---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ####### ######## ######## ########### ### ### ## ### ## # ### # Interpersonal Computing and ### ### ## ### ## ### Technology: ### ### ## ### ### An Electronic Journal for ### ######## ### ### the 21st Century ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ## ### ISSN: 1064-4326 ### ### ### ## ### July, 1993 ####### ### ######## ### Volume 1, Number 3 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Published by the Center for Teaching and Technology, Academic Computer Center, Georgetown University, Washington, DC Additional support provided by the Center for Academic Computing, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 This article is archived as BERNER IPCTV1N3 on LISTSERV@GUVM ---------------------------------------------------------------- USING COMPUTERS TO TEACH JOURNALISM: WHAT SOME STUDENTS THINK R. Thomas Berner, Department of Communications, The Pennsylvania State University The stereotypical view of the current generation of college students is that they embrace new forms of technology and thus should welcome new technology in the classroom. After all, this is the generation raised in Nintendo and MTV, and what parent hasn't encountered the teenager who understands how to set up a stereo system and program a VCR? However, an exploratory study of journalism students at the Pennsylvania State University suggests that not all students are comfortable with the new technology and welcome its various applications and that accessibility is still a problem for some. In an attempt to learn how a select body of students had reacted to the use of computers in their classes, I sent a open- ended questionnaire using U.S. mail and e-mail, to approximately 50 students who had just completed beginning newswriting and were predominantly sophomores or were taking editorial writing and were predominantly seniors. BACKGROUND ON NEWSWRITING INSTRUCTION Penn State journalism majors do a lot of writing in class and out of class. Beginning newswriting students can expect to write (and rewrite) two stories at week; students in advanced classes might write fewer stories but they would be longer and require more research. In-class writing assignments are always done on the computers in our newswriting lab. The lab contains 18 terminals linked to a file server used by the instructor. Students can thus access one another's stories and work collaboratively. The server the only machine in the lab with a modem and thus access to e-mail. Instructors are free to use whatever word-processing software they want, with Microsoft Word 5.0 and Word Perfect 5.1 the two favorites. Another member of the journalism faculty and I use the computers to their fullest. That is, we have created virtually paperless classrooms. Stories are turned in to a file server and we copy them onto diskettes for later recall on our office or home computers, there to be evaluated and then returned via diskette to the file server. The only time students might print out a paper is when they want a hard copy. Most of the other faculty in the department who teach newswriting tend to use the computers as typewriters. Students print out stories and then their instructors put their comments on the papers by hand. I use Microsoft Word 5.0 software, which enables me to do strikeovers and underlines, thus showing students what I deleted and what I added to a story. Unfortunately, strikeovers and underlines show only in printed copy. My colleague uses Word Perfect 5.1. I do not like marking papers by hand. Eventually, I tire, my comments become shorter and shorter (and sometimes short tempered) and less useful, and my handwriting becomes illegible--if it is legible to begin with. In fact, early in my teaching career, one of my promotion and tenure evaluators who examined my graded papers said he could not read my writing and urged me to correct the problem. Based on several years of electronically annotating stories, my colleague and I have built up an extensive computerized glossary of common errors. (Mine had 96 entries the last time I checked.) Thus, students can receive heavily annotated papers. I place my comments in footnotes. My colleague inserts comments directly into the body of the story. Given the repetitive nature of many errors--say pronoun- antecedent disagreement--my glossary makes it easier to explain a mistake in greater detail than I might have were I marking with pen or pencil. I set up the footnote and then type "insert PANT" and get the following from the glossary: "This is a PANT problem. PANT is my acronym for 'pronoun-antecedent.' That means there's disagreement between the pronoun and its antecedent. (See LSFJ pp. 80-81.)" (LSFJ is shorthand for my text "Language Skills for Journalists.") (Berner 1984) While most of the stories in beginning newswriting tend to be under 500 words, I do require the students to do a major feature story as a semester-ending project. As one who teaches writing using the process approach, I have students write major stories in drafts then rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. This is consistent with a growing trend in journalism education. (Zurek, 1986; Olson, 1987; Pitts, 1989; Hresan, 1992) And Yoder reported that "students appear to feel better when offered the opportunity to revise a completed draft." (1993) One particularly ambitious student using e-mail managed to send me five drafts of her feature story as we headed down the final stretch. Of course, I