Innovative Uses for a Computer Classroom?

flard asks: "I will be teaching a Freshman English class at a medium sized public university, in a computer classroom for next semester. Every student has their own machine with an internet connection. I am thinking about using a weblog for them to post their work and critique each other. Do you guys have any other cool ideas on what to do and what NOT to do?" How can the computers best be applied to assist in teaching a non-technical class? Use of a weblog is a start, but are there other pieces of software that can be deployed in such a setting?

Waaay back in the 90's

[Anonymous Coward]

Spring 1997 to be precise, I took a College Writing (English) section that was focused on online writing. Some of the things we did in class involved not actually speaking in class, but "chatting" over IRC with each other (even role playing as various internet folks and taking their views in the discussion). Personally, had blogs been as visible then as they are now, I think that would've been a great addition. Many classes have regular journals as part of their requirements anyway.

Submission System

[sdawara]

Rohcester Institute of Technology has a online submission system that checks for
1. Minimum assignment requirements met
2. Plagiarism
3. Submission/Deadline requirements

Hope you can get that setup :) They work great here at RIT. You won't believe how effective the plagiarism avoidance solution is.

- Santosh

Wiki!

[dubStylee]

I suggest looking at setting up Wiki [wiki.org]. Collaborative writing with ability to make links inside and outside the wiki and the ability to edit each other's texts which will put a different spin on the nature of the collaboration. Also, the sheer simplicity of it will focus the students on the content rather than on playing around with a bunch of software widgets.

Things NOT to do

[sosume]

Things NOT to do in class with pc's

- Do not give students an 'open' environment (shell). They'll break out of it in no time and ignore the rest of the class. Even worse, they'll hack other students' (or the professors') computers and make a mess.

- Do not allow file sharing whatsoever EXCEPT via a main central shared folder. Any other way will eventually result in warez and pr0n.

- Do not allow e-mail or IMs to be read during class. Another disaster for non-class related communication. Better yet, disable all network communications except maybe port 80.

- Do not allow students to run non-approved programs. If they want to, they should use their home pc for that.

- Constantly run a sniffer on the class segment to check for 'abnormal communication'

Okay, maybe you can create some exceptions to these rules for the highest graders. But you shouldn't.

computer lab for non-technical courses

[pcboss99]

I'm an instructional technologist for a large university, and your concern here is one I find myself discussing with a lot of faculty lately.

Here are some precautions and some ideas:
* Be careful how much you require your students to learn in order to use the tools you choose -- frustration with technology will overcome any benefit from the tools.
* Identify and use 'peer experts' in your class to help you teach the basics.
* Using Blogging in a writing class is a fantastic way for your students to gain ownership of their writing online, but you'll have to work hard to encourage anything like collaboration, peer reviewing, or even quality. This is a good use for a detailed syllabus.
* An easy way of supplementing a Blog is to require the students to build a web-based portfolio on which they can post edited 'highlights' from their blog.
* Be precise about your requirements. I recommend giving seperate credit for 'participation' and 'attendance' online. This means that they have to do something meaningful to get the 'participation' points, but by simply posting anything they'll earn the 'attendance' points. Sounds hokey, but it really works to show students how to go beyond just posting to posting something worthwhile.

Okay . . . enough edu-speak. Let the technophiles sound off, because I'm curious to hear what these creative minds will offer as alternatives to blogging.

--- Brian Richard

A single weblog?

[metalhed77]

Perhaps a weblog for each student would make more sense. A single installation of moveable type (www.moveabletype.org) can service an arbitrary number of weblogs. You could also have one main weblog where each student turns in the link to his work, and where assignments are posted.

Groups bad...

[TWX]

"Why not use a Yahoo group and subscribe them all."

Yahoo! Groups is not a good idea for something that is University Curriculum, especially if it is required. If someone managed to break into the system, there is not IT department to run to, and if Yahoo! changes policies, then you are left holding the bag. If you intend to use collaborative efforts digitally (which I strongly recommend against), at least use something that is available locally, provided or maintained by someone that you can go yell at if something goes wrong.

TikiWiki

[gmuslera]

TikiWiki [sourceforge.net] is a combination of Wiki, CMS, Forums, chat, blogs, image/file galleries and a lot more that let users collaborate in a lot of different ways. It also have a very highly configurable permission system, that enable controlling what some can do and some others no, or what features a group or an user can access.

