ed. William Wresch Two years ago it became apparent to a number of us that the next
area of computer-assisted instruction to take off would be
computer-assisted writing instruction. Up to 1980 or so very little
work had been done in the area, but then Hugh Burns at the Air Force
Academy and Michael Cohen at UCLA began their pioneering efforts and
suddenly colleges all across the country began trying to see what they
could do.
In order to describe the major efforts which were underway, and to
provide a guide for those teachers who might want to use or design
computer-assisted writing programs, roughly a dozen of us who were
working in the field decided to put together a book. The result is
A WRITER'S TOOL.
WRITER'S TOOL has five major sections. The first is an
introduction which describes the history of computer-assisted writing
and summarizes the approaches which seem most promising.
The next section of the book describes four of the major
pre-writing projects underway. Hugh Burns describes both "first and
second generation" pre-writing programs with an honest and humorous
appraisal of the first generation and some projections of what will
come next in the "second generation." Dawn and Ray Rodrigues describe
their work at New Mexico State and make a plea for computer activities
which respond to the varying needs of students and which acknowledge
the illogical as well as logical processes involved in pre-writing.
Next Helen Schwartz of Oakland University describes her program for
helping students write about literature, and also describes some
creative uses of electronic mail. In the last chapter in this section
I describe my Essay Writer program and its use within a system that
includes other pre-writing programs, a word processor, and a stylistic
analyzer.
The mid section of the book describes three editing and grammar
programs. This section begins with a chapter by Kate Kiefer and Charles
Smith in which they go into detail about the nature and use of the
WRITER'S WORKBENCH
programs. I consider their description, of how the use of such programs
affects the direction and content of typical composition classes, one
of the highlights of the book. In the next chapter Michael Cohen
describes the HOMER program of UCLA and gives
examples of its use and benefits as a stylistic analyzer. Lastly Mike
Southwell describes the issues and programs involved in using the
computer as a remedial tool in grammar instruction.
The longest section of the book describes six efforts in evaluating
or creating word processing or word pocessing based systems. Lillian
Bridwell and Donald Ross begin the section with a chapter which
explores all the research which has been done on word processing and
describes their approach to these programs. This is a good chapter for
anyone new to word processors to use as a starting point--it is
thorough, concise, and very honest. Stephen Marcus of UC-Santa Barbara
writes the next chapter on creative ways word processors can be used as
an instructional tool and explores some of the issues their widespread
use involves. Colette Daiute of Harvard University follows with a very
insightful chapter explaining how word processors seem to affect the
writing approaches of younger writers. In the next chapter Ruth Von
Blum and Michael Cohen explain a new approach to computer-assisted
writing in which a word processor is combined with pre- and
post-writing programs so that students can move back and forth through
the various stages. On the writing process, Cindy Selfe of Michigan
Tech, who has been working on such a system for several years,
describes her approach to this problem next, followed by Chris Neuwirth
of Carnegie-Mellon.
The last section of the book is a glossary of terms related to the
computer-assisted writing, an annotated bibliography of major articles
in the field, and an index. With these three we hoped this last
section would help the book serve as a continuing reference tool.
All combined, the book is a rather substantial work totaling nearly 400
manuscript pages, all intended to give readers a clear sense of
what is currently being done, why authors took the approach they did,
how such programs affect classroom instruction, and what early
evaluations reveal about their instructional efficacy. It is our hope
that having such information available will make it easier for our
colleagues to try various computer-assisted writing programs and plan
for their effective use, or to design programs of their own based on
the models the book provides.
A WRITER'S TOOL will be published in June. --W. Wresch
University of Wisconsin Center-Marinette
COMPUTERS and COMPOSITION 1(1), November 1983, page 3