Computers in Composition

This paper, which is a much abridged version of the original, was presented at the 2005 Illinois Philological Association Conference at Richland Community College. The author researched and wrote the paper as part of his Ph.D. program in English Studies at Illinois State University.	Computers in Composition: Promises Unfulfilled by Ted Morrissey
For anyone interested in the evolution of computers in composition, an invaluable resource is Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979-1994: A History, by Gail E. Hawisher, Paul LeBlanc, Charles Moran and Cynthia L. Selfe (Ablex Publishing, Norwood, NJ, 1996).	[1] Computers began to appear on college campuses in the 1960s primarily in administrative buildings--used for things like bookkeeping and payroll--but it wasn't until the following decade that English teachers began to see possibilities in the machines for writing and related studies (Hawisher et al. 18). By the early 1980s, however, "the computer was seen as a potential cure-all for cross-curricular ills in student writing . . ." (Holdestein 1). Fueled initially by the fervor of composition teachers, joined soon thereafter by publishing and computer companies, the zeal to put students in front of monitors and keyboards has had profound effects on education and its myriad stakeholders. As a transforming cultural phenomenon, computer technology's influence has been compared to Gutenberg's printing press and the Industrial Revolution. It has affected schools, households, businesses--even the values that Americans hold as a nation (Selfe 123).
Link to Kemp's presentation.	[2] The one thing that computer technology seems not to have affected, at least in a positive way, is the quality of writing as a whole. Hawisher et al. asserted in 1996 that research "to discover whether computers made writing better or not . . . has proved to be a dead end" (50). In fact, by the early 90s, "computers and composition specialists had left behind a concern for quantitative empirical research that would measure the effects of computers and had taken up in its place more speculative or theoretical work . . ." (192). At the 1994 Conference on College Composition and Communication, Fred Kemp gave a presentation titled "The Limits of Proof in Writing Instruction" in which he basically said he was tired of the "call for proof." Meanwhile, a review of the history of computers in composition shows a succession of problems that have continuously worked as roadblocks impeding success in learning to write. More troubling is that these problems have been well documented from the earliest days of computer use in composition, and the profession has all but ignored them--opting instead to keep the technology juggernaut ever moving forward. There are numerous reasons why teachers have continued to promote the use of computer technology in language arts, especially writing, even though no evidence can show its effectiveness. One reason, of course, is simple optimism, as computers appeared on the scene serendipitously in synch with the emergence of the writing-process movement. The two developments looked to be tailor-made for each other. Unfortunately, it appears that other reasons for the spread of technology in education are rooted in personal and corporate gain.
Some may prefer the term "neo-Luddite." Link to author's SCI webpage. Link to Springharvest, the student literary magazine of Williamsville High School.	[3] It is important to state that I am not a Luddite. I've been using computers for word processing since I was in high school in the late 1970s. I began teaching word processing skills to students and other teachers in the mid 80s. In the 90s I became involved in desktop publishing and advised scholastic newspapers for a number of years, and even published my own literary journal, A Summer's Reading, from 1996-2004. I have maintained a teacher webpage since 2000, and currently all of my syllabi for the courses I teach at Springfield College are online. I have been working with hypertext for the last couple of years; in fact, this paper is available online. In my college courses, I encourage my students and teach them to use the companion websites and/or CD-ROMs for the adopted textbooks. Moreover, at Williamsville High School, I advise the school literary magazine and have developed an online version. In short, I am not opposed to technology. But I am opposed to the deification of it, and I am opposed to education's blind acceptance of it.
	[4] I, like many teachers of my generation, have the nagging suspicion that my students used to be better writers--not to mention readers and thinkers--before the technological explosions of the 1980s and 90s. In her 1990 book Endangered Minds: Why Our Children Don't Think, Jane M. Healy, an early questioner of technology in education, quotes a professor from Harvard who describes a phenomenon that is familiar to many of today's educators; he says, "What is interesting to me is how frequently I cannot get my students to write down what they mean. I spend a lot of time with them on their writing--far more than I think I should have to at a college like this. They simply can't do many of the things that were fundamental fifteen years ago when I started here" (112).
