Division News
Composing in a Crowd
Online peer interaction, instructors add fresh perspective to first-year writing program
What would happen if the hundreds of students enrolled in UW's freshman composition course could talk to each other at any time, day or night? What if they could give each other feedback on their writing and tips for understanding assignments? While a required course like UW's English 1010 may more likely bring to mind lonely hours spent staring at Microsoft Word than conversations with fellow students, a new element in the course this spring challenges that notion of the isolated student-writer.
Known as the Wisdom of the Crowd (WOC), this project provides a Web-based forum for first-year writing students to offer course-related questions and ideas to their peers who are grappling with similar skills and concepts in their own sections of English 1010. Students have access to a wiki site (http://engl1010wisdomofthecrowd.pbwiki.com) where they can collaborate as they work through various assigned readings and writing tasks.
"It's really a good way for students to interact with each other," says senior history
major Alex Seifert, one of two students who excelled in English 1010 last semester and are serving as peer instructors to those currently enrolled. "They're going through the same processes, the same assignments."
One of those shared processes that many students struggle with is learning to incorporate a variety of concepts from assigned readings into an academic paper that sets forth its own persuasive argument. Coming up with and communicating one's own ideas, while still supporting those ideas effectively with other texts, is no simple feat, Seifert says. But that's where a resource like WOC can help.
"A student can be thinking, ‘I kind of want to go in this direction with my paper,' but it's hard to come up with a concrete idea to write about," Seifert says. It's at such a point in the writing process where a student can take advantage of the WOC by running her ideas past her peers.
Heather Morris, a second-semester freshman, is the other peer instructor tasked with monitoring WOC this spring. Morris sees the project as a way for students who are all "going through the same thing" in the course to assist each other in a non-threatening
 way."I think a lot of students hesitate to ask questions of their instructors," Morris says. "They might not be afraid to ask questions if they know that other students have the same ones."
As peer instructors, Morris and Seifert work together to manage the wiki site, address technical issues and also respond to students' questions and ideas in order to spark further discussion among the students themselves. Traffic on the wiki may take some time to get moving, but those involved with the WOC project remain optimistic about the possibilities.
"I would hope that we would have a lot of use from all the classes," Morris says. "I'd really like to see other students helping out each other."
Posted on Tuesday, February 24, 2009
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Department of English
Mary P. Sheridan-Rabideau, Composition Director
Hoyt Hall #318
University of Wyoming Department of English--3353
1000 E. University Avenue
Laramie, WY 82071
307-766-6201
Email: msherid1@uwyo.edu
