5/23/01
Topic & Research Question
How can teaching assistants (TAs) use a class discussion board and
a class website to help students with Academic reading and writing?
Relevance of Topic
Additional personal reasons for conducting this research.
Chi: I had following ideas and expectation in mind upon starting
this project.
1. Including Chat room on the class website was mainly from my exciting
experience of Chat in Eng.724. After we tried Chat in Eng.724, both wished
that we could use this tool to have one-to-one tutoring session with the
Ss in Eng.310, especially who were too busy to have a tutor in school time.
2. I realized a few Ss have difficulty to keep up with the in-class
discussion probably because of the weak listening skills, lack of attention
and concentration, and the quite first pace of each lesson of this class.
Therefore, if the discussion was continued or reviewed on the discussion
board, these problems could be avoided and Ss would receive more benefits
from the discussion with other.
I expected that the result of our research would give us the idea of
how we can use the on-line group discussion effectively and how we should
keep balance between CALL and in-person assistance.Our goal for the website
and discussion board was to provide the students (Ss) in English 310 with
a forum to communicate and collaborate with each other outside of class.
Because English 310 is a demanding class and the ESL Ss at SFSU have such
heavy workloads, we felt that it was important to explore the ways in which
we could offer the students extra possibilities for communication and collaboration
through technology.
ENGLISH 310
Students
Ages - Juniors and Seniors at San Francisco State University
Native languages - Cantonese, Farsi, Hebrew, Indonesian, Japanese,
Korean, Mandarin, Nepali, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese.
English proficiency level – Intermediate to Advanced
Previous reading classes – Many of the lower level students have taken
English 204
Length of term – one semester (Feb.2001 -May, 2001)
Class Size – 26
English 310 fulfills SFSU's learning objectives for written communication. These objectives state that, among other things, Ss exiting the course must be "capable of understanding discipline specific texts thoroughly and using them as a basis for their writing assignments" (General Education Segment I Policy). To this end, our Ss wrote three essays on three different topics: the cultural values represented by quiz shows like Survivor and Who wants to be a Millionaire?, Global Trade, and Gene
Therapy/New Reproductive Technologies.
Unlike the majority of writing that Ss have done in previous English
classes, the essays in English 310 are highly "text-responsible" in that
they require students to demonstrate a thorough understand of the readings
(Leki and Carson, 1997). Rather than simply using the readings as a springboard
for an essay in which they explore their own opinions or present their
own experiences, English 310 essays require the students to synthesize
and analyze the ideas of multiple authors and then extend, illuminate,
and analyze those ideas in their essays. In short, Ss in English 310 have
to learn a new and quite demanding form of writing, with its own unique
set of rhetorical features. This combination of difficult readings and
new writing requires that the students climb several steep learning curves
simultaneously: they must quickly build the schemata necessary to comprehend
the ideas of various writers representing multiple perspectives on complex
issues while at the same time learning the structure and formal schemata
of academic and argumentative essay writing.
Since class time is limited, and often concerned with teaching writing
skills, we felt that extra opportunities to discuss the readings would
be invaluable for the students. In addition, we felt that since the Ss
face a steep learning curve in multiple areas, S collaboration outside
of class would be a particularly useful, if not an essential, part of the
learning process.
STUDENT WORKLOAD
However beneficial it might be for students to collaborate outside
of class, some students are just too busy to do it. Our experience with
SFSU ESL students has been that they are extraordinarily busy; most of
the students we have worked with in previous semesters balanced several
classes with part-time jobs while performing a significant role in their
household. This semester's English 310 students turned out to be no exception.
The following information on student workloads (see Appendix A) comes from
the student information sheets collected at the beginning of the semester:
§ the average student in the class worked 14 hours/week while taking
over 12 units.
§ 10 Ss reported working more than 20 hours/week
§ 14 Ss reported taking 15 or more units
§ 9 Ss in the class reported a combined workload (units+work hours)
of 35 hours or more.
(note: 26 students were enrolled in the class at the beginning of the
semester; 2 Ss did not fully respond to the questions about workload.)
