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Volume 1, Issue 2 ISSN 1528-5804
Print Version
Submit a Commentary
Bull, G., Willis, J., & Bell, L. (2000).
Rethinking the nature of academic discourse. Contemporary
Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, [Online serial],
1 (2). Available:
http://www.citejournal.org/vol1/iss2/editorials/article1.htm
Rethinking the Nature of Academic Discourse
GLEN BULL
University of Virginia
JERRY
WILLIS
Iowa State University
LYNN
BELL
University of Virginia
The transition to an emerging technology offers an interesting
juncture. Often, the transition begins by transferring an existing
format to a new medium. The first movies were essentially filmed
plays. Over time, filmmakers began taking advantage of the new
medium, culminating in the cinematography and special effects that
characterize contemporary offerings.
Similarly, some online academic journals are primarily
electronic versions of their printed counterparts, while others
have moved farther from their roots. With the CITE Journal , we hope to
build upon the tradition of scholarly academic publishing, while
encouraging ongoing dialog and taking advantage of the new
media’s capabilities.
The CITE Journal is distinguished from others, both print and
electronic, by a focus on technology in specific subjects and core
content areas, such as science education, mathematics education,
language arts, and social studies education. The board of directors
of teacher educator societies for each content area has appointed
editors in the respective content areas each association
represents. This organizational format is designed to ensure that
the focus remains first and foremost on content, encouraging
discussion of ways to incorporate technology into each academic
discipline.
Ongoing Dialog
The new technologies supporting an online journal offer the
opportunity to develop an ongoing dialog. Many online journals
feature interactive chat rooms, mailing lists, and web forums that
create a space for informal conversations. As a matter of editorial
policy, we hope to establish a high scholarly standard for dialogs
and commentaries about articles, as well as in the articles
themselves. For this reason, readers of the CITE Journal have the
opportunity to respond to an article by submitting a commentary
that will be published as an article in its own right. These
commentaries will undergo the same process of peer review as the
original articles. However, taking advantage of an electronic
medium, commentaries and responses will be posted immediately after
acceptance.
New technologies also offer opportunities for different kinds of
academic dialogs. Print-based journals have fostered a style that
has encouraged long articles separated by extended periods measured
in months or years before a response (if any) occurs. Publication
delays of up to a year or more encourage authors to develop lengthy
manuscripts encompassing every possible aspect of the topic they
might wish to address.
In contrast, online readers have become accustomed to scanning
text, preferring shorter documents that make use of hyperlinks to
provide access to secondary information. The
“Commentary” option of the CITE Journal makes it
possible for authors to publish shorter commentaries that respond
to a specific aspect of an article or to make a specific point.
This could potentially lead to a more interactive style of
discourse that still meets high scholarly standards. Shorter
commentaries of three to five pages may be better suited to an
online than more lengthy responses, generating the interactive
dialog that is the objective of the journal.
While publication timelines may be shorter and printing costs
may be less constraining for an online journal, the attention span
of the readership is finite. Research in computer-mediated
communication suggests that when discussants are faced with a large
number of choices, the discussion becomes so fragmented that it is
difficult to construct a meaningful dialog. To facilitate a
thoughtful dialog on each topic presented, CITE Journal will
publish only one or two articles per content area in each issue.
This approach will ensure that a topic of importance in each
content area will be highlighted in each issue of the journal. With
encouragement and facilitation from content area editors, a dialog
of associated commentaries will be published in each topic
strand.
This will ideally generate a discussion strand similar to this
example from the inaugural issue:
If We Didn’t Have the Schools We Have Today, Would We Create
the Schools We Have Today? – Thomas G. Carroll
Commentary: Some
Comments on “If We Didn’t Have the Schools We Have
Today, Would We Create the Schools We Have Today?” –
Gerald Bracey
Commentary:
Technology, Learning, and Schools: Comments on Articles by Tom
Carroll and Gerald Bracey – John Bransford, Xiadong Lin, and
Dan Schwartz.
