Not the Same Old Story -- Long Distance Collaboration to Increase Interpersonal Understanding

The social milieu is a prime component of the personal and social development of children when they attend schools with 20 to 30 students in a room. Yet feelings, emotions, morals and ethics are concepts that an objective educational establishment has never entirely accepted. However, recent tragic events in American schools have led to the call for affective content in education. Through the ages, societies have used stories to define human interaction for their citizens (Brewer 1980). Joseph Campbell (1968) stated that myths enabled people to live in harmony with aspects of their environment and themselves, which were beyond their control. Similar to myths, fairy tales enabled children and adults of both genders to comprehend their world and the events in it (Zipes 1988). Modern storytellers, or advertisers, attempt to establish an identity with their products by selectively reinforcing certain attitudes and values that appeal to consumers (Edel 1988). Schank (1990) asserts that stories embody the very nature of human intelligence. People use narratives and stories to communicate with each other. In doing so, memory structures are activated in both the speaker and listener. Bibliotherapy, a branch of psychological counseling, has existed since the turn of the 20th century. It is defined as the guided use of stories to gain understanding, or the ability to solve problems relevant to a person's needs (Riordan and Wilson 1989). The characters of stories provide youngsters with a safe medium to collaborate, discuss conflicting feelings, and solve problems (Olsen 1975). The technology of today has the capacity for students in diverse locales to collaborate in discussion of stories and in doing so, come to a better understanding of each other. Could students in different locations collaborate in solving age appropriate problems through hypertext stories on the Internet? Preparation Twenty-four students between the ages of 12 and 15 from the states of Pennsylvania and West Virginia were selected to participate in story reading and collaborative discussion via e-mail. Students were given a partner from the other state. While students from Pennsylvania were dispersed throughout the Commonwealth, the students from West Virginia were from a single school. The stimuli for discussion were a series of stories titled Mill River Junior High (Rubisch 1992). In its original text and audio tape format, Mill River Junior High consisted of 30 serialized stories that followed five fictional characters through a typical school year. The characters spanned the gamut of young adolescent subculture (jock, prep, delinquent, new kid in town, etc.). Stories each contained a topic relevant to this age group (e.g. drugs and alcohol, teasing, suicide). The text materials were designed with follow-up questions for each story (or "episode") to be answered and discussed by students in a classroom setting. Initial evaluations from students who read Mill River was positive, and revisions were made based upon student recommendations. Subsequent evaluations of over 1,000 students were also positive. In moving Mill River to the Web, the text episodes that featured the two lead female characters, Mousey Brown and Holly Henry, were chosen. This choice was made for two reasons: the reported success in the original series of the Peer Relations theme, and the concise nature of the theme as it was largely developed in the episodes that featured Mousey and Holly. The Characters Holly Henry is described as follows in the teacher's guide of the original series: "Holly seems to have everything going for her. She is pretty and popular, earns straight A's, and wears the right clothes. However, behind the facade, Holly is a very unhappy girl: she finds her `perfect' image is in conflict with what she really wants to be. Her parents are getting divorced. Although she has the `right' friends, she has no one in whom she can confide. …