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.

Other?

The story about the black mother and the complaints of some African American students in Blackman’s article reminds me of two international students I met. One of them is a Fulbright scholar from an African country. He has degree in his home country and he comes to the US as a scholar. I do not know how he is placed in a doctoral class here in BG. He came to the writing center for help. It was not difficult for me to find that he did not know what assignment sheet meant. I asked him “Does your instructor have particular rules about the online sources?” He did not know what I was talking about. I mentioned the library database and he excitedly shouted out “That is what the instructor wants.” He absolutely had no idea what an academic database was, let alone to use it. I went over the assignment with him and showed him how to use the library
resources. He told me he was so lost. I comforted him telling him I was equally lost when I first came. The blackboard was once a challenge to me. As an international student, I did not know what it was. I was just too scared to even think of using it. At that time I was supposed to use it to communicate with my students, which gave me more pressure. I know another white international student who almost quitted. Actually I just have two Chinese friends who asked for leave. Their difficulties are the same: too much academic pressure. Looks like I am digressing since I did not talk about the stereotypes at all. But I am addressing the problem of how international students are overlooked here. The culture change, fear of technology, different pedagogy even different foods can make life very difficult. If looking into this, I would consider this cultural oppression. When all my friends are so depressed, not so many people really care about them or show nay concern to them. It might be true in this culture that people will not help the others unless asked to. But I feel safe to say that the needs of the international students are not met. Everything is set up in a default way—what the native Americans might need.
Sometimes I would like to make my postings mor etheoretical but I think real life stories might examplify better.

Do Visuals Always Work Well?

Bolter’s writing is quite intriguing. I am quite interested in discussing the code and the interpretation of writing. The author might have his secret code when composing, but the interpretation is totally at the hand of the readers. When the author is composing, he might want to express his thoughts, or to inform people, or even to formulate an argument. The awareness of the audience probably helps the author to choose how to compose and help the readers to decode. This week’s readings reminds of the feminist readings for introduction to composition. We can be confined as well as inspired by our life experiences. Such experiences can determine the way we want to compose and decode. When I walked on this campus, I could not understand at least 80% of the posters. Usually we may assume that visuals help readers to understand but it is not always true. If the poster is text-heavy, I tend to understand it better compared with those that have more images. I do not know who those people in the posters are even if they are BIG people and what some of images symbolize. Therefore I cannot decode what the designer wants his audiences to get. It is easy to spot visuals in the modern world and people tend to rely on them but to read beyond these images is difficult. It is a painful experience but at least it shows visuals do not really work well everywhere anywhere.
Do you understand what the image on the left suggests?

Hypertext—Freedom?

Hypertext—Freedom?
Online writing seems to give us so much freedom to communicate in different genres and to different groups of people. I donot see how the emergence of hypertext can suggest the end of the print. I never think print can be replaced by digital media. People not only feel differently when reading online compared with reading printed books, but also have different expectations to them. This explains why an online source (unless in online journals or academic databases) is usually considered invalid by many instructors.

Does hypertext offer us more space to write? Seemingly yes. People blog, ejournal, create online albums and e-portofolios to chat and/or to market themselves. Hypertext appears to provide us easy opportunities to get our thoughts published and recognized. However, I would rather think of it as a web instead of a space. To me space suggests liberty, ease and comfort. But in this typertext world, I feel more like being controlled instead of controlling though I really enjoy the fun that technology has brought me. People publish their thoughts online and have showed great enthusiasm to link and be linked to different sites. If I read online, I can easily be brought to different pages. I am more confused than relaxed since many times I ask myself why I am there reading that irrelevant page? For many times, those contradictory online reports puzzle me since I donot know which might be true. Of course I need to be judge on my own. But unlike print sources which have been peer-reviewed many times for its credibility, online texts make me wonder what on earth might be t he truth. Therefore, such seeming freedom actually presses the public to decide on their own and be responsible for the consequences if there are. Then are not human beings like spiders spinning so hard but can never be freed from the web they weaved? This web can work as their weapon to get food, but also mess up their little world.

