The focus of this module is managing collaborative student projects. Often the best way to introduce technology-enhanced assignments is to have students do them collaboratively. Groups of students can be formed with varying levels of expertise in Internet technology. The groups can then share their expertise – teach each other – the necessary skills to create web projects. When working in groups, it is useful to assign group members specific roles, so that students can become experts in that area and then take charge of helping their peers' gain fluency in that area as well (for example, one group member acts as a specialist in web design/web builder, media specialist, or webitor/web editor).
For any collaborative group project, it works best if group members are assigned specific roles as specialists: Web builder (who codes and posts projects), library researcher (who collects library materials), Internaut researcher (who collects Internet resources), media specialist (who collects images, icons, and media files), and Webitor (who edits the final project). While all members of the group are responsible for all areas of the project, the student with an assigned role will collect and redistribute materials from the group members, will ensure that his or her area is completed, and will meet with the instructor as a specialist group. For example, all of the Webmasters will meet with the instructor to discuss problems and exchange ideas. Meeting with individual groups and specialists is an effective way to do Web projects in large classes of fifty or more students.
The focus of this unit (is) to introduce students to the space of the Web and to compare the information provided on the Web about coffeehouses to the ethnographic information students compiled about coffeehouses on campus. After completing these analyses, students (write) collaborative papers that compare their online cafe experiences with their "real" coffeehouse experiences. They cite Web pages as well as their observations to support their contentions.
This project asks students to use the web for research and topic generation. Watch a movie together as a class (Patricia Webb used Bladerunner), and then search the Web for sources that would broaden and complicate your understandings of the movie. Students then collaboratively write papers which focus on a salient issue about the movie and use the Web as their sole source of research.
This project asks students to use their experience using the Web to help them collectively author a Web page that could serve as a newcomer's introduction to important campus places.
After creating their campus Web page, students write a reflection essay examining the process of collaborative writing / work and analyzed the web page they produced.
Using collaborative technologies invites students to refine their ideas as part of the composing process. Extending classroom conversations also encourages collaboration by giving students opportunities to discuss course concepts, compare understandings, ask questions, make connections, and generate ideas for papers and further discussions. It does this through a medium which promotes conversation, communal sharing, and critical thinking, as well as break down some communicational boundaries that present themselves in normal classroom discussions.
E-mail is becoming a universal means of communication. You can usually find e-mail addresses for authors and others who may be willing to communicate with students.
Listservs are mailing lists that allow e-mail messages to be sent instantly to any number of people. All members of a class can instantly be contacted and threads of conversation can be followed by the class.
Forums are places where instructors and students can post messages and respond to the thoughts of others. Unlike listservs that utilize e-mail to post messages, forums utilize web pages on the world wide web.
Try a Forum - http://matrix.msu.edu/interact/interact1/
This page will prompt you for a username and password. Enter in the following
Chat Rooms allow multiple people to occupy a virtual environment and engage in "synchronous" conversation. Like forums, chat rooms are simply web pages that are accessed via the world wide web through any browser.
Try a Chat Room - http://matrix.msu.edu/interact/interact1/
This page will prompt you for a username and password. Enter in the following
Webb, Patricia R. "Changing Writing/Changing Writers: The World Wide Web and Collaborative Inquiry in the Classroom." In Weaving a Virtual Web: Practical Approaches to New Information Technologies. Ed. Sibylle Gruber. Illinois: National Council of Teachers of English. 123-145..