--Michael Day, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology 

For argumentative papers, or papers on controversial topics, networked discussion tools allow students to get a sense of audience, and the range of opinions on a topic. When they have a written discussion, one students might make a statement, and others can disagree, provide alternatives, or demand qualification. Thus, because good argumentative writing demands some acknowledgement of contending viewpoints, the class can provide a wider range of opinions for each other. Some writing teachers have also had success testing claims on outside audiences, via MUD, MOO, and Email. Not only does the discussion give students ideas for possible alternative viewpoints, it also helps them be more generally aware of the world of values and beliefs outside their families and towns. (next entry) 

--Diane C. Boehm, Saginaw Valley State University 

"Writing and Cyberspace," a new course I developed and taught for the first time this past winter, evolved from the desire of my colleague and myself to offer students a course in which they could learn about electronic media and how they are intersecting with writing, and develop their own writing skills as well. I designed the course as I always do, by asking the primary question: What do I want to have happen to students in this course? I looked at a number of similar online courses, and developed assignments to meet my goals: 

• rhetorical analysis of a listserv 
• summary & critique of article from on-line journal 
• online job search/resume 
• contrastive analysis of two search engines (with a partner) 
• "Design a Project"

--George Otte, Baruch College/CUNY 

I'm a writing director, so this is the area I focus on most. Lately, because it is of special interest to me, I've focused particularly on basic or remedial writing, wondering what new technologies can do for those judged most in need of help. For a couple of consecutive semesters now I've focused still more specifically on a group of students who fail both reading and writing assessments on entry--who, if these assessments are to be believed, have genuine literacy problems. The results have been astonishingly gratifying (not least of all because part of this experience was grist to the mill of a national cost/benefits study of computer use in college teaching). Even in terms of raw data like pass-fail rates, retention, etc., the classes with computer-enhanced instruction do significantly better. (In a class for which the pass rate has historically been 40%, I've had 100% pass rates for two terms running now, and successful exit is determined by cross-read exams the instructor does not score.) I'm trying to process the results in my own head, trying to get a sense of how much this may translate into applications for "regular" composition and other venues of instruction. My own sense is that basic writing students are not qualitatively different from other students, that what works for them will work for others. But I should get specific about "what works." 

My work with computers in basic writing goes back to the eighties and two things in particular: work with early versions of Daedalus (especially InterChange) and with computerized text analysis (specifically, an error tabulation program developed by Gerard Dalgish, a friend and colleague). I could go on about the particulars almost endlessly, but the two overarching principles are fairly simple and straightforward (and don't rely on particular programs or techniques). First, computer-mediated communication enormously facilitates the experience of writing as genuine communication (a new experience for most writing students, not just basic writing students either); there is a much more powerful sense of audience, much more effective impetus to open up, and the result is heightened fluency and thoughtfulness. Second, though errors (a major issue for BW students) are a part of this experience, encountered in the process of communication (as sometimes funny, sometimes distracting, sometimes obfuscating), error tabulation--used only for more formal, finished pieces and never for on-line exchanges--is also very useful for exposing patterns, and the students (who have formerly been told unhelpful things like "You make too many mistakes") find the computer-generated analyses compelling as well as useful, ascribing a kind of pseudo-objective oracular function to the computer (when, of course, it's actually the instructor who has to go in and tag the errors). This work on two fronts--correctness and communicative fluency--relies on computers to do what could not happen (certainly not in the same way) without them. Tabulating the errors (the computer generates percentages for each type, an error-to-word ratio, etc.) would be maddening, insupportable without computers doing computing; and the fluency that results from computer-mediated communication is in large part due to an in-your-face experience of audience possible in no other medium of written communication. (next entry)