In this essay, the author describes her own attempt at incorporating Web 2.0 technology into her teaching: a wiki project that she used in her English as a second language (ESL) composition course. The theme she traces throughout the rest of this essay is the wiki's ability (or inability) to make "connections" of various kinds. Like any text, the…

Effective writing happens when the values of a genre and the desires of a writer match. Studying the blog entry as a genre has strengthened the author's assumptions about the possibility of using blogs as examples of emplaced, agency-granting writing and as bridges to academic writing. Because blogs are a relatively new form of communication, the…

At the beginning of each school year, the Languages and Humanities Division at Chandler-Gilbert Community College (CGCC) meets to discuss first-year composition matters. Faculty leave the workshop renewed by the collaboration and buoyed by the promise and potential of a new semester. Yet, when classes actually begin, faculty may find that they are…

Composition teachers have generally embraced collaborative learning in the years since Kenneth Bruffee published his first article promoting its advantages in "College English" in 1972. But assigning collaboratively written papers in an introductory college writing course is still rare. This study assesses the benefits and drawbacks of assigning a…

Peer-response remains a central process in first-year composition; faculty can make it effective and efficient by "spotlighting"--designing the process as digital, emergent, and distributive. In this article, the author first elaborates on his own use of peer-response terminology. He favors "peer-response" as the descriptive term for…

This article presents an exchange between Kip Strasma and Elizabeth Tomlinson. Strasma responds to "Gender and Peer Response" by Tomlinson, and Tomlinson responds to Strasma's ""Spotlighting": Peer-Response in Digitally Supported First-Year Writing Courses." Both of them respond to each other's cross talk.

In her second semester teaching for Arizona State University, the author suddenly found herself teaching a fully online writing course for the first time. Originally she had been scheduled to teach the course in a hybrid format, meeting face to face with students once a week; however, a coding error in the online class schedule resulted in the…

This article examines, in a variety of ways, the concept of identity and presents reports and views from regional representatives of the Two-Year College English Association on the issue of identity in the classroom. Reporting from TYCA-Northeast, Marsha Nourse echoes some dismay as she relates chance meetings with students. Elissa Caruth from…

Discusses how certain strategies can enable successful chat rooms in academic courses. Examines some of the author's own pedagogical trials, errors, and successes with chat rooms. Offers some strategies for conducting effective participation among students in such settings. Discusses several models of teacher-student interaction for developing the…

Argues that networked classrooms offer a number of opportunities for effective writing instruction. Argues that shared discourse in the networked-computer classroom has three levels forming a continuum of interactivity: students sending messages "at,""to," and "between" each other. Offers classroom examples of each level of discourse. (SR)