As we prepare to welcome 15-or-so new instructors to the lab, the first question to consider to consider is "why CA?" Why would us humanities-types want to teach in a computer assisted (CA) classroom?

There are a lot of answers to this question. The first and most popular is the least interesting, and not especially true: you want to teach in the cwrl because staffing is easier than working in the writing center. While proctors have always had free time during thir shifts, they are nonetheless responsible for 3 rooms full of new computer hardware, 2 or 3 instructors who might need help in a pinch, and 75 students who might need technical assistance. On top of this, proctors have to pursue on the job training, do odd jobs, and work on workgroup projects. I'll talk about some of these things some other time, but I haven't even mentioned the developer role. Suffic it to say that staffing in the cwrl is not necessarily easier than working for the UWC.

Anyway, we should be talking about the benefits of teaching in the lab. These I break down into two families-- pragmatic and theoretical. By pragmatic, I mostly mean to point out that we do indieed live in the 21st century, and computers are common and very helpful tools for organzing and communiticating information, and that's a a large part of what we do in teaching rhetoric and writing. Adapting the tools technology makes what we do seem more relevant and gives our students skills that employers think they need. Neither of these scenarios are essential true, but they are pragmatic. Another subsection of what I'm calling pragmatic is the fact that computer tools really work. When employed with forethought and clear purpose.

I need a better term than "theoretical" for my second category, since what I'm talking about is very real. Simply, I mean the changes that happen when you put computers in the classroom. Suddenly, the possibilities of what can happen explode form 'let's put our desks in a circle' to everyone finding examples of a particular rhetoric, multimedia presentations, and changing the interface of discussions. Every one one of these changes have deep pedagogical (and dare I say, ideological) implications. In the CA-classroom are possibilities that don't exist in the traditional classroom. In a time of change, we should strive to see and shape these possibilities.