Electronic meetings of the minds: Research, electronic conferences, and composition studies

Over the past decade two electronic innovations have profoundly influenced writing classes. Although each of these innovations had simply been part of the computer programmer's work environment for many years, for writers and for writing teachers they have been revolutionary, changing not only the way we teach but also influencing our research and our understanding of composition studies. I'm speaking, of course, first of word processing and then of the electronic conference, each of which was uncommon to the writing instructor's life before the advent of the first fullyassembled microcomputer in 1977 and each of which entered our professional lives sometime during the eighties. These two technological innovations, however, did not grow up in isolation; they emerged as our very theories of writing and writing instruction were evolving. Word processing appeared as a classroom technology at the same time that the process paradigm was establishing itself in composition studies. Electronic conferencing has taken hold of the field at the same time that social constructivist views of language have similarly become prevalent in the profession. Such changes in our views of writing