Handout for Geiger and Rickard's article "Relinquishing...."

Relinquishing Authority: Tapping Into Students’ Cognitive Skills through Familiar Content and Virtual Worlds
BARBARA GEIGER AND KRISTIAN RICKARD
Problem:
1. Students take Freshman Composition class as a “waste of time,” or “sth to get out of the way.”
Research Question:
2. How can we make the class both interesting and useful for students? How can social construction work in teaching composition?
Proposed Solution:
The computer-based composition classroom (the use of MOO, the Internet, and e-mail) + popular culture make the class both entertaining and useful.

Method: Computer-based classroom (MOO)
(MOO is, according to Jan Holmevik, “a synchronous online multiuser space. It was originally developed for online gaming and socializing purposes, but since about 1993-95 it's been used more and more for academic learning purposes.” [http://www.dartmouth.edu/~webteach/cases/linguamoo.html] Wikipedia says, “A MOO (MUD, object oriented) is a text-based online virtual reality system to which multiple users (players) are connected at the same time.”)
1. The class does not feel like English class.
2. Students recognize the importance of learning to operate technology.
3. Due to anonymity, reticent students can thrive as it avoids the traces of gender, race, ethnicity … and makes the class more democratic.
4. It empowers them to strengthen their own writing by utilizing technological tools.
5. It makes students feel comfortable by allowing them to personalize their learning space.
6. While working in group, they understand the importance of collaboration.
7. They also know how things look from different perspectives through role playing.
8. While preparing their final class presentation and final project, they learn all the necessary skills of writing from organization to audience analysis.
9. They become knowledge managers of the classroom; in other words, they become responsible for their own learning process
Content: Popular Culture
1. The use of popular culture as the content helps in “eliminate[ing] standard, overworked research topics, such as teen pregnancy and drunk driving in favor of topics that really mattered to our students.”
2. Students have various options to choose from different fields of popular culture (not restricted to a narrow field).
3. It empowers students by allowing them to choose what is important and interesting for them. They feel they are experts in the field they write on.
Conclusion:
This computer-based social constructionist approach empowers students by letting them find their own voices. Students can use their own imagination, creativity, and their culture. To be precise, it empowers students’ writing voices. Though the writers do not directly compare computer-based approach to ordinary collaborative and student-centered approach, their implication is that the former, besides making the class more interesting, strengthens students’ writing skills, through completely text-based virtual communication, better than the latter.