A CEA Forum Roundtable: Teaching Writing in New Spaces: Access, Design, and Application in the Technology-Equipped Classroom

Authors

  • An Introduction

Keywords:

technology, classroom design, pedagogy

Abstract

This roundtable attempts to address issues of access, design, and application that have been undervalued in scholarly work. In “Teaching Writing in a Digital Age: Addressing Issues of Access,†Brittany B. Cottrill looks at how issues of access are more complicated than just possession; instead, access includes multiple levels of support. Vanessa Cozza’s “Reflecting on Teaching Experiences in the Lab: Challenges with Classroom Design†focuses on her experiences in computer-equipped classrooms at two different institutions. Her analysis serves as an example of how classroom dynamics affect a student-centered pedagogy and collaborative learning environment. While traditional environments lack the tools students need to compose, technological classrooms often eliminate comfortable discussion environments. Katherine Fredlund’s “Teaching in a Laptop Classroom: Merging Traditional with Technological†addresses how a laptop classroom eliminates both these issues but also creates new problems for the instructor to deal with. Bret Bowers’ “Disrupting Determinism: Classroom Design as a Technology†looks at how classroom design functions as a technology. His analysis will provide examples of the problems of classroom design and how the classroom design serves to limit and/or determine classroom pedagogy and ideology. Finally, Bowers offers possibilities for subverting the dominant ideology present within classroom spaces. Ultimately, these four articles come together as a means to discuss various challenges that instructors face but that are often overlooked.

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