-
Scheduling
and Timing. Not only
were the various campuses on a different calendar (spring break occurred
at different times), but they were on a different timetable, so that when
students from the different schools met in their groups on Thursdays, they
had only about 20 minutes to talk with one another. Thus, a good deal of
work had to be done outside of class.
-
-
Subject matter.
Georgia Tech has constructed itself as a department of Cultural Studies,
so the subject matter was consistent with that taught in other versions
of the course in that institution. Gainesville College and the University
of Georgia teach the second course in the composition sequence as "Writing
about Literature." At least according to their class evaluations, the students
at UGA perceived the course as
very experimental. To some extent, this perception made them tentative
about the class.
-
Social Construction
of Identity. As Angela Mitchell discusses, each
campus is constructed in advance according to its own stereotype . Class-based
assumptions about student demographics at all three institutions, which
exist independently of individual students, can be long-standing and widespread
in the closed system of Georgia higher education. Not only did these preconceptions
sometimes impede productive discussion, but they also influenced task distribution.
The Tech students were sometimes reluctant to relinquish control of the
technical aspects of group projects, as they felt they could do a better
job more efficiently. Students at the other campuses either acquiesced in
this judgment or were frustrated that they were not learning more technology.
Furthermore, differences in lifestyle became apparent during the collaborations.
Tech students were used to working on class projects Friday nights; UGA
students were not. Gainesville College students were more likely than those
at the other campuses to have family responsibilities or to work long hours
at outside jobs.
-
Different Expectations.
For the students at Georgia Tech, the final project counted 40% of their
final grade; there was no final exam. Understandably, the Tech students
were insistent on attending to the final project. Students at the other
two campuses had to take a departmental final exam. At the University of
Georgia that exam counts for a third of the final grade, so the attention
of UGA students was, understandably, somewhat divided. At Gainesville College,
the departmental final counts for 20% of the students' final grade. Furthermore,
the students at UGA and Gainesville College wound up writing more papers
than the Georgia Tech students. At UGA, students wrote a more traditional
literary essay on Frankenstein, in addition to the other work. (This
problem was my fault as administrator; I was unwilling to see this class
be so completely different from other classes in our mildly
standardized program.) Angela reported as well that although the students
had done excellent work on Frankenstein with their postings, the
literary papers tended to be dull and traditional and not to take advantage
of the more imaginative observations made in the postings. A related problem
was class size. The Tech classes were larger–25 students each to UGA's 15
and Gainesville College's 15. Thus, Georgia Tech students tended to dominate
any given collaborative group.
-
Shared Technological
Resources. Web Crossing and TechLINC are both attractive packages and
the sharing of resources allows the intensive time and money needed for
developing the tools to be concentrated in one locale. (The workload for
creating TechLINC was heavy, to say the least!) As I mentioned before, however,
some students at the UGA campus had difficulty downloading the proprietary
software. Those who worked in dorms or public labs did not have TechLINC
readily available to them. (This problem should be obviated as Palace becomes
web-based.) Gainesville College had a lab devoted to the class, and Georgia
Tech students were required to have personal computers; but UGA students
relied heavily on public labs and their classroom doubled as a lab in off
hours. Throughout the semester, there were problems with broken computers,
which increased the difficulty of collaboration by forcing students to share
computers. Several times during the semester net traffic or other problems
interfered with the collaborative sessions. Finally, both Web Crossing and
Palace were unfamiliar tools for the UGA and Gainesville College students,
since both campuses support WebCT. If students were web savvy, WebCT is
the program with which they would have been familiar.
-
Extra Work
for Teachers as Well as Students. It goes without saying, I suppose,
that the time gained in sharing assignments and handouts was lost in the
teachers' extensive communication by e-mail with one another, both in norming
the grading of group projects and in adjudicating relations among the students.
These teachers worked very hard!
-
Dispersion
of Authority. While on the macroscopic level dispersion of authority
is a good thing, multiplying audiences for students' writing, on at least
one occasion it became a problem, when teachers gave slightly contradictory
instructions to students. As Angela discusses in her contribution, the students
became alert to whose teacher would "win" and so contributed to a mythology
about the different teachers.
-
Grade Inflation.
While the good students in these classes did work above and beyond the norm
for Freshman writing classes, it is also possible that students were given
"slack" because of the difficult nature of the class and the obstacles they
encountered throughout the semester.
