Collaboration

In The Wealth of Reality An Ecology of Composition, Margaret A. Syverson describes a case study she conducted in order to explore what happens when students write collaboratively.  The students were middle to upper-middle class enrolled in a first-year composition course and the assignment entailed writing an essay proposing a solution to a particular problem.  (Students chose controlling the noise level in the dorms.)  Students chose to write the essay together, huddled in a dorm room around a computer while one person typed the ideas they dictated.  The resulting essay was disappointing.

In my WEC class, we recently completed a group Usability Project.  It was my first collaborative writing assignment in graduate school (in the sense that we were all writing and submitting our names on a common document) which I attribute to the fact that I have been enrolled in a writing program, which more often than not is considered independent work (even if writing is socially constructed…)  But unlike Syverson’s students, the only times we huddled were in the classroom to plan our courses of action.  All other correspondence took place through email and online chat.

As I was reading the transcripts of the students’ conversations (they were audio-recorded while working) I envisioned how different the study may have unfolded if it had taken place today, almost 20 years later.  (At one point a student marveled over the fact that the computer contained a thesaurus, as this apparently preceded the convenience of dictionary.com.  I will admit it was at this point that I flipped back to see when the study was conducted.)

But to what extent has technological advancement altered the way we have come to see and understand collaborative writing?  In my job, one of my projects has entailed writing a manual to help learners navigate one of our products.  I’ve been back and forth IMing our SIM guys for support, my project lead has written notes throughout the piece, and it’s almost ready for the customer.  Smooth collaboration.  But I can’t say with any confidence that I would just as easily be able to produce a position paper with a group of people, no matter how intelligent or cooperative.  I’m interested on hearing more of the class’ take on cooperative learning structures.  I know they’re advantageous, but why do some of us resist them?             

  

       

Hypertext

I’ve been finding myself torn concerning issues we encounter in my graduate class, Writing for Electronic Communities.  Currently we’re reading Geroge P. Landow’s Hypertext 3.0, which explores the way hypertext is extending the possibilites in authorship and shifting power in the process. 

When I was teaching high school English, I was adamant about students formulating and exploring their own thoughts and celebrating themselves as thinkers and as writers.  But in doing so, I was accustomed to bringing them back to the book–printed text that offered an extension of multiple interpretations, but through an unchanging and linear reading.  If a student’s assertions seemed poorly supported, we could turn to page ____ and read where he/she was getting his ideas.

The idea of shifting to this mode of non-linear reading and writing overwhelms me.  In my career in instructional systems design for computer based training, we offer the learners choice in their use of simulated equipment, but the questions we need to consider are How far do we let them go and How do we bring them back when they’re off track? 

When reading certain genres of hypertext, there is no off-track.  Learners have the ability to navigate the direction of the text.  I’ve tried to imagine how I would hold discussion on a piece of hypertext fiction without the ability to ground the students by turning to a specific page.  I imagine clicking endless links on the Smartboard to access readings some may have not encountered.  The possibilites for thought seem endless, but what would be the unifying effect?    

MUDs and virtual personas

The term MUD was foreign to me until I read Sherry Turkle’s article, “Who am We?” which discusses how MUDder’s roleplaying influences self exploration and identity and Juliann Dibbel’s “A Rape in Cyberspace” which discusses a MUD community’s response to an online rape and the incident’s effect on the victims.

My experience and understanding of MUDs is limited, but I’m having difficulty accepting the communities, which I understand to be fictitous, as a means for authentic exploration of self.  In one respect, I can see how the graphic rape experience that Dibbel presented carried over to the MUDders’ realities, so the potential emotional investment is evident.  I’m also considering the personas we project in real life and how we adjust in our varying personal and professional environments to maintain social code.  But are these codes and standards so engrained in us that they continue to drive the MUD communities and participants’ interactions?