CW2001 Program - Computers and Writing

Friday
2:15 — 3:30 Session C.9
Inhabiting Cyberspace:
Synchronous Conferences and Metaconversing
BC 129
Joan Latchaw, moderator
Kristina DeVoe and Chris Rausch
“Writing Ourselves Online”:
Negotiating Roles in the Electronic Writing Classroom
The presenters closely examine their own multiple, unexpected, and,
sometimes, clashing roles that emerged from observing and, later,
mentoring students during a first-year composition class taught on
the MOO in the Fall of 2000. By incorporating transcripts of the class
discussion into the presentation, the presenters analyze and show how
they approached group dynamics, community, and conflict resolution
through the use of language strategies and language channels–
especially in the context of emotes, directed speech, backchannel
(paging and whispering), and their own physicality. Finally, they
provide corresponding metaphors for novice instructors who are trying
to negotiate their own roles within an online classroom environment.
Trish Harris
Synchronous Metaconversing:
Active Social Construction of Knowledge
This participatory session provides an experience quite unlike what we
experience in our usual scholarly and classroom conversations, in which
we tend to self-edit and compress. Out of consideration for others’ time,
out of natural reserve, out of fear of being discovered “incorrect,” we
tend to edit first thoughts, we mistake a text’s, or a conversation’s,
surface for its depth-charge relevance. But if offered the freedom to
risk being “right,” how do we react Do we appropriate Do we affront
Do we oppose How do we engage the true subjects in our virtual
discourse communities This active session attempts to socially
construct answers to these questions and model ways our different
languages can be explored in the writing classroom.
50 Computers & Writing 2001