Virtual Meeting

Change of Pedagogy in Virtual Classrooms
In Danowski’s article, she quotes Holmberg “distance education is based on learning as an individual activity.” I cannot really understand why this should be the case. I cannot imagine an online class where students are confined to individual activities and ignore collaboration among peers. I hope I did not misunderstand Holmberg. To me one of the merits of online classes is students enjoy more freedom to collaborate with peers since they are not so much restricted by time and space compared with traditional classrooms. E-journaling is good. I can see why Danowski thinks that we should synthesize academic into journals—which are usually perceived as self-reflexive. Some people claim that journals are not a good way to enhance critical thinking since they are basically for self- reflection. But if we synthesize academic writing into our journal, this should not be a problem. E-journal provides a venue for students in the same class to express, criticize and learn.

I am interested in how instructors can create “a comfortable learning environment for students” who choose distance learning. In terms of creating a comfortable learning environment, I tend to believe that it is easier to do so in a traditional classroom where teachers can verbally and nonverbally communicate with students more directly. For example, a smile from the instructor, a friendly gesture, and even the eye contacts among participants in the classroom sooth the students down. I am quite curious to know how instructors can effectively control the “mood” of this virtual space.

The virtual peer review article by Lee-Ann is quite helpful in terms of better understanding the pros and cons of peer review. Her discussion about virtual peer review made me think about my online tutoring in the writing center. I can surely see the convenience online tutoring brings both to me and the students. Neither students nor tutors are so strictly controlled by time. Students can get feedback in a different way—tutors need to type to comment, thus making a permanent record possible. This creates the possibility that students can always go back and refer to the notes for their current and future assignments. But I am not so much in favor of online sessions since it is basically one way communication. I know what the students want me to work on but I do not have the chance to know what they think of the comments. Students’ responses help tutors see whether the students are comfortable with the advice or not. Sometimes I see a different problem other than the problem the student writer wants me to address. I do not have the chance to ask whether he will feel comfortable if we shift and work on that. Virtual peer review does give people the chance to comment on each other’s comments. However, since people probably may comment at different time, the discussion may not be as fruitful as it can be because of the busy schedule.

teaching in computer-mediated classroom

Chapter 4 in Computers and Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education reminds me so much of the teaching of English in China. 1989-1991 witnessed the change where computers transform from being personal to interpersonal in America. Such transformation had its impact on the pedagogy of composition classroom and thus attracted many scholars’ attention to the dynamics in the composition classrooms. In China, personal computer did not become popular until the late 90s in the last century. It was in the recent 10 years that thesis and dissertation should be saved in Microsoft Word and printed.
However such late flourish of PCs also brought changes to the English teaching in Chinese universities. In 2002, teachers who taught undergraduates in the foreign language department in the university where I used to teach were required to prepare classes in the form of PowerPoint because the university built many well-equipped multi-media classrooms. We spent some time learning PowerPoint and were quite amazed at what PPT can do to make the class more attention-grabbing and dynamic. Lectures in the form of PPT were considered a way to share resources since teachers could take turns to prepare the class and if someone had additional information, we only needed to save that to our flashdrive(I found that flashdrive was introduced in China a lot earlier than the US). Such a reform saved me lots of time preparing for the class and students were so excited by the new way of leaning English. At that time, my university was the only one in Shaanxi province where English was taught in a multi-media classroom.
But soon many problems came. I think some instructors paid too much effort to make the PPT attractive and fancy. There were lots of effects and transitions. We spent so much time waiting for the next line pop up on the screen. Meanwhile, the real student population in Chinese universities was not seriously considered. I think such a computer-mediated classroom was to help students interact more with their peers. However, just as what it was stated in the book “The teachers’ behavior did not change significantly as the semester progressed, nor did the teachers noticeably adapt their teaching styles to the new environment”(202) So really no great changes took place in the classroom. It was still lecture-heavy and teacher-centered. I failed to give students many opportunities to speak and share since we only had a 90-minute class and I had more than 100 students in the class. I had a hard time deciding who should speak in class. So the intention of having students speak more English in class never became a reality. Many problems like “the marginalization of individuals” and the intentional or intentional “silencing” of some students(203) were still there.I did not consider my class a success. I sometimes wonder how I can implement what I have learned here to a Chinese English classroom.

