This guide would not exist without the support of the UC Davis Campus Writing Center and the English Department's Computers in Composition Program, and I thank my bosses for their encouragement and patience with this project. Part of the work and much of the reproduction costs of this guide were supported by an Undergraduate Instructional Improvement Program grant, administered through the Teaching Resources Center. The TRC's Frank Samaniego and Winifred Anderson have been solid supporters of computer-assisted instruction, and some of the ideas and techniques enumerated here had their first airing at Summer Institutes on Teaching and Technology (SITT) or High-Tech Teaching Assistance (HTTA) workshops run through the TRC.

Obviously my colleagues in the Writing Center and Composition program deserve credit for making this guide what it is. I had thought this was to be a reworking of a computer-classroom instructor's guide, written originally in 1988 by Carolyn Handa, Eric Schroeder, and John Boe, but it has become a very different kind of task, far more complex and time-consuming than I ever imagined. The 1988 Guide compiled dozens of exercises tailored to specific courses, and many of these exercises remain relevant models today, so I have not attempted to duplicate that effort.

As any long project comes to a close, mixed feelings arise. Doctor Johnson, completing his monumental Dictionary while acknowledging its shortcomings (and his own procrastination), struggled as he finally brought himself to "dismiss it with frigid tranquillity." Though the scale of this endeavor is laughably smaller, I recognize some of that ambivalence as I complete this draft, too conscious of its warts and blemishes and incompleteness. All I can think of is what I haven't covered, how much better this guide could be, how much more there is to learn about teaching and learning in the computer-enhanced classroom. The classrooms, like the machines themselves, are now far more complex places in which to teach composition, and demand more thorough documentation to overcome this complexity. They also present (for all their faults) significantly enhanced potential for improving our students' critical thinking and writing skills.

There are next to no class-specific exercises here, but individual instructors may recognize their contributions, from Jayne Walker and Betsy Davis to Joe Aimone and Marlene Clarke. Thanks to all, and apologies to those not mentioned. Besides John, Eric and Carolyn (the last-named now running CAI at American River College), past and future CAI coordinators Pamela Major and Andy Jones have helped shape this guide. More importantly, I wish to thank the many computer-classroom teachers who, over the past three years, have asked the questions, voiced the complaints, and developed the solutions that are, I hope, addressed in this version of the manual.

I would like to acknowledge several individuals outside the Department: in my three years as CAI Coordinator, Tim Leamy and Peter Blando of IT's Lab Management group have taught me more than I ever wanted to know about the complex workings of Macintosh labs, network protocols, software hassles, and political machinations. Thanks for all the good work, guys, and sorry for the times my exasperation and my ignorance got the best of me. Under the guidance of Margaret Byrne, this part of the oft-maligned IT world has become much more responsive to composition-classroom needs, and has become a true partner in academic computing. As the field becomes ever more complex, the need for such people and good management will become all the more clear.

Good things happen when students become colleagues, and my own composition classes have taught me much more about what works in a computer classroom than any workshop or book ever did, especially two classes I taught in 1995 and 1997, English 104B (Legal Writing) and English 104A (Technical Writing / Documentation); extra thanks to Sudeep Chandra, Ronda Harkness, Jessica Mignone, Jon Lavrich, Bill Brier, and Linda Wong. Often the best information comes from people, not manuals, and folks like Kevin Roddy, Andy Austin, Jill Pellettieri and Margaret Keefer all provided timely help in crucial spots.

For more than fifteen years here at UC Davis, we have taught some of our composition courses in rooms equipped with computers. In the beginning these were 128K Macintoshes running the MacWrite word processor, sharing noisy dot-matrix printers and little else. As the technology has radically changed, the classrooms have filled with high-end machines loaded with powerful applications software, networked to each other and to a local file server, and joined to the Internet. High-quality overhead projection screens can display instructors' and students' work in living color for the whole class to see, with e-mail and newsgroups and interactive Web sites extending the class discussion beyond the scheduled meeting time and physical classroom space.

While the tools have changed, two premises have remained essentially the same, with mixed results. The first premise is that a room filled with computers is automatically a classroom if classes are taught in it. Unfortunately, a computer "lab" and an effective computer classroom differ in floor plan, networking, software needs, and ergonomics--and most non-teachers have been slow to recognize how difficult it is to teach composition in a room laid out and managed as a lab. The second premise is that writing is about communicating ideas through groups of words, and computers can be a powerful (and, to risk the overused term, empowering) aid in the writing and teaching process. In recent years much of the hype about computers has concerned the Internet's impact on research, electronic communication, commerce, and community; however, the bottom line for composition teachers and for students continues to be the efficient production of structured texts that reflect disciplined thinking.

