HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: HUNT@UNB.CA (Russ Hunt)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Subject: getting a "C"
Date: 17 Nov 92 12:47:40 GMT
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Comments:     <17NOV92.09518560.0096.MUSIC@UNB.CA>

David Schwalm writes:
>                                                      Now, the student centered
> (androgogical) model of education is extremely attractive in many ways. It is
> tempting to try to move more in that direction, stop giving so many tests and
> grades. But I wonder. . . . I am occasionally guilty of either/or thinking
> when some middle ground might serve. Is there a middle ground here?
     Seems to me that's an important question.  I'm very leary of
the implications of accepting "student-centered" as a label for
what I'm doing.  When my colleagues use the term, it has
inalienable connotations of the soft, wet, warm sixties, of
"progressive schools" from the anti- Dewey thirties and forties:
the baggage it brings is definitely NOT WANTED ON THE VOYAGE.
When people refer to my teaching as "student- centered," even
when they mean it approvingly (they usually don't) it makes me
itchy.
     Seems to me me don't want so much a middle ground as to
remap the territory: it's not a question of "student-" or
"something-else" centered.  My teaching is dialogue-driven; not
"centered" on anything.  Except maybe (I hope) learning.
                                    -- Russ
                                _~|__
Russell A. Hunt            _~|__)_ __)~|__   Learning and Teaching
Department of English      )_ __)_|_)__ __)     Development Office
St. Thomas University        |  )____) |        EMAIL: hunt@unb.ca
Fredericton, New Brunswick___|____|____|____/  FAX: (506) 450-9615
E3B 5G3   CANADA          \                / PHONE: (506) 452-7700
                       ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Date:         Mon, 16 Nov 1992 18:09:48 EST
From:         rselfe@MTU.EDU
Subject:      computer-supported classroom management

Mary
>1. are your college's computer-supported writing classrooms coordinated or
>managed by a faculty person
No. they were but Cindy she was smart and bailed out of the day-to-day
several years ago.  I have a staff position and teach.  About three
quarters of my assignment has to do with managing the labs.

>2. how is technical support handled and who is responsible for it (faculty or
>computer tech people)

It should be full time staff people but we're too poor.  We  have excellent
technical students who have done, extraordinary service for the lab and the
department.  Although they rarely get credit in the department--partly my
fault.  When people visit from off campus, they are universally impressed.
Student consultants are the reason I keep on with this job! (Well, there is
that massive pay check.)


>3. what duties does the faculty person manageingthe c-s classroom on your
 campus
>have

where to start: budget, ordering, some research, faculty advising, training
consultants, curriculum development, campus computing committee assg.,
prof. development (publishing, conf. papers, . . . ), weekly propeller-head
meetings (my favorite), tour guide, stuffed animal replacement, plant
waterer.


>4. how many hours of a faculty person's overall load does manageing the c-s
>classroom account for

half to three-quarter of a position

>5. anything else you might think would be useful to me as I try to convince
>administration and technical people that a writing classroom really needs to
>be coordinated by a writing teacher

technicians know technology--are totally committed to it.  We know people,
teaching, and are committed to people.  Put the people people in charge,
and give the technical people all the support you can afford.  Well, it
sounds like a good idea.

>
>Sorry for the length of the message--working on a dissertation makes one
>incapable of saying anything succinctly.

Sounds succinct to me.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Dickie Selfe              rselfe@mtu.edu
Humanities Dept.          906-487-3225
Michigan Technological U.
Houghton, MI   49931
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Date:         Wed, 18 Nov 1992 10:45:06 CST
From:         Irvin Peckham <peckham@CWIS.UNOMAHA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Getting a C
              92 10:40 am

To pseudopodia
We had the same picture of Swathmore.  One of the first we dropped.
Amherst came next.
Anyone else who has inside dope on the top SLAC (I just learned a new
acronym), please rattle on a bit about your perceptions.  I should
have asked for information from the crew here before.
--
Irvin Peckham
Internet: peckham@unomaha.edu
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Date:         Sun, 15 Nov 1992 16:50:47 EST
From:         "(Bill Konrad)" <konrad@MACE.CC.PURDUE.EDU>
Subject:      Re: software & hardware
              "@VM.CC.PURDUE.EDU:MBU-L@TTUVM1.BITNET" at Nov 14, 92 10:47 am

Re: Gail Hawisher's query about start-up dates for computer writing
classrooms.

