A remarkable example of hypermedia is the Dante web site where "the video option increases the emotional impact of the text even more dramatically, as the latest film interpretation of Hell appears on the screen on demand. Integrating the video clips and the voices in this way, with the images and texts, results in a more powerful and complete 'reading' experience" (Bump 11).  Postmodern images and texts have a reputation for being affectless and non-emotive.  The Dante web site is an excellent example of affective communication since it more readily provokes an emotional response from the reader than if he/she had merely read the book. Using hypermedia to teach writing is "a new and controversial approach to recruiting and retaining students and their tuition dollars," adds Swiss in his article (4).

But the discussion and collaboration valued in conventional courses can be carried over to a distance learning course that incorporates hypermedia onto its website. Dan Melzer, in his article "Constructivism Online: A survey of Freshman Writing Distance Learning Courses," writes about a type of hypermedia different than the one on the 'Dante' web-site: "If the technology is used well, the cyber- classroom can be a place of thoughtful and continuous discussion, in 'real time' chat rooms and MOOs and on asynchronous communication tools such as bulletin boards and listserves. The student-centered writing classroom can remain alive and well in cyberspace, as long as the teachers insist that the tools of technology are used for discussion and collaboration."

The second most important thing we must do to insure that students participate and cooperate in a virtual classroom is make the Web-based writing course a student-centered writing classroom. Melzer suggests that teachers use the technology in a variety of ways: "[having] electronic peer responses work shopping in a chat room, discussing class readings on a bulletin board, sharing topics on a listserve, writing collaborative hypertext essays on the Internet, having students explore links from a class website, or holding poetry reading in a MOO." Melzer states that distance learning writing courses are more student-centered than conventional courses because students are freer to move in individual directions with the teacher acting only as the support person (coach) for the learning experience, students also need to know how to work without direct guidance, and the responsibility for the learning experience is placed more on the individual student since the teacher takes more of a "guide" role. (Melzer)

Constructivists have theorized that students form knowledge themselves and don't rely on what someone else says is true.  In other words a student creates his own meaning.   Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt in their book, Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace, say that the "key to the learning process are the interactions among students themselves, the interactions between faculty and students, and the collaboration in learning that results form these interactions" (5). Successful learning occurs when a learning community is formed in which knowledge is imparted and meaning is co-created. The authors argue that students learn best from concrete experiences that engage their senses. Contrary to conventional knowledge, the best learning experiences begin with practice and end with theory (Twigg 1994).

Palloff and Pratt argue that students enrolled in distance learning courses are more motivated, have higher expectations, are more self-disciplined, and are older and more serious than the average eighteen-year-old student (8). This becomes important because distance learners who learn in a virtual environment need the ability to deal with emotional issues both in textual and non-verbal form. Earlier I had stated that the use of hypermedia was a powerful tool that elicited more of an affective, or emotional, response from the reader than print text. Hypermedia integrates words, graphics, sound, and animation to increase the emotional impact of a text. Working collaboratively on assignments, participating in small-group discussions and projects, role playing, and using simulations are all active learning techniques that require a mature and stable personality.

 Working in a serious and disciplined way should be the shared goal of an electronic community.  Participation and cooperation in a virtual classroom that teaches writing is a sign that students have embraced their shared goal of learning to become better writers. Palloff and Pratt state that on-line discussions are conversations that allow "participants to take responsibility for the way they will engage with the course and come to [a] shared agreement about the ways they will interact with each other" (112). They argue that student-centered learning occurs when the content of the course is embedded in everyday life. Participants must relate their life experience and what they already know to the context of the online classroom, so that a deeper understanding of what they learn can take place (116). A collaborative approach an instructor can take is using group exercises and simulations that encourage participants to connect around shared problems, interests, and experiences.

This approach mirrors the "real" world out there because individual students' realities are mirrored in society. When students connect around shared problems they are forced to see the connection between individual actions and collective outcomes. What Palloff and Pratt are arguing for in their cyberspace classroom is more interdependence rather than more independence. Relationships between students are the key to interdependence thinking. But finding a common cause and respecting diversity is not enough to create interdependence, participation, and cooperation in a virtual classroom. "An instructor must be willing to give up control of the direction—even the content of the discussion—and act as a participating member, allowing the students to take the discussion wherever it might go," argue Palloff and Pratt (123).

For some teachers, collaborative skills are prized in the economy of the computer age. Learning valuable interpersonal skills is what gives students the ability to take risks with peers in collaborative environments. However, Carol Twigg, in an article entitled, "The Value of Independent Study," believes that lessening the need for direct faculty intervention and increasing the ability of students to find and use learning materials on their own is the key to a higher quality of student learning. "No longer will [tomorrow's students] be passively taught by teachers who organize the learning experience for them. Students will learn how to find and use learning materials that meet their own individual learning needs, abilities, preferences, and interests; they will learn how to learn," she states (Twigg 1995).  Twigg believes that learning how to learn is not necessarily acquired from interaction with other people because people can learn on their own. She agrees that group-based learning using computers and video tapes can create an impersonal atmosphere where there is no interaction and participation with other students and professors, but that both conventional and distance education students spent the majority part of their learning studying alone. Says Twigg: "Interaction can fail to occur when face-to-face" (1995).  She thinks that higher quality learning equals less contact with faculty and more independence on the part of students.

