Michael, Tharon, Christine, and Charlie, along with Mike, our moderator, have written and spoken eloquently on the role of WAC/CAC in teaching with technology in this forum and elsewhere. I endorse their comments emphatically: Communications technology supports both the interdisciplinarity and the cross-disciplinarity that WAC promotes.
"What is not clear to me, yet," Charlie says, "is what the benefits of F2F education actually are." This issue strikes close to home for me because I spent an entire academic year conducting research and preparing a plan for my college to incorporate technology into teaching as an enhancement for classrooms as well as for distance learning. Repeatedly I confronted colleagues at my own college and elsewhere who were confident that face-to-face teaching not only has benefits but is preferable to-even superior to-any computer-based activities or online education. Many teachers asked how we knew that technology-enhanced or Web-based education would work, taking for granted that lectures and exams "worked."
How could a computer substitute for a debate on current issues, a political science teacher asked--but would not let us demonstrate an asychronous Web dialogue in which students supported their positions and responded directly and thoughtfully to the statements of their classmates or to the Web resources that provided up-to-date news on those controversial issues. How can a sense of community in the classroom and identification with the college be established, a psychology teacher asked-but would not take time to visit student-generated collaborative and cooperative projects like multimedia CD-ROMs and group Web sites or listservs where students posted questions and problems in the middle of the night that their classmates or teachers would help them with that same night or the next day, for example, calculus questions or physics problems (and because it was online, simultaneously give the answers to everybody in the class). How, biology and chemistry teachers asked, could a computer application replace or supplement hands-on lab experience-but these scientists would not examine the most recent interactive online simulations developed by other scientists.
Teachers who routinely guided their students on selecting appropriate print sources for their history and literature papers expressed doubts about the credibility of Web resources but would not attend workshops on evaluating Web sites and teaching students how to do so. One colleague even asked our dean to monitor Web-based classes for proof that faculty were spending the same number of hours "on line" as would be spent in office hours and the classroom. "Come visit one of our online classes," I suggested. He declined.
One role of WAC when such attitudes are widespread is to persevere: Demonstrate that technology does not necessarily undermine effective teaching but might well support it, as books and chalk sometimes do. Demonstrate ways that students can gain fluency and comfort as writers and thinkers by writing and reading online; that students can present and discuss and publish and edit their multiple perspectives about politics, behavior, statistics, fiberoptics, vitamins, the global economy, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and all the thought-provoking issues we want them to contemplate as scholars and citizens. Integrate electronic communication into our WAC-CAC-WID programs and workshops as the University of Missouri-Columbia has done by including the Campus Writing Program among the project partners of its Institute for Instructional Technology; as the Pearce Center has done at Clemson University, bringing Cindy and Dickie Selfe to be visiting professors during the 2000-2001 academic year; and as my own institution, Tidewater Community College (Virginia) did when I moved from Writing Center Coordinator who emphasized writing across the curriculum to Coordinator of Online Learning who emphasized electronic communication throughout the curriculum.
University of Missouri-Columbia MU Institute for Instructional Technology (MUIT) http://web.missouri.edu/~muiit/ and Campus Writing Program http://cwp.missouri.edu/
Pearce Center for Professional Communication. Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina. Contact Kathleen Yancey at kyancey@clemson.edu or Art Young at apyoung@clemson.edu.
Internet Enhancements for Any Class. Tidewater Community College Online Learning. http://onlinelearning.tc.cc.va.us/resource/enhance.htm
– Donna Reiss
dreiss@wordsworth2.net