The Electronic Teaching Collaborative ETC
This site is designed to be a resource for teachers who wish to collaborate. It is a place to exchange not only ideas and scholary articles, but also support. Naturally, we figured the best place to create this resource was on the web, since it is both philosophically and physically an ideal venue for collaboratively-oriented teachers to meet. Scroll down and click on the links that will take you to a a call for "collaborative stories" and a reference list devoted to collaboration scholarship. To become a member of ETC, email Gian Pagnucci at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Why do we need the ETC web site?
Last year, when we heard that the First Annual Western States
Composition Conference (Oct. 1997 in Tempe, AZ) would focus on
collaboration, we proposed a talk on how collaboration takes on
different forms in our teaching and in our classrooms. We came to
the conference, listened to a number of excellent speakers, and
gave our own presentation. In preparing for our session and
attending others, though, we realized how ironic it was that an
entire conference focused on the topic of collaboration involved
almost no actual collaboration among attendees. True, we did talk
together a lot and eat together, but only one or two sessions
offered any kind of collaborative activities for participants.
Most sessions took the form of the traditional academic
presentation we've come to expect: active talking by the
presenter and passive information reception by the listeners.
The first Western States conference helped crystalize something we'd been thinking about for awhile: That the discipline of composition, and most other academic disciplines for that matter, functions in ways which are counter productive to collaboration among scholars. The Electronic Teaching Collaborative (ETC) is a place for us to come together as scholars who wish to collaborate with other teachers to meet our personal needs and to advance our fields of study.
Won't you join us?
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