Students in network-based classrooms converse in writing through the use of communications software on local-area computer networks. Through the electronic medium they are immersed in a writing community--one that supports new forms of collaboration, authentic purposes for writing, writing across the curriculum, and new social relations in the classroom. The potential for collaborative and participatory learning in these classrooms is enormous.

The book examines an important type of network-based classroom known as ENFI (Electronic Networks For Interaction). Teachers have set up ENFI or similar classrooms in elementary and secondary schools and at more than a hundred colleges and universities. In these settings, teaching and learning have been dramatically transformed, but the new technology has brought with it difficulties and surprises. The process of creating such a classroom raises important questions about the meaning and the realities of educational change. [Ordering information]

Table of Contents

List of contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction, 1

Part I. Studying the re-creation of innovations

1. Innovation and social change, Bertram C. Bruce, 9
2. A situated evaluation of ENFI, Bertram C. Bruce & Joy Kreeft Peyton, 33
3. Understanding the multiple threads of network-based classrooms 50, Joy Kreeft Peyton & Bertram C. Bruce, 50
4. Pulling together the threads: Themes and issues in the network-based classroom, Joy Kreeft Peyton & Bertram C. Bruce, 65

Part II. Creating the network-based classroom

5. The origins of ENFI, Trent Batson, 87
6. Student authority and teacher freedom: ENFI at New York Institute of Technology, Marshall Kremers, 113
7. Script writing on a computer network: Quenching the flames or feeding the fire?, J. D. Miller, 124
8. Seeing students as writers, Geoffrey Sirc, & Tom Reynolds, 138
9. The origins of ENFI, network theory, and computer-based collaborative writing instruction at the University of Texas, Fred Kemp, 161
10. Why write - together - concurrently on a computer network?, C. M. Neuwirth, M. Palmquist, C. Cochran, T. Gillespie, K. Hartman, & T. Hajduk, 181
11. One ENFI path: From Gallaudet to distance learning, Diane P. Thompson, 210
12. Institutionalizing ENFI: One school struggles to implement ENFI across the writing program, Michael Spitzer, 228

Part III. Assessing outcomes across realizations

13. I'm talking about Allen Bloom": Writing on the network, David Bartholomae, 237
14. Designing a writing assessment to support the goals of the project, Mary Fowles, 263

References, 286

Further reading, 294

Index, 297