A visitor to the English Department computer classrooms at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (SIUE) in September of 1987 would have observed new computers, printers, a video switching system, handsome furniture, and floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall. The visitor probably would have noted the fresh, blue carpet; the contrasting rich walnut of the computer furniture; and the sense of openness created by the huge windows looking out from the third floor over the trees, parking lots, and green patches that stretch for several acres. An observer might have been impressed by the simplicity with which teachers were guiding students through the key strokes fundamental to WORDPERFECT, assisted by a newly-printed handbook especially prepared for these first-year writers. What would not have been apparent on that smooth, efficient surface were the ignorance, false starts, confusion, and ineptitude that had only haltingly yielded to shrewd plotting in the final months preceding the inauguration of the rooms.

The roots of computer-aided teaching of composition at SIUE reach beyond the fall of 1987. They began in the spring of 1985, when I began to team-teach with the graduate teaching assistants. During each fall quarter, I would facilitate a graduate seminar on writing pedagogy. After taking the course, the teaching assistants were usually on their own in the following quarters; they taught their own sections of first-year writing--planning the course, teaching it, and being sole arbiter of grades. In 1985, though, I decided to follow up on that training by going into the classrooms with some of the graduate teachers. Six of them volunteered to let me come into their classrooms once a week for a two-hour period and work with them and their students on whatever was on the syllabus for that day. I had encouraged each of them to develop different approaches to their first-year writing classes. One teacher, for example, had designed a syllabus that used literature to create writing contexts for her students; her students would write themselves in and out of the plots of short stories. Another gave no grades throughout the quarter and relied on each student's maintaining a complex writer's notebook that incorporated a variety of writing modes and tasks. One of the graduate teachers asked me to reserve the Apple II's in the library computer lab for her class. Each of the six sections created special problems for me since I was coming in only once a week and dealing with six different formats and six different sets of students. However, most demanding for me was the computer class. I had never touched a computer, didn't know what a floppy disk was, and wondered at terms like "DOS" and "block moves." After a few weeks, I just tried not to get in the way.

I learned a little more during the following year: I stumbled through my own section of English 101 in the library computer lab, and I published a review of a composition software program as a means of forcing myself to look closely at some aspects of CAI. However, as I sat down in the spring of 1987 to write a proposal for an internal grant to create two computer classrooms designed solely for the teaching of first-year writing, I knew I was just pretending. I knew that the only reason I was writing the grant was that no one else in the department knew any more about computers and composition than I did. Like almost all people who teach writing, train writing teachers, and direct writing programs, I have no formal preparation for the integration of computers into the classroom. What I needed as I prepared my request--complete with a detailed $128,000 budget--was someone to advise me with respect to research on the benefits of teaching writing with computers, on what new teaching strategies would have to be incorporated into these classrooms, on how best to help teachers become familiar with this new, computer-assisted writing pedagogy, on what hardware and software to buy, and on how to lay out the rooms. I needed not only answers to these questions; I also needed someone to tell me which additional questions I should ask.

Of course, I did some reading. Helen J. Schwartz and Lillian Bridwell-Bowles had published the first installment of their bibliography on computers and composition; that and other sources gave me some guidance through published literature. However, my needs easily exceeded the available published information. So I made phone calls. I called Bradley Hughes of the University of Wisconsin at Madison; Maurice Scharton of Illinois State University; and Stephen Bernhardt, then at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and now at New Mexico State University. I called each of them several times. Through those conversations, I learned not only what I needed to know to create effective computer classrooms, but I also learned how valuable it is to have people knowledgeable in the field comment and disagree on almost all aspects of CAI.

Even with expert advice, writing the proposal and then overseeing the development of the two computer classrooms during the summer was difficult: equipment would become "lost" on loading docks; "technicians" would admit, screwdriver in hand, that they had never tried a task like the one before them; a $10,000 air conditioning improvement would remain incomplete for months while a 59¢ part supposedly made its way from Korea; various University officials would go silent if you posed questions that were too complex or too different from questions they had answered before; and some final painting had to be done quietly by volunteers on a Sunday with one person posted as lookout. Nevertheless, I learned the value of beginning with expert opinion; expert opinion helped me define the goal I sought, so that over and over, I knew whether to cooperate or resist as different people, events, and ideas wove the fabric that finally became SIUE's English computer classrooms.

This issue of Computers and Composition partially replicates the function of the several phone calls I made in 1987. It offers an overview of many aspects of CAI, from choosing equipment to training teachers to assessing the effectiveness and impact of CAI to carrying out research in computers and composition. However, the issue is far more comprehensive and is directed to a more sophisticated audience. The readers of Computers and Composition are better informed than I was in 1987, and CAI has matured dramatically in just a few years; the authors of these articles acknowledge both this reader sophistication and the quick development of the field. Accordingly, the overview contained in most of the articles contains an assessment of some of the research that has been done on computers and composition. Remarkably, although the field is relatively young, development has been so fast that it is already possible to offer critical retrospectives in many areas. Thus, while all of these articles offer an overview, most of them also offer critiques and revisions.

