Hi, I don't have a position statement so much as a few thoughts and some
ideas about ways to approach our topic of crossing boundaries of various
kinds: across campus, across colleges, across the world. I'd like to hear
about other people's experiences and concerns about the ways electronic
communication platforms (MOOs, e-mail lists, threaded discussion forums,
videoconferencing) have supported--and in some cases
generated--collaborations across boundaries of place and time.
WAC has always encouraged collaboration, and student postal exchanges or
in-class paper passing are not unfamiliar educational practices; however,
the speed with which text and images can be transferred over the Internet
has made the logistics of such collaborations easier--and perhaps motivated
some teachers to try group literacy activities.
Two projects come to my mind immediately: Students of Teresa Redd, Howard
University, Washington, D.C., and Stephanie Newman-James of Montana State
University produced a magazine that crossed both disciplines and
institutions; a writing class and a graphics design class, the former
predominantly black urban students, the latter predominantly white rural
students, explored together the topic of racism, using e-mail to connect.
The Intercollegiate E-democracy Project http://www.trincoll.edu/prog/iedp/
brings together faculty, students, and journalists "interested in the
contemporary state of public discourse, the future of politics online, and
the complex role of education in preparing active citizens for democracy."
In its online update 11 April 2001, Educause reported on an Internet 2
collaboration between the University of Pennsylvania and University of
Grenoble in France (from Philadelphia Inquirer, 7 April 2001): "The
moderator of the Penn presentation, Lauder Institute director Richard J.
Herring, said he sees international videoconferencing as an opportunity to
have students experience new cultures and perfect their language skills in
new and exciting ways." And language teachers have long been active users
of the Internet, designing activities for students to write in the language
they are learning by corresponding with native writers.
Some of the questions I hope our conversations will engage:
-o- How have is electronic communication being used to collaborate across
disciplines and beyond our schools and colleges?
-o- How might we use electronic communication to support disciplinary and
interdisciplinary learning?
-o- What kinds of assignments are effective for using electronic
communication to enhance both literacy and learning?
-o- How can we motivate and support colleagues interested in learning to
use electronic communication for teaching writing and other content areas
throughout the curriculum?
Donna