Given the Ss' heavy workloads, it became clear that they probably had
very little time to communicate and collaborate with each other outside
of class. We felt that a class discussion board, allowing both asynchronous
and synchronous communication would be an ideal solution.
NOTE: WHAT IS A CLASS DISCUSSION BOARD?
Warschauer, Shetzer, and Meloni (2000) define a discussion board as
a "program on a Web site that enables you to have asynchronous conversations
with others; also known as a Web Board. The conversations are organized
by subject heading, or thread" (p. 169). In an academic setting, a discussion
board functions as a the class center for online communication, allowing
Ss to communicate readily with their peers, Ts, and TAs. Discussion boards
can be set up through either commercial services (e.g., http://www.blackboard.com;
http://www.webct.com) or free services (e.g., http://www.groups.yahoo.com;
http://www.beseen.com; http://www.freeforums.com/;
http://www.beseen.com/;
http://www.coolboard.com/;
http://www.multicity.com/).
RESEARCH ON THE POTENTIAL BENEFITS OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION
Benefits for Reading
In their chapter on Syllabus Design and Lesson Planning, Ferris and Hedgcock (1998) suggest that syllabus designers allow "generous time" for reading assignments and "provide for effective discussion in class" (p. 68). While this is certainly an ideal, it is not always easy to conduct extensive reading discussion in class when the syllabus requires that several writing objectives be met in each unit. In a writing class, it seems that there is just never quite enough time for class discussion. Our mentor teacher mentioned several times that she often encourages her Ss to meet outside of class to discuss their readings, since much of the time in class has to be devoted to fulfilling the writing objectives. Since the Ss face several challenges that make it difficult to meet outside of class (see the results of our final survey on collaboration below), we felt that the discussion board would provide the Ss with a place to continue and extend upon in-class discussions, generate new discussions outside of class, and gain insight into the reading processes and strategies used by their peers. Also, because the readings for English 310 come from various content areas, the Ss have varying degrees of background knowledge on each topic. We felt that the discussion board would allow the Ss extra time to share their background knowledge with each other.
Participation, Motivation, and Learning Styles
In addition to merely providing extra time for discussion, we hoped
the discussion board would provide the Ss with an open forum for self-directed
exploration of the readings. Warschauer and Lepeintre (1997) cite the work
of several teachers and researchers (Kern 1995; Sullivan, 1993; Barson,
Frommer, & Schwartz, 1993; Batson, 1988; Beauvois, 1992; Chun, 1994;
Cummins, 1991; DiMatteo, 1990, 1991; Faigley, 1990; Kelm, 1992) who have
found that in computer mediated communication, Ss not only participate
more often but also exhibit more leadership and control over the discussion.
This shift of control from the teacher to the students is one of the great
potential benefits of computer-mediated communication. In addition to encouraging
greater participation, six studies reviewed by Sproul and Kessler (1991,
as cited in Warschauer, 1996) showed that computer-mediated communication
"was decidedly more balanced" than face-to-face communication. They discovered
that "those who are traditionally at the bottom of the totem pole [are
the ones] who benefit most from [the] increased equality" of computer mediated
communication (Warschauer, 1996).
The increased and more democratic communication that takes place electronically
may be due in part to the fact that computer-mediated communication seems
to help Ss whose learning styles might keep them from communicating extensively
during face-to-face communication. It seems that asynchronous communication
allows shy or more reflective students the opportunity to compose their
contributions in a safe, low stress environment. Also, because class discussion
boards are able to have dynamic content like pictures, they may help visual
learners access course materials (see discussion of the "picture of the
week" below).
