Stine, Linda. “The Best of Both Worlds: Teaching Basic Writers in Class and Online.” Journal of Basic Writing 23.2 (2004): 49-51. ProQuest. Web. 12 Feb. 2011.
I approached this article with great interest, since, at first blush, it appeared to contradict the 2010 article by the same author I reviewed for my last blog post. I was surprised to see such unequivocal positivity in this title and abstract after reading the 2010 article, which I would describe as cautionary.
Reading this article confirmed that Stine views hybrid basic-writing courses very positively. Although she begins by laying out potential difficulties basic writers may have with online environments—issues of access, technological fluency, and learning to read online, among others—the bulk of her article is devoted to describing the positive potential of moving at least some of the work of the writing class online. In the middle third of her article, she lists ten general ways in which web-enhanced courses can outperform traditional ones. Her reasons are compelling and cover situations both outside and inside the purview of the course—for example, hybrid courses can greatly simplify scheduling for working single parents, and they can encourage students with shaky academic skills to develop them by requiring students to use the Internet, research, word-process, and communicate online.
The last third of Stine’s essay focuses on her own experiences with hybrid basic-writing courses at her college, which, she relates, implemented the hybrid program two years before this article was published. Her college’s version of hybrid means that students alternate between meeting for a week face-to-face and “meeting” for a week online. Face-to-face sessions concentrate on describing assignments, grammar, groupwork, and quizzes; online, students write and revise, participate in discussion, and review each other’s papers. Stine writes that the hybrid environment provides advantages over both fully-online and face-to-face environments; for example, students form stronger interpersonal bonds through face-to-face interaction, but still can have the space to consider their posts in online discussion. Stine ends her article by asserting that her college’s hybrid basic-writing course “seems to offer our students the best of both worlds: the infinite freedom of the Internet enhanced and made manageable by regular classroom interactions.”
As I wrote above, the tenor of this article is markedly different from her 2010 TETYC piece, which states that “the intersection of adult education, basic writing, and online learning [is] a complicated and messy place,” and ends with a series of questions that seem to suggest how little we know about what makes a good online or hybrid basic-writing class. It’s true that the latter article focuses more on fully online courses than it does hybrid ones; however, many of her cautions in that article apply equally well to both environments. When re-reading the 2010 piece, I was struck by how Stine describes herself as “struggle[ing] each semester to decide what sort of an online teaching/learning experience to require […and] growing increasingly conflicted.” Hawisher et al. have described how the optimism of the early era of computer-mediated composition was gradually supplanted by a more critical, theoretical mindset—practitioners realized computers were no panacea and began to advocate a more critical examination of their place in the writing classroom. I wonder if Stine may have experienced a similar progression (as I have over the past decade or so).
Stine is a thoughtful writer, and I enjoyed this article. The model of hybrid class she presents is interesting and worth trying at other institutions, and she provides a good theoretical underpinning for her argument.
Hawisher, Gail, Paul LeBlanc, Charles Moran, and Cynthia Selfe. Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979-1994: A History. Norwood: Ablex, 1996. Print.
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