Opening Statement

Christine Hult, Utah State University

Since Mike posed this forum question, I've been thinking about how communication across the curriculum (CAC) has evolved on my own campus and, specifically, how it has changed in response to recent near-revolutionary changes in technology. We, like many other universities across the country, are using technology in support of faculty outreach and training efforts, but our efforts are indirect, through other technology initiatives, rather than directly connected to CAC. I don't think there is one "ideal" way for WAC/CAC programs to use technology. What I do think, though, is that all such programs must confront the technology question – and must indeed use technology in some fashion., since it is currently the most powerful agent for curriculum change in academia.

There have been ongoing CAC efforts at Utah State as a part of the General Education curriculum, called the "Citizen-Scholar" program:

A university education prepares students to work and live meaningfully in today's rapidly changing global society . . . . These competencies include: 1. Reading, listening, and viewing for comprehension; 2. Communicating effectively for various purposes and audiences.... 5. Working effectively, both collaboratively and individually.
To satisfy these competencies, a two-tiered "Communications Literacy" program was instituted: two required English courses (freshmen and sophomore writing) plus two 3-credit, upper-division courses that have been designated as Communications Intensive (CI) courses in the major. (These competencies are described more fully in the USU General Catalog, which can be found at the USU Home Page http://www.usu.edu)

However, as has happened on many campuses, since this newest initiative was put into place about three years ago as part of the university's switch from a quarter to a semester calendar, many faculty have begun to be somewhat complacent about CAC. Courses which were originally designated as CI may not always be reviewed. New courses that are proposed go through a committee that reviews the syllabus, but then follow-up to see if what was proposed is actually what gets taught is not systematic. Those of us who have been in the CAC field for some time know that to keep a program going, it needs constant monitoring. It also needs considerable resources behind the program if the program is to be sustained, permanent resources that have not been forthcoming on our campus.

As Susan McLeod (2000) points out in the first Academic.Writing Forum, "WAC programs should be flexible and forward-looking, partnering with (or co-opting, if necessary) educational initiatives that are or can be amenable to WAC goals" (http://wac.colostate.edu/aw/forums/winter2000/index.htm). At my institution, what we have co-opted is our state's current mania for all things technological. Another program has found a similar strategy to work on their campus, as described by Linda Anstendig and Eugene Richie (2000) of Pace University in Academic.Writing's CAC Research Reports:

Although over the past two years we had been giving workshops, highlighting faculty efforts to integrate both 'writing to learn' and 'learning to write' assignments in their courses, and had brought a national WAC leader, Christopher Thaiss, to our campus, it was not until we began to focus on technology that we gained more widespread support among faculty in other disciplines. As Cynthia Selfe (1998) noted in her forward to Electronic Communication Across the Curriculum, 'Teachers…gradually realized that technology was useful…as a broadly based support system and medium for the writing and learning that students in all disciplines were doing' (p. xii). The technology component became the hook that drew faculty into this initiative, and seemed to make them more willing to consider redesigning their curriculum and examining their writing assignment requirements." (http://wac.colostate.edu/aw/research/program_reports/pace2000.htm)

A national sea change in higher education has shifted the emphasis to technology on many campuses. This is perhaps even more true in the state of Utah where the governor has been the prime proponent, and chief fundraiser, for a university without walls, the so-called "Western Governors University." The fact that in three years this new "university" has only been able to attract about 200 students hasn't deterred its boosters one iota.

Our response to the WGU in the English Department at Utah State has been to seize control of our intellectual destiny by infusing technology into our own programs and curricula. Students seem to be responding positively to these initiatives, preferring to obtain a degree from a known, accredited institution, rather than some unknown entity like WGU. We have moved rapidly into the business of online education; our campus now offers several degree programs as well as hundreds of courses that are available through distance education via the Internet, including the first Technical Writing master's program available entirely online.