A computer classroom can be an excellent place to teach students to create text, convey ideas, craft prose, shape arguments, and collaborate productively with each other and the teacher. The computer classroom can also be a frustrating, alienating, hostile environment, stuffy from machine-generated heat and illuminated by harsh fluorescent tubes, its work stations crowded without space for drafts or research materials, further plagued by high ambient noise levels and balky equipment. Computers themselves, no matter what the brand and model and system number, are too often complex and finicky beasts, still prone to annoying idiosyncrasies, products of an industry with ludicrously short-term notions of quality and value.

Until very recently, the tech people who ran classrooms rarely knew what it was that teachers actually did or needed, and because the machines are equipped to do many different things for many different users, they end up not being optimally configured or reliable for the particular kinds of usage demanded by composition instruction. Tipping the balance in favor of effective teaching has been one of the guiding principles in the writing of this guide, and in the work I have done for the past several years. (For a more in-depth discussion of this, seeIT-Lab Management.)

Even when all the equipment is working perfectly and the software humming smoothly, an instructor may lose students to the seductions of the World Wide Web or their latest e-mail, the computers serving as an irresistible temptation to divert focus and attention. Why such negativity at the start of such a guide? I include these caveats to counteract the starry-eyed optimism of those who proselytize for yet another technological solution to pedagogical problems, to temper the idealism with a dose of reality. Now is not the place to engage the debate over the supposedly miraculous effects of a "student-centered classroom," as many computer-classroom advocates seem compelled to do.

It's too easy to lose sight of a basic truth: just as word processing did not transform bad writers into good ones (only into more productive bad writers), computer-mediated instruction is only as effective as the instructors themselves. Bad electronically-facilitated collaboration is still ineffective, and the current crop of poorly-designed Web-based curricula speaks for itself. A generation of techno-evangelists has arisen whose idealistic projections--like those of their predecessors who touted the educational benefits of the television or the filmstrip or the movie or the language lab--do not match the complex and often disappointing realities of long-term implementation.

I find it ironic (especially considering how much energy this project has demanded) that I have been jokingly and even seriously called a Luddite simply because I question the single-minded pursuit of upgrades and "virtual learning," and try to view innovation with healthy skepticism and fiscal (as well as pedagogical) responsibility. It's my hope that this guide will support this heretical notion--that our machines and networks and facilities should actually work reliably to serve teaching--and encourage newcomers and veterans alike to harness the new technology without fear and with enthusiasm.

This cannot be a comprehensive how-to manual for every aspect of the computer classroom teaching environment--for one thing, parts will have become obsolete in the time it takes me to upload the text to the Web site, much less to get it back from Reprographics--but the guide does give a detailed and practical-minded teacher's view of the classrooms and the technology. I've divided the guide, somewhat arbitrarily, into the following sections, roughly adhering to an outline I developed for introducing Computers in Composition to general audiences. I have also had to restrict my field of view, leaving a good many hot areas like multimedia presentations and Web-enhanced courseware to other manuals and workshops, and concentrate on a composition-centered audience.

In the first section I give an overview of the typical classroom environment, along with some basic conventions and rules. The next section takes the students' composing process as a framework for showing instructors how to use computers effectively, moving from brainstorming through drafting to revision, editing and polishing. The section on projection screens and demonstrations details some ways to share student and instructor's writing in process and as product; the section on the classroom file server allows instructors to use electronic pick-up and drop-off folders for collaboration and paperless file exchange. In-class written discussions or conferences are made possible with the Daedalus software package, covered in its own section, and the E-mail and electronic communication section addresses ways to extend the discussion outside the walls and time constraints of the classroom.

I have put an unusual amount of time and effort into the glossary section, in hopes of creating a resource that instructors could productively read in a more systematic fashion. Too often, I have found, technical and non-technical personnel do not speak the same language, nor does either group thoroughly understand the definitions of the terms being used. The result is a perpetuation of powerlessness, a frustrating pattern of miscommunication or non-communication that makes useful cooperation difficult if not impossible. I have perused more than a dozen published computer dictionaries, on paper and on line, and still have not found consistently good definitions that actually transmit understanding instead of reinforcing in-group / out-group distinctions! This glossary, and the on-line glossary of networking terms that I developed and posted earlier, are an attempt to fill this need, and I appreciate any comments or suggestions or clarifications.

There is almost nothing here about setting up class Web pages, or even using the Web as a research tool. Not only has this topic become much larger since the advent of this project--and dealing with it fully would greatly increase the bulk and duration of this already-delayed project--I also feel that the topic is being treated in other publications and seminars sponsored by the Teaching Resources Center and others. I refer interested readers to the work of others.

As with all aspects of this guide, please do send comments, via e-mail preferably, to John Stenzel, or to Andy Jones.