Tom Strawman

tom.strawman@mtsu.edu

Tom Strawman

English

Master Classroom

Peck Hall 313

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The English Department has 18 first-priority classrooms that house nearly 400 sections each semester, serve approximately 8,000 students, and are taught by some 130 instructional faculty. While only 10 of our 18 classrooms are master classrooms, 4 of which are equipped with student computers for writing instruction, the other 8 rooms are served by either tethered or mobile Nomad carts. Literature and writing classes are greatly enriched by the instructor's ability to show film, access U-Tube videos of poets or other writers, pull up databases for student research, project student writing or maps or other illustrations from books or other older print media with the document camera, and provide students assigned oral presentations with the tools they need to succeed with these assignments. Furthermore, the cutting edge in writing instruction today centers on multi-modal presentation and requires a full complement of classroom technology. Since we must make progress in converting this old space into state-of-the-art classrooms, we propose taking PH 313 to outfit with the standard master classroom package (ceiling projector, sound system, computer, document camera, dvd player, acoustic insulation, new floor and ceiling, etc.). We chose the master classroom option, although we need more computer classrooms, to maximize our seating capacity. As a master classroom seating 29, it would handily accommodate any of the 80 sophomore literature classes we offer each semester or any of our 50 sections of upper-division courses in literature and film studies, thus providing some 540 students each semester with the enhancements current technology provides.