Trent Batson
Seton Hall
University
Trent Batson, a senior
associate of the TLT Group, received his Ph.D. in American Studies from George Washington
University in 1974. He has taught at Michigan State University, George Washington
University, Gallaudet University, Carnegie Mellon University, and George Mason University.
His current appointment at Seton Hall University is within the Computer Center, consulting
with faculty across campus about integration of computers into the curriculum.
Batson's
primary work has been in the area of computers and writing. In 1985, he was the first to
use a real-time group discussion tool ("chat") to teach writing. That discovery
led to the creation of the networked writing lab and to many commercial software packages
to support the networked writing lab. Best known is the Daedalus Group's InterChange, part
of the Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment. For this work, Batson was presented the
EDUCOM award for best innovation in writing in 1989. He was also honored by the
Smithsonian Computerworld awards program as a runner-up for their awards.
He
has directed a number of funded national projects, published a book with Cambridge
University Press (Network-Based Classrooms, with Bertram Bruce and Joy Peyton) in 1993,
numerous articles and chapters, and has made a couple of hundred conference presentations.
Most
recently, he directed the Epiphany Project, a funded national project (The Annenberg/CPB
Project) to develop models of workshops for the use of campuses to support mainstream
writing faculty in their transition to "enlightened" use of technology in the
classroom. A book about this project is scheduled for publication in 1999.
His
current workshop (one-day or two-day) is called "Words With Wings: Literacy Takes
Flight." This workshop helps faculty understand the deep changes in literacy they are
dealing with, easy ways to use these changes to good advantage in the writing classroom,
and also to understand many of the professional issues related to these changes.
A
project underway this year is called BANC: Building A New Consensus. This project is
building a new mechanism for peer review of faculty work with computers so faculty may be
rewarded for teaching with technology in the same way they are for research.
|
