 | The Writing of Business Writing the Class Electronically |
| The Writing of Business Writing the Class Electronically |
Starting with Ourselves: Encouraging Our Students to Become Reflective Technology Users
Useful Resources for Business Writing and Computers
Yet all of this technology can be intimidating for those of us who learned to write with pen and paper-or perhaps on a typewriter. It helps to remember, I think, that we're teaching writing, not technology. And as Patricia Sullivan discovered when she studied students' evaluations of TAs teaching technical writing at Purdue, students did not expect their teachers to be experts in the technology even though they were teaching in a computer classroom; however, students did expect them to know what was on their syllabi. In other words, students were able to distinguish a course in technical writing on computers from the computers and their management. And given the speed at which technology is being developed, certainly no one can be expected to know the ins and outs of every computer platform, every word processing program, or every e-mail program. But being a user of computers, word processing, and e-mail should give you enough familiarity to talk with some authority about how such technology affects writing. So if you're intimidated by the technology, we suggest that you aim for facility with any word processing program and any e-mail program on any computer. Most schools offer faculty free introductory training sessions on word processing and e-mail that can help you get started. And we encourage you to work with colleagues in your department who are more advanced users and are willing to help when you're stuck. In addition, we suggest that you set up a collaborative classroom in which experienced technology users help those who are less experienced. Finally, we suggest that you avail yourself of opportunities to talk and write about using technology in the classroom with other teachers of business writing as well as those in the workplace. Conferences and workshops are certainly possibilities. So are electronic forums. We've included a list of possible resources for such discussion later in this Instructor's Manual: this list includes electronic journals, listservs, and organizational web sites that focus on computers and writing or workplace writing.
It helps to remember, too, that we're not really going to help students very much in the long term by teaching them how to use one word processor or one e-mail program on one computer platform. The minute we teach that, the program or platform will be upgraded. What does help in the long term is enabling students to be more reflective users of the technology. Being a reflective technology user for a writer is more than knowing how to turn the machine on and find the word processing program. It's being able to imagine the entire document even though one can see through only a small window. It's being able to think structurally enough to be able to move sections around. It's having a skepticism about the spell or grammar checker. And it's knowing when the technology should and should not be used and what it can and cannot do to manage work on a day-to-day basis. In this context, we are reminded of a colleague's remarks about a coworker who is alienating his peers because he chooses to communicate through e-mail even though his coworkers' desks are in adjoining cubicles. In other words, we can encourage our students to think about when they should use technology as well as how they can use features of technology and the technology itself in appropriate and helpful ways. And teaching students to reflect upon their use of technology will continue to serve them well as they leave our classrooms and enter a workplace which continues to become more technologically sophisticated.
As we've already suggested, memos can become the heart of the class, and memos to the instructor (intended as a classroom assessments) can easily take the form of e-mail. Once students begin communicating with instructors via e-mail, it's not uncommon for students to use e-mail voluntarily to ask the instructor clarifying questions, to communicate their confusion, or to address other classroom issues. And when instructors respond quickly and fully to such e-mail, they often discover that e-mail can become a powerful means of individualizing classroom instruction. E-mail can also provide documentation for the progress of individual students or whole classrooms. If you plan to use e-mail in this way, be sure to set up a storage system of electronic files so that you can sort e-mail as you read it, can find it again when you need it, and have the e-mail organized in a way that helps you achieve your goals. You'll probably want to get in the habit of downloading this sorted e-mail from your e-mail account to your computer on a regular basis so you're account doesn't fill up completely-assuming, that is, that your e-mail program doesn't automatically download e-mail for you.
Some instructors have students use e-mail to submit their written assignments and run a "paperless" class. (This is especially common when computers are used for distance education.) If you ask students to submit papers this way, it's probably a good idea to download all of them as soon as they're submitted; this prevents the sort of problem one of our colleagues experienced last term when he asked students to submit their final exams online and then was unable to grade them because the server went down. Having a Plan B always helps when you're using computers in your teaching.
In addition to using e-mail to communicate with individual students, many instructors establish class listservs or newsgroups to extend discussion beyond the classroom walls. If you have academic computer support people establish a listserv for your classroom, students in your classroom who subscribe will automatically receive any e-mail their colleagues post to the list. In contrast, if you use newsreader software to establish a newsgroup (or have someone else do it for you), your students will have to connect to the newsgroup to post and read messages. For this reason, some of our colleagues have found listservs to be more effective for students who are more uncomfortable with technology or more passive in their learning.
