Teaching Literature with GoogleWave

Today's Chronicle of Higher Education includes one professor's experience with podcasting as a new classroom technology. Like Professor Lang (the article's author), I have reservations about technologies that are all glitz and no guts--that don't contribute substantially to the classroom. Wait--reservations? No, actually, just contempt. But I suspect that for most technologies it is not the tech itself that poses a problem, but rather the ways in which it is used. This, too, Lang argues about podcasting.

Always one open for experimentation, I've been looking for an opportunity to try Google's much raved-about new technology, waves, in the classroom. And that opportunity may be now.

I'm grading my first round of major essays this semester, and it's clear that some students had trouble understanding what was asked of them and many probably wrote the paper the night before/morning of and didn't proofread (let alone revise). Obviously, next time I teach this course I'll improve the clarity of my instructions; but for now I have to deal with the situation as it is. How to prevent the same problems again?

If I assign the students to use Google Wave to compose their papers, with myself as one of the wave participants, I can see exactly how much work they do on their papers each day, and what kind of work. I can even make comments in it if I see them going off track--"Oops, that's not what I meant when I wrote X in the assignment!"

To test this, I propose to do the following:

1. Offer extra credit for volunteers to participate in this study. I'm thinking about a third of a letter grade for the next writing assignment. This is fair to them, since they'll be taking a risk in trying this; it should also inspire nearly all of the class to sign on.
2. Divide the class into the following sections:
   1. Those who will commit to using GWave and writing a certain amount every day.
   2. Those will use GWave, but not commit to writing a certain amount every day.
   3. Those who will use a Google Doc (shared with me) to compose their papers. (After all, there might be no substantial difference between GDoc and GWave for this purpose--or is there?)
   4. Depending on how many people sign up, I might assign some to compose their papers normally.
      
   
   
3. Next, well over a week ahead of time, I'll have to send GWave invitations to those participating in that part of the study. Since I don't want to use all of my invites, if a lot of students are to use GWave, some of them will have to invite their classmates. So extra time is required.
4. Finally, run the experiment! Then grade the final versions, using the first essay grades as a comparison to see if there are any significant differences, and reflect on any unexpected events during the composition process.

So that's the plan. If this works, I might ask students to collaborate (in this class or another) on a GWave for, say, group presentations or other work.

Watch this space for updates!