Here's how it works at my uni

[NemesisStar]

While we're nowhere near the 1 computer for every student mark (something like 1 for every TWENTY) we do have quite a good infrastructure set up for those who are 1337 enough to know it exists.

* We have our own irc server, which is meant to be used for only Uni related topics but somehow falls short of that

* The uni has a newsgroup server and most subjects (at least that I do) have a newsgroup which the lecturer/tutors check regularly and answers questions

* Each lecturer/tutor has an email address that they can be contacted on for answering questions of any type. That is to say questions like "If I were to be sick on Tuesday, how would it affect me" as opposed to "wanna date ROFL"

The downside of all this is that we no longer get assignments printed out and handed to us in class, we have to go to the course website (oh yeah, each course has a website) and download the PDFs and print it out ourselves. Some of them take up MANY pages.

We also have a place where we can submit our assignments/projects electronically which saves BIG BUCKS on printing costs. For the students that is, the cost is usually passed onto the school which prints them out because it's easier to read for the lecturers/tutors. (bit of a double edged sword that one)

All university administration is handled via computer - ie signing up for classes/tutes etc. which is fantastic when it's working.

I guess a lot of that goes outside the scope of the question, but hey, at least it opens up some branches which you might not have thought of and want to explore further.

phpBB2

[macemoneta]

phpBB2 [phpbb.com] is a great community forum system that's easy to setup, extensible, and requires little or no maintenance. You can easily create forums that the students would find interesting and useful (homework discussion, reference sources for research, suggestions for class projects, etc.), while still allowing instructor oversight and moderation. Private areas can also be setup (invisible to students), to allow the instructor to have their own discussion areas as well (or areas where students can work on group projects, isolated from other student groups).

The phpBB Community Forum [phpbb.com] is an example of the software in use, if you want to get an idea of its capabilities. All open source. I'm not involved with the project, just a happy user. :-)

Try a forum, not a weblog.

[Selanit]

As I understand them, weblog programs are designed to allow one person to post an article, and then other people to comment on it. I do not think this is well suited to what you want to do, because 1) you will have multiple people posting multiple works, 2) you will probably not want to allow comments from random strangers. Using weblogs, each student would need to have his or her own weblog, which would make it more difficult for collaborative use of the type you envision.

For these purposes, a forum would be much better; forums allow for multiple, separate discussions to take place in a centralized area. They also allow the forum administrator to lock down the forum in such a way that only members can post messages, and the administrator gets to say who can be a member. This would help keep the discussion on topic. Each student's work would go in a different thread -- say Sally M. Haverforth posts the first draft of her argumentative essay on Milton's treatment of women in a thread called "S. Haverforth -- Milton: Masochistic Misogynist?". Subsequent comments from her peers would be replies to that initial posting, keeping the whole thing neatly organized.

If you have access to an appropriately equipped server, I recommend phpBB [phpbb.com] for the job: it's easy to set up and administer, open source, free of charge, and fairly easy to use.

Do not allow

[phorm]

Anonymous FTP'ing or such things. It took us one weekend with somebody leaving the anon FTP open for a nice 7200 new folders to be found on the server at work (no, it wasn't me)

Classroom Computer (ab)use

[luxin]

During my freshman year I had a few classes that were located in computer labs such as programming and a business class. In both cases no one would pay any attention to the instructor. AIM, ICQ, news and just surfing were the main culprits. I would recommend pulling the plug when you plan on actually teaching them material and then finding a way to limit there activities on the internet during assignments. I think you will find that most people will tend to do other things during class and not the work at hand. I would have to say keep an English class in a regular classroom, to keep the distractions to a minimum. I would promote the use of these resources as a study aid or way to complete assignments.

oops

[colmore]

Since i've been thinking a lot recently about becoming a highschool teacher, i just read it that way.

Anyway, yeah, make sure you teach them to be a bit more critical readers than me.

And apply for a room transfer. A computer classroom is a gimmick. Gimmicks have their place in highschool - it's your job to hold their attention even if they'd rather be 100 miles away, but in college anyone who doesn't feel like learning can just leave. The computers will only distract the students. They can post to a blog using library computers or their own computers during time outside of class. I promise you that your class will go better if you get a better room. Ideally one with a table like I talked about above.

