Who Owns School--New Book by Kelly Ritter

In Who Owns School: Authority, Students, and Online Discourse, Dr. Kelly Ritter, Associate Professor of English and Director of Composition, explores the online forums in which college students discuss their learning experiences. Dr. Ritter argues that there are three fundamental ways in which the Internet has changed the relationship between students and educators:

1) "The Internet has changed the relationship between students and texts, altering how they read, how they value the act of reading, and how this affects or is affected by the texts themselves" (4).

2) "The Internet has changed how students view writing, and how they define 'writing' versus 'authorship,' which are no longer viewed as inextricably linked" (4).

3) "The Internet has changed the relationship between students and teachers--specifically the methods by which students value and evaluate teaching, and how that information might now be disseminated publicly to other students, so as to make public what most educators prefer to think of as a private, local act of intellectual rather than commodified, free-market exchange" (4).

Check out Campus Weekly's recent interview with Dr. Ritter for her take on sites like Rate My Professor and others that students frequent.