Pedagogy
Perhaps the Internet is the perfect virtual classroom: a discourse community
of writers and readers, naturally orbiting a common textual environment
where the writer/reader has the ability to converse with the text and then
reach beyond to dialogue with the greater potential community of other writers
and readers.
With our website, we are not trying to distribute information to our
students, but rather we are attempting to engage them in a dynamic conversation.
The World Wide Web offers our students an instantaneous, almost unmediated
environment for thinking. Just as an essay may provide a snapshot of the
line of argument of an individual's learning on a particular topic, the
membranous structure of a hypertextual composition, like our class website,
may show us the social and collaborative structure of a community of learners
creating knowledge.
It is important to note here that it is not technology that is driving
the learning. Good educations are still the products of great conversations.
The computer is just allowing us to follow our conversations beyond the
walls of the classroom.
Entering the Conversation
The mere presence of a hypertextual environment does not move students
rapidly beyond their level of intelligence. On the contrary, most of the
students probably will only enter the discussion, as they do in normal conversations,
at their previous level of understanding of the material. Some of our students
will eventually provide further essays to enlighten other students down
the line, as a student from last year contributed an essay on Nat Turner.
Probably many of our students will barely get beyond email discussions,
or help others with their revisions.
My observations support the findings of Jeutonne Brewer and Boyd Davis
(1994), who noted that students enter and participate in electronic dialogues,
"Like participants in a conversation... [they] must choose the point
at which to enter the discussion and select a linguistic level at which
to participate" (1994). In the future, this website will strive to
show the dynamic learning community we already have in place.
Several years ago, even before we had an American Studies class, we started
reading groups around selected authors and themes. We are recording these
discussions on film, and later we spent considerable time analyzing the
discussion. Perhaps these discussions will be placed on the website. Already
we are making plans to have graduated students dialogue through email with
current students as the year progresses. We believe that knowledge is a
product of community and this website reflects that assumption.
Conclusions
True knowledge develops only in the interactions of real individuals
in real contexts. Conversations between students and teachers do just that,
bringing narrative structure to disorganized facts and helping to synthesize
the thoughts of all (the class) in a dialectic of conversation. Knowledge
then is a product that develops one step at a time, as a matter of mutual
agreement. Consequently, these American Studies students are the course
content through group use. Nowhere in their learning were these students
left to themselves with only books.
Or computer screens.
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