Paperless Writing Revisited

In Paperless Writing Revisited, Edward Jennings examines the ways in which writing and social relationships in the classroom are affected by computer networking programs. Jennings describes a classroom experiment in which all students used a computer network to submit texts to a professor. Once the texts were submitted, the professor and the class could read and comment on everybody's work.

Jennings noticed how teacher-student power relationships changed depending on the writing medium. In the classroom, the students wrote on paper, turned in their work at the same time, and got their work back in the next class with the teacher's comments. It was a hierarchical and synchronized process controlled by the teacher. On these assignments, students often saw the teacher's comments as scolding because they were written directly on the paper next to the error. The comments seemed to be pointing out how badly the student had performed.

On the computer, students turned in assignments at random times, commented on other students' work, and received the teacher's comments via email. This time, the students perceived the teacher's comments to be a benign summary of what he did and did not like about their work. This is because the comments were not written directly on text, and the emails were sent out hours after the text had been submitted. Furthermore, since the teacher's and students' comments were all written in the same font and submitted in the same fashion, the teacher appeared to be equal to his students.

Jennings, Edward M. (1990). Paperless writing revisited. Computers and the Humanities, 24, 43-48.