The U. of Cincinnati developed at least two computer labs/classrooms
in the mid-80s. As I was a lowly undergrad at the time, I don't know
many of the details, but I recall that they had an IBM based lab for
professional editing grad classes, and there was a classroom for
frosh comp. using Macs. I believe Bill Lasher of the English dept.
there was instrumental in developing those facilities. Unfortunately,
I don't know if anyone in the english dept. there uses e-mail much.

I recall seeing both facilities fully operational in '86 and it seems
that they had both been there for awhile.
--
Bill Konrad
konrad@mace.cc.purdue.edu
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Date:         Mon, 23 Nov 1992 22:41:01 CST
From:         Eric Crump <C509379@MIZZOU1.BITNET>
Subject:      re: at-risk students

On Wed, 18 Nov 1992 08:21:10 CST McDonald James C said:
>The central place that education has in compensating for
>inequalities in people's circumstances obscures the fact that meritocracy
>
>requires education to differentiate, to provide valuable credentials and
>abilities for some people, but not too many.  To my mind, we're doing a pretty
>good job of this.

So while we're eyeing the master's house with malice or affection, we
shouldn't forget that down the road a piece there's a hired hand's
house made of left-over boards from the master's sun deck & jacuzzi,
right?

This is a perspective on credentialing I hadn't looked from before.
Thanks, Jim.

--Eric Crump
From: IACDES@ASUACAD.BITNET (David E. Schwalm)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Subject: Re: Getting a C
Date: 18 Nov 92 17:56:39 GMT
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From: David E. Schwalm
Our son is looking at Reed, Trinity (Texas), Chicago, Oberlin (he does not
play an instrument), Vassar, and Swarthmore. Tell me more about perceptions of
Swarthmore (off the list, perhaps).

-- David E. Schwalm, Assoc. Provost for Academic Programs
___Arizona State University West
___4701 West Thunderbird Rd.
___Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100___(602) 543-4500
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Date:         Sun, 15 Nov 1992 20:23:44 MST
From:         "David E. Schwalm" <IACDES@ASUACAD.BITNET>
Subject:      Early labs

From: David E. Schwalm
As I recall, we got our first "lab" at UTEP back in the spring of nine-teen
and eight-five, i think its was. Yes, siree, nineteen andf eighty five. We had
three or four clusters of 6 XTs each networked with an AT. But when we tried
to install the network, we found that the network stuff ate up almost all of
the memory in the XTs (a whopping 256K each) and we couldn't use them as
stand-alones. Yep, we had to get us some of them there memory upgrades, when
cost a passle of money in them days. I think we had an IBM Proprinter in each
cluster too. Might even have had a site license for WordStar, although so many
illegal copies were flying around then (3.3) that it was a bit tough to tell
what was legal and what wasn't. We jammed each unit into what had been
language lab stations. It was not a good fit. The sight lines were blocked by
the language lab sound partitions. There was no workspace at each station. THe
rest of the room was still language lab. But we thought we were in heaven. I
taught my honors research paper course using that "lab shaped object" with
reasonable success. You ought to see my "read my lips" Nazis style
introduction to the computer--essential DOS and WordStar commands. Students
caught on in a matter of hours.

-- David E. Schwalm, Assoc. Provost for Academic Programs
___Arizona State University West
___4701 West Thunderbird Rd.
___Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100___(602) 543-4500
From: tmcgee@GARNET.BERKELEY.EDU ((Tim McGee))
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Subject: Re: getting a "C"
Date: 18 Nov 92 19:07:26 GMT
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Irv,
	The "ped" in pedagogy relates not to foot (Gk. podos) but
to child (pais, paidos). The "leading around" part is in the "agein"
portion. So, an "androgogue," which actually should be "andragogue," because
the "a" belongs to the verb meaning "lead," would be a man leader as
opposed to the child leading pedagogue.

