“There’s a reason for these comments in that people are frequently working ideas out as they are speaking. They do not know where they are going when they start to comment.”

True of online comments too, worse luck.

Quick point of clarification: when you say this…

“Instead, we seem to be calling for more shared experiences, whether that take place via writing ahead of time (something that I will definitely include, should I ever have the chance to teach a graduate seminar) or through more engaged conversation. If we could figure out a way to get technology to provide that shared experience, then we’d be happy with that solution.”

…are you counting online course management systems like bspace or Moodle (which offer discussion forums where students can post and respond) as happening “ahead of time” and therefore outside the grad seminar? This seems like one of the “backchannels” you mention under Social Media. Am I understanding that correctly?

It’s also interesting that almost everyone thus far has indicated that they are unclear where the technology could comfortably fit into the English graduate seminar. Instead, we seem to be calling for more shared experiences, whether that take place via writing ahead of time (something that I will definitely include, should I ever have the chance to teach a graduate seminar) or through more engaged conversation. If we could figure out a way to get technology to provide that shared experience, then we’d be happy with that solution.

To that end, I’ll offer a new suggestion. One of the difficult things about responding to one another in a graduate seminar is that people tend to speak for great lengths of time. If someone makes a five-minute comment, it can be very hard to respond to all of the points that she makes. There’s a reason for these comments in that people are frequently working ideas out as they are speaking. They do not know where they are going when they start to comment. But I wonder if we could institute portions of grad seminars where we have lightning rounds. People only get, say, 2 minutes to say something and then others have to respond. The lightning round would be timed (and here’s where the technology comes in) using something as simple as a kitchen timer or something like presentation timer for the iPhone or iPad. When your time is up, someone else gets the chance to respond to what you’ve said. I don’t think it would be useful to run an entire seminar in this format, but it could be a great way to start the conversation, especially when students were speaking about the reflective pieces that they had written ahead of time about the assigned reading. They would already have something to talk about and to respond to rather than working out new and complete ideas. One could also invoke lightning rounds at other points of the seminar to force people to become more concise in their formulation of points.

Does a lightning round require a lot of technology? No. Does it foster conversation? Yes. I think that shifting even a small piece of the graduate seminar format would prove enormously useful for making us more agile in thought, speech, and writing.

I’m late to this discussion but stumbled across it while I was thinking through similar problems that inhere in the deadening process of professionalizing for its own sake, namely, the difficulty of hosting useful conversations in the majority of academic contexts. Thought I’d toss my two cents in.

Re: Skype: FWIW, used it in my undergraduate course, which was structured around fiction, technology and the author function. We finished the class by reading an experimental novel (VAS: An Opera in Flatland by Steve Tomasula) and finally spoke with the author himself via Skype videochat. The students were astounded by every aspect of this: what with all the Calvino and Borges and Benjamin and Foucault I hammered them with, the idea that we could actually *talk* to an author had receded into a near-impossibility. It was fantastic.

It would also, I hasten to add, have limited value in a grad seminar. If I’m being honest, its main effect on my students was to smash their sense of authors as (dead) gods and the world of books and publication as otherworldly and inaccessible—something graduate students know all too well, and firsthand. My model, like many mentioned in this thread, doesn’t apply to scholarly training.

But neither does the traditional graduate seminar, which too often *does* devolve into a semi-smart set of statements that don’t much need to engage with each other or support their assertions as long as the professor allows him or herself to anchor the room. Real-time conversation is almost definitionally unrigorous.

All this is a preface to what I really want to do, which is to second (and third!) Kathy’s suggestion about discussion forums as an initial step in initiating grad students to technology and an essential one if we want to improve graduate education. Here’s why: as a student, I could take or leave the conversations in seminar, which often left me confused or frustrated at how little we’d covered or at how persistently one angle of inquiry foreclosed on others. What I missed (and miss) most was an opportunity to substantially engage with my colleagues’ points of view.

Now, that’s possible on a comment thread. It’s possible on an internet forum. It’s possible on a blog. To make that possibility available in the context of a class would be a hell of a way for graduate students to cut their teeth as they learn to speak acadamese. Because one of the things we avoid talking about at all costs, and teaching—despite the fact that it comprises most of our work—is academic writing.

It wasn’t until my prospectus workshop that I got a chance to actually read my colleagues’ academic prose and got their feedback on mine. That’s absurdly late: these are people I’ve known for four years. By that time, the usefulness of a “workshop” is limited–to actually give someone feedback on their “writing” is tantamount to telling an old friend they’ve got bad hair.

Far be it from me to suggest dispensing with the grad seminar; it’s an important part of academic socialization. You have to learn to talk the talk. But it’s not (at least in my experience) where good thinking or good writing or good discussion usually happens. What the discussion forums (Moodle for Kathy, bspace here at Berkeley) offer is a site for an academic conversation about the primary and secondary texts to develop the way they should: over a realistic timescale (a week, say), and giving the parties involved the time they need to craft—not a high-stakes paper, not a thesis—but a thoughtful comment on a text with care.

I also really like pulling in readings of poets. You don’t really understand Ginsberg’s poetry until you’ve heard him read it. There’s something about the urgency in his voice through much of it that doesn’t carry across quite in the printed words (although those look pretty frantic too). At the same time, it always seems a bit of a cop-out to think that the poet’s own reading is the correct one, so listening to readings is a great way to get students thinking about authorial intention.

And e-lit is a no-brainer (either for the use of tech or for including in a wider range of classes).

But there are two times when I break from this pattern and turn on the computer: 1) Whenever I bring a piece of electronic literature into the discussion (I try to touch on a piece in every lit course I teach, whether it is an e-lit course or not). I know you mention this, but I think that those of us who are hip to what’s going on in the realm really can push the discussion of literature forward by letting e-lit into more traditional courses. I like to talk with students about how various conventions develop across time, so a good, but challenging, contemporary example can make some of these discussions move in unpredictable directions. And, 2) whenever I can find a reading from one of the poets we are discussing. Last time I taught Ginsberg, I pulled up a reading from Archive.org, and let the students listen. It’s just plain pleasurable.

And I do feel fortunate to be in my current position and hope that I can show it’s a worthwhile one.