away from commercial publishers and consider the benefits of open-content publication. The second involves multimedia. Since the World Wide Web makes incorporating multimedia easier than ever before, and since so much current research demonstrates that students learn best from more than one teaching method, webtext authors should take for granted that they will be including video and audio into their projects.
       I would like to see CWO offered as a free, open-content composition webtext. What I mean by this is that none of the text would be copyrighted and students and teachers would work together to keep it refined and updated; a socialist publishing scheme, if you will. We currently see such projects underway by Dave Munger. I feel that these kinds of projects are more reflective of the kind of collaborative and community-driven approach that we all ought to emulate as members of the profession. If profit-motivated publishers were brought in at all, they would host the server and, if no other source of profit could be found, solicit advertising. 
       Still, I cannot overlook the fact that many administrators, students, and teachers simply could not accept the premise that a webtext (or textbook) offered for free would be as "professional" as one sponsored by a "legitimate" textbook publisher at significant expense. This situation will probably change with the market; as businesses begin to take open-source software seriously, perhaps schools will likewise embrace open-content. Until this moment arrives, however, CWO offers a fine alternative to print textbooks and at least encourages collaboration.
       Other than the financial aspect, I would like to see more video and audio (an innovation that Moxley himself sees coming to composition in his "E-Media" section). Ideally, CWO would feature a series of lectures or multimedia presentations to help guide students through the writing process. Implementing audio and video is one vital way in which a webtext can reign supreme over a printed textbook. Of course, the bandwidth and storage space for length videos (even with superb compression schemes) can be mighty, but they could be provided on a CD-ROM to accompany the book, or, better yet, be available as downloads in a peer-to-peer networking system. If a commercial textbook publisher was involved, it could splice advertisements into these lecture videos and thus recover some of the losses. Even though incorporating video and audio into the webtext may dramatically increase the complexity of the publishing endeavor, I feel doing so is critical--especially when so much current research shows that students learn from a variety of methods.
       Other problems:

3. How may a webtext like CWO change composition?
Again, I must return to my favorite aspect of webtexts: the collaborative. If enough compositionists embraced CWO and took full advantage of its collaborative features (the forums, in particular), we would see the emergence of a strong community support infrastructure. Compositionists will hopefully stop seeing their textbooks as something static, (I hesitate to say "and as containers of fixed knowledge, since few of us would claim to have such knowledge about composition and rhetoric). Instead, compositionists will view their materials as dynamic and conversational; something in which they have a personal stake.
       Imagine a neophyte compositionist (perhaps a graduate student) teaching his or her first composition course. Let us assume that this teacher has the support of the department; perhaps the writing program administrator and a few helpful advisors or mentors (in these tough financial times, who can realistically ask for more?) Can anyone state with any sincerity that this support base is adequate for the teacher's, or, more importantly, the students' needs?
       CWO potentially offers that compositionist another means of support, encouragement, and enrichment: the family of enthusiasts who inhabit the message boards and contribute their time and energy into helping anyone out of a dilemma. I have seen such communities spring up virtually overnight (and last indefinitely) for other applications, especially when those applications are open-source. Consider this one for an open-source product called HTML AREA. Hopefully, the collaborative features of CWO will be expanded in the future, ideally separating teacher-messages from student-messages if the writers so choose (I assume that most of us would not want our students seeing our requests for assistance or pleas for help).
       Of course, I should emphasize that CWO offers the potential for this degree of collaboration. As of this writing, few people have contributed to the message boards. However, CWO is fairly young and has not had time to penetrate deeply enough into composition to make its presence felt. Hopefully, this review and others will help spread the news and encourage participation in this innovative new approach to composition.