Although as instructors we often strive to facilitate student work that is digital and multimodal, not all classrooms easily accommodate these course activities and goals. In “Hacking the Classroom: Eight Perspectives” Aimée Knight (2016) writes that in her experience “...we needed to hack some classrooms. We needed spaces that encouraged active, experiential learning.” In this workshop, we continue the work of the Computers and Writing 2012 panel “Hacking the Classroom” to problematize physical classroom spaces and develop a heuristic for hacking-as-techne that participants can apply to their unique institutional contexts.

 

Practitioners of online writing instruction (OWI) are increasingly concerned with design of online spaces, as addressed in recent work by Hewett and DePew (2015), Ruefman and Scheg (2016), and the CCCC Committee for Best Practices in Online Writing Instruction. In the same way, we must apply an equally critical eye to the design of physical spaces in face-to-face writing classes. We believe these spaces still warrant attention and, in many cases, critical disruption. In the same way Selfe and Selfe (1994) call for us to be technology critics, not just technology users we must also be critics of our physical classrooms rather than just inhabit those spaces. This workshop began with discussion about these classroom spaces and the “types” of classrooms that we physically inhabit including computer labs and lecture halls as well as the variations of those spaces.

 

Participants introduced themselves and the spaces they teach in by coming to the workshop with photo or video artifacts of their classrooms. We used these artifacts to actively work together to problematize the restrictions of classroom spaces we regularly inhabit as instructors. In response to the deconstruction of current spaces, participants then formed smaller working groups to construct ideal classroom spaces. In the spirit of Shipka’s work with multimodal methods for making, we used both tactile technologies like Play-Doh, Legos, markers and paper, and digital technologies to construct and articulate classroom spaces.

 

Participants also worked alongside facilitators during breakout sessions to explore and hack classrooms on The University of Findlay’s campus to create spaces of wonder. Each group was assigned a classroom space on campus to hack. Participants catalogued the challenges and limitations of the room while working together to counter those challenges. These “hacks” included moving furniture, reimagining in class activities, inventing new uses for existing classroom technologies, and exploiting the room’s empty space. We encouraged participants to prioritize their own and their students’ bodies in the reconstructions of these spaces. Participants used photos, videos, and audio recordings to capture the classroom spaces they encounter and their hacks in their breakout groups. The group reconvened and shared their experiences and documentation of each classroom. We concluded with an eye toward returning to our own campuses and leave with plans to hack our classroom design.