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Charles Moran's Attitude Towards the Traditional Classroom 

Charles Moran, in a chapter from Re-imagining Computers and Composition: Teaching and Research in the Virtual Age, takes a look back at the classroom from the perspective of someone who has seen and appreciated online environments. He says, "This classroom we inhabit is not an inevitable structure, or even a good one for our purposes. Indeed, to argue for the conventional  writing classroom is not going to be easy" (8). He goes on to note the classroom's deficiencies from a writer's perspective: lack of necessary supplies, furniture, and equipment. As Eric Crump notes in his presentation at C&W97, "The typical classroom, small or large, is designed for oral exchange, for lecture and discussion, not for writing . . . [yet] writing teachers [haven't] noticed that fact, much less lodged complaints about it." 

More recently, Moran has gone back to the traditional classroom and tried to make it work.  His report on his teaching failure in this environment is documented in a recent issue of Computers and Composition

Overview | Preliminary Comments | Pedagogical Choices | Moving On | Conclusion | Bibliography