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Assessing the synchronous online classroom : methodologies and findings in real-time virtual learning environments

In "Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention," Cynthia Selfe charges the field of composition not to simply consider technology a tool, but to "pay attention" to the rhetorical and social implications of those tools. In one sense, paying critical attention to technological literacies echoes the decade-old call for Computers and Writing practitioners to use research as a means of assessing online activities, suggesting that teachers not remain satisfied with the unreflective excitement that has been the operative epistemology of the field from its beginning. In another sense, Selfe's recent call enlists teachers and students in reflective and evaluative class discussion and writing on the technological literacy tools they are learning to use.This dissertation responds to both of these implications as it studies a semester of first-year college composition students within a synchronous online classroom environment. The question that guides my study is, in its most basic form, what happens during synchronous online writing conferences? And to speak to that question, I design an ethnographic context-sensitive text analysis employing grounded theory for data coding, a methodological model adaptable for future research in synchronous online classroom activity. I focus on three issues that have continually arisen in the scholarship surrounding synchronous conferencing: aspects of online language, the implications of the environment within object-oriented MUDs (MOOs), and the use of social constructionism as a theoretical foundation for synchronous conferencing.With the findings from my study, I conclude the dissertation by offering pedagogical suggestions to teachers and students for critically assessing synchronous online discourse. My articulation of assessment mandates that students and teachers engage in it together, collaboratively reflecting on what happens online and learning about synchronous online discourse-a significant ingredient in contemporary literacy. / Department of English

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/176077
Date January 1999
CreatorsEnglish, Joel Alexander
ContributorsNewbold, W. Webster
Source SetsBall State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Formatx, 386 leaves : ill. ; 28 cm.
SourceVirtual Press

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