Closing Statement:

Donna Reiss, Tidewater Community College

Dear Mike, Michael, Tharon, Chris, and Charlie,

Thank you for this electronic conversation, a good example of the way WAC can help schools address complex issues. What variations of this forum might bring together our colleagues from across the disciplines-especially if they were invited to participate because of their reputations as excellent teachers? (Mike, is this the strategy you used to bring us together for this forum?) Too busy to meet face-to-face very often and when they do meet, too constrained by the limitations of time and available technology to reflect much before responding to issues, might these colleagues not appreciate an asynchronous forum once in a while? I know I appreciated the opportunity to edit my responses to this forum and to show my drafts to a colleague for comments before sending them forth, advantages absent from a face-to-face panel. And having participated, might our colleagues not be encouraged to consider ways such a forum would be beneficial to their students? This WAC approach of modeling an instructional strategy might well inspire some participants and other readers.

Thus, for the future, WAC-CAC programs should continue to offer colleagues opportunities to experiment with communication-rich technology-supported activities. We should show examples from a variety of disciplines, many of which appear in online journals and Web-published conference proceedings. At ECAC (electronic communication across the curriculum) workshops, I show examples from classes in history, astronomy, and psychology as well as my own literature students' asynchronous discussions. Our colleagues are likely to learn elsewhere about discipline-specific technology such as CDs and software for simulating labs and from their publishers' reps about Web companions to textbooks. What WAC-CAC can offer is presentations, demonstrations, and workshops that illustrate effective electronic communication: online journaling, informal asynchronous conversations, asynchronous peer tutoring and draft exchanges, e-mail exchanges or interactive television events or synchronous chat sessions with guest experts, student-generated slide presentations, collaborative multimedia, electronic portfolios, hypertext research projects, and project-oriented Web research activities such as Webquests.

When we were offering workshops for the Epiphany Project, Dona Hickey at the University of Richmond and I emphasized "WAC Through the Back Door," not unlike Christine's taking advantage of her state's "mania for all things technological." At Tidewater Community College, for example, offering workshops on "Using E-mail for Professional Work and for Teaching," was a way to introduce letter-writing-to-learn across the curriculum. "Computer-enhanced Learning Communities in the Classroom" workshops focused on listservs and threaded discussions to encourage student interaction and collaboration. If I were to offer a WAC workshop on the research paper process to encourage colleagues across the discipline to include multiple drafts, conferences on works in progress, interviews with local experts, and critical evaluation of print and online resources, I would collaborate with a librarian and call the session something like "Academic Honesty in the Age of the Internet."

So "what next" might be more of everything WAC-CAC has always done well but with an ECAC cybertwist. WAC promotes interactive instruction. WAC emphasizes creative as well as critical thinking. WAC recognizes the importance of effective communication in college and the community. And WAC demonstrates that communication is effective for learning about the content and concepts of courses at every level. Who better than WAC enthusiasts and experts to figure out how to use new technologies to serve and extend these objectives? I applaud the assertiveness of Tharon's words: "We need only have the courage to step forward and proclaim our expertise."

Sincerely,

Donna

– Donna Reiss
dreiss@wordsworth2.net