I found the concept of “teaching” (of course he claims to not be teaching very often) entirely through conferences to be a very compelling concept. Would it be feasible in a large, public university such as FAU to teach ENC 1101 entirely through conferences? Simply for the sake of time – 22 students with 3 hours a week of classes – it doesn’t seem possible. In an ideal world, these time structures wouldn’t matter, but due to the concerns surrounding metrics that seem to run this university, I can’t imagine that this type of structure would ever be universally adopted at FAU.
That being said, I think that a sort of hybrid form of this process could be extremely useful. As a UCEW consultant, I find that most interactions are too fleeting to do a great deal of change in student writing, and it is only the students who return on a regular basis to the same consultant that improve as writers. When students develop a relationship with a consultant, it seems that they are able to make realizations about their own writing, because the “teaching” is directly applicable to the content of their own individual paper. On the other hand, as a GTA, I think there can be value to the traditional classroom structure. At a minimum, MLA, grammar, the “basics” of writing, and classroom discussions are things all students need to experience; therefore, why can’t they all experiences this at the same time in the same room?
Like I mentioned above, perhaps a hybrid of this conference system would be most beneficial for student writing. If we met as a class for one week, and then the next week met in conferences to discuss drafts, they could have the best of both worlds. Murray paints a very pretty picture of his abilities, claiming that his students continue to do more and more of the teaching themselves. I wish I could talk to him, because I can’t fully understand what this means or how it can be possible. If his students teach themselves, and have only conference experiences, how do they learn the norms of the discipline? An easy example being MLA. Of course students have a handbook, but I don’t believe that they can simply pick something like this up and then magically understand everything about it. It takes time, much longer than a 25 minute conference that should focus on larger concerns. Finally, how does he make sure that students maintain an intrinistic motivation to learn and improve, when Murray provides such little guidance?