"What possible use is a computer in Freshman English?" "Since I must purchase something for the computer in our language lab, how can I judge between a good and bad program?" "The Board of Regents has recently mandated that each division explain how it plans to use the computers in its discipline. Bogard, can you write an eight-page justification for the use of computers in composition classes by tomorrow morning?" Since many of my colleagues know that I write CAI programs for English Composition classes, I always seem to be the divisional target of such questions. After some thought, I decided that all the answers to these questions rest upon an understanding of two points: first, the primary advantage and inherent quality of any Computer-Aided-Instruction program depends not so much on the material that the students must master as it does on the interactive manner in which the material is presented; second, the theory and practice of CAI programs can not be explained in the abstract but must be seen in relation to a specific program.
Various articles in professional journals have discussed the benefits and essential elements of good CAI in composition classes. These benefits generally fall into two categories--the advantages of CAI for the students, and those for the instructors. Good programs allow students to proceed at their own pace in a personalized fashion; good programs free the instructor from the tedium of grading and constant repetition of basic writing instructions, thereby allowing the instructors to deal with their students' unique problems of style, mechanics or content. The essential elements of a good CAI program should contain at least the following: branching and evaluation, which direct the weaker students to work on additional exercises and the stronger students to move on to new and more difficult sections; interaction, which forces the students to enter answers and receive immediate, personalized feedback based upon their responses; a balance of text and questions, which changes the pace of the program and keeps the students alert; record keeping, which allows the instructor to "track" the students' performance; and a menu, which allows the students to choose where they wish to begin.
I have recently written a CAI program for my Freshman English classes. The program now runs about 180 pages on four floppy disks and is not yet finished; I plan to continue writing and improving the program until I am satisfied that it is complete or until it drives me "bananas"--whichever comes first. So let me make a professional pitch now: if you wish to use a copy of this program in your classroom and help me develop it by your comments and your students' suggestions, please contact me. I ask only that you send me four double-sided. double-density floppy disks in a self-addressed, stamped "disk mailer." The program runs on single drive, IBM compatible machines with 64k capability. I have attempted to incorporate in this program all the elements necessary for good CAI. A brief discussion of a few sections will illustrate these points and suggest whether the program may help you in your classes.
The program begins with a brief review of how to use the program and then asks the student for his first and last name. I ask these questions for two reasons. When responding to the student's entries, I will frequently include his name with my comments, as in "great job, John! That's the way to go." The student then seems to feel that the feed- back is more friendly or personalized. But I ask these questions for a more devious purpose: the students' responses are filed in a special record keeping section where the instructor may review at some later date the student's progress and suggest further study in particular areas. Because the students are not aware that their responses are being recorded, they operate in a non-threatening environment, a situation that they seem to like.
Following this introductory material, the main menu appears, and the students can then choose where they wish to begin the program during the current session. If it is the first time that they have worked on the program, they will probably choose to start at the beginning of the program. If it is not the first time--because the program takes the average student about four hours to complete--they can choose to start at various other places in the program. Also, if the instructor has noticed that a student has a particular stylistic weakness, she may suggest that an individual review only a particular area.
The rest of the program is a traditional, stylistically-oriented Freshman English text. The menu breaks the program into the following sections:
A. Beginning the paper.
1. Major kinds of writing.
2. The four stages of good writing.
3. Prewriting activities.
B. Focusing a paper with a thesis.
C. Outlining correctly.
D. Titles, introductions, and conclusions.
E. Greater and lesser levels of abstraction.
F. Paragraph construction.
Nothing really very fancy! I purposefully kept the material to those points that I most frequently emphasize in my Freshmen English courses. In fact, I so frequently discuss these points that I now hear echoes in my brain when I introduce these concepts. And it is for this reason, among others, that I became interested in writing CAI. If I am tired of constantly telling the students about topic sentences, thesis statements, and paragraph logic, I suspect my students are tired of listening to explanations of the same concepts. Was there, I asked myself, a better way to introduce and practice a limited number of major stylistic elements that are effective and attractive to both students and instructors? CAI appears to be the answer.
