Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Date:         Sun, 30 Aug 1992 14:09:30 --500
From:         "David E. Schwalm" <IACDES@ASUACAD.BITNET>
Subject:      comments

 *** Reply to note of 08/30/92 07:47
 Let me tie this back into computers for a second. One of the virtues of asynch
 (and synch) conferencing programs is that they allow students to write for an
 audience that is going to read (in Russ's terms, "use") their writing. If you
 have computer facilities that allow students to use conferencing programs (and
 that's a big if), it is very easy for students to acquire a lot of experience
 in writing for an audience (audience of one, of the whole class, of a segment
 of a class, etc.), more experience than most of them have had in their entire
 lives. And we can do it without the cumbersome and expensive (of course
 computers are expensive too), and time consuming process of copying and
 distributing papers. Response is timely (very quick in some cases), and
 student can tell when their ideas are mis understood, when they are thought
 provoking, when they are being ignored. The time element is critical here, and
 this is a case where computers allow us to do something new and different,
 where they truly challenge our ideas about use of classroom time, etc. The
 kind of curriculum Russ describes could easily be enacted where computer
 conferencing is available. I'll ramble on a bit here to describe a pilot
 application at ASU this term. THe Maricopa Community College District gave ASU
 a version of their excellent conferencing software, which we have now loaded
 on the VAX. It can be accessed from various sites around campus and via modem.
 We are experimenting this semester with our version of Freshman Interest
 Groups. All of the students in a section of freshman comp will also have three
 other classes together. The other classes may be huge. We have four of these
 clusters underway this semester. The members of each cluster will be members
 of a computer conference designed to encourage intergrative
 discussions--especially related to comp writing assignments that will be based
 on readings and concepts in the other courses, to some extent. All cluster
 members will belong to a "grand" computer conference where they can talk with
 each other about their experience in the clusters or, generally, in the first
 year in college. The faculty involved in the program will be members of these
 conferences and will be encouraged to paerticipate. The software allows for
 the establishment of sub-groups, the use of pen names, and includes a mail
 system that allows one-to-one communication. We are anticipating 1) that the
 computer conferences with speed up the process of forming the class into a
 functioning group, 2) that it will bring out participation that might not
 emerge in the classroom, 3) and that the integration of ideas from the various
 courses will take place largely in the conferences. We are a commuter
 university, and these conference will allow students to be in contact with one
 another and with the instructor in ways that are just barely possible in small
 residential colleges.

 -- David E. Schwalm, Assoc. Provost for Academic Programs
 ___Arizona State University West
 ___4701 West Thunderbird Rd.
 ___Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100___(602) 543-4500
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