The Online Writing Classroom: A Review
ed. by Susanmarie Harrington, Rebecca Rickly and Michael Day
Hampton, 2000 396 pp.
ISBN: 1-57273-271-7 $79.95
ISBN: 1-57273-272-5 $27.50 (pbk)Review by Patrice Fleck
Eastern Kentucky University
The Online Writing Classroom is a well conceptualized collection of essays with a built in audience of technology neophytes in the writing classroom. However, because of the scope and variety of technologies discussed, the book is also a very useful guide for veterans as well.
Susanmarie Harrington, Rebecca Rickly and Michael Day have collected sixteen essays and divided them into three interconnected sections: PEDAGOGY, COMMUNITY and ADMINISTRATION. The editors' introduction neatly condenses the goals of the collection as "practical pedagogical applications grounded in current composition theory" (3). They identify teacher training as a key site wherein compositionists can learn to articulate effective teaching goals through computer mediated communication. Each contributor advocates the responsible and relevant theorizing of technology in order to achieve these goals. Calling for a balance between CMC, face to face and paper based activities in the writing classroom, Harrington, Rickly and Day call for a "reflective critical pedagogy."
Unlike much early scholarship in the field, the tone of the collection cautiously advises "critical examination of pedagogical practices in the age of technology" (3). Technology is not panacea here; authors carefully examine disastrous teaching events resulting from inexperience, from not connecting theory with appropriate pedegogical goals. They advise circumspection yet passionate involvement, calling for Composition and Rhetoric professionals to be aware of technology's rapid evolution and to become involved in software production and the explosion of pedagogical sites on the world wide web.
Contributors discuss a wide variety of electronic tools such as newsgroups, mailing lists, MOOs, chatrooms, e-mail, E-journals. Even though some of the technology is dated (such as VAX notes), reflecting the lag between writing, publication and the rate of change, Betsy Bowen's discussion of introducing collaborative writing to students is just as applicable to the more streamlined, user friendly online message boards used at many institutions in the publication year (2000). Also reflecting the lag between writing and publishing is the dearth of material on web-based pedagogy--web publishing and authorship. Steven Kraus' piece touches on this burgeoning pedagogical site in his straightforwardly titled, "Why Should I Use the Web? Four Drawbacks and Four Benefits to Using the WWW as a Pedagogical Tool," but his current website offers more useful, practical exercises with several different tools.
Overall, The Online Writing Classroom is a very wise book, combining theory and practice in a careful and accessible way for recent adopters and veterans alike. While the collection sounds repetitive in its insistence that good teaching emerge from well conceived theory and goals, this repetition is also its strength. Each essay can stand alone as a practical guide for a particular electronic tool, and the pedagogical strategies delineated throughout are abundant, rich and timely. I recommend it as a "handbook" for anyone who teaches writing with computers.
| Pedagogy | Community | Administration |