ASA Proposal

"Our purpose will be to contextualize, review, and evaluate with other participants student web sites created last spring [2000] for an experimental humanities course [Humanities 299], "Student Perspectives on World and Multicultural Writers, Writing for the World Wide Web." The course was developed through participation in a project of the Community College Humanities Association, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, 'Advancing the Humanities Through Technology.' (<http://www.cocc.edu/hum299/ccha/>).

"The focus of the course was to enable the students to create academic web sites conveying information on a writer, theme, or topic relevant to the study of world and multicultural writers. Related aims were to create an interdisciplinary learning community, to engage students in meaningful web research, and to instruct students in the rhetoric of writing for the Web.

"The course arose from our sense of the need to break beyond the borders of our relatively isolated and homogeneous central Oregon region. Rich resources for the student of multicultural writers and issues are available on-line, and we theorized that students would make the strongest connection to this material if they participated as creators rather than passive recipients of Web information.

"Initially, students were asked to develop topics through structured, on line brainstorming activities. Then, through a series of sequenced 'web practices,' students were led to focus their ideas and begin their on-line research of these topics, while developing standards for evaluating web sites (both those they were researching and those they were creating). Eventually, students were required to identify and discuss, within their web sites, all of the following: their interests and their relationship to their topics, their sources, their audience, and the web-genre in which they were writing.

"The students' creativity and commitment to their topics enabled them to persist despite technological breakdowns and a rather ambitious set of outcomes for the 10 week quarter. Student sites developed by the end of the course include a creative and personal exploration of the contact zone, an exploration of expressions of cultural identity and social justice in art and culture, and an introduction to United States Immigrant literature. All student work, course plans, web practices, and final reflections are available on line. See <http://www.cocc.edu/hum299/>."

[Note: The course was offered again in Spring 2001. See hyperlinked table of contents
for all student websites produced in Spring 2000 and Spring 2001: http://www.cocc.edu/hum299/TeamTOC.html ]

Format: "Online format. Presenters will post their materials on the Internet, via Crossroads (<http://www.georgetown.edu/crossroads>), one month before the meeting [in November 2001]. These sessions will be prominently marked in the program as intended for an audience that has read the papers in advance and followed whatever online discussion they may have generated. The session will be devoted to formal commentary and group discussion."

Description: "In the spirit of ASA's 2001 theme, "Multiple Publics/Civic Voices," this session is an exploration of the impact of internet technology on teaching and research multicultural studies. The Internet is breaking boundaries between academic and public spheres, as students, community scholars, and the general public increasingly use the Web to access information in a variety of ways.

"This session emerges from an ongoing Web project at the University of Minnesota called Voices From the Gaps (<http://voices.cla.umn.edu>). Voices is a site dedicated to women writers of color that represents an intersection between new technology, pedagogy, and online research. Featuring book reviews, biographical and critical information about women writers of color, the content of the site is authored by community scholars as well as high school and university students and their instructors.

"We are seeking papers that discuss the implications of putting and using (student) content online, particularly in relation to underrepresented groups or areas of study. These papers could be studies of coursewebs, existing academic or non-academic sites, or the uses of technology in the classroom. We are also specifically interested in issues of access and how the boundary-breaking potential of new technology is realized (or fails to be realized) in practice."

Chair: Joshua Brown, American Social History Project, City University of New York

Papers:

(1) Going Online to Develop and Communicate Student Perspectives on World and Multicultural Writers
Cora Agatucci, Dept. of Humanities, Central Oregon Community College; and
Kathleen Walsh, Dept. of Humanities, Central Oregon Community College

(2) Whose History Is It? The Densho Project, Online Access, and the Narration of Japanese American History
Daryl J. Maeda, Densho Project, University of Michigan

(3) The Invisible Student in a Web-Based Classroom
Kathleen Fox, Computer Sciences Dept., Northwestern Connecticut Community College

(4) Educating in the Politics of Knowledge Production: Using Voices from the Gaps as the Central Focus of a Course
Danielle Bouchard, Dept. of Women's Studies, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Comment: Audience

Making It Public: Web board Discussion