The evolution of the Computers and Writing Conference, the second decade

This article, written for the twentieth anniversary of the Computers and Writing Conference, is the sequel to “The Evolution of the Computers and Writing Conference” (Computers and Composition, 12(3), November, 1995). The earlier article analyzed many of the intellectual concerns, values, and language expressed in presentations at the Computers and Writing Conference from 1982 to 1994. This article does the same for the second ten conferences, 1995-2004. Throughout the second decade, we have developed a new comfort with computers, expanded our idea of “writing” beyond the traditional essay, and gained a respected place in the academy. Computers and writing has become an institution. At the same time, we sometimes worry about losing control over our teaching and can feel overwhelmed by the size of the task we undertake. Many of our values have stayed the same; however, we are optimistic about the place of technology in our work and in the culture at large, we love to experiment, and we routinely weave ideas from other disciplines and other areas of our lives into our computers and writing research.     

De-coding Our Scholarship: The State of Research in Computers and Writing from 2003–2008

Since its inception, the field of computers and writing has responded to rapid technological advancements that affect the research, practice, and teaching of writing. A potential consequence of addressing these advancements in teaching and practice, however, may be a reduced focus on foundational, empirical research. To examine the state of research in the field of computers and writing, we assessed the types of research published in four journals (Computers and Composition print, Computers and Composition Online, Kairos, and College Composition and Communication (CCC)) from late 2003/early 2004 to the end of 2008. We explored the state of research by investigating research approaches, design, and modes of inquiry over time. Within this context, we considered author gender, collaboration, and employment of interdisciplinary and mixed methods. We applied criteria from MacNealy (1998) to classify 26% of the computers and writing articles we analyzed as rigorous empirical research. We found a preference for qualitative research designs (56% of articles were qualitative) and, to a lesser degree, mixed methods (29%). While providing a sense of the state of the field as it matures, we conclude by presenting discussion questions on the role of research, research drivers, and ways to increase the quality of research and research reporting. We urge the field to consider the kinds of research we do, teach, and value.     

Sexualities, technologies, and the teaching of writing: A critical overview

In this introduction to a special issue of Computers and Composition, the authors critically review current literature on computer-assisted writing pedagogies that grapple with issues of sexuality. Although this body of work is small, it points to provocative ways to develop our students’ critical and rhetorical sensibilities about the constructions of sexuality in our culture. Further, such work innovatively addresses the place of networked communication technologies in the interrogation of such constructions. The authors conclude with both an introduction of the work in this special issue that addresses the intersection of sexuality studies and computer-assisted writing studies and with a call for additional work in this field.     

How international is Computers and Composition?

In this article, I examine to what extent Computers and Composition: An International Journal for Teachers of Writing is international. My analysis of several aspects of the journal indicates limited international scope. I also discuss two issues important when considering the potential international scope of computers and writing research and practices: the differing uses of computers for writing by different language users and the differing concepts of identity and self in different cultures in relation to writing. I conclude with concrete suggestions for broadening our perspectives on computers and writing and making this journal truly international.     

Writing, technologies, and the fifth canon

Andrea Lunsford's keynote address to the 2005 Computers and Writing Conference at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, expands the definition of writing to include epistemic, multivocal, multimodal, and multimediated practices in the computers and writing classroom. The article describes the development and piloting of a new undergraduate course in Stanford's Program in Writing and Rhetoric that applies these concepts to the undergraduate composition process. The address closes with a challenge to create classroom experiences that allow students to compose in “the most compelling discursive modalities of their generation”.     

Computers and Composition 1983–2002: What we have hoped for

I review the first 20 years of Computers and Composition, looking particularly at the expressed hopes for the potential of change in the emergence of new writing-classroom technologies. Hopes in the early issues of the journal focused on technology’s presumed potential for improved writing, teaching, and learning in the composition classroom; a later and recurrent hope was that by embracing technology, composition teachers would improve their status in the academy. Authors in recent issues looked less at the technology and much more through the technology, toward a more egalitarian and just society. I attempt, in this review, to locate these hopes in the context of professional and national cultures.     

软件复用、软件合成与软件集成

软件复用被视为解决软件危机的一条现实可行的途径。在软件复用的科学研究与实践活动中,针对不同的应用领域,结合相关的计算机新兴技术,出现了许多解决软件危机的方法与途径,软件合成、软件集成就是软件复用的成功实践扩展和技术应用之一。简要地介绍了软件复用,分别给出了软件合成、软件集成的概念,归纳总结了二者实现所涉及的关键技术、适用领域和应用目的,详尽地对比了软件合成、软件集成的区别。     

CASA,WASA, and the dimensions of us

In this paper we replicate and extend the work of the Computers are Social Actors (CASA) researchers who repeatedly found evidence that humans treat computers with typical social norms as if they were humans. We performed a between-subjects 2 × 2 factorial experiment to test our hypotheses as well as an exploratory factor analysis to further refine and validate a construct which measures politeness. We retest the CASA hypothesis and found that our new hypothesis – Websites are Social Actors (WASA) reduces the CASA effect in contexts where individuals form a social attachment to websites instead of computers. We found evidence that suggests humans can exhibit politeness toward websites and literally (not virtually) treat them as social actors. Finally, we tease out the elements of politeness as a construct and identify the key items in the instrument for data reduction, and initiate efforts towards establishing reliability and construct validity. As we shall see, the results of an exploratory factor analysis are quite consistent to recent research in social cognition, and suggest that the politeness construct may be tapping similar and fundamental components of how humans engage with others in their social world.     

