Effective Teaching in E-writing

Blair and Tulley
“The AAUW recommends that instructors respect multiple points of entry into the electronic writing environment. Every teaching approach will not work effectively with every student; thus, a variety of approaches are needed to address different learning styles, particularly those that have been identified as feminine by theorists…”
Addison and Hilligoss discusses whether e-writing is a safe haven or not.

It is not surprising that people would assume that e-writing would be an e-utopia—a heaven that is discrimination free. However, just like Blair and Tulley as well as Addisson and Hilligoss found e-writing was also impacted by race, gender and ethnicity etc. Then the question is: How can instructors create good activities that can effectively reduce such prejudice? How to subvert the traditional power structure where males and the instructor are the center? How can instructors create an entry for every student?

Feminist teaching pedagogy aims to create a fair learning atmosphere by destroying the old power structure and constructing a new power structure. Like Addisson and Hilligos says, instructors need to “recognize and respect differences among the students” and “endorsing collaboration rather than competition might ease some of the tension female students may be feeling in the classroom.” (Blair and Tulley) Apart from respect and collaboration, the instrutor needs to come up with actvities that are narrow enough to help the students formulate ideas but at the same time being broad enough to cover different interests. Another approach is having them develop their own projects. After the completion of the projects, students can peer review what the others have. When they do the peer review, instructors can purposefully ask students to see the stereotypes revealed in the projects. They can also work in pairs/groups and see the rules hidden under some similarities or differences. This will be an approach to help students be aware of the power structure in the classroom to redefine the power structure in the classroom.

If relating e-writing with the body theory in composition studies, I can see how the weak bodies (females, people of color, the poor etc.) might be oppressed in the online spaces. The only way to break through is to decenter the strong.