VOLUME XII, NUMBER 29 8% INNOVATION ABS TRACTS 4 ie NATIONAL: Fu 6 FORISTAFF ry eis eli May ako 208 THE Naess ae sc ais re aed See ciao uni a bs cee Fe 9) N4y) TION CN eae Ba ee ee Ne A Writing Assignment for the Tech Classroom When I first started teaching in the technologies after more than a decade in the humanities, | was worried that there would be little opportunity for writing assignments. I felt that my computer students should be doing more writing than responding to the occa- sional short-answer questions on tests. Thanks to the efforts of our local WAC (Writing Across the Curricu- lum) group, I’ve discovered that writing assignments can have an important place in the technology curricu- lum. Now, I use a variety of writing activities in my tech classes. Ca 2, ae ee So afo fe One simple exercise has worked particularly well. | tell my students to read an assigned chapter and then write five questions based on their reading. However, these questions must not be questions that the text answers; rather, they should be questions that someone who has read the chapter carefully might not be able to answer from having completed the reading assignment oniv. | also give the students examples of appropriate and inappropriate questions. For instance, if the chapter is on programming languages, a poor question would be: “What are the names of the major computer lan- guages?” This would be a poor question because the book provides the answers. A better question would be, “Why are there so many different programming lan- guages?” —a topic not directly addressed by the book. No matter how well | explain the assignment the first time | give it, typically over half of the initial group of questions are simple factual questions, and the answers are obvious froma simple reading. The students, it appears, are not accustomed to questioning what they read. But with encouragement they are soon producing questions that are thoughtful and provocative. Some questions students asked after reading one chapter last semester were: “In foreign countries do they use BASIC and COBOL. as we do, or do they need their own pro- gramming languages?” “How is Apple BASIC different from IBM BASIC?” 1 admit I first devised this assignment out of despera- tion. Too many students were coming to class without having completed the assigned reading. This exercise not only serves as a check that students have read the material in advance of the discussion, but it also helps ensure that they have read it carefully. Moreover, their questions alert me to what might be problem areas in the reading for the day. I unabashedly steal as many of the students’ ques- tions as I can and use them during class. Asa result, discussions have become much more interesting, with many more students participating spontaneously. I closed last semester by discussing for an entire hour one student’s question: “On the whole, will computers do more harm to society or more good?” This controver- sial question led to one of the rowdiest yet most infor- mative discussions I’ve ever had the pleasure to lead. The student who wrote that question was being an active reader; instead of passively taking for granted everything the text said, she talked back to the book by asking a question to which neither she nor I have the answer. It’s said that an educated person is one who knows what questions to ask. Writing Across the Curriculum has inspired me to get my tech students to ask the tough questions—and to put them in writing. Dennis Lynch, Chair, Electronic Data Processing Depart- ment For further information, contact the author at Elgin Community College, 1700 Spartan Drive, Elgin, IL, 60123. EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712 THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD) Community College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin ort fe