Like the many other units in the program, the Thesis Statement section contains a theory and practice section. This 'theory' section describes thesis statements primarily through an examination of seven qualities. the first four of which are mandatory, the final three optional:
1. A good thesis statement is usually a single, declarative sentence.
2. A good thesis statement limits an essay to manageable proportions.
3. A good thesis statement is neither boring nor self-evident.
4. A good thesis statement is logical and sensible.
5. A good thesis statement always contains a "destination" and frequently an "itinerary."
6. A good thesis statement frequently illustrates the author's attitude toward the subject.
7. A good thesis statement may deal with the opposition.
After carefully explaining each of these qualities, the students are asked if they understand these qualities and wish to continue: if they answer "No," the program branches back to another explanation; if they answer "Yes," the program moves on to the interactive question section.
The interactive, or question, section contains a series of hypothetical thesis statements about which the students are asked two questions: "Is this a good thesis statement?"; if not, "Why is this not a good thesis statement?" Below each test question I place an abbreviated form of the "seven qualities" from which the student chooses the correct response. The first question, for example, is
Thesis Statement: "The Qualities of a Good Teacher."
Is this a good thesis statement?
After they have answered this question and received a response based upon their reply, I ask another question,
Thesis Statement: "The Qualities of a Good Teacher."
Why is this not a good thesis statement?
1. declarative sentence. 5. destination and itinerary. 2. manageable proportions. 6. attitude toward subject. 3. not boring or evident. 7. deal with opposition. 4. logical and sensible.
Answer 1 through 7, and then press ENTER.
Each time students enter an answer, the program compares that answer with the accepted answer in "the memory buffer" and counts the number of correct and incorrect responses. Then, depending upon whether their response matches the "correct" answer and the number of times they attempt to answer that question before "matching" my recommendation, a response is given to them. If, for example, they answer the question correctly on the first attempt, they receive a "hearty congratulations"; if they fail to answer the question correctly until the fourth attempt (three previous replies are supplied), they receive only a "luke warm" response and a request to read more closely in the future. At various points in the program, I evaluate the students' progress: if the students appear to be progressing satisfactorily, I send them to the next section in the regular track; if the students appear to have trouble with the concepts, the program again explains the concept, asks them to try again, or sends them to another completely new section designed solely for students with certain problems. The better students may never see these separate sections designed specifically for the weaker students. The function of these special sections, of course, is to make the program truly self-paced and interactive.
Besides asking students to supply answers to questions based upon a concept--such as topic sentences and outlines--and giving immediate responses to their answers, a CAI program can carefully and patiently "tutor" students while explaining a rather complex stylistic problem. Let's say, for example, that you wish to explain and introduce the concept of subordination and coordination in paragraph logic, a concept popularized by Christensen. Textbooks, of course, can explain Christensen's rhetorical method. Programmed readers can slowly help students grasp the concept by moving from simple to more complex questions and answers. But the computer can do all of this and more: it can introduce and explain the concept; test whether they understand the idea; immediately reward them if they answer the questions correctly and reprimand or coach them if they give the incorrect response; carefully tutor them until they do understand the concept; send them to more difficult or simple sections, depending upon the students' level of understanding; and keep a record of the students' progress. Such an exercise will force students to examine sentence logic for subordination and coordination. Let me illustrate this through one question in the program, a question concerning mixed paragraphing.