To be above board, Selfe's book is not so much a criticism of technology in education, but rather the author is concerned with the so-called "digital divide" between students in well-to-do schools and those in impoverished ones, and what the long-term effects may be if the divide is not narrowed. Ironically, Healy and others have theorized that the have-not students may come out ahead, intellectually, because of their lack of exposure to computers.	[5] Perhaps we are simply being nostalgic about our students of yore. Yet there's no evidence that today's students are better writers than their predecessors. Jo Ellen Winters, in the anthology Technology and Teaching (1997), writes, "From a pedagogical perspective, I still receive papers with run-on sentences and fragments, as well as beautifully presented papers which somehow manage to be very long, heavily detailed, and completely incoherent" (19). And this apparent lack of progress in teaching students to write is in spite of the fact that schools and parents have invested an incalculable amount of money in hardware, software, training, and infrastructure. Cynthia L. Selfe, in Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention (1999), cites a U.S. Department of Education report from the mid 90s that "listed more than $4.2 trillion in state-supported educational technology projects" (74). She also cites a researcher who estimated that in 1994 alone $73.8 billion was spent on software for personal computers (90). I underscore these figures from a decade ago because the students sitting in our high school and college writing classes are the supposed beneficiaries of these enormous investments in technology. Yet do their communication skills, especially in writing, reflect it? As a society, have we gotten our money's worth? I am dubious, to say the least.
	[6] Meanwhile, the plight of education in the U.S. is well publicized--overcrowded classrooms, overworked teachers, the cutting of "nonessential" programs (especially in the fine arts), and skyrocketing tuition and fees. As summed up by Hawisher et al., "[I]t is hard to justify spending on technology when we know that such a move might result in fewer teachers, larger classes, less money for professional development, and more difficult situations for students and teachers. Technology is not always the answer; not always the best choice" (286).
	[7] And problems with using computers in composition began almost the moment students were placed in front of them. For one, students had to be taught how to operate the hardware and software, putting them in what several educators have referred to as a "double bind"--that is, attempting to learn to write while also learning how to use a computer. Lillian S. Bridwell and Donald Ross, writing in 1984 but reflecting on their earliest days of using computers with students, discuss how they continually had to rewrite the instructions that came with the software because their students had a difficult time following the publisher's directions. They conclude, "The problem seems to be confusion between learning about word processing and learning about writing" (111-12). By the end of the 80s things hadn't changed much, as Selfe and Billie J. Wahlstrom write, "Teachers beginning to teach computer-supported classes often feel the time they spend discussing writing technology takes away from the already limited time they have to discuss course content and writing itself" (265).
In editing this paper, the author excised a discussion of composing in hypertext which relied heavily on the following: David N. Dobrin's "Hype and Hypertext" and Johndan Johnson-Eiloa's "Reading and Writing in Hypertext: Vertigo and Euphoria," both in Literacy and Computers: The Complications of Teaching and Learning with Technology (Selfe and Hilligoss, eds.); and Pamela K. Gilbert's "Meditations upon Hypertext: A Rhetorethics for Cyborgs" in JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory. Link to Gilbert's article.	[8] Yet, in spite of the fact that computers with word processing capabilities have become commonplace in schools, businesses, and households, students have continuously found themselves in this double bind. Differences in hardware and software prevent students--and teachers--from being totally at ease with the applications at hand. Now pressure is being applied to incorporate hypertext, multimedia, and other Web-centered technologies. From some of the earliest writing programs, like Prewrite, WANDAH and Writer's Helper (Hawisher et al. 43), to Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Flash, teachers and students consistently have been distracted from the business of writing by the medium of composition itself. Common sense indicates that when a writing project is presented to students, they have a finite amount of mental energy and cerebral processing capabilities to bring to the task; the more cognitive power that is taken up with the mechanics of the computer, the less available for the process of writing itself.
	[9] This aspect of composing on computer--that the hardware and software themselves are instruments of distraction--cannot be overemphasized, and it has been a constant concern of educators over the years. Helen Schwartz noted in 1989 that unless teachers are highly trained and organized, "time required for teaching the mechanics of computer use can take away from pedagogical concepts and practices" (qtd. in Hawisher et al. 200). Moreover, word processing programs tend to encourage students to tinker with the software's features, rather than focusing on their writing. William Costanzo, in 1994, writes, "Such preoccupation with format seems to come as naturally as child's play. . . . What does it mean when we spend more time attending to the visual texture of our words than to their content?" (15). Clearly, the newest trends in composition involving multimedia applications encourage the extensive attention to visual texture that Costanzo questioned more than a decade ago.
