Evolving Sites for the Teaching of Writing by Susan Delagrange Introduction

Since 1994, growing numbers of instructors who teach writing-intensive courses, both in Departments of English and across the curriculum, have made the World Wide Web a part of those courses. It is the purpose of this inquiry to examine the ways in which the WWW is moving from an auxiliary position as a simple source of information for writers, to a central position of support for a collaborative, student-centered pedagogy of the teaching of writing.

Several ways of examining the issue are provided here:

A descriptive analysis looks at two WWW sites designed by Steve Krause. The first supplemented his Spring, 1995 Great Ideas course at Bowling Green State University; the second was developed as a working site for Writing 122: Composition and Rhetoric, which he taught in the Spring of 1997 at Southern Oregon State College.

Although by no means exhaustive, some further thoughts on hypertextuality, interactivity and accessibility supplement this discussion of WWW sites for the teaching of writing, and provide jumping-off points for on-going inquiry.

The World Wide Web is a seemingly inexhaustible well of information. A Resource page lists some exemplary course pages in English and other areas, as well as links to on-going discussions and interpretations of academic representation on the Web.

A few cautionary notes are also sounded on the risks and rewards of designing and using WWW pages for writing-intensive courses and others. The World Wide Web practically defines instability and change, and there may also be some institutional constraints to consider.

These pages can be read effectively from beginning to end as they are described above. This is not a necessity, however; digressions may be equally fruitful. Here are some navigational hints:

	The scream logo (courtesy of Steve Krause) appears at the beginning and end of all my Evolving Sites for the Teaching of Writing pages. You may click on it at any time to return to this page.
Links to Steve Krause's pages are provided in a target window that can be resized for better viewing. Links chosen from Steve's pages will remain in this window. To return to Evolving Sites for the Teaching of Writing, simply close the target window.
Evolving Sites for the Teaching of Writing is my research project for English 883C: Studies in Electronic Literacy, a graduate seminar taught at the Ohio State University by Dr. H. Lewis Ulman in the Spring of 1997. Links back to the E883C course pages are also provided at the top and bottom of each page.
These pages are best viewed at full screen width.

I invite your participation as a visitor to this page. Please use the Comments link at the bottom of each page to e-mail me with questions, suggestions, additions of either information, reseources or sites. Comments will be incorporated into the site and/or added to a new Comments page.

Electronic Literacy Course Page	Current Location Introduction		Two Sites	Hypertextuality
			Risk/Rewards	Interactivity
			Resources	Accessibility
Last updated 6/10/97	Comments to Susan Delagrange are invited.