Certainly the idea that teachers should give up some control and be more like followers than leaders in their cyber classrooms challenges the ideas we have about teaching and learning that we have always taken for granted. The role of teachers is changing. The greatest impact comes from using the Net as a teaching and learning tool. Crawford Kilian de-bunks several myths about virtual classrooms in his article, "F2F – Why teach Online." He believes that online teaching is not cheaper or easier than conventional face-to-face teaching, it is not for everyone because only a tiny fraction of the student and teacher population is computer-literate, and it is not the "wave of the future." He imagines that in the next ten years "interactive digital video" will dominate the Web because of its nonverbal mode of delivering information. Twigg in her argument for more independent study says that about 80 percent of the costs of colleges and universities are for personnel costs. "Every hour a teacher spends learning computer skills is an hour lost to professional development in one's discipline. Every computer lab means less space for regular classrooms or study areas.  Every modem could have been books in the library," adds Kilian (1997).  Can higher education afford such an expensive delivery system?  All indications point to YES!

Computer instruction is getting cheaper and ever more common. "The computing power of 16 Cray supercomputers (total 1993 cost: $320 million) will be available in 2003 on one [billion-transistor] chip for under $100," according to Kilian (1994). He maintains in the end that a radical re-conception of the learning process and the roles of teachers and students will advance self-propelled learning. He says, "What we learn ought to surprise us, open up unexpected opportunities, create whole new industries and cultures" (1997).    Advances in computerized hypermedia, in graphics, audio, memory, words, and animation will enable students to understand their subjects better than ever before. But danger lurks here too.  Computerized hypermedia can turn a subject like history into vivid re-creations of events.  The Vietnam War, with color, 3-D, and very realistic bloodshed will make the student forget about issues like capitalism and communism and Terror in the Third World and make him search the Web for more gory images. Computerized "texts" and virtual reality are so powerfully emotive they might trigger protests and complaints of brainwashing (Kilian 94).

Hypermedia--because it more readily provokes an emotional response from the student--must be watch-dogged for accuracy and emphasis.  With the advent of networks, billion-transistor-chip computers hooking up to millions of others, most education will be independent, self-paced, student-centered home learning.  Why enroll in a conventional campus-based course when distance learning offers greater resources?  Students will be creating their own meaning, but teachers will also be needed to guide, advice, and encourage students who will be learning in a virtual environment that by its very nature requires students to be able to cope with emotional issues.  The Internet is full of garbage: neo-Nazis, pornography, bigots, dumb games, useless shareware, irrelevant databases, lechers, and child abusers (Kilian 1994).

What is the point of learning things that one will never use in the real world?  Instructors teaching Web-based writing courses are needed because when Advanced Computerized Hypermedia (3-D and virtual reality) merge with independent self-paced student-centered learning, it will be a prescription for disaster if a system of checks and balances is not implemented.  Teachers are in the front line of checking and balancing the excesses of the Web.  Because virtual reality and computerized texts are so powerful and emotive, there needs to be a coach there, a guide, who will help students screen out all the garbage on the Net, and give them a chance to find a "pearl."  This pearl is Knowledge and self-propelled learning.  Technology can enhance learning.  Students will learn how to learn more effectively, form knowledge themselves, create their own meaning, and in a virtual classroom, engage all their senses.
 
 

Bump, Jerome. "Left vs. Right Side of the Brain: Hypermedia and the New Puritanism." Currents in Electronic Literacy. Fall 1999 (2).
 <http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/fall99/bump.html>
<http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/discovery.html>

Kilian, Crawford. "2005: A Virtual Classroom Odyssey."  Educom Review, May/June 1994, 29(3).
 <http://educause.edu/pub/er/review/reviewArticles/29316.html>

---. "F2F – Why teach online."  Educom Review, July/August 1997, 32(4).
 <http://educause.edu/pub/er/review/reviewArticles/32431.html>

Melzer, Dan. "Constructivism Online: a survey of freshman writing distance learning courses." Currents In Electronic Literacy. Fall 1999 (2).
 <http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/fall99/melzer/conclusion.html>

Palloff, Rena M. and Keith Pratt. Building learning communities in cyberspace: effective strategies for the online classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999. 1st ed

Swiss, Thomas. "Talking about the web: the web, language, English studies."
 Currents In Electronic Literacy. Fall 1999 (2).
 <http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/fall99/swiss.html>

Twigg, C. "The need for a National Learning Infrastructure." Educom Review, Sept/Oct. 1994, 29(5).
http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm.html

---. "The Value of Independent Study." Educom Review, July/August. 1995, 30(4).
http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm.html