When I was charged with designing the first computer writing facility at my institution, Approaches to Computer Writing Classrooms served as the primary source for what I consider to have been most of the decisions that proved successful. For me, the essays in Myers’ book acted as a kind of sounding board, sometimes in harmony but often in opposition to the directions we wanted our program to take. I consider this book a must-read (along with Cynthia Selfe’s Creating a Computer-Supported Writing Facility) for anyone embarking on such a project.

Myers’ book is a particularly thought-provoking collection of twelve essays which tell the stories of different approaches to designing computer-mediated writing programs. According to Myers, her volume intends to provide something straightforward and practical: what instructors lack is “a strategy for designing the actual learning environment” (xi). This book helps teachers and program directors gain the ability to develop such a strategy, but, more importantly, it encourages them to do so in a customized way, based upon local pedagogical visions: “This book does not advocate any particular pedagogy, software package, or hardware system, but rather provides a collective experience from which the reader can learn and thus create an environment that suits his or her needs without recreating others’ past mistakes” (xii). Myers accomplishes these goals through a distinctively multivalent compilation of voices that, in fact, contradict each other at times. The result is a truly dialogic offering that makes room for the reader to enter into a dynamic negotiation with the different approaches to computer classrooms presented in this anthology.

While it is true that the reader who is seeking practical advice on both architectural and philosophical issues regarding the design of a computer­mediated facility should find a valuable resource here, the book does not offer a particularly meaty or intellectual look at these issues. Reading through these twelve essays is a bit like rummaging through bins at a used ­record store: you must sift through a fair number of mediocre works in order to find those few gems for which you may or may not have been consciously searching. These are not particularly theoretical or sophisticated essays; they are, for the most part, narratives of different “practical” experiences that are presented to help others avoid pitfalls in the potentially hazardous and expensive realm of instructional technology. As such, this work has limited value for those who are not immediately involved in the business of putting together a new computer classroom. However, I imagine that in one way or another, almost every post-secondary writing program is currently consider­ing expansion in this direction.

Myers writes, “The essays move from explicit discussion of room design and construction, through pedagogical descriptions and concerns, to theo­retical hypotheses for future learning environments” (xii)—a promise which neither the individual essays nor the collection as a whole keeps in that the physical “nuts and bolts” of such designs play an important role in every part of the book from beginning to end. But the issue I would like to raise here is that this alleged move from the practical to the more abstract is a suspicious one. As most of the writing on the topic of program design argues—including the writing in this collection—issues of pedagogy, theory, students, and teachers should precede any attention to machines, buildings, budgets, and computers. The clearly stated argument of Selfe’s earlier book on facility design set the tone for most of the work being conducted on computers and writing today, and that message was and is that people come first, not machines or institutions. Nevertheless, the consensus in the field of comput­ers and composition has recently begun to inch away from the notion that it might be possible to isolate “human” concerns from technological ones. In a recent CCC article (45 (1994): 480-504), Selfe and Selfe examine the ways that computer interfaces themselves are embedded with ideological value systems. I raise the issue of the embeddedness of ideology in technology because Approaches to Computer Writing Classrooms provides an excellent example of the phenomenon of embeddedness despite the off-handed sug­gestion in Myers’ introduction that practical issues can be separated from the theoretical and that questions of humanism can be attended to apart from the mechanical. Each contributor relates a perspective that is uniquely his or her own, and when Myers runs each of the stories up against the others as she does in this collection, it becomes apparent that different approaches to learning will result in different physical landscapes.

A fascinating dramatization of these variations and their respective mechanical manifestation can be accomplished by flipping through Ap­proaches to Computer Writing Classrooms and comparing the seventeen different floor plans presented within the twelve essays. No two are alike; few are even similar; and some are accompanied by impassioned explanations which directly fly in the face of each other. And so, in a wonderfully dynamic way, amidst varied but not cacophonous voices in this collection lies an illustration of the heart of the matter regarding the interrelations of language, computers, ideology, and people: each actively and reciprocally defines the others. Thus, when Myers claims in her introduction that this book covers only the narrow scope of how to proceed once one has secured funding for a computer writing facility, she actually sells this book short, for issues of budget, pedagogy, theory, and hardware are all intricately intermeshed in such a way that it is unwise to consider them as autonomous dimensions of design. For example, how can you effectively request funding unless you have at least some idea of the type of purchases and renovations you wish to make, and how can you project those architectural concerns unless you have in mind the type of pedagogy you wish to promote?

Despite its drawbacks, Approaches to Computer Writing Classrooms is certainly a useful and important book, especially for those in the process of establishing new facilities. Recently, I was asked to consult with three colleagues in three different writing programs, all of whom I had never met and who were beginning the process of facility design. I urged each to read Approaches to Computer Writing Classrooms before taking another step toward putting together a computer-mediated program. My recommenda­tion is a testament to the book’s value.