by Christopher Dean, Will Hochman, Carra Hood, and Robert McEachern

Exuberance and the Failure to Learn Their Names: Node I
By Carra Hood

I began this semester with exuberance and idealism. It was not my first in a computerized classroom but the first that I seriously confronted the pedagogical challenges of computerized writing instruction. During previous semesters, I had asked students in my first-year composition classes at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) to use computers from time to time, primarily to produce in-class writing or to perform research. But this term, all excited about the wireless laptop lab, I started the semester asking students to use computers each class session. Students sent their assignments to me as email attachments; I sent comments back to students electronically. Students communicated their thoughts about course readings to me and to other students electronically. They also responded electronically to each other's and to my comments. Students conducted peer evaluation electronically, as well.

Three weeks into the semester, I thought it was all good. Both writing instruction and students' writing practice seemed enhanced by the daily use of computers. Communicating with students over email meant that I could receive their writing assignments anytime anywhere and that I could respond to them promptly whether I was in class, in my office, in the library, at home, in a wired coffee shop, on the train, at a friend's house, or at my parents' house in Pennsylvania. I could also direct their research just as promptly and efficiently. In fact, students' knowledge about the varieties of online, researchable materials seemed to expand significantly this semester, as did their ability to work with research in writing and to perform citation.

The following week, however, a few minutes before Tuesday's 4:40 classes started, I overheard two students talking while they waited in the hallway outside EN a109. Both were in my Tuesday/Thursday composition course. Although I didn't hear what preceded this comment, one student said to the other, "I don't know anyone's name in this class." An innocuous enough statement--one that could be made by students taking any course in any room at SCSU--shocked me. Actually, it embarrassed me because I thought that engaging groups of students in electronic conversations would have accomplished just the opposite. I assumed, although I did not monitor every piece of email, that students disclosed information about themselves in these conversations in addition to sharing their opinions about course readings. I also thought that informal discussion, which took place during each class session while students waited to pick up their laptops and which also took place between students during the class (i.e., asking questions of and helping each other with the work on any given day), indicated that at the very least if they didn't know anything else about each other, they knew each other's names.

Well, not only was I wrong about students' knowledge of each other's names, but I also realized that four weeks into the semester I didn't know every student's name either, even though putting students' names to faces had been an achievement that I prided myself on. I knew the name of neither the student who made the comment nor the student to whom she was speaking. I did know some students' names; however, those students had faced difficulties with email and attachments, subsequently handing in hard copies of their work for class.

This realization caused me to question the pedagogical value of computerized classes. In a department that, as Bob McEachern reports, perceives computers as "a tool for dehumanization," I was concerned that my experience proved just that. Not knowing each other's names, however, doesn't equate to dehumanization. Rather, this experience suggests that knowing each other's names is as inadequate marker of humanization in the classroom as it is of pedagogical success. But like Bob McEachern wrote, "It feels good to me" when we all know each other's names, so I decided to keep the computers in the closet until we had accomplished this learning, which took two class sessions. Next semester, I thought at the time, I will hold off bringing the computers out for two weeks; then, we will all know each other names before we even begin engaging in electronic communication. I was not uncomfortable communicating to students whose faces I could not put to names; students were not distressed by their inability to name the person sitting next to them either. The two students talking in the hallway before class shrugged their shoulders when I asked them if finally knowing the names of the other students in the class changed their experience of the course. "No biggy," they said.

So here we are. We all know each other's names, and yet it doesn't seem to matter. Perhaps, computer technology has effects on classroom identities that parallel those occurring in chat rooms. Can I intervene to prevent this effect? Should I? If students' writing and research skills improve, should I really care whether we all recognize each other's names and faces? After all, professors teaching online courses wouldn't know if they were standing on line at Stop and Shop behind one of their students. Is the classroom space really that different? The students in my class do not always know my name either. I guess I have a little bit of a Luddite in me because I want to believe that the classroom space must be different. Whether I keep the computers in the closet for two weeks; ask students to create a signature that includes their photo, as Joe Fields, a math professor at SCSU, suggested when I recounted my dilemma to him; or design another solution, I am convinced that it is important for me and for the students in my classes to put names to faces of everyone who shares the same physical space.

Node Two of "Exuberance and the Failure to Learn Their Names"