Diane Davis Past Interviews

VOICES ON: Setting Up Computer-Enhanced Classrooms Diane Davis is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Iowa. An overhauled version of her dissertation, entitled Breaking Up [at] Totality: A Rhetoric of Laughter, is forthcoming with Southern Illinois University Press; it will be the second volume in the press's Rhetorical Philosophy and Theory series. Davis received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Arlington. Please tell us about the rhetoric program at University of Iowa. The rhetoric department at Iowa was established primarily for general education, and its GER courses are central to the overall mission of the university. More than 6,000 students per year enroll in GER Rhetoric courses, and more than 120 graduate instructors teach most of those courses, which offer integrated instruction in writing, speaking, reading, and listening. How are the computer-enhanced classrooms set up? I am part of a team that is setting up a wireless laptop classroom that will be ready for classes in the fall. The classroom will be furnished with movable trapezoidal tables that will plug into the floor in the configuration of four pods, each seating five to six students. The Internet connection will be wireless, meaning that there will be one wired node somewhere (probably on the ceiling) that all the laptops will run off of -- like cellular phones. There will also be an instructor's machine with a 36" monitor that will be connected to a VCR, a DVD/CD player, and a VR presentation device (VR's answer to an overhead). There will be two hardwired machines along one wall. One will be connected to a printer, the other to a scanner. Why is the design of the computer classroom significant? This configuration was devised to promote the same collaborative environment that rhetoric courses have always promoted in traditional classrooms. The design makes the room a more flexible space. The laptops will be stored in a charger cabinet against one wall, and the tables will also be moveable so that the room can be rearranged. What software programs will be available to the students? The laptops will be running Microsoft Office Pro, PhotoShop, Filemaker Homepage, Pueblo (MOO software), StorySpace (hypertext authoring software), Netscape Communicator, and Internet Explorer, among other possibilities. The two hardwired machines will be running all the software on the laptops plus Macromedia Director. What is your sense of the field of composition today? The most pressing and controversial questions in rhetoric and composition today have to do with what communication can be after the so-called death of the subject and the crises in legitimization and representation. As a field, we're starting to wrestle with these questions intellectually, but the struggle doesn't seem to be having much practical effect. Each of the fundamental elements of the communication triangle has been exposed as little more than a concept metaphor: the reader, the writer, and the message. And from here, we'll need to go back to the starting board and reconsider not only the prospects for rhetoric but also the goals of composition instruction. ###

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