We want to use this final post to put forth a small archive of resources that might help students and instructors access ways to move beyond current problems of materiality in the classroom. We summarize our sense of the pedagogical imperatives that arise from our study here and provide some resources that have aided us in accessing how we might take a more intentional approach to materiality in our own classrooms.
Pedagogical Imperatives
1. Syllabi should put forth clear policies about the material (e.g. digital or print) nature of paper submission. This is a ready way for instructors to demonstrate their intentional approach toward creating course policies and a way to reduce paper waste that might be brought about from a lack of clarity about submission guidelines. This is also a way to initiate conversations about the conventions of academic reading and writing (why 12 point Times New Roman, for example?) and discuss the purposes of regulations on materiality in the classroom.
2. Instructors should engage students in earnest conversations addressing reading practices and the attention economy in the classroom, by engaging in justifications of e-reader and cell phone policies and do so by thinking about course policies’ utility as student engagement. We have seen many syllabi policies that work to regulate the attention economy of the classroom by restricting the use of technology in the classroom in this study. It seems that it would serve students well to expressly permit those technological reading practices that the instructor believes are acceptable or instructive for the course. This might mitigate concerns about cost by allowing for the use of (usually cheaper) e-books
3. Instructors should carefully consider engaging students in digital practices where available. Considering what the material form of instructional design and delivery does might create exciting new ideas for the classroom and bring out new relevance to our contemporary world in the classroom.
4. Instructors should think about the out-of-pocket costs that students incur taking their courses and approach text selection with the same intentionality they approach the rest of their work. We learned that many of the texts taught in the classrooms we studied were available in the public domain, but this goes unmentioned in most syllabi and students are asked to purchase particular editions of these texts that are freely available. Teaching students that the public domain exists or teaching texts from the public domain seems like a valuable life skill that might facilitate student access to literature and writing more widely beyond the conclusion of the class.
The following video send-up of restrictions on the use of texts,“A Fair(y) Use Tale” is a way to engage students in a conversation about their access to texts:
Teaching Resources
Duke Law's Center for The Study of the Public Domain--a great site for facilitating classroom discussions around the affordances and constraints of the Public Domain, especially this article.
Fair Use Tube.Org--A site devoted to discussion about controversy over intellectual property and copyrights on massive digital platforms like Youtube
Project Gutenberg--An archive of digital publications of texts already in the public domain.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare--MIT's archive of digital copies of Shakespeare's works. While it says "Complete" the archive does not include many of the Sonnets.
Public Domain Sherpa--This site catalogs places where you can find Public Domain texts online. It's useful if you find Project Gutenberg's collection inadequate.
Complete Results--Here are the results of the survey we conducted about FYW course material habits and video streaming practices with 80 FYW students in their second semester.
