[1] From: John Unsworth <jmu2m@virginia.edu> (31)
Subject: Re: 10.0504 dark side of humanities computing?
[2] From: Sharon Cogdill <SCOGDILL@TIGGER.STCLOUD.MSUS.EDU> (111)
Subject: Re: 10.0504 dark side of humanities computing?
--[1]----------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Dec 1996 22:37:17 -0500
From: John Unsworth <jmu2m@virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: 10.0504 dark side of humanities computing?
> [1] From: Attachment Research Center (78)
> <Postmast@attach.edu.ar>
> >
>
>Hello,
>
>I wonder why everybody is persistently trying to view the positive
>side of humanities computing, ignoring or depreciating the negative
>side effects such endeavour might entail.
>
>For instance, MOO technology which is used in some Universities to
>create virtual worlds where one is encouraged to let one's fantasy
>go unrestraintedly in full fledge has turned out to be an an adverse
>instrument for pupils' performances. Many youngsters neglect their
>lessons because they spend endless long hours at the Telnet site.
This criticism is, obviously, blissfully uninformed by experience with
educational uses of MOOs and MUDs. MOOs do have the capacity to enthrall
students, but that capacity can be used for good *or* ill, depending on
the imagination, creativity, and discipline of the instructor.
>I would say that the pomo movement repels anything that has to do
>with rigour.
>
>To their minds, "rigour" stands for "enemy of creativity".
>An astonishing contention.
I know of no one except the author of this post who opposes rigor and
creativity. Examples of rigor in postmodernism might burst into mind as
well, if the author of this post had read any.
Forgive the tone, but both of these criticisms are intellectually
irresponsible.
John Unsworth / Director, IATH / Dept. of English
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~jmu2m/
--[2]----------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 08 Dec 1996 19:25:02 -0600 (CST)
From: Sharon Cogdill <SCOGDILL@TIGGER.STCLOUD.MSUS.EDU>
Subject: Re: 10.0504 dark side of humanities computing?
Among other things, JC Garelli wrote,
>I wonder why everybody is persistently trying to view the positive
>side of humanities computing, ignoring or depreciating the negative
>side effects such endeavour might entail.
well, um, actually, people working in the field of, to pick one example,
computers and writing/rhetoric have been working for more than a decade to
think clearly about the semiotics of computer interfaces, the values inherent
in the language and processes of computing, and the impact of computers and
word processing on writing and on classroom practice. The large number of
studies that tried for ten years to find out *if* students wrote better on
computers than with pen and paper all attest to attempts not to view computers
positively *or* negatively a priori, but to test our hypotheses.
I can help you construct a bibliography on this, if you like, but the
bibliographic overview of an established discipline like computers and writing
would get you quite a long list of things to read. More instructive, perhaps,
would be for you to see for yourself just how much work has been done. There's
lots of stuff that *is* uncritical, of course, but lots and lots that's not.
>For instance, MOO technology which is used in some Universities to
>create virtual worlds where one is encouraged to let one's fantasy
>go unrestraintedly in full fledge has turned out to be an an adverse
>instrument for pupils' performances. Many youngsters neglect their
>lessons because they spend endless long hours at the Telnet site.
Well, as somebody who uses MOO technology with adults in educational settings,
and have done so now for several years, I need to address the members of this
list about what seem to me to be misconceptions and unsubstantiated claims made
in Mr Garelli's posting.
Like many other responsible faculty in literature and writing classes, I use
MOOs to turn the discussions in some of my classes from oral activities to
meetings in which we all *write* to each other, in real time, about what we
think and have thought about the subject for the day. Some work has been done
on MOOing (or, more precisely, MUDding) in education. The online journals
_Computer-Mediated Communication_ and _Kairos_, for example, have both
published articles about the use of synchronous communication software in
classes. The number of conference papers presented about MOOing and MUDding
increases every year.
I have published in _Kairos_ on the community of computers and writing teachers
who get together most Tuesday nights (on a MOO in the Media Lab at MIT) to talk
about the use of computers in our classes. That is, we all telnet to MIT's
computer from our own servers; most of us are from the U.S., but there are also
members of the group from Australia, England, and Norway. We telnet to MIT, and
then we talk about/write about issues in computers and writing.
