The Themes Defined

Online Technologies

While many educators have rushed to embrace online teaching, I think it is useful to recall some of the key objections to online classes for first-year students,

1. The lack of context makes interpretation difficult (Hayakawa,1939); thus, figuring out what an assignment "means" may elude the inexperienced reader/writer.

2. Hypertext requires a certain amount of linguistic knowledge (Bruffee, 1986; Burke, 1966; Halliday & Hansen, 1976; Winterowd, 1970), which many first-year students do not have.

3. Informal writing existing on listservs and newsgroups promotes poor writing (Bolter, 1991).

4. Distinguishing between "email" writing and different types of writing may be difficult for the inexperienced writer (Spooner & Yancey, 1996).

5. Problems of unstructured time and unlimited, uncensored information because students are enraptured with the "newness" of the online experience (Dyrli & Kinnaman, 1996).

Add to the mix Turkle's previously noted warning, "Computers don’t just do things for us, they do things to us, including to our ways of thinking about ourselves and other people" (p. 26). Do these crop up as minor inconveniences in the online first-year composition course, or are they deterrents to students in the class? These questions inform this category which includes any comment made in regards to the technology of the course, including email, Internet providers, machine types, machines crashing, webpages or sites, downloading, etc. For example, when Sue sent her first draft through to the class, she did so four different times because she was not sure it went the first time; thus, the first time she sent her draft, that was coded as Product theme; the subsequent drafts, along with her apology for sending the draft four times, were coded in this category.

Process: Writing and Pedagogy

One of the primary goals in the writing classroom, according to most instructors of first-year college composition, is to help students become better writers through the writing process (Emig, 1971, 1988; Flower, 1989a; Hayes & Brandt, 1992; ). In practice then, most writing students need to understand the first draft is not the final draft. They are told to revise, revise, and revise again. They are shown how to do this by discussing models, through peer-editing each other’s drafts, and through offering formative feedback on drafts. Then they are asked to rewrite what they thought was the final product and are shown areas that could be strengthened. Therefore, one of the most active themes is that of Writing and Pedagogy in terms of amount of messages.

Emig's (1971) seminal case study in the field of rhetoric, The Composing Processes of 12^th Graders, was one of the first to actually try to begin understanding how beginning writers talk about their processes. Using talk aloud protocols, she sought to answer the question of what happens to the self as a result of the educational stimuli of academic writing. She discovered two dominant modes of composing among her eight subjects: (a) the reflexive mode, which focuses on the writer's thoughts and feelings, and (b) the extensive mode, which focuses on conveying a message to an intended audience. Thus, drawing upon these distinctions this category contains two parts.

Reflexive talk is any actual talk about their processes, i.e., the theory of their processes. Extensive talk, the practice of their processes, includes audience bearing activities, brainstorming topics, rewording thesis statements and such. For example, Robert stated in the reflexive mode, "After I have the outline I start to write my only rough draft. Then I will fix up any mistakes I see on the rough draft, then write my final paper." Here Robert is responding to a question about his writing process. The impetus of this response was a teacher-generated question. Conversely when Sue, in the extensive mode, stated, after she had already decided that her topic for her second paper would be violence in bars, "Now, I am thinking about littering. Because that bother me very much. What do you guys think?" Here, she is practicing the application of the writing process, rather than making general comments about the writing process.

Product: Assignments

The praxis, the blend of theory and practice, of student processes is their writing products. Recall Secor's (1992) point that "writing ability is a discrete skill that develops over time and incorporates many subskills, new dimensions, and applications that continually require more learning" (p. 172). Moreover, teachers are constrained by time and space; therefore, the writing instructor must design activities to encourage emergent writers to develop the required skills. Teachers set up a hierarchy of activities for developing strategies, first teaching how to develop content and support, then organization, then addressing surface level problems, i.e., grammar and punctuation (Garrison, 1981; Huff, 1983). This hierarchy expresses itself in a set of clearly defined assignments, usually increasing in complexity.

This theme contains the products of the class: drafts of their essays or exercises based on their readings. Messages in this area included references to exercises or answers to some type of prompt from the professor. These types of messages do not attempt to elicit a communication from another, nor do they require any type of response. All essays, responses to questions posed by the teacher, and all debate discourse from the final assignment fit in this theme. This category does not include discussion that ensued from confusion about an assignment or topic.

Communication

The third theme is that of Communication. As noted, Sproull and Kiesler (1989) believe computer-mediated-communication (CMC) is a means to revolutionize "social and structural changes in the ways people communicate and relate to each other" (as quoted by Spears & Lea, 1994, p. 427). At the same time, we should recall that other researchers suggest, "Computer-mediated communication qualitatively limits the nature of communication by reducing the amount of social context information available in or around the message" (Spear & Lea, 1994, p. 429). This category attempts to address that mix of messages where students share information, matters of interest, and in some instances, confusion with their peers. This is the small, safe talk of a typical class. For instance, Rhonda stated, "I have been neglecting my duties as an English student lately, but don't worry, I have been practicing plenty of writing in my other classes." This type of statement could be overheard in any writing classroom, as it is common, daily talk which is not revealing nor intimate. These types of comments tend to invite others to reply or respond, but do not require either. In other words, the comments are bland enough that if one is so inclined a response could be warranted. Also, included in this category are messages, indirectly and directly, requesting help. For example, Monica, one of the least skilled writers in the class often relied upon her peers for their comments. She would send messages to the class, "Please give me any comment as soon as possible!" This type of statement differs from one requesting or giving feedback that is a different theme entirely.