Tim McGee
From: FRIEDLAC@DUVM.BITNET (ALEXANDER FRIEDLANDER)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Subject: Re: software & hardware
Date: 17 Nov 92 14:25:09 GMT
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              14 Nov 1992 10:47:46 -0600 from <hawisher@UIUC.EDU>

>
>Drexel and Carnegie Mellon must have been early players, but I don't think
>that CMU used computers *for writing instruction* until '86 or so.  Anybody
>know for sure? How about Drexel, Sandy?
>
 Gail

In talking with faculty who were here at Drexel in 1983/84 when freshman first
purchased their own machines, a small cluster initially and then a number of
classrooms were available for faculty to reserve for writing classes.  A number
 of faculty have thus been using computer classrooms for freshman writing and
technical writing classes since then.

Incidentally, we are now at the point where our entering freshman not only
own  their own Macintoshes, but also have modems and mainframe accounts so that
in my writing class, the classroom interaction and ongoing discussion and
feedback can take place at (literally) all hours.

Sandy Friedlander
FRIEDLAC@DUVM
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From: wkl1@Ra.MsState.Edu (Wing-Keong Loke                                               the consummate chronic prevaricator)
Subject: Re: Getting a C
Organization: Mississippi State University
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 17:53:54 GMT

In article <9211170303.AA23821@cwis.unomaha.edu> Irvin Peckham <peckham@CWIS.UNOMAHA.EDU> writes:
>A bit to Jim and David on their comments on grades--David's

>  We have recently been looking at schools for my daughter who
>will soon graduate from high school.  I have been struck by the
>way in which the wealthy liberal arts schools are generally
>predicated on the educating assumption.  Few of them stress grades.
>They stress learning, the individual student.  I teach in a
>university with basically working class students who could never
>afford the kind of school we'll be sending Heather to.  My
>university is predicated on the credentialing assumption.  I think
>we all know which assumption leads to the better education.
>Interesting implications here.
>--
>Irvin Peckham
>Internet: peckham@unomaha.edu

What is more interesting is that people are calling for more ways to
"credentialize" education, i.e. find MECHANICAL WAYS of assessing the 
amorphous "standards" so as to put some (another dreaded wor 
"accountability" into the education system.
	Rubbish!
	Want a good education?  Look at the number of required courses.
Some "places" have some many required courses that students don't need
to decide more than a handful of times what courses to take in their
undergraduate lifetime.
	It's a case of the more paded theschool is the lousier it may
be.  I really am taken up with Brown University's 30 course requirement
for graduation.  It's so "arrogant," something like saying that their
graduates learn so much in their courses that 30 courses would be enough
versus, maybe, 40-45 for some monstrous public instituition.
 
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Date:         Mon, 23 Nov 1992 15:17:56 EST
From:         MROSE01@UKCC.UKY.EDU
Subject:      Re: Last (?) thoughts on lurking/Reason.Argggh!
              23 Nov 1992 12:28:20 -0500 from <R_CONNORS@UNHH.UNH.EDU>

Bob:

         Could be the tools are chewed up and the screws stripped and
         the nailheads below flush and the poured concrete made from
         high density rubber so that when the sledgehammer hits it will
         bounce and even the plywood made out of Sumatran ebony and the
         dry wall particle board of NASA composite materials.......

         Or, if you just take the house apart by its components, someone
         will just build it again.........


                                                                mer
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Date:         Fri, 20 Nov 1992 18:16:00 PST
From:         Lisa Gerrard <IDR2LXG@UCLAMVS.BITNET>
Subject:      Wyoming Resolution

Bob W., the text of the Wyoming Resolution is contained in an opinion
piece by Linda Robertson, Sharon Crowley, and Frank Lentricchia
published in College English 49, March 1987.

As for Dell computers, our computing facility just installed 16
of them in a new lab (we had ordered IBMs, but somebody up the
hierarchy changed the order) for student writers. The lab will be
used for the first time starting January, so I have no war stories
yet--but let's keep in touch on this.