	[10] Not only does computer technology distract writers from writing, it makes them poorer listeners. Almost as soon as composition teachers began using computers to teach writing, they also began convening their classes in labs--originally ones commandeered from the math and science departments, then later ones designated specifically for English instruction. Selfe and Wahlstrom observed in 1989 that in "a computer classroom . . . a teacher-centered focus quickly dissipates. The physical layout of the computer classroom/lab and the lure of the [computers] are certainly two of the major factors for this change in focus" (266). Winters, writing nearly 10 years later, claims that more than simply not paying attention, her students "resent" her attempts to teach while in the computer lab: "[T]hey resist analyzing an essay from our anthology there, or discussing the merits of conjunctive verbs vs. subordinate conjunctions" (16). Moreover, her students are "unwilling to be distracted from their writing by what they perceive as petty voices or petty concerns, even if the voice or the concern belongs to an instructor" (16). Contemporary computer labs that have access to the Web--and therefore email, instant messaging, chat rooms, and supermodel homepages--offer even more potential for poor attention from students than their primitive forerunners did.
	[11] Computer labs and computers in general are supposed to make writing more efficient, but the efficiency has been consistently negated by malfunctions and human error--human error perhaps caused by the ever-present double bind. Lisa Gerrard, working with students in an early lab at UCLA in 1980, had regular difficulties when "the mainframe would crash, and students would lose a whole paper, a day's work . . ." (qtd. in Hawisher et al. 60). And teachers over the past three decades have spent an incalculable amount of time and energy trying to coax hardware and software into working properly, instead of using their time and energy to coax students into becoming better writers. Winters, writing almost twenty years after Gerrard's experiences at UCLA, claims that in the lab she "felt dislocated and downright nervous" and would often have to admit that she "didn't know where a student's text had gone or why it wouldn't print out . . ." (17). These kinds of problems persist in spite of--or, in part, because of--constant and costly software enhancements. I say "because of" due to the old double bind--the teacher or student who was competent with version 5.0 will suddenly find herself using version 5.1, thus moving from solid to shaky ground through no fault, and no choice, of her own.
This notion of the "cult of the IT people" has only occurred to the author while editing this paper, and he has not had the opportunity to research the phenomenon.	[12] In the 80s and 90s, one of the main problems with computer labs was that they were left in the hands of teachers or aids whose knowledge of them was more often than not incomplete. In 1996, Donald Gotterbarn, in the anthology Social and Ethical Effects of the Computer Revolution, emphasized the need to put technology in the hands of trained and licensed professionals. Gotterbarn and other like-minded advocates have largely gotten their wish, and colleges and school districts have hired legions of information technology specialists, the "IT people." Perhaps the hiring of IT people has cut down on the amount of troubleshooting writing teachers have had to do, but a new trend has developed whereby the technology specialists have assumed critical positions in their institutions. Teachers increasingly have to develop and execute their pedagogical strategies under the auspices of the IT people, who may or may not be especially interested in learning outcomes. IT people have quickly evolved into a powerful fraternity that operate independently--and sometimes it seems mysteriously--within their institutions. What lessons are carried out and what technology is purchased may very well need the approval of the IT person more so than or in lieu of the curricular leaders of the institution.
	[13] Even when the technology of computer labs works properly, it is highly questionable whether they are the best places to write. They tend to be uncomfortable spaces where each student has insufficient room to work, especially if the project involves resources like books, articles or notecards. Labs are often noisy, and students are generally under some time pressure--either because the class session will be ending or the lab itself will be closing. Winters cites students who say "it is difficult to get to a computer on campus when it is convenient for them," and she writes, "The one-hour lab isn't always long enough to really benefit some students, especially those with developing typing skills" (19). Hawisher et al. cite a number of scholars who, in the early 90s, a full decade into the computer revolution, documented the expensive and wasteful nature of using computers, which "initially, and perhaps still, consume a tremendous amount of time and energy and may, as a result, make institutions and individuals less, rather than more, productive" (107). One may argue that the negative effects of labs have been significantly minimized by the number of students who have access to their own computers in homes and dorm rooms; however, these multifunctional machines offer numerous distractions from writing. Even the most dutiful students admit they write their papers while simultaneously surfing the Web, listening to downloaded music, and/or chatting with friends--to name just three avenues of cognitive distraction. In fact, many young people have convinced themselves they cannot write if writing is the only activity at hand.
