"Issues and Concerns: Graduate Students Teaching Composition in the Computer Lab."
Sibylle Gruber
Northern Arizona University

Graduate Teaching Assistants are often expected to know how to teach before they get any teacher training. And often they are told what to teach -- especially first-year GTAs -- without any input on their part. In addition, GTAs might be asked to teach in a computer lab without having prior experience in "computers and composition" theory and pedagogy.  My question is: how can we help GTAs who, in addition to juggling their graduate student careers with teaching obligations, need training in a variety of technology-related issues such as basic instructions in the software/hardware available, instruction in the theories of computers and composition, and instruction in the methodological and pedagogical issues involved in teaching in a technology classroom.

Some basic questions about pedagogical issues and concerns we can try to address are the following:

• What are the reasons for incorporating computers into your teaching (goals and objectives)

• What methods, approaches, techniques are you going to use / fit into your teaching style?

• How does your use of computers fit with the overall goal of the course?

We can also provide the GTAs with some starting points for their lesson plans:

• we can tell them to always plan ahead. Impromptu classes for the most part do not work

• we can encourage them to always have an alternative plan in case the computers are not cooperating or your students didn't do the work they were supposed to do.

• we can ask them to integrate long-term and short-term goals

• we can give them some basic ideas for classroom activities such as:
  • Needs analysis: questionnaire, word processing exercise
  • Pre-writing, brainstorming, composing, revising, editing, peer reviewing activities
  • Team activities: newsletter construction in pairs/groups
  • Weekly reading/writing/response journals (you or other students can respond to it)
  • Weekly discussion sessions (synchronous or asynchronous)
  • Web page construction
  • Presentation of research
  • Email: group / instructor / other students
  • Rough draft submission via email / web

Where do we go after addressing some of these basic issues? How do we encourage GTAs to look at the theoretical as well as the practical implications of their approach to computers and composition? I hope the conversation opens up various possibilities for GTA training that encourages everybody to look critically at the proposed uses of computers in composition classrooms.

Back to Town Hall Meeting #1