Charles Moran, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
In his history of Writing Across the Curriculum programs, David Russell has observed that "cross-curricular writing programs were almost always a response to a perceived need for greater access, greater equity"(271). My advice to WAC/CAC programs is to take this history as guide and think about ways in which technology can increase students' access to the many facets of this thing that we call postsecondary education.
Donna reminds us that without technology, some students can't participate in postsecondary education. Instead of "participate in postsecondary education" I almost wrote "go to college" – so embedded am I in the campus-model of education which itself denies access to working people, to single parents – to all but a relatively small segment of the population: those who can leave their home communities and 'go to college' for four years. Technology can enrich and facilitate distance education. So if we are concerned now, as we historically have been, with issues of access and equity, we need to be exploring ourselves ways in which we can open our institutions to new populations of students, and emerging technologies offer new ways of increasing access to our curricula and our teaching.
On the other hand, we need to be alive to the ways in which technology increases the cost of, and thereby restricts access to, our curricula and teaching. As I've said in my opening statement, technology is expensive. Someone has to pay. We have to work within our institutions to ensure that the costs of technology do not restrict access to our colleges and universities.
Finally, we should stay engaged with technology. WAC/CAC has always been to some degree about faculty/staff development. It would be smart of us, for a range of reasons, to incorporate technology-training into our faculty/staff development programs. Writing is still the dominant form of on-line communication. When voice-recognition software gets a lot better than it now is, we may not be able to say this, but for now, as teachers of writing, technology is on our side.
Russell, David. Writing in the Academic Disciplines, 1970-1990: A Curricular History. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1991.
– Charles Moran
cmoran@english.umass.edu