Link to Wakefield's article.	[14] Sarah R. Wakefield noted some interesting results in 2002 when her two advanced composition classes, which she normally taught in a computer-assisted classroom, had one section assigned to a traditional classroom. For fairness and simplicity, she decided to keep the contents of the course virtually the same, but the methods of delivery were different because of the varying classroom environments. At the end of the semester, Wakefield found the students in the traditional classroom were significantly more successful, with over a third (37.5%) earning A's compared to only 9.5% in the computer-assisted classroom. One possible reason for the difference might have been that the students using computers "had another hurdle in completing assignments: familiarizing themselves with the electronic formats" (par. 13). Wakefield is, of course, referring to the old double bind that the earliest users of computers noted with their students. While there could be a number of factors that accounted for the different grade distributions and behaviors in the two classes, Wakefield believes "it might have been the technology" (par. 17).
	[15] Wakefield's experience, though only one example, appears to validate the advice given by many of the pioneers of computers in composition: namely, that using computers may not be advantageous in all teaching situations. This sentiment is a far cry from the current technlogy mania that is an extension of Bill Gates' motto of the 1980s: "Windows everywhere!" (qtd. in Hawisher et al. 132). Selfe and Wahlstrom in 1989 encouraged teachers to think carefully before implementing computers into a class, writing, "[U]nless the use of computers has distinct advantages for presenting the course content, assisting teachers, and aiding students, the additional work in redesigning a class may not be worth the effort" (258). Selfe and Wahlstrom were echoing the common sense idea put forth in 1980 by the U.S. Senate's Rockefeller Commission, which called for "Intelligent, discriminating applications of electronic technologies in the classroom as their capabilities increased, and their costs decline" (qtd. in Hawisher et al. 56).
	[16] Far from solving writing problems, like the earliest practitioners of computer instruction hoped for their students, technology seems to have created new ones--or at least exacerbated old ones. From prewriting through publication, computers can adversely affect writers. Ruth Goldfine, in 2001, writes, "Studies of the effects of using word processing in the composition classroom have revealed that some features of the word processor create problems for students and foster poor writing strategies" (307). Goldfine notes "six key elements of the writing process [that] seem negatively affected": planning, reading, organizing, revising, detecting errors, and developing spelling and vocabulary skills (307). For example, students who compose at the keyboard "spend less time planning than those who compose using pen and paper" (307). Moreover, it is in the revision phase--where computers were thought to be the most beneficial--that students consistently fail to take advantage of the technology. Goldfine writes: "[R]esearchers have discovered that the ease of revision that word processors offer has not encouraged students to make more macrostructural revisions . . ." (308). Instead, students focus solely on microstructural elements; that is, simple proofreading/editing. J.C. Bean predicted such failures in 1983, writing, "[T]he computer cannot cure directly students' psychological and cognitive blocks to revision . . ." (qtd. in Hawisher et al. 81). Many compositionists have called into question the use of spelling and grammar checkers. Goldfine concludes, "[T]hese . . . tools may diminish students' ability to reason about their writing, thereby complicating their ability to master the writing process" (314). This is an ironic diagnosis considering that the original word processing programs--like WANDAH--were intended to simplify the writing process, not add to its complexities. Ruth Von Blum and Michael E. Cohen pointed out in 1984 that "writers must simultaneously perform all of the cognitive tasks constituting the writing process, both the trivial and the complex" (154). They believed that the "mediation" of "computer word processing" would "help reduce the writer's cognitive burden and . . . encourage revision [. . . thus improving] writing" (155). In retrospect, Von Blum and Cohen appear mistaken on all three counts with the vast majority of students.
