Select Bibliography: Teaching with Email

Abstracts, where available, are from ERIC. For summaries and questions by Laura Mandell, click on titles.

Hawisher, Gail and Charles Morton. "Electronic Mail and the Writing Instructor." College English 55.6 (1993): 627-43.

Discusses the growing importance of electronic mail among academicians. Offers a rhetoric and a pedagogy that include electronic mail in their fields of vision. Argues that writing instructors should continue to do research into the issues inherent in electronic mail.

---. "Responding to Writing Online." New Directions for Teaching and Learning 69 (1997): 115-25.

Electronic dialogues tend to be rapid, informal, and public. When college teachers use computer technology to respond to student writing, they have an opportunity to rethink and reinvent the ways in which they teach and by which students learn. Despite some new concerns and problems, this mode of communicating does not evoke the same response that margin comments and error markings may.

Karayan, Silva S. and Judith A. Crowe. "Student Perceptions of Electronic Discussion Groups." T.H.E. Journal 24.9 (1997): 69-71.

Discusses the use of electronic discussion groups as part of regular course activities at California Lutheran University. Highlights include benefits, including meeting student needs and convenient interaction; the need for assessment to determine instructional effectiveness; and the results of student surveys.

Lewis, David C., Janine A. Treves, and Andrew B. Shaindlin. "Making Sense of Academic Cyberspace: Case Study of an Electronic Classroom." College Teaching 45.3 (1997): 96-100.

Describes the experience of Brown University (Rhode Island) in offering alumni a six-week electronic seminar, entirely text-driven, on drugs and drug policy in which course exchanges occurred with listserv software and electronic mail. Outlines the course's background and design, student demographics, technical support, dynamics of class discourse, and ways in which teaching and technology interacted.

Mandell, Laura. "Virtual Encounters: Using an Electronic Mailing List in the Literature Classroom." Profession 97: 126-132.

Describes using a class email list in the Romantic classroom.

Marttunen, Miika. "Electronic Mail as a Pedagogical Delivery System: An Analysis of the Learning of Argumentation." Research in Higher Education 38.3 (1997): 345-63.

Content analysis of 441 electronic mail (e-mail) messages used by 31 Finnish undergraduate students investigated the use of the medium for practicing argumentation (grounding of stated claims) in two teaching modes: a tutor-led seminar and self-directed student discussion. Results indicated argumentation improved during the experiment, especially when counterargumentation was involved and that student-led groups improved most.

Moran, Charles. "Notes Toward a Rhetoric of E-mail." Computers and Composition 12.1 (1995): 15-21.

Explores the differences between e-mail and paper mail, focusing on audience, interface, and rhythm of response. Argues that technological change triggers other changes in a system, creating discomfort, and that this discomfort should not prevent English and writing teachers from studying and accepting e-mail as a legitimate site for writing.

---. "We Write, But Do We Read?" Computers and Composition 8.3 (1991): 51-61.

Discusses the social interaction between writers using electronic mail systems. Shares two stories concerning this written form of conversation.

Palloff, Rena, and Keith Pratt. Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999.