Benefits to the Writing Process
We hoped that the discussion board would allow for more communication both between the Ss and their teachers/TAs and between Ss and their peers. Warschauer, Shetzer, and Meloni (2000 pp. 32-34) point out a number of ways that computer-mediated communication can "open up an extra channel for teacher-student communication":
§ Ss e-mail teachers with "minor questions" that they might otherwise
not have asked
§ Ss set-up appointments, and inquire about assignments
§ Giving feedback on student writing via e-mail "allows more frequent
exchanges, especially if a class meets only once or twice a week, and it
provides a convenient written record of all the drafts and communications"
In addition, the discussion board seemed like an excellent way to help
the Ss with the writing process by giving them more opportunities to communicate
with each other. Barker and Kemp (1990) and Flores (1990) found that the
"easy transfer of documents and one-to-many communication facilitate collaborative
thinking and writing" (as cited in Warschauer & Lepeintre, 1997). We
hoped that the end result of this "collaborative thinking and writing"
would be more extensive and more productive idea generation, increased
exposure for Ss to the writing processes of their peers, and increased
opportunities for reflection on the writing process.
Research Process
1. RESEARCH ON ONLINE COLLABORATION AND WEBSITE DESIGN
While setting up the class website and discussion board we found a number of invaluable resources:
§ Elizabeth Castro's (2000) HTML for the World Wide Web, Fourth
Edition was a very useful HTML reference guide.
§ The Online Tutoring e-book (ed. Carol A. Higgison, 2000) is
a fabulous (and ever-expanding) resource for online teachers. In particular,
we found chapter 3, "Building an Online Community" an essential primer
for online communication with our students. The e-book can be accessed
by visiting http://otis.scotcit.ac.uk/onlinebook/.
§ Purdue's Online Writing lab (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/)
provides some great advice on tutoring online; we found their explanation
of the differences between face-to-face and on-line tutoring quite valuable
(see in particular, Blythe, S. (1997), Online Tutoring Discussion: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/lab/owl/tutoring/tutoring.html).
2.DISCUSSION WITH THE MENTOR TEACHER
A few weeks after the semester started, we asked the mentor teacher what she thought about our idea of using the technology to assist Ss in her class. Although she had already created a lesson plan for the whole semester, she generously let us try this project with her Ss.
3. THE FIRST SURVEY (BEFORE THE STUDY)
After receiving the mentor teacher's permission, we conducted oral surveys with the Ss in order to learn the Ss' familiarity with the use of e-mail and the on-line discussion board. This informal survey showed that most of the Ss were familiar with e-mail and only one S had the experience of using a discussion board before. The Ss also agreed with our conducting the project in this class.
4. CREATING THE CLASS WEBSITE AND SETTING UP SS' ACCOUNT
With the result of first survey in mind, we created a class website (http://www.oocities.org/english310web). By studying a few other course management options of using the discussion board such as BLACKBOARD (http://www.blackboard.com) and ICQ (http://web.icq.com), we decided to use the Yahoo! Groups site because we found that it allowed us to use a discussion board and chat room in one place without making the Ss download any software or sign up for anything new. Since we respected Ss privacy, we created Yahoo! e-mail account for each S so that the Ss did not have to use their private e-mail account on the class discussion board. In addition, since the TAs set up the e-mail account for them, the Ss' focus could be less on the technology, and they could avoid any potential technical problems. One weakness of this setting was, however, the Ss needed to sign-in by their 310 e-mail account every time they tried to access to the class discussion board.
5.PARTICIPATION ON THE DISCUSSION BOARD
We introduced the class website and the class discussion board to the Ss in class. With the mentor teacher's approval, we provided a detailed handout explaining the function of all features of the website in detail (see appendix B). We especially emphasized the usefulness of the discussion board and encouraged the Ss to use it for their benefits. Although we provided Chat on the class website, we were not sure at that moment whether we could actually conduct online tutoring sessions by using Chat because students were not familiar with it and might not need it. We thought we might use it eventually later the semester, therefore, we did not emphasize or explain about Chat on the class websites.
We did the following things in order to encourage the Ss' participation and collaboration on the discussion board:
ü We put a "picture of week" on the class homepage and discussion
board and changed it regularly. The pictures were related to the essay
topics that the Ss were working on (visit http://www.oocities.org/english310web/picoweek.html
to
see all of our pictures of the week).
ü We posted a few questions weekly, which were about the readings
the Ss were using in class. The questions were intended to encourage the
Ss to respond the questions on the discussion board and helped them understand
the readings and generate the ideas for the essays.
ü Each of us posted comments, responses, and questions on the
discussion board, which showed the Ss the models of on-line discussion.
