On Beyond Webpapers

While writing a final paper for my Contemporary African Literature class, I ended up "Googling" the effects of marijuana on the brain (I was writing about pathological gambling in a text and comparing it to chemical addiction). The first "hit" that popped up in my search was a Serendip webpaper written in 2006. Further, several listings below the initial Serendip one had actually cited the webpaper; the paper appeared in forums, blogs, and other forms of internet media. In four years, the paper had left the confines of the classroom and found itself as a reference for other works. 

So where do we go from here? As seen with the example above, I think Serendip has effectively allowed classes at BMC to communicate with the larger virtual world. But I have to ask - have we effectively communicated with our larger academic community on campus? As far as webpapers go, perhaps putting students not only in conversation with Internet users, but with their own peers in other classes might be a way to expand upon the traditional sense of the academic paper. Just as classes are cross-listed, would it be possible to cross-Serendip classes? As an English major, I've noticed that many of my English courses feed into one another. The courses are in communication in my mind, yet I cannot put them into any real communication. What if, for example, my African Lit class was linked electronically to my Nonfiction Prose class so that members of both classes posted on the same forum or had access to each others' papers? I'm not saying that students have to take both of the linked classes (in fact, it would probably be better that they don't), but rather that putting two related topics being taught on the same campus into conversation might lead to an expansion of our postings and webpapers.  As it stands, the webpapers encourage us to draw references from the virtual world. I'd like to see them start to connect the "real" (nonvirtual?) world as well, starting with allowing classes to engage in conversation.