Allegheny College
English
Reproduced with permission from NeXT Computer, Inc.
A Reference Guide to NeXT in Higher Education, Fall 1992
ยช 1992 NeXT Computer, Inc
Learning as a shared activity in Basic Writing courses
In the early 1980s when Allegheny College designed the Basic Writing course for freshmen, it was a review and practice course in the fundamentals of expository writing. In 1989, though, the English Department abandoned the traditional course material in favor of a variety of innovative teaching practices using NeXT technology.
First, the English faculty decided to focus class materials on a specific topic. Because Pennsylvania had recently enacted new environmental protection laws (and Allegheny had adopted a schoolwide recycling program), the faculty chose an environment-related theme for the course: human control of nature. For texts, they selected three books that explore how humans have interacted with the environment in the 20th century: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring; John McPhee's The Control of Nature; and Alston Chase's Playing God in Yellowstone: The Destruction of America's First National Park.
According to Susan Smith, assistant professor of English and director of the expository writing program, the faculty opted to teach all sections of the course using NeXT workstations "because NeXTSTEP provided the kind of interpersonal communication environment we were looking for, and its powerful object-oriented development environment made designing and creating our own software a practical reality."
Says Smith, "One of our goals was to create lessons and tools for our students that would involve them in the preparation of the materials for the course."
For the course, Allegheny's Educational Computing Services developed Journal, a custom application that lets faculty make weekly assignments in an instruction panel and provides windows for the students to enter their responses. "Having the students keep journals helps us pinpoint problems students are having with writing or understanding the texts they are reading and respond to those problems in a timely fashion," says Smith. The journal writing also often stimulates classroom and/or electronic discussions.
The faculty also constructed a series of sequenced writing assignments that use course readings as the basis for discussion and writing. The assignments ranged from simple summaries to more complex evaluations. Students begin the term by writing a summary of the Foreword of Silent Spring, for example, and move to assignments in which they examine their own perspectives on issues raised in their readings.
"The multitasking environment is an invaluable tool to students in these assignments," says Smith. "The students have immediate access to their journals, notes, and other tools, likeWebster's Dictionary and Thesaurus and electronic mail. They can open these as windows simultaneously on their computer screens, and we encourage them to use all these resources as they compose their essays."
To comment electronically on student papers, instructors and Educational Computing Services developed an application called Commentary. The application enables faculty to record comments directly into the text of student papers by speaking into a microphone built into the monitor of every NeXT computer. Students receive their essays electronically with a series of buttons inserted into the text. They click each button and listen to the comments with headphones.
"We discovered Commentary was extremely useful for comments concerning ways to improve evidence, to clear up faulty reasoning, and to strengthen weak or inadequately explained examples," says Smith. "Not surprisingly, we learned we could be less formal and use humor with our spoken comments. Our computer and writing tutors told us that students listened to the comments repeatedly, especially the comments of praise."
In addition, faculty designed 10 weekly lessons to help students with writing problems that arise during classes. Each lesson requires students to read material on-line, use various tools (such as the digital dictionary or editing techniques), and write responses to questions in their electronic notebooks. The first lesson involved writing various-length summaries on Silent Spring. According to Smith, each lesson in the software series was created, revised, and tested in one week. Other lessons included using evidence to support an argument, avoiding informal fallacies, and using source material effectively.
"Designing the lessons gives faculty an opportunity to talk to one other in detail about the issues involved in teaching our courses here at Allegheny," says Smith. "We didn't get that with turnkey software. The process of designing the lessons led many of us to rethink and revise our teaching strategies. Our weekly lessons often incorporated the comments made by students in class discussions just the week before the lesson was written."
Smith says she was initially concerned that such heavy use of a computer in the course would mean that students and faculty would spend less time together and, consequently, communicate less. After teaching the course since 1990 using NeXT machines, however, she says, "Although I may have seen students less frequently during my office hours, I've never communicated so regularly and so profoundly with students. We ask students to use e-mail to send us questions and papers, so we're constantly in touch with them."
Concludes Smith, "The network has created a writing center without barriers. Indeed, we combine NeXT workstations and NeXTSTEP development tools to create a serious learning and communications environment. We know students are successfully completing far more work than they did in previous English 100 classes. In these courses, learning has become a shared activity-not a one-way transmission of information and answers. Faculty also report improved relationships with one other as they work collaboratively and communicate electronically about the lessons, assignments, and applications that support the courses."
For more information, please contact:
Susan Smith
Assistant Professor of English and
Director of the Expository Writing Program
Allegheny College
Meadville, PA 16335
(814) 332-4343
ssmith@alleg.edu