In addition to doing our governor one better, our primary reason for bringing technology into the curriculum has been to allow the university faculty to maintain control over their own intellectual destiny. As we have thought about the impact of a competing virtual university in our own virtual backyard (conceived, governed, and run by non-educators, primarily politicians and business people) we have had to confront very serious issues of local control – control of intellectual inquiry within disciplines, control of teaching methods, and control over curricula.

What does all this mean for Communication across the Curriculum? It seems to me that CAC has a crucial role to play in the development of these new Internet-based programs and curricula. All too often, when courses are translated to the Internet for distance delivery, the teaching methods and models that CAC has fought against for years are imported whole-sale into the new courses – thus perpetuating the worst teaching/learning models from the past.

In his article "Academic Technology and the Future of Higher Education: Strategic Paths Taken and Not Taken," Paul Privateer (1999) argues that, all too often, when "learning migrates to a computer screen – with students memorizing information and then taking on-screen exams," educators fail to take the appropriate learning path that technology can provide. In fact, he states that, if American colleges and universities are to be effective, their "technology agenda should be focused on the production of intelligence rather than on the storage and recall of random and quickly outmoded information" (60).

Too frequently, online classes have been designed by large corporations with obsolete learning paradigms. Such classes are simply a replacement for a lecture or a textbook to disseminate information and a testing mechanism to find out if the students can recall that information. The ideal Web-based classroom should become, not a place to lecture, but a place to continue a student-centered, interactive, face-to-face environment that promotes communication skills (essentially, a CAC classroom). Furthermore, many links to other resources on the Internet, including libraries, online textbooks, and the Writing Center, should also extend communication in the traditional classroom in pedagogically appropriate ways.

One of the initiatives that I have been working toward for the past two years has been to establish a campus-wide entity that would be a leader in the research and development of online pedagogies. This week (June 29, 2000), at the meeting of the Board of Regents, that initiative has finally made its way through all of the university bureaucracies to become a permanently-funded campus entity, of which I am the first director. The entity, which we are calling COLE (the Center for On-Line Education), will be a clearinghouse for information related to best-practices in online teaching and learning. It will spearhead research efforts into the relative effectiveness of online classroom packages such as Blackboard or WebCT. It will conduct research on the usability of online courseware in a usability laboratory connected to the center. And it will assist faculty in the design and implementation of appropriate online teaching and learning strategies.

So, as I mentioned at the outset, our way of infusing technology into CAC training and outreach programs has been indirect. But our goals remain the same. Susan McLeod (2000) puts it very well in her Forum opening statement:

The best new book on WAC, Electronic Communication Across the Curriculum, doesn't even have "writing" in the title: WAC has become ECAC. It may be that in the coming decade the term "WAC" will simply disappear. It doesn't matter. As long as there are programs that focus on students' learning through communicating, WAC will continue to be an important part of the educational enterprise. (http://wac.colostate.edu/aw/forums/winter2000/index.htm)

Works Cited

Anstendig, Linda, and Eugene Richie. (2000). Academic.Writing CAC Research Reports. http://wac.colostate.edu/aw/research/program_reports/pace2000.htm (15 June 2000).

General Catalog, Utah State University. (2000). http://www.usu.edu (15 June 2000).

McLeod, Susan. (2000). Opening statement. In Herrington, Anne, LeCourt, Donna, McLeod, Susan, Russell, David, Young, Art, and Palmquist, Mike. Principles that should guide WAC/CAC program development in the coming decade. Academic.Writing. http://wac.colostate.edu/aw/forums/winter2000/mcleod_opening.htm (15 June 2000).

Privateer, Paul Michael. (1999). Academic technology and the future of higher education: Strategic paths taken and tot taken. The Journal of Higher Education 70(1), 60-79.

Reiss, Donna, Selfe, Dickie, and Young, Art. (1998). Electronic communication across the curriculum. Urbana, IL: NCTE.

– Christine Hult
chult@english.usu.edu