Three of the articles in this issue discuss changes in the teaching of writing either forced or facilitated by computers. Raymond and Dawn Rodrigues note that "when teachers teach writing with computers, their teaching changes." They also note that "Teachers' first attempts to integrate word processing into their classes were . . . shortsighted." Their article, "How Word Processing is Changing our Teaching," explores some of the "writing environments" teachers are able to create now that they are more accustomed to computer technology. Linda Barnes' essay, "Why Is There a Text in This Class?" explores an older technology, the textbook, and its relation to the new computer technology. Book reviews are traditionally placed at the end of collections. However, Barnes' essay is less a review than a questioning of whether books should continue to be used in computer classrooms, much less continue to be reviewed. Drawing on an interview with colleagues, Barnes comments both on ways computers have affected writing pedagogy and on the diminished role of the traditional textbook within computer-supported classrooms. Whereas the first two articles concentrate on the classroom, Maurice Scharton's focuses on the writing lab. His "The Third Person: The Role of the Computer in Writing Centers" illustrates some of the "unexpected catalytic effects on human interactions" typical of CAI that occur in the lab--effects that were not apparent when writing lab directors and tutors first began to share their tutoring functions with computers. He shows that, despite some popular cultural stereotypes to the contrary, the computer is a "humanizing force," at least in the writing lab.

The remaining articles do not emphasize the teaching of writing as such. Helen J Schwartz's essay deals with reading as much as with writing; Bradley Hughes' deals with training teachers in the use of CAI methods; the article by Lillian Bridwell-Bowles reviews the history of research into computers and composition; and Stephen Bernhardt offers guidance with respect to designing and planning computer facilities.

Referring to poststructuralist emphases on the reader's role and on intertextuality as sources of meaning, Schwartz discusses a variety of programs and techniques that foster and redefine literacy in the computer lab or classroom. Her "Literacy Theory in the Classroom" discusses analysis programs, word-processing devices, hypertext, scanners, and other technological aids that can create reading/writing communities and collaborative texts in the classroom, thus recasting notions of how writing occurs, of the reading/writing relation, of what constitutes a text, and of how meaning is created.

Bradley Hughes' article echoes some of the themes of preceding essays. Like the Rodrigues and Rodrigues article, it emphasizes integrating hardware and software into one's teaching rather than merely adding the computer to one's collection of pedagogical devices. And like Schwartz' article, it critiques the role and characteristics of selected software. However, Hughes' focus is the writing teacher's introduction to and training in the use of CAI. His article acknowledges that training new as well as experienced writing teachers in CAI is fast becoming a necessity on all educational levels. Concentrating on workshops intended for teachers new to CAI, "Balancing Enthusiasm with Skepticism: Training Writing Teachers in Computer-Aided Instruction" discusses some fundamental principles of teaching with computers, critiques the types and uses of software available to teachers, and suggests reading vital to teachers approaching CAI.

"Designing Research on Computer-Assisted Writing," by Bridwell-Bowles, reviews approximately ten years of research on computers and writing. Critiquing her own earlier groundbreaking research along with the work of Gail Hawisher, Helen J. Schwartz, Geoffrey Sirc, and Ann Duin, Bridwell-Bowles traces the evolution of the questions asked by researchers and the methods used to answer them. As her article illustrates, the questions and methodologies associated with computers and composition have changed as swiftly as computer technology. Bridwell-Bowles' essay suggests that the question of whether students write better with computers than with pens has become moot. Students do write with computers now; the goal of present research is to determine how to integrate CAI with recent information and theories gained from composition research, management information systems, poststructuralist theory, studies of the influences of technology on society, the politics of teaching, and several other sources. Bridwell-Bowles and the other researchers she surveys suggest that research on computer-assisted writing is necessarily expanding into several areas at once, plotting a future ten years that will be substantially different from its past ten years.

"Designing a Microcomputer Classroom for Teaching Composition," by Stephen Bernhardt, is just what its title suggests. The final article of this collection relies on Bernhardt's extensive work in computer labs and classrooms across the United States, as well as on opinions of various other educators experienced in working with computer learning environments. Bernhardt discusses where to put the lab; how to lay it out; what furniture to buy; the selection of computers, software, HYPERCARD, networks, video switching systems, and other technology; and even how to pay for the labs. Of course, new computer technology is replaced by even newer technology so quickly that the months between the writing and printing of an article such as Bernhardt's can outdate some of its information, but Bernhardt has done his best to see into the future as well as survey the present. For the many educators now making the transition from traditional to computer classrooms, Bernhardt's article is invaluable.

I have said that this issue of Computers and Composition partially replicates the function of the several phone calls I made as I prepared to set up computer classrooms for the first time. Manifestly, it replicates those calls in offering an overview of the subjects that make up CAI: classroom and lab teaching methods, preparation of teachers, research methods, and hardware and software. But this issue also replicates those calls in another way. This issue is as collaborative as was my earlier quest for information. The articles by Barnes, Bridwell-Bowles, and Bernhardt rely on written or oral statements given them by colleagues. Ray and Dawn Rodrigues, Scharton, Schwartz, and Hughes all discuss the influence of the computer on collaboration among teachers and students. Because computers and composition is a relatively new field, and because new technology, research methods, and classroom practices emerge monthly, those of us interested in the field are forced to rely on one another a great deal for current information, whether through journals, conferences, or informal conversations. This collaborative emphasis typical of teaching and research in computers and composition is necessarily maintained throughout this collection.

Isaiah Smithson, the Guest Editor for this issue, teaches at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Illinois.