Writing and Building Community in a Learning Environment

Writing. College students in a class are generally more comfortable with writing than with talking as a means of expressing themselves. We find that at most 20% of the students will respond to our questions and pleas for discussion and the evidence is that the other 80% resist speaking for fear of embarrassing themselves in front of their peers. On the other hand the anecdotal evidence is strong that students are more willing to write their opinions. For one, they are used to writing from their years of experience in school, and secondly their sense of fear is alleviated when writing in their own privacy even when they know that their comments will be posted on the web or a mail list for many to see. So why do we want our students to express their opinion?

We believe that writing is a powerful tool in learning, and it is the learning of our students that we want. This is certainly not a new idea as witnessed by the fact that many colleges and universities now have writing components to courses that traditionally did not have them, such as science and mathematics courses. At Oregon State University we have a significant "Writing Intensive Curriculum" program that actively promotes these courses.

Writing on a topic forces the student to really come to grip with the topic and helps them integrate it into their way of knowing. There are also psychological motivations indicating the importance of opportunities for students to be able to express themselves. Parker Palmer, a prominent authority on teaching, has discussed this issue and it rings true to our ears. In [P2, p 46, 1998] he says, "Behind their fearful silence, our students want to find their voices, speak their voices, have their voices heard." In support of this, at the International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics, November 1997, in Chicago, a speaker claimed that students who go to big name universities are more interested in having their famous professors hear what they have to say than the students are interested in what the professors have to say.

Palmer also says [P2, p 75, 1998],
"Learning does not happen when students are unable to express their ideas, emotions, confusions, ignorance, and prejudices. In fact, only when people can speak their own minds does education have a chance to happen."

Community. The learning of mathematics requires much more in the way of social interaction than has been traditionally understood. The solitaire student sitting in a corner studying mathematics has been a prototypical image for too long and it has hurt the public image of learning and studying mathematics. We now give a general discussion of this topic.

Palmer [P1, p 37, 1983] discusses that the conventional classroom in pursuing objectivism sees no rationale for community, no need for a mutual, interactive quest to know and be known. "If we believe that knowledge arises from the commitments of communities (as some new epistemologies tell us) we would create classrooms where community was fostered, not feared."

In [P2, pp 90-94, 1998] Palmer gives lengthy descriptions of different models of communities: the therapeutic, civil, and marketing. He convincingly argues that none of these is an appropriate model for a community of learners. He defines the concept of "community of truth" [P2, pp 95-106] and argues that it is the most appropriate model for teaching and learning. A salient point is that the subject is the center of attention, not the teacher nor the students as in the case for less effective models.

Making the subject the center of attention is precisely what we do in CalculusQuest, and in particular with the Communication Activities. These structured activities, the focus of this paper, represent a teaching technique that reaches to the heart of the model for teaching discussed above. It uses writing in a subject centered class activity that fosters creativity in the process of building community.

[P1] Palmer, Parker, Knowing as We are Known, ... , 1983

[P2] ______________,