evaluated each draft and returned them-- virtually within hours. Using a computer and e-mail has made me more accessible to some of my students. They do not have to wait for me to hold office hours to get a response to their work. Obviously, my colleague and I think that evaluating papers electronically is superior to doing it by hand. And as Maule (1993) points out, computer-supported instruction comes with the advantages of convenience for students and gives the instructor the ability to customize learning. Maule also says that the critical social interaction so important to learning can be accommodated through network-supported instruction. RESPONSES TO THE QUESTIONNAIRE Just to be affirmed in those suppositions, I developed a six- item questionnaire and sent it to approximately 50 students who had been in one of our beginning newswriting or editorial writing classes. The questions: 1. Have you ever taken a writing course in which the instructor's comments and editing were done by hand? (You might mention the type of course it was.) 2. In which type of course--written versus electronic--did you get the most useful editing. 3. How would you compare the value of handwritten comments versus electronic comments? 4. Would you prefer that the evaluation of all written work be done on a computer? Why? 5. How might evaluation now done electronically be improved? 6. Please make additional comments, especially if something's been overlooked in the other five questions. Twenty students responded. The responses are thoughtful and mixed. I have divided the responses into what students like and do not like about handwritten comments and like and do not like about electronic comments. Handwritten comments Handwriting, it appears, makes students feel as though they are getting more personal and individualized attention on their papers. Written comments seem more human. One student said: "I like the feeling that comes with written communications. I like seeing my professor's writing on the paper itself." Students who prefer handwritten comments also say that even the smallest mistakes are pointed out. Those who do not like handwritten comments note that they are not as easy to read or as detailed. Some students cited a lack of room in the margins, which they feel discourages lengthy comments. Also, handwritten comments can create the appearance of chaos where some would prefer order. One student said: "A hand-edited paper will be more of a jumble of words and editing symbols." Comments on the computer A very overwhelming--and and obvious--response was that comments made electronically are easier to read. Comments were also seen as concise and legible. Some students especially liked it when the comments appeared right in the text rather than as footnotes. They also said that it is easier to store stories on a diskette than keep them in a folder. Some of those who generally favored electronic comments made thoughtful points about problems. For example, one student expressed concern about the loss of personalized comments when all an instructor has to do is press a button. One student said: "Many people may not get what they need from their teachers if their teachers can push a button for automatic responses, especially people trapped in lower or remedial levels who really need special attention." This is consistent with a comment in my favorite editing text, to wit, beware of letting computers replace human insight and judgment. (Berner 1991) Some students pointed out a problem with gaining access to the medium. You have to have a computer to read comments made electronically on a disk. One student, apparently annoyed at having to turn on her computer and go through the log-in procedure to finally read her evaluated story, pointed out that a student receives handwritten comments faster and reiterated the point that others made about the accessibility of computers. Accessibility should not be downplayed, as I just learned in another class in which all assignments had to b sent via campus email directly to me or be copied back onto the file server in the newswriting lab. Two students who could not get to any of the labs typed their homework assignments and slipped them under my door or put them in my mailbox. We do not yet have 100 percent accessibility. One other student, also making the point about accessibility, did note that with electronic evaluation he did not have something he could pin to his refrigerator if he had done a good job. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS From my viewpoint, the computer is preferred to the pencil. Just to show a reorganized story in the pre-computer days required me to make a photocopy of a story and then cut and paste it into a better structure. Now all I have to do is copy the misplaced paragraph(s) and then strike over the old one and inserting the new in the proper place. That way the student sees the original story structure and the revised one. Further, the newswriting laboratory's file server, when accessible from a remote personal computer, enables a faculty to extend the classroom by assigning work to be due on the computer on other than a class day. As long as the lab is open for evening hours, this works. Individual rewrites can be assigned and returned to the server in the lab, where a student can drop by any evening or weekend. Direct e-mail also extends the reach of the instructor (and student accessibility to the instructor) and allows for more individualized attention. The computer