See earlier note regarding hypertext and Gilbert's online article (par. 8).	[17] The fact that students cannot see their entire draft on the computer screen seems to hinder composition as well. The pioneers of technology in English did not envision this problem and thought that "paperless classrooms" would one day be commonplace. Goldfine says that "computers disrupt students' spatial recall, the ability to remember where (in the document and on the page) a particular item appears" (308). The spatial recall problems that students face when word processing are minor compared to composition in hypertext. Pamela K. Gilbert explains, "Hypertext is organized in space rather than time--instead of a linear narrative, we shift planes, jump into other areas, go through a window into another screen." Gilbert refers to the hypertext as a "docuverse," where "the distinctions between the author and reader [collapse]." Hypertext hardly seems like the proper medium for underdeveloped writers; yet many instructors are boldly pursuing this latest evolution in writing in their composition classrooms.
	[18] A rationale for the continued use of computers to teach writing is that young people are completely at ease with the newest technology. But this may not necessarily be so. In one study, Barbara Blakely Duffelmeyer surveyed 140 freshman composition students at Iowa State University in 2000 and found only about a third (37%) as being totally positive about computer technology, whereas 11% were in the "oppositional" category that claimed they "hate" technology because it "detracts too much from other aspects of life" (296). Furthermore, Duffelmeyer found that students had a tendency to transfer negative feelings about technology onto their schools and teachers, who are viewed as "pushing" the technology on them (299). If students can transfer their feelings about technology onto their institutions and teachers, then they can also associate the act of writing itself with frustration and pressure.
For an in-depth study of ethics, see Social and Ethical Effects of the Computer Revolution, edited by Joseph Migga Kizza (McFarland, 1996), and in particular Richard Rubin's "Moral Distancing and the Use of Information Technologies: The Seven Temptations." Link to Kimbel Library's homepage, and site search "Internet Paper Mill."	[19] Another troubling aspect of technology is its tendency to encourage or at least facilitate unethical behavior in people. This subject is too complex to cover here, but it may account for the problems that many instructors have with students "flaming" each other on electronic discussion boards and for the explosion of Internet sites offering papers for purchase. Kimbel Library at Coastal Carolina University maintains a list of sites from which students can plagiarize papers. The list expanded from 35 sites in March 1999 to 257 in June 2004. Obviously, if students are downloading papers, they are not learning writing skills from the process. Moreover, many institutions have invested in costly services to help them detect plagiarized papers; and instructors spend valuable time attempting to identify and prove plagiarism.
	[20] How, then, with all the problems, the mind-boggling costs, and no reliable evidence that they were helping students to learn to write, did computer technology become so firmly entrenched in English curricula? Again, this could be the stuff of an entirely separate presentation, but at the risk of oversimplifying I'll say the following. In the 1980s, computers got a foothold in schools thanks to the efforts of academics and fledgling hardware and software companies; then in the 90s, government influence combined with burgeoning computer companies to make the machines ubiquitous by the end of the century. Gerrard reflected on the difficulties of obtaining a university position at the end of the 1970s because "jobs for Ph.D.s in comparative literature had pretty much disappeared . . ." (qtd. in Hawisher et al. 58). She was preparing to seek employment in the business world when opportunities for computer programming began to emerge, and she went to UCLA in 1980 to write language programs; she eventually helped to develop WANDAH, one of the first word processing programs (61). Other pioneers of computer composition tell similar tales. In essence, they carved out places for themselves in academia by promoting computers in writing and filling the growing need themselves, as a select group of computer specialists. Many of these pioneers worked with publishers to write, then market software and accompanying manuals. New scholarly journals began to spring up. Hawisher et al, write, "The opportunity to present conference papers in refereed professional venues meant credit toward tenure, access to travel funds, and increased recognition within the profession" (81). Schwartz, for example, acknowledges that the publication of one computer-related article in College English in 1982 "led to a lot of consulting work" and "a book contract" with Holt (qtd. in Hawisher et al. 118). Hugh Burns, who wrote the first dissertation on computers in composition in 1979 (52), eventually established Hugh Burns and Associates, "a consulting firm working on new designs for schools" (57). It was not unusual for compositionists to work out the kinks in programs they were developing for publishers by using their students as guinea pigs. No empirical data could prove that computers helped students to write better--but a growing segment of academia stood to lose a great deal if studies showed that computers actually hindered student writing.