ü In the classroom, we often encouraged the Ss to use the discussion
board in order to reduce their workload for the class. We also had
a chance to hear some Ss their comments on or reaction to the discussion
board during the tutoring sessions.
ü We put our office hours on the website and encouraged the Ss
to make an appointment with us on the discussion board (see http://www.oocities.org/english310web/office.html)
6. SPRING BREAK
The school had one week off for spring break. Since the Ss had to hand in the final draft after the break, we encouraged the Ss to post any questions regarding the readings and essays during the week in order to get help from TAs and other Ss. Only one S posted the message asking for help with her essay. The S posted a message literally 'asking for help' and did not specify the problems or difficulty. Although the TAs responded to her message, there was no response from her on the discussion board.
7.THE MID-SEMESTER SURVEY (THE 2ND SURVEY) (SEE APPENDIX C FOR THE SURVEY & APPENDIX D FOR THE RESULTS)
THE QUESTIONNAIRE
Time: About one and half month after we started using the class
websites.
Type of questionnaire: Anonymous. Outside of class
The number of Ss' responses:14
The purpose of questionnaire:
to learn the frequency of Ss' use of the discussion board, their reaction
and comments on the discussion board.
8.THE FINAL SURVEY (THE 3RD SURVEY) (SEE APPENDIX E FOR THE SURVEY & APPENDICES F-L FOR THE RESULTS)
THE QUESTIONNAIRE
Time: Three months after starting the discussion board.
Type of questionnaire: Anonymous. In class
The number of Ss' responses:20
The purpose of questionnaire:
to receive the Ss' feedback to the discussion board and the class websites
in general.
- to learn how often the Ss collaborate each other to work on assignments
in Eng.310 and in other classes and what kinds of assignment the Ss prefer
to collaborate more.
Findings
TECHNICAL ISSUES
Extensive Set-up time
We found that setting up a website and discussion board takes a considerable
amount of time and planning. The first hurdle, once we had decided to use
technology to help students communicate, was to choose just which technology
to use. Although commercial services like Blackboard (http://www.blackboard.com)
are quite popular and have been implemented in several classes at SFSU,
we decided that, as TAs, we would be better off using one of the many free
services available on the internet. Using one of these free services seemed
like the best way to ensure that we did not impose on our mentor teacher
by asking her to set up a Blackboard account with the school. The disadvantage,
of course, was that the free services require somewhat more adaptation
for use in an academic setting.
Early on we began discussing just which resources we wanted to make
available to the students. We debated the use of several discussion board
platforms and internet chat utilities. Ultimately, we decided to use Yahoo!
Groups as our platform, since it integrated a number of resources that
we were interested in, including a discussion board, a chat room, and a
website (through Yahoo!'s geocities service). We thought that we would
offer several methods of communication to the students, since we were not
sure which resources the students would find most useful.
The next step was to set up the student's accounts. Again, we debated
how to do this, eventually deciding to set up new accounts for the students
in order to avoid any privacy issues that might arise through their sharing
of personal email addresses. We also discovered that while Yahoo! Groups
will send list messages to members whether or not they use a Yahoo! email
address, it only allows access to services like the Chat room to those
members who go through a rather complicated sign-up process. Thus, since
we did not have access to a computer lab, and did not want to use class
time to instruct the students in how to set up their accounts, we decided
to set up accounts for all 26 students ourselves. This turned out to be
a very labor intensive process, thanks mostly to Yahoo! Groups complicated
sign-up process.
Sensory Overload
Two responses to our mid-semester survey (see appendix D for complete results) indicated that having a class website as well as a discussion board/chat room was causing the Ss a bit of sensory overload:
§ One S responded to a question about the class website by saying
that s/he had been unable to post messages to the discussion board, indicating
a confusion about the difference between these two resources.
§ Another S wrote, "I think you can get more involvement if you
use the discussion board for students to sign up conference with you. This
will inform student of your available time & which time slots are taken."
This response indicates that the S did not know that our hours were posted
on the class website and shows that expecting the students to visit two
different online resources for class information was asking too much.