Oh and you weren't very clear in your question: is this an English class as in books and composition, or teaching the English language to those who don't know it? There are a variety of useful computer applications for learning language. Literature on the other hand is for dead trees and human discussion. Your students will be reading their email and not listening if you put computers in front of them.

Prior knowledge

[Anonymous Coward]

Will your students be able to type?
Do they have experience using a computer?
Are they comfortaqble using a mouse?
Do they know where the any key is?

The first thing I was taught in my teacher ed classes was not to assume any prior knowledge.

My advice would be to forget the computer room for teaching English. If not your class will turn into a computer class.

Re:phpBB2

[Anonymous Coward]

Postnuke! [postnuke.com] With all the built-in modules and extensibility via other modules, and whatever PHP coding you could/would contribute you'd have a heavy-duty classroom portal-- with a module for the phpBB2 forum system described above available too. May be a bit overkill, but it'd almost certainly have everything ya'd need...I use it for five or six Intranet sites- very useful for the lazy... ;-)

Do you really want peer critiques?

[MemRaven]

It seems like you're looking at a situation where everybody's going to be roughly on the same level, which probably means that they're not going to be too advanced. Remember, you're the instructor. That presumably means that you have more insight than they do, and that they're in your class to gain your insight. With that in mind, do you think having Sally critique Bob's work is going to be more useful than your critiqing Bob's work in the first place? In fact, if you then posted the results to the class saying "this is what made Bob's work good; this is what made Bob's work bad," that would probably be far more useful than having Sally spout out drivel at Bob. After all, you're not going to be able to review every comment, so how do you know that Sally won't tell Bob lies (inadvertant or not) and overall reduce Bob's skills even more?

This is not to say that you will end up with a bunch of people who are morons critiquing everybody else's work and ending up with them all dumbing down even more, but it's a possibility. Another possibility is that they'll all rise to a level of Borg-like hive mind and produce amazing work. Personally, I'd bet on the former more often than the latter. Although in classroom settings people often open up the door to peer review and discussion about works and ideas, it's almost always moderated and on subject, so that the instructor/moderator immediately has the opportunity to call "Bullshit" when Sally is full of it, or "Bravo" when she has a deep insight. If you've got blogs gone crazy, you don't have that control.

Peer review on something technical probably works much better because you're focused on getting something done, and on getting the correct results.

It might be better if we knew what type of English class this is? Are you teaching them the basics of the English language? Are you teaching creative writing? Is it literature, comparative or not? Is it focused on a particular style of writing and literature? English covers so many different things that the possibilities for effective use of technology are really different for each of them.

But something that you probably should do if you don't pay heed to the many people telling you to get the heck out of hte computer lab for the English class is something I've seen for business meetings. They're systems which are essentially whiteboards where students can post questions online for you to cover during the lecture, as well as comments, anonymous or not. So if you're covering Wuthering Heights and aren't properly covering the psychosis of Heathcliff, someone can say something like "Please cover more Heathcliff's obvious lack of proper seratonin function" or even just "slow down, you're going too fast" and you (and/or everybody else) can see and/or respond live.

Re:A single weblog?

[jodo]

Check out drupal.org. [drupal.org] It has the ability, if desired, to have separate blogs for each student. Also a "book" format for collaboration. And even a separate forum. And static pages as well. Very nice. Students can even learn the meaning of taxonomy! ;->

The Wiki Way

[fm6]

Ditto that. But go to the source. Wikis were invented by Ward Cunningham, and he's collaborated with Bo Leuf to write an excellent hands-on introduction to the Wiki phenomenon [amazon.com]. And if you or any of your students knows a little Perl, you can tweak the source code (which is disturbingly short!) for your own purposes.

Warning: the book was originally bundled with a CD with all the Perl source files in Mac format. (Sad how often this happens.) Perl interpreters on other platforms don't grok this, so they withdrew this printing and replaced it with a corrected version. The screwed-up version was sold off to remainder houses. You can save money [bargainbookstores.com] buying the screwed up copies, but you have to convert the files, or download corrected files [wiki.org].