reinforces the process approach to teaching writing. Overall, then, the computer, especially when configured and used as I have described, should be a welcome tool to the current generation of students. But I was surprised by the responses to the questionnaire. I expected 100 percent affirmation of electronic evaluation. Frankly, in the classes in which I have done this, I have not gotten feedback that there was a problem. But I know I did on this questionnaire because some of the respondents are my former students. So it seems to me that I need to reinstate one of the principles of good teaching, which is to invite mid-semester evaluations from students to make sure that what I am doing is working for them. I do hold mid-semester conferences, but apparently I have failed to invite comments on the electronic evaluation and thus have not got any. I also think it is important to discuss beforehand the method of evaluation. Although one of my respondents revealed that even in his computer science class, his papers were evaluated by hand, we could have students who have gone through electronic evaluation before and have insight that would enable us to make it a better experience. As one respondent put it: "There are good points and bad points to both and these need to be considered before a choice is made between the two. With careful planning, the pros of both kinds of evaluation could be merged into electronic and the cons of both eliminated." In fact, a choice may not have to be made. Lago (1993) points out that after ten years of electronic editing at the University of Missouri Press, she has concluded that there is no one best way to edit on a computer and that each editor finds his or her own compatibility. Lago says that when editing for organization, she always looks at a hard copy so she can spread pages out before her. But when editing for mechanics, she works on the computer. We need to be aware of knee-jerk evaluating. By that, I mean just pressing a button to explain a student's problem when the problem might need a more personal response. Let's face it: It does not take students long to see that comments repeated from paper to paper are not spontaneous. (Of course, you would think they would stop making the same mistakes.) We also need to make sure that the medium does not become the message. As one student reminded me: "Evaluation has a lot more to do with the professor than the medium, so one instructor could use electronic evaluation sparingly while another might go into a lot more detail, just as professors do on hardcopies." Let me insert one of Yoder's conclusions, which seems to reinforce the last point: Instructional techniques in teaching writing need to be varied to consider those students who work best dependently or independently. . . . Students tend to adopt techniques to suit their personal style, so it is best to consider variety within the single course structure to benefit all students. Let me conclude on an obvious note: The computer is not going to go away. So as we use it more and more in writing classes and especially to evaluate writing, we need to remember the individual who will be reading those comments and make sure that we are serving that person rather than ourselves. * * * This paper was originally presented, in different form, at a conference on computers and writing in Aberystwyth, Wales, April 13-15, 1993.) REFERENCES Berner, R. T. (1984). Language Skills for Journalists (2nd Ed.). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Berner, R. T. (1991). The Process of Editing. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Hesan, S. (1992). Process method of teaching the news writing class. "Journalism Educator," 46(4), 61-65. Lago, J. (1993). A decade of electronic editing. "Scholarly Publishing," 24(2), 101-112. Maule, R. (1993). The Network Classroom. Interpersonal Computing and Technology, (1)1 (unpaginated). This article is archived as MAULE IPCTV1N1 at LISTSERV@GUVM.GEORGETOWN.EDU. Olson, L.D. (1987). Recent composition research is relevant to newswriting. Journalism Educator, 42(3), 14-19. Yoder, S.L. (1993). Teaching Writing Revision: Attitudes and Copy Changes. Journalism Educator, 47(4), 41-47. Zurek, J. (1986) Research on writing process can aid newswriting teachers. Journalism Educator, 41(4), 19-23. ---------------------------------------------------------------- BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: R. Thomas Berner is a professor of journalism and American studies in the School of Communications at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of textbooks on language skills, newswriting, editing, literary newswriting and divorce. In addition to teaching many of the professional courses in the journalism program, Berner also teaches an honors course in research and writing for the mass media in which all students have accounts on Penn State's mainframe and must use e-mail and access the Internet. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Interpersonal Computing and Technology: An Electronic Journal for the 21st Century Copyright 1993 Georgetown University. Copyright of individual articles in this publication is retained by the individual authors. Copyright of the compilation as a whole is held by Georgetown University. It is asked that any republication of this article state that the article was first published in IPCT-J. Contributions to IPCT-J can be submitted by electronic mail in APA style to: Gerald Phillips, Editor IPCT-J GMP3@PSUVM.PSU.EDU