INTERACTION
Throughout this semester (Feb.2001-May.2001), TAs posted 28 messages on the discussion board (TAs' initial postings 12, TAs' responses to the Ss' messages 16) while only 4 of the 26 Ss in the class participated in online discussion (Ss' postings were 13 in total). Only one message was posted by a S to another S's question, and other 12 messages were either questions to TAs or responses to TAs' responses to the Ss' initial questions.
Use of the discussion board by Ss, TAs, and the T
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Initial Postings Responses
to T/TAs to Ss to T/TAs to Ss 12 16
5 4 3 1
The Results of Mid-Semester Survey
The results of this survey (Appendix D) revealed some interesting points:
1) More Ss had visited the class website than the discussion board,
even though the discussion board was intended to be the really useful resource.
2) As the reasons of not posting any messages on the discussion board, eight Ss pointed out their busy schedule and six Ss said that they could not think of anything to say. Interestingly, one of them, who responded that s/he had not posted any messages because s/he "couldn't think of anything to say", said that the discussion board would be better "if we could get feedback or advice on how to improve our drafts." This S clearly did not know that the discussion board was in fact a place to ask for advice or feedback on drafts. Another S commented that "If we can get the feedback in the discussion board as what we have in school that will be good". These comments indicate that some Ss didn't understand the main purpose of the discussion board such as posting questions about the drafts, getting feedback etc. In addition, although we thought we mentioned these functions of the discussion board orally in class, the survey result clearly shows that we had not done an adequate job explaining what sorts of things Ss were able to do on the discussion board. One S suggested in the questionnaire that we use the discussion board for Ss to sign up conference with us. It seems that this S felt that the real value of the discussion board was for administrative uses (setting up a conference) rather than collaborative uses, which seems to represent some other Ss' ideas and images of the discussion board.(This finding was based on other comments in questionnaire and informal feedback from the Ss in class).
COLLABORATION
Although we tried to generate class collaboration on the discussion board by modeling on-line discussion and positing questions regularly, only two Ss responded to our questions or comments. Also, there was only one student-student interaction on the discussion board. We assumed that one of the main reasons for the lack of collaboration and poor participation on the discussion board might be that the Ss were too busy to use the discussion board. Since the participation on the discussion board was completely optional and the all assignment did not require the Ss to use the discussion board, it was understandable that Ss did not use the discussion board, which might be extra work for the busy Ss.
The Results of the Final Survey
The results of the final survey showed that all Ss think that collaboration
with others outside of class (Eng.310 and other classes) is either very
useful or somewhat useful (See Appendix F). However, in reality the majority
answered that they worked on assignments with their classmates in Eng.310
only a few times during the semester, and only one S said s/he worked with
classmates more than twice a week (Appendix G). The Ss collaborated a little
more in other classes (The number of Ss who collaborated more in Eng.310
were 3. The number of Ss who collaborated more in other classes were 8).
It is interesting to note that there was a gap between the Ss' responses
to the question #4 "How do you usually communicate with your classmates
when you work on class assignments?" and their responses to the question#2
"How often do you work on assignments with your classmates outside of class?"
(compare Appendices G and J). In response to question #4, one third of
the Ss said they contacted their classmates in some degree, while many
of them said they rarely worked with other classmates when answering question
#2. This contradictory result could be considered as unreliable data.
Or, we could read it that the Ss understood the two questions differently
since the question #2 asked whether they work on assignments with classmate
and the question #4 asked whether they communicate with classmates when
they have assignment. The Ss might think that the question#4 did not ask
them about collaboration with classmates but asked whether they somehow
contact the other classmates regarding the assignment, such as asking for
clarification of assignment and catching up the lesson if the Ss were absent
for the class.
The most useful data from the questionnaire was the types of assignment/study
parts that Ss prefer to collaborate with their classmates.
The Ss chose `Understanding the readings' (11 out of 19) and 'Researching,
collecting ideas and information' (9 out of 19) as the ones for which collaboration
is VERY USEFUL. As assignment for which collaboration is SOMEWHAT USEFUL,
many Ss chose 'Generating ideas for essays' (11 out of 19) and "Discussing
final draft of essay" (9 out of 19). 'Paraphrasing and summarizing'
and 'Discussing final draft of essay' were selected as ones which are better
to work on alone (see appendix I).
