reload/reset/reboot:
Rethinking the Role of Computers in Writing Instruction
Rebekah Shultz Colby

On Thursday, January 24, Michael Palmquist, a professor of English at Colorado State University, gave a talk entitled reload/reset/reboot: Rethinking the Role of Computers in Writing Instruction, in which he discussed the computers role in writing instruction. Dedicated to improving how teachers use computers in the writing classroom, he directs the University's Institute for Learning and Teaching and co-directs the Center for Research on Writing and Communication Technologies. He has also co-authored Writing with a Computer and Transitions: Teaching Writing in Computer Supported and Traditional Classrooms, a study that examins just how writing teachers use the computer within their classrooms. Finally, he is the developer of Writing@CSU, Colorado State University's Online Writing Center, founding editor of the journal Academic Writing, and edits the WAC Clearinghouse, a major online resource for research on writing across the curriculum.

Michael Palmquist opened up his talk by introducing a common pedagogical truism in composition: never let technology drive teaching. Only use technology if it supports the teaching goals already in place. However, Palmquist argued that teachers should not just think of technology in this way as an add-on tool. As a writing community, composition has long since stopped thinking of language as a purely transparent medium and should stop thinking of technology in the same way. Instead, as a community, we need to be open to the ways technology changes thinking, writing, and, inevitably, pedagogy. Technology is transformative, and we need to rethink pedagogy as technological changes occur. We need to think of the new possibilities that technologies open up instead of just thinking of technology as an add-on (and often not a very good add-on) for existing teaching practices.

Palmquist explained that at first he, too, had followed the axiom of not allowing technology to drive teaching practice. In fact, when he first began developing Writing@CSU, writing software and applications for students and teachers which is online at http://writing.colostate.edu/, he had followed this motto. On the site, he and his writing faculty developed writing guides, writing activities, and video-based speaking guides. On the site, they uploaded annotated model drafts and included email and chat with the writing center. In 1999, though, he came to the realization that he was really just reinventing the writing instruction wheel. While the writing advice and software was helpful to students, it really didnt offer students anything new that could not have been offered without the technology. He was not utilizing the technology to its fullest extent to teach writing.

So, he embarked on Transitions, a study of how exactly teachers use computers in the writing classroom and how exactly computers benefit the writing process. For the study, four teachers were interviewed and four classrooms were observed. In addition, students responded to surveys and gave samples of their writing. In the study, he found that teachers and students interact three times more in a classroom with computers than in a traditional classroom. He also found that in a computer classroom, students were more likely to talk about their writing, revise more frequently and extensively, and show a much greater increase in their confidence as writers. He discovered that in a computer classroom teachers took on more of a facilitator role, giving students more control over their own writing. Finally, he learned that while writing was most often an object of study in a traditional classroom, in a computer classroom, writing became something that was actively done. In other words, he discovered that computers fostered more of a hands-on writing studio approach to teaching.

These results from the Transitions study inspired him to revamp the Writing@CSU website and software in a way that used technology to transform writing pedagogy in more dynamic ways. He added collaboration tools, composing tools, communication tools, and tools for facilitating better peer-to-peer and instructor feedback. He created a classmates page, which is similar to Facebook. He created wikis, added an eportfolio, and developed a bibliography tool. He also created a writing co-op, a web page in which students who want to network with other writers outside of a formal class can better collaborate.

As his course management tools became more developed, he began to wonder how writing teachers were actually using them in their classrooms. So, he embarked on a second Transitions study. This time it included 16 teachers and 60 classrooms and covered the span of four years. During the first year, he examined the teachers experience. In the second year, he looked at the impact of classroom settings, specifically how computers impact this setting. The third year he studied the impact professional development on teachers attitudes toward computers and how this impacts how they use technology in their classrooms.

With this new Transitions study, he has discovered that students use of writing technology reflects the way that teachers integrate this technology into their classrooms. However, students attitudes toward technology vary. Some see the computer as a way to just easily disseminate information, while others see it as much more than that -- a more sophisticated writing tool. Unfortunately, most teachers see technology as an add-on to their classes; however, professional development does change attitudes toward technology and, therefore, how it is used.

Conducting both of these studies taught him that teachers should think carefully about the relationships between technology and teaching goals. As a teaching community, we should also interrogate metaphors that inform the design of learning tools and environments so that we are not constrained in thinking about technology or teaching in only the same old ways but, instead, try to find metaphors that productively innovate teaching as well as technology. We also need to continue to study interactions between curricula, technology, students, and writers.

Home