	[21] In the 1990s, the Clinton administration, its efforts spearheaded by Vice President Al Gore, took up the cause of technology for primarily economic reasons. In short, Clinton and Gore set about making the technology industry the backbone of America's economy. Selfe writes, "By 1996, then, policymakers in the federal government had committed fully to expanding America's technological involvement and thus to a national project designed to increase the population's technological literacy" (63). The well-being of the nation and its status in the world order became dependent on businesses, schools, and families buying and using computer technology. This development just happens to be concurrent with academia's giving up on proving the effectiveness of computers in teaching writing.
	[22] It is ludicrous to suggest that schools turn back the clock on technology and replace their computer labs with rooms full of typewriters, their laptops with legal pads. But it is equally ludicrous to pretend all is well. From the earliest pioneers of computers in composition to today's heretical questioners of technology, professionals have recognized the drawbacks of using technology indiscriminately. Perhaps if enough teachers identify what Selfe calls their "personal beginning points for initiating change" (134), then the profession can develop a more circumspect, more productive--and more pedagogically sound--approach to using computer technology.
	Works Cited Bridwell, Lillian S., and Donald Ross. "Integrating Computers into a Writing Curriculum; or, Buying, Begging, and Building." Wresch 107-19. Costanzo, William. "Reading, Writing, and Thinking in an Age of Electronic Literacy." Selfe and Hilligoss 11-21. Duffelmeyer, Barbara Blakely. "Critical Computer Literacy: Computers in First-Year Composition as Topic and Environment." Computers and Composition 17 (2000): 289-307. Gilbert, Pamela K. "Meditations upon Hypertext: A Rhetorethics for Cyborgs." JAC: Journal of Composition Theory 17.1 (1997). 3 July 2003 http://jac.gsu.edu/jac/17.1/Articles/2.htm. Goldfine, Ruth. "Making Word Processing More Effective in the Composition Classroom." Teaching English in the Two-Year College 28 (2001): 307-15. Gotterbarn, Donald. "Computer Practitioners: Professionals or Hired Guns?" Social and Ethical Effects of the Computer Revolution. Ed. Joseph Migga Kizza. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996. 219-29. Hawisher, Gail E., et al. Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979-1994: A History. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1996. Healy, Jane M. Endangered Minds: Why Our Children Don't Think. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990. Holdstein, Deborah H. Computers and Composition. Englewood, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994. Kemp, Fred. "The Limits of Proof in Writing Instruction." (1994) Alliance for Computers in Writing 2 July 2003 http://English.ttu.edu/acw/database/essays/ cccc94.kemp.html. Selfe, Cynthia L. Technology and Literacy in the Twenty-First Century: The Importance of Paying Attention. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois UP, 1999. Selfe, Cynthia L., and Susan Hilligoss, eds. Literacy and Computers: The Complications of Teaching and Learning with Technology. New York: MLA of America, 1994. Selfe, Cynthia L, and Billie J. Wahlstrom. "Computer-Supported Writing Classes: Lessons for Teachers." Computers in English and Language Arts: The Challenge of Teacher Education. Ed. Cynthia L. Selfe, Dawn Rodrigues, and William R. Oates. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1989. Von Blum, Ruth, and Michael E. Cohen. "WANDAH: Writing-Aid AND Author's Helper." Wresch 154-73. Wakefield, Sarah R. "Comparing Traditional and Computer-Assisted Composition Classrooms." Currents in Electronic Literacy (spring 2002): 19 pars. 2 July 2003 http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/currents/spring02/ wakefield.html. Winters, Jo Ellen. "The Affect of Computers on College Writing: A View from the Field." Technology and Teaching. Ed. Les Lloyd. Medford, NJ: Information Today, 1997. 13-21. Wresch, William, ed. A Writer's Tool: The Computer in Composition Instruction. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1984.
Link to the author's CV. Contact the author. © 2005 Ted Morrissey	Ted Morrissey has been teaching secondary and post-secondary English for 21 years, most recently at Williamsville High School and as an adjunct instructor at Springfield College in Illinois. He has a B.S. and M.A. in English from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (1984, 1995), and plans to complete his Ph.D. in English Studies at Illinois State University in 2008. His articles on using literature in the classroom have appeared in Eureka Studies in Teaching Short Fiction, and his fiction has been in Glimmer Train Stories, Paris Transcontinental, Eureka Literary Magazine, and elsewhere.