Box Logic

As a person who loves technology, I find this week’s readings quite interesting. It is true that composition has been tremendously influenced by technology, thus causing noticeable changes in composition. People can use technology for various purposes, and for people in rhetoric and composition, we can use technology to incorporate pictures in different colors and music in different styles to express our thoughts and successfully win the readers’ heart. If pictures can express themselves in still images, the introduction of images in motion adds more dynamics in visual rhetoric.

But on the other hand, I tend to agree with “The means or media are not as important to me as the expressive or conceptual uses afforded by them” (Sirc 113) I used to think that technology is super great and the acquisition of it gives people so much freedom and the cool feeling of “being modern”. However, the more I apply technology in my projects, the more careful I am when I want to use technology. It is not so easy to acquire all the skills needed for the application of various softwares, but the real hard part is the principle that we need to learn to effectively utilize these tools. Conceptualizing how images, colors, fonts, audios work for the project is a life-long process. I believe it is an art that reveals the writers’ personality and thoughts. When the writers deliver their thoughts to the targeted audiences by means of computer-mediated texts, their purposes are not to display how tech-savvy they are, but to effectively inform or persuade them. Therefore it only makes sense if we direct more attention on what the messages are and how to reduce the loss of the messages to its minimum.

The “box logic” made me to think of the classroom as a box too. This box is made of items like computers, chairs, overhead, printer and also the most important items like teacher and students. I think when the writer picks up items from the box to compose, he is quite selective. Such selection applies to the classroom too. Students select courses and they come to the classroom. The difference I see here is that the most important items in the classroom are quite active since they can choose which box to go while the items in the author’s box are quite passive. Within the big box—classroom, there are lots of interaction between the students and the teacher, students and students and students and computers. Students and teacher can work as individuals or groups quite flexibly (just like researching to cut and paste to see what works together and what not). Of course the effectiveness of such a classroom is to a large extent decided by how successfully the teacher carries out his/her pedagogy. If the instructor’s methods work well and do make the class move like fluid instead of being static, probably the class is successful in the sense of helping students to be creative, collaborative and interactive.

Educational MOOs?

“Not only do MOOs connect students locally, they connect students at a global level, with each other and with resources otherwise inaccessible.” (Haynes and Holmevik 1)

My learning experiences in Tech 566 showed me the great charm of MOOs. The whole class was doing a project for a company, including a comprehensive website and an attractive brochure. We were divided into different groups and we worked in virtual groups which is the students in the class may work with different people in different groups. Therefore throughout the semester we changed our partners quite often for various small projects. Every of us had a busy schedule and the students in that class came from various departments, we tended to forget who our partners were. Then the online blackboard helped us a lot. We were divided into two groups which were divided into several smaller groups with quite specific assignments to finish. As long as we logged into MyBGSU, we knew who we were working with and what we were supposed to do. We could actually visit other groups too if we wanted to know the overall pace of the class. The cool thing was we could leave messages there and email other members to check the updated information without disturbing the other classmates by selecting users. Files were attached and feedback was given. It worked like a classroom but we were not so restricted by time and place. If something popped up and everyone needed to know it, the project manager would email the class. So blackboard features like emailing, discussion board did help connect students and provided sources otherwise inaccessible.

A wholesome way of thinking

One of the many things I begin to think in week 3 and week 4 readings are the different ways of categorization. In my opinion, the categorization that I noticed seems to enable a very different way of thinking.