As the biggest problems with meeting their classmates outside of class,
the Ss raised 'conflicting schedules' and 'Not enough time to meet' as
the very big problems (see appendix K).
We assumed that one of the main reasons might be that the Ss were too
busy to use the discussion board. Since the participation of the discussion
board was completely optional and the all assignment did not require the
Ss to sign in the discussion board, it was understandable that Ss did not
use the discussion board, which might be extra work for the busy Ss.
ISSUES FOR THE TEACHER AND TA'S
Integration
As the semester progressed, we realized that the
discussion board was falling far short of our expectations. Rather than
increasing student participation and control, we found that they TAs were
posting far more messages than the students in their attempts to generate
discussion. We discussed several possibilities for this lack of interaction,
and decided that one of the main factors was that the class discussion
board was not well integrated into the curriculum; the students were busy
enough finishing their daily assignments, what motivation would they have
to add to their workload by visiting the discussion board? We approached
our mentor teacher and asked if we could try to better integrate the discussion
board into the curriculum, perhaps by having the students do one or two
of their assignments online. Understandably, she told us that even though
it was a good idea to assign homework using the discussion board, these
sorts of changes need to occur before the semester begins. Adapting an
assignment to work online takes a considerable amount of time that the
T and TAs could not spare while the semester was rolling along full-steam
ahead.
Plagiarism
One consideration that neither of us had thought
about was the possibility that Ss might use the discussion board for plagiarism.
We have both heard ESL teachers at SFSU mention that student plagiarism
is a recurring problem in the department. Because there was no time in
the schedule for peer review during units 2 and 3, we felt that the discussion
board would help out by allowing Ss to share and review their peers' papers
outside of class. Unfortunately, our mentor teacher felt that this use
of the discussion board might make it easier for some Ss to plagiarize
the work of others.
Recommendations
TECHNICAL ISSUES
Our findings indicate that it is very important to simplify online
resources, only using those that are absolutely necessary. Trying to use
a class website as well as a discussion board/chat room amplified the potential
for technical problems and confusion. It also increased the amount of time
required to set-up and maintain online resources, and created a greater
need for training the Ss. We also recommend as much hands-on training as
possible, since we found that despite a very thorough handout some Ss still
experienced technical problems.
INTERACTION
In an online learning community, "learning takes place through collaboration
and through writing and question formation." (Zimmer, B., Harris, R. &
Muirhead, B. section 4.1) Therefore, the Ts should integrate the use of
discussion board into the curriculum, rather than adding on (The TAs, who
want to use the discussion board for their assisted class, should collaborate
with the T and propose these ideas before the Ts make the curriculum or
lesson plan. ) The online component of a class must be an integrated part
of the class rather than something that is merely tacked on. The ideal
is a "seamless" integration of electronic and traditional classroom resources,
in which "we study and learn and interact in the physical and virtual spaces
without thinking about how we do it … taking the best from both worlds"
(Higgison, 2000). Online interaction should extend from and build upon
classroom interaction. Thus, planning on how technology should be integrated
should be started before the class begins. As one of the ways of
integration, the Ts can assign some homework using the discussion board
(generate essay topics, paraphrasing etc). In other words, the Ss'
participation should be required for some type of homework. In addition,
considering the study which shows asynch communication might need to be
tied to tasks without immediate deadlines (Blythe, 1997), the Ts can assign
the Ss to generate ideas or ask questions each other on the discussion
board. The participation can be worth to a certain percentage of class
grade. All of this will make it possible that the participation is on the
discussion board is not extra work but the part of assignment/learning
process.
