Section 2

Our uses for the software

MILE software has been used at McMaster University to produce course materials for Critical Thinking, for Economics, for Humanities Computing, for a project on Adult Literacy and technology, called LUNA, and for my course, Writing in the Electronic Age. In Writing in the Electronic Age, my course, first-year students learn an amalgam of skills that culminate in a critique of a web site, as well as a research essay, both on paper and in HTML. Along the way, I teach students how to do HTML mark-up, how to use an HTML editor, and many of the components required to put together a readable research essay on a topic related to Multimedia or the Internet. Among the background materials that students are expected to learn are the elements of good academic writing and a basic knowledge of standard English, error correction, and editing, meant to make them better editors of their own and others' work.

The CD that we produced as part of a course package in Writing in the Electronic Age, aimed at giving students better feedback than a composition textbook can on subjects that relate to their competence in grammar and in essay writing. Students each purchase the CD, along with the composition textbook. The use of both of these tools, however, is at the student's discretion and dependent on their own knowledge of the fundamentals. This self-pacing on the part of the students means that I can devote more of the course time to working on students' skills in conciseness, in structure, and in issues, like bias, that affect the overall impact of a student's work. It also means that the course can be geared towards Multimedia students: class readings (the substance of written responses and electronic discussion) are core texts related to Multimedia, and students are expected to develop proficiency in HTML encoding also. Generally speaking, it was determined that instructors should aim at about one hour per week of time from a student to work through the CD materials aimed at improving their knowledge of grammatical structures and terminology. This regularity is assumed to be one of the motivations that students have to complete the CD. Another incentive that I gave students was the promise (or threat, depending on your point of view) of a quiz at the end of the course that took about half its content from the CD itself.

My research assistant, Gordon Roberts, and I worked together to adapt the material to the medium as seamlessly as possible. In many ways, exercises resemble those found in composition textbooks, except that the immediate feedback provided to the student is a major improvement on written materials, and the focus on terminology encourages students to think about themselves as editors of others' work or as teachers of these materials, and not just the recipients of the information. In part, that is so because students frequently work in pairs to accomplish the tasks set for them, and because we have actively involved them in the ongoing revision of the CD for future classes. For an example of how the software is used to reinforce knowledge of terminology in the discipline, see the following:

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Section 3