Commentary: The
Paradigm behind the Curtain: Comments on
Papers by Carroll; Bracey; and Bransford,
Lin, & Schwartz – Jerry Willis
While much of the dialog and commentary associated with a topic
strand will be published in the quarter in which the base article
first appears, the editorial staff will continue to review and
publish commentaries for as long as original contributions are
accepted. This approach generates a model in which there are a
relatively small number of topics four to six in each content area
over the course of a year and a larger number of commentaries that
extend the dialog initiated through publications of the base
article.
Guidelines for a productive dialog suggest that new commentaries
should make an original contribution, rather than rehashing or
restating previous positions, and should be constructive, intended
to advance the conversation. As a further innovation, we hope to
assemble panels of authors and affiliated commentators at the
conferences of sponsoring professional associations. These invited
panels will provide an opportunity for direct interactive dialog
that will build upon the foundation of scholarly publication and
may, in turn, generate further articles and commentary in future
issues.
Taking Advantage of New Media
The CITE Journal also provides an opportunity to take advantage
of new media. For example, an article on “Preparing
Tomorrow’s Science Teachers to Use Technology” in the
inaugural issue contains a discussion of the Doppler effect. It
includes a video illustrating the change in pitch that occurs as a
moving vehicle approaches. In the printed version of this article,
only a still image of this illustration may be displayed.
On the other hand, the printed version has advantageous features
not present in its electronic counterpart. Most computer monitors
are not capable of displaying a full page of text, and the
resolution is considerably lower than that of the printed page.
Because of these and other characteristics, studies have found that
reading comprehension is often higher when text is displayed on a
printed page. The printed version is also accompanied by page
numbers, which seem less appropriate for the web version.
This concept of multiple instances of a base document, each
containing characteristics and features that may not be present in
other versions, flows directly from opportunities offered by a new
medium. In addition to printed and online versions, other formats
might be generated by a base document. For example, in preparation
for a conference (the National Technology Leadership Retreat), the
articles found in the inaugural issue were transferred to a format
suitable for handheld computers (Palm OS). These devices currently
have a display area of 160 x 160 pixels. The articles were,
therefore, condensed and reformatted to take advantage of this
medium.
As a result, there are potentially several instantiations of
each article, each with somewhat different characteristics. (In the
field of computer science, the term “performance” is
sometimes used to refer to different expressions of an underlying
base document.) Since the CITE Journal is intended to be an
academic publication, this leads to the question of how to
appropriately reference the different instances or expressions of
an underlying document. This has been resolved for the present by
adopting the APA format for printed documents for the printed
version and the parallel style for electronic documents for its
online counterpart. Thus the appropriate citation for the online
version of the science article in the inaugural issue would be
Flick, L., & Bell, R. (2000). Preparing tomorrow’s
science teachers to use technology: Guidelines for science
educators. Contemporary
Issues in Technology and Teacher Education [On-line serial], 1 (1). Available: Hostname:
www.citejournal.org
Directory: vol1/iss1/currentissues/science/article1.html
while the corresponding citation for the printed counterpart
consists of the following:
Flick, L., & Bell, R. (2000). Preparing tomorrow’s
science teachers to use technology: Guidelines for science
educators. Contemporary
Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 1 (1),
45-67.
The citation for the printed version reflects the fact that it
has page numbers, while the online citation reflects the fact that
this version is available through the web. Page numbers provide a
mechanism for locating a specific quotation or section of the text
in the printed version, while imposing printed pagination upon
resizable browser windows in the online version unduly constrains
this medium. Printed pages also lend themselves to hand annotation,
while the web version facilitates animation, virtual reality,
video, and audio. When each is used its best advantage, the two
media are complementary. In the future, technologies such as XML
(Extended Markup Language) will make it possible to automatically
generate multiple instances from one underlying metadocument.
Conclusion
New technologies allow the CITE Journal to encourage ongoing
scholarly dialog that can take place in formats and media different
from – and possibly better than – the traditional print
publications of the past.
Technology offers the opportunity, but realization of this
potential will depend upon the readers and contributors to the
journal. If you have an academically grounded insight or
perspective inspired by an article in the CITE Journal, we
encourage you to
submit a commentary, becoming not only a reader but a participant
in an interactive discourse.
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