COLLABORATION
As the final survey result shows, the Ss think collaboration with other
classmates outside of class is useful in certain degree. But, the conflicting
schedules with other classmates and their busy schedule make meeting with
classmates impossible outside of class. Here is really the use of
discussion board should come. First, the T/TAs make it really clear to
the Ss what they can do with the discussion board. Probably, the T/TAs
can show them how they can help each other collaborate each other with
a specific example. Second, the T/TAs should take into consideration which
assignment/tasks their Ss prefer working with others(In the case of Ss
in Eng. 310, they were 'understand the readings' and 'researching, collecting
ideas and information ) and integrate the use of the discussion board into
the particular assignment, encouraging them to collaborate each other to
do the homework.
ISSUES FOR THE TEACHER AND TA'S
Integration
As we found, it was impossible for our mentor teacher to incorporate technology into her lesson plans after the semester had already started. Planning and implementation of online resources takes quite a bit of time; therefore, if electronic resources are to be used, Ts and TAs need to start the process of integration early, well before the beginning of the semester. The integration of technology should include:
§ making online participation a compulsory part of class participation
§ determining which lessons and activities might benefit from
increased collaboration and then adapting them to the online environment
§ creating new tasks, activities, and assignments that exploit
the benefits of computer-mediated communication
§ determining effective ways to asses the success or failure of
new tasks, activities, and assignments (source – somewhere in CALL environments)
Simplicity
As mentioned above, Ts and TAs should make sure that the online resources
used in a class are simple and easy to use. Trying to incorporate too many
resources, or tacking on resources just in case they might be used can
cause quite a bit of extra work for the T/TAs.
Also, Ts and TAs need to consider what will happen if the Ss do use
the technology – will there be enough time to respond to student questions?
Pieter Nagel (1999) asserts that "if e-mail is a core component of the
course the success of the course depends on the quantity and quality of
electronic traffic generated. Continuous teacher involvement is very important
in this regard as the teacher has to steer with pedagogical leadership
on issues and ensure constant participation and active encouragement."
Ts and TAs should incorporate technology only when they are sure they will
be able to handle the extra workload that might be caused by increased
S participation.
Needs assessment & Setting
Warschauer, Shetzer, and Meloni (2000) assert that when student-centered learning is not a priority in a class, attempts to integrate computer mediated communication have shown poor results, "as the students view computer activities as another form of teacher-mandated busy work" (p. 109). Choosing to integrate technology into a class curriculum should ultimately be based on a thorough analysis of the class setting and student needs.
Conclusion
Our research this semester has shown that it is quite difficult for
TAs to use a discussion board and class website to help the Ss with academic
reading and writing. However, if Ts and TAs are able to work together before
the semester begins to integrate computer mediated communication tools
into their lesson plans, the Ss will be able to take advantage of these
resources (personal communication with Kohn, 2001).
We have also learned that computer mediated communication can be a
tremendous tool for collaborative writing. This semester we have exchanged
well over 100 email messages while working on various projects. In each
of these emails we have asked questions, negotiated meaning, reflected
our works in progress, and synthesized each others ideas.
Sources
Bishop, Ana L. (1999). CALL issues: setting policy for the evaluation
of the CALL environment. In J. Egbert & E. Hanson-Smith (Eds.), CALL
environments – research, practice, and critical issues (pp. 272-283). Alexandria,
VA: TESOL.
Blythe, S. (1997). Online Tutoring Discussion. Purdue Online Writing
lab. Retrieved from the World Wide Web April 27, 2001: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/lab/owl/tutoring/tutoring.html
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Appendices
A. Student Workload Chart
B. English 310web Handout
C. Mid-semester survey
D. Mid-semester survey results
E. Final Survey
F. Final Survey Results – Chart 1: How useful is working on assignments
with your classmates outside of class?
G. Final Survey Results – Chart 2: How often do you work on assignments
with your classmates outside of class?
H. Final Survey Results – Chart 2a: Comparison of collaboration in
English 310 and other classes
I. Final Survey Results – Chart 3: When do you think it is useful to
work with your classmates outside of class?
J. Final Survey Results – Chart 4: How do you usually communicate with
your classmates when you work on class assignments?
K. Final Survey Results – Chart 5: What are the biggest problems with
meeting your classmates outside of class time?
L. Final Survey Results – Chart 6: How many hours a week do you work
alone on your assignments outside of class?
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