Conversants and Combatants:
InterChange and Newsgroup
Discussions in Literature-Survey Courses
by Daniel Anderson and Nick
Evans
In Spring 1995, when each of us taught an American literature survey course in
the Computer Writing and Research Lab at
the University of Texas at Austin, we sought
to experiment with a wide variety of computer-assisted discussion formats because
our own particular approaches to teaching emphasize an interactive, collective
process of literary interpretation. We believe that expanding the number of
voices contributing to textual analysis will produce a more valuable learning
experience for students and for ourselves. In practice, this means that we
encourage students to develop their own interpretations of literary works in
collaborative settings that include traditional face-to-face conversations as
well as computer-mediated ones. We also encourage students to work
collaboratively when they represent their interpretive conclusions in projects
ranging from conventional essays to World Wide Web sites. This paper reports on
our use of two types of online discussion formats: InterChange for intraclass
conversations and newsgroups for interclass ones. We try to evaluate how well
our implementation of these formats during the Spring of 1995 met our pedagogical
goals. At first, some results seemed contrary to our hopes, but overall we find
that these forums have proven effective for pedagogies emphasizing diversity of
interpretation. While InterChange and newsgroups proved to have different
strengths and weaknesses, both exposed students to a wide variety of interpretive
perspectives, helping us to prompt them to sift through those perspectives and
produce and present their own literary knowledge.
There are several ways to read this essay. You can choose a topic from this menu:
and move around the work at your own direction; at the end of each section there
is a linear link to the next part of the narrative as well as an image map
providing access to all parts of the essay. You can also read through the work in
a linear way by starting at our goals and pedagogy and following the links at
the end of each section.
The First Linear Link is Goals and Pedagogy.
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Computers, Writing, Rhetoric and Literature
Page:"Conversants"
Daniel Anderson
Nick Evans
Copyright (c) 1996