Fred Kemp Biography
Dr. Kemp began
working with computer-based writing instruction in 1985 when he
helped start the Computer Research Lab (now the Computer Writing
Research Lab) at the University of Texas. When local-area networks
became readily available the following year, he realized the potential
for peer interaction and document management through LANs and
joined with others to create the instructional software Daedalus
Integrated Writing Environment.
In early 1988,
he incorporated The Daedalus Group, Inc., in order to support
this software, and remained its president for the next ten years.
He established the first major online discussion list for computers
and writing scholars (MBU-L) in 1989, and together with Trent
Batson formed the Alliance for Computers and Writing (ACW) in
1994 and created its Web site that year.
From 1995
on he has, with his colleagues at Texas Tech University, developed
numerous network-based processes to encourage peer-to-peer instructional
activity and administrative innovation, culminating in a database-driven
Web application (TOPIC) and an objective grading matrix (ICON)
that explores the restructuring of first-year composition programs
for (1) intense peer mentoring online and (2) clarity and coherence
of writing and evaluation criteria across large programs.
His work at
Texas Tech is allowing discipline-specific writing assignments
to be spread throughout first-year composition in a radical new
design for writing-in-the-disciplines, and ICON is providing peer
interaction for extended studies students, an innovation that
promises to bring new critical-thinking models to a population
of distance students previously assumed beyond the scope of peer-interactive
instructional processes. Dr. Kemp is a past chair of the CCCC
Computers and Composition Committee, a member of several professionally
related committees dealing with computer-based instructional issues,
and on the editorial board of various publications. He has written
and presented extensively about computer networks for instructional
purposes over the last eighteen years.
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