academic names

Student, instructor, and administrator participants at this particular institution have a strong preference for extant academic names with “classroom” as the most popular option among all groups. This preference among students may be indicative of a limited repertoire of names. As one student put it, “It just looks like a classroom.” Three students cited the lack of fixed computers on desks at all times to justify their preference. When explaining their choice of the term classroom, two students noted that unlike computer labs, Heavilon Hall 124 is not available for their use during non-class times. Other students substantiated their preference for "classroom" by citing the absence of a printer, a lab assistant, surveillance, login and password, server space, and the freedom to work on their own extracurricular projects. Among the participant groups, students are perhaps least likely to recognize how the names of the places in which they write could contribute to or detract from the perception of their work. The naming issue may hold more immediate consequences for instructors and administrators because, unlike students, we are actually occupying a workplace domain in HH 124 rather than preparing to enter one. Even in the face of students’ disinterest, it is important that we seize on a consciousness raising opportunity by addressing the naming issue in class. By encouraging our students to examine today’s metaphors, we prepare them to analyze—and possibly change—tomorrow’s workplace contexts. This skill is especially helpful for future technical and professional writers whose professional status is often tenuous. As I argue elsewhere, re/naming is one tactic professional writers can use to assert the value of their contributions.

Instructors and administrators favored “classroom” as well, not surprisingly given all participants’ familiarity with classrooms. What was surprising was the conviction with which several instructors’ voiced their preference. One instructor commented:

It’s not a computer lab in my opinion; it’s my classroom. And it just happens to have computers in it. I think because those computers aren’t always there. Just like the overhead projector, just like the screen, just like the chalk. I can get it out and use it when I want to but I can keep it out of the way so that room is a lot more than just a place to have computers in it. As opposed to some place that has hardwired desktop computers that are there all the time. Those…those to me are computer labs that I just go in and teach a class in for a couple of weeks if I’m working on something but 124 is the opposite. It’s a classroom that happens to have some computers.

It is not difficult to understand why “classroom” is an attractive choice for those working in and administering wireless environments for the first time (as all participants were at the time of their interviews); classrooms are familiar turf. By describing settings equipped with portable technologies as run of the mill classrooms, however, we run the significant risk of making these technologies invisible and less susceptible to critique. How does one pay attention to that which she cannot easily perceive? Take, for example, M.I.T.’s Project Oxygen, which laudably aspires to bring “abundant computation and communication, as pervasive and free as air, naturally into people’s lives” (MIT project oxygen: overview, 2002). M.I.T.’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory’s metaphor for this technology, oxygen, speaks to pervasive technology’s goal of invisibility. And mobile communications technologies are quickly evolving from portable to wearable (see Rheingold, 2002). Wireless technology is poised to disappear into the environment. By neglecting to differentiate wireless instructional settings from ordinary classrooms, we could hinder our ability to critically engage with them.

Unlike “classroom,” “computer classroom” acknowledges the presence of some technology, but it does so in a nonspecific manner. This one-size-fits-all option does not make these settings any more—or admittedly any less—favorable for writing instruction than the wired places in which writing students and instructors have met over the last twenty years. Of course we could continue to use the names and metaphors we’ve relied on for decades. But a thoughtful name change—the adoption of a proper noun, new metaphor, and so on—is a small change that could influence others’ perception and our own perception of the scope and worth of our work.

Read about non academic names or jump to a few conclusions.