This regular Tuesday meeting is part of the Netoric Project, codirected by Tari
Fanderclai and Greg Siering. (I don't have the urls here at home, so I'll
suggest you begin looking at Tari's homepage - <http://ucet.ufl.edu/~tari>, and
she's got links to spots that can give you more information about the Netoric
Project and MUDding in education as well. I'm sure that other subscribers to
Humanist also have experience, including publishing history, with MUDs, but if
any of you would like to know more, please let me know and I'll be happy to
construct a small list of urls, telnet addresses, and articles and email you
back or post it to Humanist if there's enough interest.)
(For those of you who may not have seen it yet, "MOO" is a technical acronym
for something like Multi-user Object-Oriented, the last which describes a kind
of programming language, of course, and the first which hints at the origins of
MOO software, a certain kind of role-playing gaming software called MUD.) MUD
software is communications software; email and listserv are *a*synchronous
communication; MUDding (and MOOing) is synchronous - real time.
While it certainly can be used for dungeons-and-dragons-type games, MUD
software can also be used to facilitate real-time *written* discussion among a
number of people at the same time.
When a writer in a MUD finishes writing a thought and hits Return, the software
sends it out to everybody else in the same "room" in the MUD. Those people then
read the statement as soon as it is written and can respond to it immediately,
or think about it, or ignore it and write something of their own.
Many of my students find MUDding to be liberating in a classroom. Students who
do not have good literacy skills - or at least literacy skills comparable to
those of the rest of the class - will be silenced by MUDding, but many students
who are uncomfortable speaking in class find themselves very active in a CMC
classroom. Women tell me that they never worry about interrupting anyone and
how much freer they feel to speak for that reason; students who are accustomed
to dominating a classroom find themselves on a more level playing field.
Those of us who use MUDs in class really do not prefer that our students "let
[their] fantasy go unrestrainedly in full fledge," though I'd suggest that the
line between fun and education may be less clear than it sometimes seems. In
fact, I like my MUDding students to be thoughtful and deliberate and creative
and rigorous and all those things I expect them to be in class when they
address an idea orally or in a quiz.
MUDs can be particularly useful when a teacher would like to make the classroom
discussion a *text* in the class - that's exactly what MUD does. Students can
see very clearly how a particular rhetorical strategy can have effects they did
or did not intend; they can learn to distinguish intention from effect; they
can see evidence and associations as material things - words on a screen or
page - and not abstract things that disappear when the sound dies away.
Language itself becomes something they can look at, analyze, remember (more or
less) calmly, and evaluate, as can argumentation, evidence, analysis itself,
and so on.
Beyond mere classroom dialogue, though, MUD software can help us get at the
ways in which our verbal environments become a part of our discourse, and
sometimes, if we're lucky and things are very clear, we might begin to get
glimmerings about the cause-and-effect relations between environment as it is
verbally constructed and the discourse we use to live by. (If there are such
clear-cut cause-and-effect relations; I'm still thinking about that one.)
Also, I'm aware of some MOOs where faculty teaching French and Spanish to
native speakers of English; and a graduate student working with me is using MOO
in her English as a Second Language class. Not for fantasy and role playing,
but to help the students work on their writing, their spontaneous language, and
the construction of a linguistic community for them to belong to as they work
on their language skills. A faculty member in German here and I have been
talking about setting up a space where students working on German can meet to
talk with/write with other learners of German or other speakers of German.
Writing centers across the United States use MOO software to enable students to
"visit" the writing center virtually. One such space, at the University of
Missouri, has it set up so that the meeting (synchronous communication,
MUDding) occurs in one window, the paper being discussed shows up in another,
and a hypertext writing-center help sheet can show up in another.
I think I won't pick at the rest of Mr Garelli's statements; my arguments and
descriptions will have to stand on their own.
Comments, anyone?
Sharon Cogdill
English Department, St. Cloud State University
St. Cloud, Minnesota, U.S.A.
scogdill@tigger.scloud.msus.edu
http://condor.stcloud.msus.edu/~scogdill