Listservs and newsgroups can be used in a variety of ways. Some instructors ask students to post responses to class readings or discussions a minimum number of times during the week or the term. Some instructors ask students to post the results of research or the results of particular tasks. For instance, one of our colleagues asks students to post URLs of well designed and poorly designed web sites to a listserv. (For more details, see Web Sites later in this discussion.) And some instructors ask students to lurk on a professional listserv or newsgroup in their field so that they become familiar with and can describe the protocol followed by participants, the tone of postings, and the sorts of topics that are discussed. If students lurk on both a listserv and a newsgroup or two listservs on the same interest area, they can also analyze the differences that they see.
MUDs (Multiple User Dimensions) and MOOs (MUD, Object Oriented) are virtual rooms on computers. People telnet to these electronic spaces to interact with others through text-based communication and (in the case of MOOs) can construct and manipulate "objects" and move from textually-described room to room. These virtual spaces are useful if you're teaching a distance education course in which students telnet to class or if you want to provide an electronic space for groups from different locations to collaborate on projects. MOOs are also useful if you want students to write a lot. But to use MOOs well, you'll need to learn how to use the MOO commands and either arrange to use someone's MOO somewhere, have someone program and maintain one, or program and maintain one yourself. And you'll need to be prepare to give up some authority over the classroom since MOOs are known for their democratizing tendencies.
If you'd like to learn to MOO and to be involved in discussion with other teachers involved in computers and writing, you might want to join the Netoric Cafe on Tuesday nights. The Epiphany project < http://mason.gmu.edu/~epiphany/hawaii/resources.html> describes the Netoric project this way.
If you'd rather begin by reading about using a MOO in the classroom, a good starting point is Michael J. Day's "Fear and Loathing in Paradise: Making Use of Dissensus, Disorientation, and Discouragement on the MOO,"
A fairly common way of writing the class electronically is developing a class web site, where students can access the class syllabus, guidelines, assignments, and links to other web sites that students might find useful (say, for information about designing web pages or for career information or for any other topic that the class will include). Some faculty who have their students write web pages add links from the class web site to students' pages.
Because we believe that the World Wide Web will become an increasingly important resource for sharing information, marketing products and services, and looking for jobs, we are convinced that asking students in a business writing class to write web pages is a useful activity. And although we know that using programs like Front Page, Hot Dog, BBEdit Lite, or even Netscape Composer to design web pages saves time, we think students should acquire a basic understanding of html coding before using web editors so they are able to use these programs efficiently and can edit and update web pages they produce. Lots of web sites and books are available that can provide this rudimentary background in html. (See The Writing of Business, page 389 for a sampling of these resources.)
Even more important than an understanding of html, though, is an understanding of what works and doesn't work on the web. And the best way we know of learning what works and what doesn't is to spend some time surfing the web, to experience getting lost or becoming awash in information that isn't sorted or linked well, to be unsure whether information is valid or not, to respond to effective and ineffective visual designs. So we like to have our students spend some time surfing the World Wide Web and developing their own criteria for good web design, and we spend class time sharing what we as a class have learned through our web browsing.
One of our colleagues, Professor Sharon Cogdill, uses the following assignment to help students write difficult html. She asks them to post to the class listserv three to five URLs for web pages that are notable, whether good or bad, and she expects the students who have posted to be able to talk about them in some detail. She also expects everyone in the class to go to the web pages whose URLs are listed so that they're ready to comment on them in class. Then she asks the class to generate characteristics of good and bad web pages, and she lists these characteristics on the board or writes them on a "note" in the MOO. She encourages the students to use specific examples and to refer to web pages everyone has seen. The class prioritizes the characteristics, talking about how important these characteristics are in general and about situations in which they might not be important. Finally, she grades the students' web pages on these characteristics. We find this assignment useful in helping students to develop the ability to analyze applications of technology-especially given the fact that criteria for good web design are still in flux and given the speed at which technology develops and changes.
For questions and suggestions, please e-mail us at kilbornj@stcloudstate.edu or rinkster@stcloudstate.edu.
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