Like most other units that attempt to explain a stylistic concept, the unit that examines Christensen's method contains both a theory and practice section. The theory section patiently examines the concept with various examples; the practice section asks the students to use the concept in an actual paragraph. If they correctly answer the questions, they are rewarded and allowed to continue. If they cannot answer the questions, the correct answers are given, the student is evaluated, and the program branches back to another unit in which their problems are again explained. After this is done, the students are again asked some more questions, and the process is continued until they grasp the concept. For example, after explaining mixed paragraphs--preceded, of course, by coordinate and subordinate paragraphs--the students are asked to unscramble the following paragraph. The students who grasp the concept of levels of generality, coordination and subordination, internal "logic" signals and various other stylistic matters described at length in the program have a relatively easy time rearranging the scrambled sentences into a correct, "mixed" paragraph.
a. The "Divine Creationists," on the other hand, suggest that God is the source of all the various species.
b. Each member must compete for the limited food supply.
c. Using the Bible as their source, they argue that God made all that we see in seven days.
d. The evolutionary theory, most clearly presented by Darwin, suggests that man is the result of a natural process of selection.
e. Scholars have presented various theories about the development of man.
f. This natural process begins with random variation in all species, a variation that is guided by no plan but affects members of all species.
g. And if a member competes successfully, he may survive and pass on the variation to his or her progeny.
h. If, on the other hand, they can't compete successfully, they will surely die.
i. Perhaps the two major theories, viewed by many as antagonistic, are the "evolutionary" and the "divine creationist" positions.
Students are asked to unscramble this paragraph by answering a series of smaller questions. The first question is "Which sentence is level 1?"; in other words, which sentence is the topic sentence? Once they answer this question, they are asked the follow-ing questions, each followed by response, evaluation, appropriate branching, explanation. and further questions:
Which sentence is level 2?
Two sentences can be labeled level 3
Which sentence is the first level 3? Which sentence is the second level 3?
Two sentences are on level 4, but they are grouped under the two level 3 sentences.
Which sentence represents level 4 in the first level 3?
Which sentence is on level 5?
Two sentences are in level 6.
Which sentence occurs first in level 6?
Which sentence occurs second in level 6?
Only one sentence occurs under the second level 3.
What is the only sentence under the second level 3, the second level 4?
After this admittedly difficult set of questions is completed. I show the students the rearranged paragraph in the correct order.
1. Scholars have presented various theories about the development of man.
2. Perhaps the two major theories, viewed by many as antagonistic, are the "Evolutionary" and the "Divine Creationist" positions.
3. The Evolutionary theory, most clearly presented by Darwin, suggests that man results from natural processes of selection.
4. This natural process begins with random variation in all species, a variation that is guided by no plan but affects members of all species.
5. Each member must compete for the limited food supply.
6. And if a member competes successfully, he will pass on his variation to his progeny.
6. If, on the other hand, he can't compete, he will surely die.
3. The "Divine Creationists," on the other hand, suggest that God is the source of all the various species.
4. Using the Bible as their source, they argue that God made all that we see in seven days.
I realize that this type of question may seem too difficult for most students, but my experience suggests that most attentive students can indeed answer most of these questions correctly.
As promising as the use of computers in the language classroom is, many scholars are now asking the public to become more skeptical about their indiscriminate use lest we "love them to death." Granted, most investigators reflect Mark Thompson's comments in Computers. Reading and the Language Arts when he reports that not only are there "substantial savings in time (20-40 percent) for learning over traditional instruction," but retention is at least as good if not superior to retention following conventional instruction; students react positively to good CAI programs, and CAI can be used successfully to assist learners in attaining specified instructional objectives. But valid questions are now being raised, questions about what the most effective CAI strategies are, what the effects of individual learner characteristics in CAI situations are, what hardware configurations are most effective, and what the most effective strategies for use of CAI with other instructional activities are.
Let me conclude with a few comments on what I perceive to be the most dangerous and potentially the most disastrous present trend in CAI programming--the lack of development of content-oriented CAI programs by classroom teachers. Good programming demands knowledge not only of a computer language but also--and more important--of the content area that will be taught and the students who will use the program. Good CAI must involve evaluation, branching and alternative levels. And only instructors who are thoroughly familiar with the course material and the students' responses--only individuals who have a practical and theoretical knowledge of the content area to be covered and of students' responses to that material--can produce such good CAI programs. That's why you and I must become involved in this process!