Students in network-based classrooms converse in writing through the use of communications software on local-area computer networks. Through the electronic medium they are immersed in a writing community--one that supports new forms of collaboration, authentic purposes for writing, writing across the curriculum, and new social relations in the classroom. The potential for collaborative and participatory learning in these classrooms is enormous. The book examines an important type of network-based classroom known as ENFI (Electronic Networks For Interaction). Teachers have set up ENFI or similar classrooms in elementary and secondary schools and at more than a hundred colleges and universities. In these settings, teaching and learning have been dramatically transformed, but the new technology has brought with it difficulties and surprises. The process of creating such a classroom raises important questions about the meaning and the realities of educational change.

List of contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Studying the Re-Creation of Innovations: 1. Innovation and social change Bertram C. Bruce; 2. A situated evaluation of ENFI Bertram C. Bruce and Joy Kreeft Peyton; 3. Understanding the multiple threads of network-based classrooms Joy Kreeft Peyton and Bertram C. Bruce; 4. Pulling together the threads: themes and issues in the network-based classroom Joy Kreeft Peyton and Bertram C. Bruce; Part II. Creating the Network-Based Classroom: 5. The origins of ENFI Trent Batson; 6. Student authority and teacher freedom Marshall Kremers; 7. Script writing on a computer network J. Douglas Miller; 8. Seeing students as writers Geoffrey Sirc and Thomas Reynolds; 9. The origins of ENFI, network theory, and computer-based collaborative writing instruction at the University of Texas Fred Kemp; 10. Why write - together- concurrently on a computer network? Christine M. Neuwirth, Michael Palmquist, Cynthia Cochran, Terilyn Gillepsie, Karen Hartman and Thomas Hajduk; 11. One ENFI path Diane Thompson; 12. Institutionalizing ENFI Michael Spitzer; Part III. Assessing Outcomes Across Realizations: 13. 'I'm talking about Allen Bloom': writing on the network David Bartholmae; 14. Designing a writing assessment to support the goals of the project Mary Fowles; References; Further reading; Index.