TWiki is a nice tool

[Joey Patterson]

One very nice implementation of the wiki concept is TWiki [twiki.org]. My school [umn.edu]'s CS department has its own TWiki set up [umn.edu], divided into subwebs for many different courses [umn.edu]. The courses on our wiki are almost all Computer Science courses, but there are a few First Year Seminar webs (located here [umn.edu], here [umn.edu], and here [umn.edu]) that might give you some ideas as to how to use a wiki in a non-technical class.

Re:A couple of negatives but at least a suggestion

[sleeper0]

I agree with the above poster.

In the early 90's I worked on a project sponsored by AT&T to install classrooms of the future in a few universities. While there are undoubtedly things we did poorly and have been improved upon, one of the most striking findings of the project was that some classes did very poorly in the room. They had booked a variety in the theater the first year and found while some technology & science classes obviously benfitted a lot, other classes such a arts & history had a harder time in the room than in a normal classroom.

A few of the findings:
* students often appeared more distracted
* time spent learning software was not made up in efficiency
* less personal contact with the professor & with the material
* transient failures would disrupt the class

If you are searching for ways to use the classroom i would wager that at least to a degree you will be changing your course from english to one that also involves learning about computers or techniques such as blogs. Is that really what you want to teach? If it was me i would seriously consider asking for a room change or for students to turn off the computers during the class but i'm no professor.

Don't get me wrong they had great uses but i think the biggest thing we learned (somewhat as suspected) was that they are not for everything.

Beyond the obvious....

[Etienne Steward]

(such as word processing and virtual meeting and collaborative tools that won't require groups to meet in the same place to work on group presentations/papers, for example)...There is the use of that technology for flushing out the "quiet ones" who normally wouldn't have the force of personality to cut across the background noise to support their assertions. Should make the class more lively.

Students could challenge each other's assertions with alternate, internet, sources. Isn't the OED online?

Of course, it raises the bar on your ability to impart knowledge in an insightful and engaging way, since you will, in effect, be competing with the computers.

You could have a website for your tests. No (hardcopy) papers. This would probably be most helpful for final exam, since you could make it live at the beginning of finals and then pull it down at midnight on the last day finals.

Who am I? Why should you listen?

I was an English major (B.A.) who now codes for a living (double minor in Computer Info Systems and TESL - and for the Lingustically Challenged, that's Teaching English as a Second Language).

Good luck. It's the wave of the future.

Take a look at Moodle

[gozar]

Moodle.org [moodle.org] is an open source package that allows several features of what everyone has been mentioning here. A neat feature is the journal that allows the teacher to critique their writings privately. It also has forums, online quizes, etc.

Re:I Second This

[mrjive]

This is commonly called a KVM (Keyboard-Video-Mouse). When I was a student at CSM [mines.edu] they installed this kind of system in all the labs in the new tech building. The teacher's ability to control all the student's desktop machines (or spy on them) should be incentive enough to prevent them from doing malicious/unproductive things.

Of course, I never got to take a class using one of these labs, but I did get to play with the systems when they were first installed at any rate.

Re:How about English?

[alienw]

Each student will have their own machine with an Internet connection.

Each student will have his or her own machine with an Internet connection.

"Their" is plural. You have a singular subject that you are replacing. You have to use "his" or "his or her" if you want to be PC.

Re:Submission System

[nick_urbanik]

• How does this compare with BOSS [warwick.ac.uk]?
• Is your system free software (i.e., GPL type license)?
• Can we see it?
• Can we see the code?
• If not, can you tell us how it works?

I wrote [slashdot.org] a quick description of how MOSS [berkeley.edu] works (different from BOSS [warwick.ac.uk]). Does your system work like that?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

WebCT/OSU and Online Collaboration

[WillyLane]

The Ohio State University uses a system, which is unfortunately proprietary, called WebCT [webct.com]. It offers bulletin boards, online submission, real-time chats, and some other features. I have only used the system briefly for a philosophy course some time ago, but it seems quite useful if the instructor is willing to embrace the technology.

It seems that any online collaboration system, for any purpose, is going to require a similar feature set. A system which allows students and teachers to collaborate online is going to be very similar to a system which allows software developers to collaborate online. What is needed is a generic online collaboration system that can be altered to fit the needs of it specific user set. Preferably, one that is not proprietary.