FOR RELEASE: Sept. 8, 1999

GTE Gives CSUN $50,000 for Online Course
to Improve Students Writing Skills

The money will be used over the next two years to pay for training for faculty and tutors and buy additional computer equipment for courses, which are taught via the Internet.

English lecturer Sheryl Thompson, coordinator of the project, welcomed the GTE grant.

"This is wonderful," Thompson said. "The money will support a program we feel was quite a success. This project is geared toward incoming freshmen and developmental writing students with the idea of incorporating online technology to improve their writing skills. So far, we believe the course works."

The project started in 1997 when faculty from the Asian American Studies, Chicana/o Studies, English and Pan African Studies departments teamed up to develop four online courses with a common curriculum that would be taught in tandem to students in developmental writing or freshman composition classes.

The students in the four courses never actually met. Instead, the communicated with each other online.

Faculty discovered that by using the Internet, these students had the opportunity to participate in a writing and reading community that went far beyond what was found in a traditional classroom setting. The multiplicity of perspectives, and the ability to communicate in a non-traditional setting at non-traditional times, motivated students to write more frequently and at greater length.

"We were really impressed with the results," Thompson said. "The students wrote more, communicated better and improve their computer skills. It was a great experience for the instructors and the students."

The students exposed to this approach improved their academic literacy skills and stated that it has also provided them with a clearer sense of their own voices. Their computer literacy skills also improved.

"This is a wonderful opportunity to continue a great project," Thompson said.

GTE California is a wholly owned subsidiary of GTE Corp., one of the nation's largest telecommunications companies and an industry leader in providing customers with one-stop shopping for Internet-access, and local and long-distance voice, video and data telecommunications services. In California and portions of Nevada and Arizona, GTE serves more than 5 million customer lines and 500 communities.