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As the last chapter demonstrates, conducting virtual peer review with no guidance and without the help of distinctions regarding collaboration and technology can lead to challenges and frustrations. Moreover, because so many new online activities are introduced every year in relation to the Internet, it is critical to become more specific about what certain online activities entail. Such a level of detail is especially imperative in the case of virtual peer review, which, as I have argued throughout this book, may soon become a regular part of writing instruction in higher education. Writers using the Internet must become savvy, understanding the actions as well as responsibilities involved in certain Internet activities. This chapter addresses the ways that virtual peer reviewers can become informed and educated about solid approaches to conducting virtual peer review—ways that allow writers to address challenges of collaboration and technology. Above all, addressing these challenges requires thinking critically about goals. As Burnett and Clark suggested, collaborative activities are often ill-defined; it is when we clearly articulate our goals for a collaborative activity that we are better able to integrate technologies. Throughout this chapter, then, I demonstrate virtual peer review according to scenarios in which various technologies may likely be used and easily integrated. In doing so, I suggest that virtual peer review can make use of several technologies (and take several forms) depending on the specific goals of a virtual peer review session. Therefore, the scenarios I describe are goal driven, in accordance with the idea that pedagogy must drive technology. In addition, each scenario includes actions, illustrating the argument that writing is active and involved rather than passive. To some extent, the scenarios of virtual peer review I include here also address technological issues in computer pedagogy within writing studies. As I explained in chapter 1, the desire to explore technologies for writing instruction has generated enormous interest among scholars, some of whom have celebrated multiple and novel uses of technology for writing instruction. Here I do not advocate any one particular technology program or software; I deliberately avoid such advocacy in order to concentrate on pedagogical goals first 109 C H A P T E R 5 Virtual Peer Review and Technological Flexibility and foremost. Rather, given the insight provided by Burnett and Clark about various factors involved in collaborative technologies, I approach the exploration of writing technologies in terms of what I call “technological flexibility ,” or the idea that writing activities should transcend any one particular technology. In the following section I explain this concept and its connections to virtual peer review and technological literacy. Technological Flexibility In chapter 4 I reviewed factors of collaboration suggested by Burnett and Clark that influence technology use and selection: group characteristics, group agreements, task characteristics, and technology environment. I applied these factors to virtual peer review to demonstrate that virtual peer review could be conducted in many ways. Here I suggest that such diversity of application— depending on a number of factors—can be defined more broadly in terms of “technological flexibility.” Technological flexibility is a concept that addresses writing instruction or any other context in which a variety of technological tools exist to accomplish a writing task. By “technological flexibility,” I mean that the goals we have for writing tasks drive our choices and uses of technology. In the context of writing instruction—the primary context with which I am concerned here—technological flexibility requires that an instructor consider the specific goals for instruction and identify the range of technologies that may be used to achieve those goals. The idea of technological flexibility therefore reflects the number of technological possibilities for instructional activities. As such, technological flexibility suggests that technology respond to goals and not the other way around; in theory and practice, technological flexibility affirms the guideline that pedagogy must drive technology. In addition, when technological flexibility exists, the expectation that activities must be tied to certain technologies dissolves. The concept of technological flexibility can be a powerful tool for instructors designing computer-based writing activities. Rather than making choices based on the latest and greatest available software, instructors mindful of technological flexibility can consider all their options and make critical decisions about instructional technology. Keeping technological flexibility in mind can even simplify choices about instructional technology; as I suggested in chapter 4, virtual peer review can be conducted using simple e-mail and does not require any specially designed (or expensive) technology . And yet, in identifying a range of possible technologies, instructors...

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