Lisa Gerrard
From: ehrlich@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Heyward Ehrlich)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Subject: Early Writing Labs
Date: 16 Nov 92 04:12:21 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

Among early writing labs was one run by Schwartz and Nash
at Montclair State (New Jersey) around 1984.  It used
WordStar on DEC IBM (mostly)-compatibles if I remember
correctly.  They had won a state grant competition and
had about 10 stations.  Since some of their early software
was CP/M, I think they must have done Kaypros even earlier.

Heyward Ehrlich (ehrlich@andromeda.rutgers.edu)
From: GSSCRON@ECNUXA.BITNET
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Subject: Re: getting a "C"
Date: 19 Nov 92 01:21:10 GMT
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I believe that andragogy refers to the art of teaching adults, as
opposed to pedagogy, the art of teaching children.  A book, "Andragogy,"
was published by Association Press about 1975.  I think andros and
anthros are variant spellings of >
> From: David E. Schwalm
> I think androgogy is a term created to oppose to pedagogy, student centered
> vs. teacher centered education.
>
> -- David E. Schwalm, Assoc. Provost for Academic Programs
> ___Arizona State University West
> ___4701 West Thunderbird Rd.
> ___Phoenix, AZ 85069-7100___(602) 543-4500
>
variant spellings of the Greek for "man."

  -- L. Ronald Farquhar
  -- South Suburban College
  15800 South State STreet
  -- South Holland, IL 60473-1200
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Date:         Wed, 18 Nov 1992 08:21:10 CST
From:         "(McDonald James C)" <jcm5337@USL.EDU>
Subject:      re: at-risk students

Irv, I think that we all teach in "a kind of structure that really _wants_ some
students to do poorly, that needs to have students who fail."  Evan Watkins
makes a compelling argument of this in WORK-TIME: ENGLISH DEPARTMENTS AND THE
CIRCULATION OF CULTURAL VALUE (Stanford UP, 1989).  The credentializing
function of the educational system gives schools the central role in sorting
and placing people for the economic system's division of labor.  Schools are
not doing their job if they don't fail some students.  When more students do
well, they are told to accomplish more--to complete high school, to go to
college, to get a graduate degree.  The term "high school dropout" is a recent
invention--people who didn't complete high school weren't considered failures
automatically because most people didn't.  "Dropping out" became a problem as
more and more people earned diplomas--high schools weren't sorting out as
many people.
  Despite the fact that all three presidential candidates argued that education
is the key to the country's economic recovery and compettiveness, increasing
the number of people with degrees does not increase the number of good jobs for
them to hold.  Significantly, all three candidates have strongly supported
increased testing, to differentiate people, in their political careers--Bush
in his America 2000 plan, Clinton in his Arkansas reforms and educational
planning with the nation's governors, and Perot with the reforms he championed
in Texas.
  It's not as if we generally face up to the need to fail students.  I have h
heard administrators and faculty at my last two schools claim, with little
or no evidence, that raising standards means all students will improve
performance.  The central place that education has in compensating for
inequalities in people's circumstances obscures the fact that meritocracy

requires education to differentiate, to provide valuable credentials and
abilities for some people, but not too many.  To my mind, we're doing a pretty
good job of this.
  Jim McDonald
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Date:         Sat, 21 Nov 1992 10:12:37 -0600
From:         slatin@UTXVM.CC.UTEXAS.EDU
Subject:      Re: What makes a good exercise?

>John Slatin, in response to (sorry, forgot first name) Woodson's
>question, are you implying that one must _accomplish_ some-
>thing tangible in a class actiuvity?
>
No, I wasn't implying that one must try to achieve something "tangible" in
a class activity.  Getting people to engage in the activity called
"thinking" would do very nicely.  But when someone asks, "What's a good
exercise," it seems reasonable to want to know more about the context.  Who
are the students? Who's the instructor? What's the course about?  A "good
exercise" for a course in argumentation, for example, might not be such a
great exercise for a course in 20th century poetry-- or vice versa; some of
the things that have worked well with my undergraduates have bombed when I
tried them with graduate students; things that worked with one group of
first-semester students and got them all excited and me all excited were
just ho-hum a semester later.
John Slatin
Director, Computer Research Lab
Department of English
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712
(512) 471-9293
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Date:         Sun, 15 Nov 1992 09:03:45 CST
From:         Bob Whipple <whippl@PARROT.CREIGHTON.EDU>
Subject:      Re: software & hardware