PBL模式在《计算机组成原理》课程教学改革的应用实践

在研究PBL教学模式及其特点的基础上,针对目前《计算机组成原理》教学的现状和存在的问题,提出将PBL教学模式应用于《计算机组成原理》课程教学中,介绍采用PBL教学模式进行《计算机组成原理》课程实习教学的组织安排和实施过程,教学效果表明,与传统教学方法相比．PBL教学模式在提高分析解决问题能力、加强互助合作和沟通能力、增强高效解决问题的能力和激发学习兴趣等方面优势较为显著。     

浅谈《计算机系统组成与维护》课程教学

《计算机系统组成与维护》课程让学生整体认识微机的软硬件系统,掌握微机的组装、系统设置和操作系统安装,能够对硬件进行测试,排除常见的软硬件故障,使用与维护常见外部设备。该课程培养学生的实际应用和操作能力,非常注重理论结合实际。针对《计算机系统组成与维护》课程的教学目标和特点,介绍在教学中对教学内容、教学方法的探索。     

浅谈人像组合系统的设计

介绍了刑侦人像组合系统主要内容及工作原理。同时,设计了人像组合系统功能模块及相关工作流程。     

Social facilitation and human–computer interaction

The Computers As Social Actors (CASA) research paradigm has examined how individuals respond to computers programmed to interact in various ways. In the current research, we extend the principles of CASA to determine whether computer icons can be used to produce social facilitation effects. Varying task difficulty and the presence or absence of a computer icon (i.e., Microsoft word’s Clip), performance on a typing task is considered. Overall, results provide some support for the contention that the mere presence of a computer icon may influence task performance.     

Groupwork with Computers: an overview of findings

Abstract  The paper presents the main findings of the London-based study, carried out as part of the ESRC project Groupwork with Computers. During this study, we attempted to identify the background and process factors which influence the success of groupwork with computers. The research used a multi-site case study design in six schools and involved eight groups of six mixed-sex, mixed-ability pupils (aged 9–12) undertaking three mathematics tasks, two using LOGO and one a database. Our main findings suggest that group settings are only successful in terms of both group outcome and learning, if the group structures their activity in particular and identifiable ways. These organisational styles and patterns of interaction themselves are conditional on interpersonal and social characteristics of the group and class.     

Constructing essentialism: Computers and Composition and the “‘risk’ of essence”

Feminist authors in Computers and Composition have generally favored social constructionist approaches to identity, yet a subtle reliance on essentialist assumptions about women (sometimes tied directly to the body) still exists. In order to explore this phenomenon, I rely on the theories of Diana Fuss and Elizabeth Grosz to unpack the essentialist/constructionist binary. Then, relying on Laura Brady's explication of “strategic” and “tactical” deployments of essentialism in composition studies, I discuss two previous articles in Computers and Composition that successfully negotiated issues of women's identity partly through essentialist assumptions. The ways in which the articles under discussion here essentialized teenage girls become stepping stones toward a reconstruction of girls’ identities. Thus, although essentialism can be problematic, feminists interested in writing and technology can still take what Diana Fuss calls a “‘risk’ of essence” to further feminist goals.     

面向案例驱动的《软件文档写作》课程改革与实践

软件文档是整个软件开发工作的基础,现代工程化的软件开发离不开软件文档。在《软件文档写作》课程中,软件文档的内容和格式被强调得较多,而对学生编写文档的实践能力训练不够。针对这种情况,提出面向案例驱动的软件文档写作课程的教学方法．其目的是让学生结合实际项目的开发完整地理解和把握软件文档写作的方法和技能。     

《计算机组成原理》课程教学改革探索

<计算机组成原理>是高校计算机科学与技术专业的重要基础课之一.在分析<计算机组成原理>课程教学改革的基础上,提出具体的教学方法、教学设施以及教学与科研结合的意见,对<计算机组成原理>及相关课程的教学具有一定指导意义.     

《计算机组成与系统结构》开放式实验教学探索

论述开放式实验教学及其在现代高等教育中的重要性,在《计算机组成与系统结构》课程实验的基础上,结合精品课程建设与实验教学改革,提出开放式二级实验体系的设计思路,并进行与此相关的探索与实验研究。     

Media Convergence: Creating Content, Questioning Relationships

The development, dissemination, and proliferation of multimedia and media convergent texts raise a number of pressing questions for literacy scholars in general and compositionists in particular. What kinds of literacy practices are students developing through their use and composition of multimodal and new media texts? What genres are used in the creation of such texts, and why? Are there particular genres that are favored? How are older genres remediated or recast through media convergence? What research methodology challenges are posed when attempting to study multimodal and new media texts? How might compositionists use media convergence to teach students about academic literacies, about research, about the changing nature of “writing?” What might media convergence look like in the future? Perhaps most immediately, the phrase itself—“media convergence”—begs a question: what, exactly, is converging? This special issue of Computers and Composition on “Media Convergence” poses answers—sometimes tentative, sometimes provocative—to these questions.     

Composition mechanisms for retrenchment

Retrenchment is a flexible model evolution formalism that arose as a reaction to the limitations imposed by refinement, and for which the proof obligations feature additional predicates for accommodating design data. Composition mechanisms for retrenchment are studied. Vertical, horizontal, dataflow, parallel and fusion compositions are described. Of particular note are the means by which the additional predicates compose. It is argued that all of the compositions introduced are associative, and that they are mutually coherent. Composition of retrenchment with refinement, so important for the smooth interworking of the two techniques, is discussed. Decomposition, allowing finer grained retrenchments to be extracted from a single large grained retrenchment, is also investigated.