Page last updated March 16, 1998.
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I. The Approach to New Textual Readings through Use of the Web Site.

Traditional classroom face-to-face interaction led to new approaches to writing and dialog with our college students. Over a series of classes we developed the concept of a Web Site on Habermas' theory of communicative action through rational discourse. We called the Web Site "Dear Habermas," and explored in that Web Journal an interactive form of writing.

We have related this theoretically to intertextual readings and the creation of text through ethnomethodological accounts of exchanges on the issues discussed.

Links to theory on intertextual readings and to the Dear Habermas Site can be found at:

http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/Homepage.htm

II. Partnership Connections and How They Were Founded

The Department of Sociology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, through its Center for Research, is investigating the developmennt and formalization of partnerships with other educational programs in our vicinity: From 1996 - 1998 this partnership has taken a variety of forms.

1. Children of the Night is a program that houses and works with children taken from the streets, most of whom are engaged at that point in prostitution as a means of survival. By the time they get to this program they are in the system. The program offers them shelter, training, social work services, and preparation for college and support for moving into college for those who so choose. Their ages from 11 to 19.

   The CSUDH Dept. of Sociology works with the Children of the Night High School to teach these young people to understand and deal effectively with the legal system, of which they are already a part. This process involves both face to face interaction with CSUDH faculty and students, and work with the students over distance. Last year we were limited to e-mail. This year we are working on creating a special Web site for Children of the Night that links to our Web Sites at the university.

   During the Spring of 1998 we are planning to extend the collective writing and discussion of issues such as justice, fairness , access equality and forgiveness to include texts created through e-mail and Web site exchanges with Children of the Night.

2. Federated Headstart Programs

   CSUDH Dept. of Sociology is working with Headstart to assess the possibilities of multiple partnerships in the community, including that with the Dept. of Sociology for this research. This government funded agency has no connectivity at present. Our department is hoping to help them fund e-mail and establish enough connectivity to share in our Web sites and expand those Web sites to community issues of parenting. Partnership in this case will involve funding guidance and technical assistance in choosing the requisite components, setting them up, and training agency personnel.

3. Our Elementary School Connection

   CSUDH Sociology students worked for several semesters at the Los Angeles Frances Blend School for the Visually Handicapped. We began our activities there teaching art to the visually handicapped. That approach to partnership grew to the involvement of the CSUDH School of Management supervising the wiring of the Blend school. Now in the Spring and Summer of 1998 we hope to extend our work with the Blend school to the Internet. Again, we are exploring partnerships and would be pleased to share any work out there. We have already extended our concept of teaching art in the context of social justice to another of the Los Angeles Unified School District's fourth grades, through one of the students in our program who is now a teacher and who taught with us at Blend.

Conclusion

Students, even at the university level, read differently today, in a less linear, less intense fashion. "Playing with Habermas," one of the papers on the Dear Habermas Site, tells the story of the student who studies fifteen minutes a day. If, as Habermas suggests, we listen in good faith to our students, who are the citizens of this academic community, then we may hear a very different validity claim. That same student was seen in the CSUDH computer lab, hours after her class, working with statistics on the Statistics Site. But she might tell us she is only given 15 minutes of discretionary time to study. The message is that in the process of developing WEB sites, as we create partnerships with many different students and teachers, over many different skill levels, we need to listen, not just in good faith, but in creatively good faith.

Faculty on our site:

Jeanne Curran, Chair, Department of Sociology, CSUDH
jcurran@csudh.edu

Robert M. Christie, Chair-Elect, Department of Sociology, CSUDH
bchristie@csudh.edu

Susan R. Takata, Chair, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Parkside
takata@uwp.edu

Presentation by Jeanne Curran at the International Conference on Technology and Education in Santa Fe, New Mexico, March 10, 1998.