Because a member of the research team distributed the first contact sheet and gave students instructions on how to complete it, and because subsequent reminders were given to all four teachers and delivered to students in the same way, we can be reasonably confident that students completed the forms in the same ways in both traditional and computer classes. And yet the computer students consistently reported more contacts than their counterparts in the traditional classes.

Moreover, as one teacher noted, students in the computer classroom may not have been recording as many contacts as they probably had: 'I don't know if they're writing those kinds of contacts [chatting in class about their papers] down on their contact sheet. Probably not. They see it as really normal interaction' (Caitlin, Interview Two). The teachers all noted that in the computer classroom students seemed much more comfortable talking to each other, and that most of the student-student talk focused on writing issues and papers-in-progress.

The computer setting, then, appears to have contributed to a greater extent than did the traditional setting to students' willingness to share their writing openly and to elicit peers' and teachers' commentary on their writing as it developed.