Description of the Computer-Aided Instruction Program
The following description of our CAI program was written by John Stenzel in 1997, and updated by Andy Jones in 2005.
Just as word-processing on personal computers revolutionized the ways that all writers worked, fully networked computer classrooms can improve the ways we teach composition at every level. Students with word processors tend to write more than those who must write longhand (and with greater legibility), but composition CAI (Computer Aided Instruction) involves more than just generating text. In a well-equipped computer classroom and with proper training, instructors can do everything they could do in a standard classroom, but the computers allow them to accomplish many additional goals that would otherwise be difficult or impossible. Projection screens enhance demonstrations and allow for shared-screen work; local network servers facilitate paperless transfer of files; access to the Internet can turn each seat into a library; and on-line conferencing can stimulate active, written participation by every student.
The University Writing Program has become one of the largest single units engaged in CAI on campus, currently administering more than 80 computer-enhanced sections of composition a year, taught in one PC classroom, and five different Macintosh classrooms. As a result, more than 1700 undergraduates and forty different lecturers and graduate student instructors benefit from computer-aided instruction each year. The program is supported by Instructional Use of Computers (IUC) funds, the Teaching Resources Center, as well as by graduate students earning advanced degrees from the English Department. For the past decade we have worked with Information and Educational Technology Division's Lab Management group to develop computer classrooms for teaching composition, helping to usher in a new age of electronically mediated teacher-student and student-student communication.
Past Coordinators of the CAI Program include lecturers John Stenzel, Pamela Major, Dale Flynn, Nancy Morrow, and Eric Schroeder.
To see other CAI documents authored by John Stenzel, visit his home page.
Last Updated February 2005