By the time I was hired in 2009 to direct the Writing Program and to teach in both Rhetoric and Composition and in Digital Technology and Culture program (DTC), our need for updated digital tools, and, indeed, the physical spaces in which students employ such tools, was already desperate. The DTC program was implemented at our branch campus in 2004, at which time the program used one of the three PC computer labs on campus. Later, in 2007, when our campus began accepting lower-division undergraduates, the DTC directors successfully argued for the use of capital planning funds from the state to establish a dedicated Mac computer lab for the program.
Of the four available computer labs on our campus at that time, a very small lab with fifteen Mac stations was dedicated for courses related to Digital Technology and Culture. As video 8.2 illustrates, this was a small classroom, with fifteen Mac stations crammed together at long tables fashioned in traditional rows. Over the course of the next five years, we continued to upgrade software, but maintenance and upgrades for the hardware and equipment did not exist in any department budget. Also by this point, our DTC program had gained in popularity and was bursting, with approximately fifty majors. We desperately needed to seat at least twenty students in each of our DTC courses. The Mac lab was too small; yet the main instructors in DTC worked only on Macs, preventing them from taking advantage of the larger PC lab. By 2012, the computer equipment, large-format printer, and other digital tools for both DTC and for the Rhetoric and Composition courses were aging past the point of usefulness and the computers no longer allowed additional software updates.
The remaining instructional labs were PC labs ranging from twenty-two to twenty-six stations. All four labs were arranged in the traditional instructional design utilizing rows of tables or desks facing the instructor at the front of the class. None of the labs allowed room to move around, to collaborate, or to engage other aspects of computers and composition pedagogy I had come to rely on. Perhaps more to the point was the fact that none of the equipment in the PC labs (computers, monitors, tables, chairs, projectors, etc.) was up to date, and much of the software was also becoming obsolete.
Not only did the condition of the instructional labs inhibit the teaching and learning possible in these labs, but these conditions also pervaded our institution at a systemic level. Recruitment of high-end students wanting to major in our digital and media arts-based courses failed when we lacked “cutting edge” spaces, equipment, and software to offer them. Additionally, I was tasked with adding to the demand in the already-overcrowded computer labs by initiating the Rhetoric and Professional Writing option in our English degree. With the technology situation, recruitment was an issue for this option in the major as well. Retention was also an issue when students failed to turn in projects on a timely basis because of the availability of working computers with appropriate software required for the various courses; thus, their grades and motivation lagged.