Gail, I began my PhD program at Miami in 1985, and they had just gotten the
IBM PCs and PCWrite.  Thet were 8088s, standalone, and each student had
2 disks--one w/an autoexec.bat and command.com, plus PC-write--the
boot/working disk--and one for her/his text files.  I believe that it was grant
funded, and the name Exxon sounds right, but I don't remember for sure. They
had just gotten them in August 1985, and were uncrating them when I arrived that
summer.  John McCarthy--he's now at U. of St. Thomas in Houston, TX--should
know exact dates and $ sources; you might also try Gil Storms, Paul
Anderson, Mary Fuller at Miami.  I was fortunate enough to teach in that lab
the next term, and I vowed then that I'd never go back if I could help it.
	The wiring to put the lab into network--I don't know if it was
ethernet or not--was run in 1987 or 1988--but the cards/hard disks hadn't
ben installed when I left in May 88.
	Miami also got a Macintosh lab in 1986--funding, I'm not sure
where from.  They were what are now termed Classics, with one little
3.5 drive and 0 hard disks.  Also standalone.  Students had to write
papers in the lab and nowhere else--that is, they could draft wherever they
 wanted, but text entry was only in the lab bc MacWrite was copyrighted and
thus not "portable."  Students kept their disks in cigar boxes at the
front of the room.  I remember we had liberal, but not lavish, lab hours.

Someone mentioned WYLBUR.  Boy, that name brings back memories.  Did anyone
out there use TECO in any group writing setting?  Just curious--I wrote
my MA report at UTexas on TECO in 82-83.  Scary now.

Bob Whipple
rhetoric@creighton.edu

hope this helps, Gail.
bw
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Date:         Sun, 22 Nov 1992 10:28:00 EST
From:         "JEFFREY R. GALIN" <WPWP@PITTVMS.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Last (?) thoughts on lurking/Reason.Argggh!

Robert,

        There are always lots of reasons why folks do or don't respond
to a given message--many of which are unpredictable.  It just so happens
that a day or so before your first post (before you joined the list)
there were a few strident requests that reflections on the elections
stop post haste.  Folks were tired and wanted to move to other concerns.
 You happened to catch the last of the political comments and jumped on
it.  Also, seems to me that your observations about how the discussions
work on this list are fairly accurate.  I'd add a few though.  Seems to
me that the responses that get the most attention are grouped around a
few kinds of rhetorical gestures.  1) a request for help or information,
especially concerning 2) issues of computers in composition (which is
a central function of this list), 3) a response to support or challenge
issues raised as points within messages that push certain unpredictable
buttons (this is my favorite because these responses make this list
interesting and unique), 4) fun statements that have nothing to do with
anything accept they loosen things up, 5) issues that concern
composition in general, especially controversial ones, 6) and there are
times when one MBUer will suggest that another post a question or issue
which the two  have discussed in private.
        Surely there are more.  My point is that depending on how many
threads are going at once, how they do or do not relate to each other,
how much time MBUers have to respond, what choices MBUers make for
response (can't respond to everything), and the stages of the moon
determines what messages get responses.  But, there are certain
rhetorical gestures that seem to get more responses than others.  I
hadn't really thought about these gestures until you offered your
response.  I wonder if anyone has finished any research looking at
rhetorical gestures on e-mail lists (I know there are numerous studies
in progress).
        One last point, speaking as a relative newcomer to this
list--beginning of this semester--I have to say that I don't think
people are excluded because they are new or are not a member of the
"inside," whatever that is.  As we've seen recently, some folks have
been readers on this list for quite a while and have only participated a
first time in the recent exchange on lurkers.  Despite the volume of
messages that has been flowing in lately, I stubbornly refuse to leave
this list because I do feel like I can contribute when I have something
to add and because there are threads on this list that are not available
anywhere else I've looked that make the load worth the time investment.
        Welcome to the list.
jeff galin
univ of pitts
galin@vms.cis.pitt.edu
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