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

The Many Colored Coat of the Emperor: Multi-layered, Literate, and Physical: Node III
By Chris Dean

The First Frontier of Space
or, Resist the Borg, and He Shall Know Thee:
From Initial Resistance to Critical Engagement with Real-time Chat

Section One

My past history of working online is, in terms of using chat, MOOs, and MUDs, replete with questions about the technologies. I often found myself, As Althea Hendrickson notes in "The Intimidation of Cyberspace," wondering if the effort invested in working with synchronous technologies was worth the time and energy that my students and I had to invest in terms of "knowledge, time, and cost." And, even if I wanted to keep up with the work being done in synchronous technologies while working a 4/4 load, my work was "complicated by constantly coined jargon, tantamount to a new language which also requires time to master" (Hendrickson).

However, I want to point out that my reticence to invest time, energy, and intellectual capital in synchronous technologies did not mean that I hadn't tried them. I had, but all of my forays into chat, MOOs, and MUDs had been uniformly disappointing. I and my students often felt like we were spiraling around in nothingness with all discussions going nowhere. I couldn't convince myself that what I was doing online couldn't be done simply by having students talk to each other face-to-face.

I knew the many reasons to engage in online discussion forums. Since the late 1980s, there have been numerous studies in composition that show its benefits. As Margaret Beauvois notes in an 1998 article in Canadian Modern Language Review:

Studies in English literature and composition classes using electronic discussion in class suggest that typically reticent students--women, minority students, and anxious or shy learners--tend to participate in the discussion more readily and more abundantly in this non-threatening environment than in their regular classroom (Bump, 1990; Faigley, 1990; Kemp, 1993; Slatin, 1991). Students and teachers also enjoy this method of communication and evaluate it positively (Batson, 1988; Beauvois, 1993, 1994; Bump, 1990; Cononelos & Oliva, 1993; Kelm, 1992).

However, despite all of the intellectual knowledge, my gut demanded speech in my classroom as well. What I came to realize in the Spring 2003 semester was that my gut was right, and it was also wrong. I needed both electronic and oral discourse to do the work that I wanted to do as a teacher of teachers. Allow me to explain.

Node Four of "The Many Colored Coat of the Emperor"