In addition, socialization issues are also found in the theme (White, 1985, p. 13). Here students learn, discuss, and begin to understand their relationship to both themselves and their classmates (Burke, 1969; Smith, 1992; White, 1985). They also begin to gain "linguistic etiquette" (White, 1985, p. 13), enabling them to become members of their peer group communities (Harris, 1989).

Feedback

Giving and/or receiving feedback on drafts of their peers is the next theme. The teacher of the class had setup the class to run like a workshop where peer comments were essential to each member. Flower (1989b) believes students must be able to problem-solve their own work, seeing it as a puzzle that can be formed as a whole. Revision, after all, is one of the key elements of "good" writing.

Teachers encourage students to offer feedback on each other's drafts and ideas. This giving and receiving of feedback affords students the opportunity to problem-solve their work (Flower, 1978). In order to do so, many composition teachers believe that learning to give feedback on problems in a peer's paper will help a student attend to those in her own work. Moreover, the reciprocal relationship between peers teaches them to be part of a community of writers (Bizzell, 1982; Harris, 1989). Since research indicates learning to give peer feedback is important to the growth of the writer, teachers sometimes create handouts and peer edit sheets to enable students in learning to give effective feedback. In this class, students were told to offer feedback with little direction given although they were instructed to read and review Chapter 3 in their textbook which offered some suggestions for revision.

Emig (1971) writes about two types of feedback: (a) "Revision" requires "reformulation of larger segments of discourse in major and organic ways—a shift of the point of view toward the material in a piece; major reorganizations and restructurings" (p. 43); and (b) "Corrective" involves small surface error correction or stylistic concerns. Thus, for writing to improve in areas of point of view, content, organization, and structure, a writer needs to receive both revision feedback as well as corrective comments. Moreover, revision feedback allows beginning writers to begin that recursive process of editing and revising. If left to their own devices, many will do nothing more than change a word or delete a sentence.

The instructor in this class provided a model for the way to give feedback with the remarks he provided on student writing. When an essay was sent to the instructor, he would open the file, comment in capital letters within the text of the student's writing. In addition, he would post the file containing his comments to the entire class, so that everyone could read them. Soon others in the class began to model his notation style. Thus, while students were not given direct instruction in how to give and receive feedback, from his modeling, if they were astute enough, they could follow his lead.

Encouragement

Another category that slowly evolved from the data analysis was that of Encouragement. One of the unwritten requirements of the first-year composition teacher is that of helping students learn about themselves in relation to others (Burke, 1969; Smith, 1992; White, 1985). Selfe (1992) notes that the use of computers in the classroom encourages students to a "larger world vision" and to see things from different perspectives" (p. 155). Once students begin to accept others who are not like them, empathy is created. From this point, students can reach out and offer encouragement to others in the class, not just those in one's own small group, as would happen in a traditional classroom. However, in terms of the amount of messages, this had the least number of entries. Not all students offered encouragement to others in the class, yet it was prevalent enough and had such distinct characteristics that it warranted its own category.

Here students reach out to others in an affective manner. When Monica tells Steve, "I knew you will do allot better for the other papers. Good luck!," she is offering hope. When Carl writes to one of the students who was complaining about his frustration, "Is there anything I (we) can do to help?," he is offering more than just polite conversation. Thus, this theme takes into consideration those times when students take time and energy to offer help or encouragement to others in the class.

Revelation

While many of the other categories named themselves, this category was difficult to label. As the class progressed, more and more students began to share small, personal details of their lives. They began to offer information about where they lived, to share telephone numbers, and even discussed their hopes and dreams for the future. The technological component of the class helped students become more articulate about their inner selves. Somehow through the course of the class, involving both its pedagogy and its technologies, a richness of experience began to emerge with those who were truly engaged in the course. After the initial obligatory self-introduction, students in the online class were much like their counterparts in the classroom; they tended to share bits of their histories in an indirect manner, telling where they worked or a bit of their backgrounds. When Julie wrote about her husband, she used specifics, describing his height, weight, and color of his hair. This disclosure might seem to fit into the category of Communication, but on closer inspection, these details reveal more about what the author thinks is important than about communicating information about class, school, or general topics.

Thus, this category has in its root a sense of personal disclosure. In this theme, notes about family origins, personal crisis, and future dreams are shared with the group. Sue told the class, "I feel a little better knowing that I'm not the only one receiving these messages." Her readers sense that she is sharing about the alienation inherent in online learning. When Rhonda wrote, "I live right behind K. H.S.," we know that she has begun to trust the members of the class. This theme does not include messages of one student encouraging another. Thus, when Steve replied to Sue's feeling of frustration, his response was not coded here in the Revelation theme, but in the Encouragement theme.