In Chapter 2, page, 64: “If we can think about resistance as an important element of computers and writing histories, then we reinforce our collective investment in the careful and responsible use of technologies” (Inman). If we check the assumptions of this statement, it is easy to see that resistance of computer is not regarded as foreign/external to computers; therefore, it is not posed in this theoretical framework as the opposite force and does not form a binary pair with the computer. The underlying importance is that this way of categorization allows us to think the resistance as part of the big picture. Mapping and analyzing such resistance enables us to improve computer technology, or to see computer technology in multifaceted lights.

The description on page 15 of Chapter 1 also used different categorization:
“One of the puzzling elements of technology use is the way many individuals imagine computers and other technologies as fixed, static innovations to be adopted or resisted, rather than as fluid innovations that can be adapted.” Rather than suggesting us thinking context as being passive and invisible in the background, it enables us to foreground the context and thinking technology, persons, and contexts as equitable elements that jointly established, control, support, and limit each other. In this way, the understanding is no longer the binary thinking, but takes more complex forms of different and specific power dynamics. I think this way of categorization, and the theoretical potential enabled by it composes a new feature of my study and my way of perceiving the world.

Embracing New Media in Writing Classroom?

One of the most important elements of cyborg era is the blurring boundaries between human and technology. People start to view that human bodies and technology mutually overlap with each other. Meanwhile, with the presence of technology, the subjectivity of human beings has acquired a different platform for different kinds of development. The feature of computers as new platform requires writing teachers to realize that computer technology has eroded into/changed our everyday communication pattern. Failing to embrace new media is failing to notice an ever increasing portion of communication and composition.
New media have created composition in a different style. With the introduction of technologies, computer and internet per se, writing classroom is no longer so strictly defined by space and time. Students can drop their assignments in the digital drop box on the online blackboard anytime before the due date rather than physically meeting the instructor in class time or conference time. Meanwhile, they can just click and submit wherever they have access to internet. Not only the location, space, time have changed with the arrival of new media, but also its content and the form. For example, in email, blog, facebook, we frequently use the symbols of emotions, like , to supplement our verbal message while the symbols, when written or typed, cannot be strictly said to be nonverbal. To judge these new uses of symbols is one pending issue that computer technology creates. The rise of such issues make it necessary for writing teachers to view these more diversified ways of expression as blessings for enriching the different patterns of composition potentials in new era.

“as the cyborg era as a term suggests, technologies should be foregrounded equitably with individuals and contexts around them, enabling a more careful and reasonable assessment of those technologies, one not restricted by problematic binaries and instead, featuring attention to the unique character and implications of the technologies (Computers and writing: The Cyborg Era).”
Technology does not/has never come as pure knowledge that can be defined by its own self. It has to be defined by its social use, which contains important factors such as culture, personal experience, and education, etc. Viewing technology as a tool is to rigidly define the relationship between human beings and technology as subject and object. This underlying definition/assumption offers very limited explanatory power of how technology can change us as persons, and how our existence as human beings is self-explanatory either. Indeed, it enables us to think technology as both a tool to make the job completed and also a chance to view daily life from a different angle. Therefore, technology does not participate in our writing passively but rather actively.

week 6 readings

This week’s three articles are insightful. I personally experienced the different physical setting of American and Chinese classrooms but did not seriously think of the possible differences this may make on the students’ learning outcomes. In China we tend to sit in rows and there are limited interactions between students and teachers. Due to the huge student population, only a few numbers of students can get the chance to speak and get heard in classes. But I believe that if we divide the students into smaller groups and make them sit in circles, more meaningful communications might occur since there will be more eye contacts and people are more likely to pay attention to the person who is speaking when they are within their sight.
In a computer environment, students have an equal opportunity to get their ideas heard if they type. Shy students or students who are less articulate can be more comfortable sharing their inputs. The charts and tables in Palmquists’ article demonstrated how computers play an active role in composition classes. The only thing in the computer-based classroom is how participation is evaluated. Usually in such classrooms, participation is evaluated based on how many messages he posts. So a good learner may not be considered an active participant even if he is quite engaged in thinking. Teachers and students can assume that he went for a drink during the class. However, I do agree that students get more work done in a computer-based class.