As you know, technology is the new wave for this 21st century generation of millennials. The fact is that “old school” teaching is no longer enough when it comes to trying to educate this new generation of students. Additionally, as instructors in this new age, you must be open to new ideas when trying to find ways to engage your class in this digital age. Let's face it, reading books isn't everyone's cup of tea and no one likes carrying around three pound books. What's everyone's cup of tea is short stints and carrying around three to four pounds of MacBooks and PCs. So the first suggestion I make to first-year writing teachers as you consider your new classrooms in the digital age is to assign more readings from short online PDFs. Students will read several short documents as long as they are relevant to an interesting topic. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay Short readings have a good chance of making students' and instructors' lives easier and less stressful. Additionally, because the readings will be on interesting topics that students enjoy, they will be more likely to actively participate and be more engaged in class. As a supportive personal experience, my freshman writing class was very similar to this setup. My instructor, Dr. Rudewalker, assigned us mostly short, highly relevant readings and engaged us as readers and writers. The short readings she assigned us were always very interesting, funny, informative and allowed us to better understand the objectives of the course. When we entered the classroom, we discussed the readings. We sometimes went over class time because the readings were very interesting. During class discussions, we would learn the goals of the day and end up learning more about ourselves as people or writers than one would usually learn from a lecturing professor who simply talks about a book to read to the whole class. Additionally, she engaged us on topics relevant to our lives and today. This class is probably the best I've had at Spelman so far for these reasons. I think more instructors should adopt this type of course structure. As the professor or instructor of the course, it is up to you to decide how you want to assess students on the readings or learning objectives of the course. It is proven that "old-fashioned" tests and quizzes do not show the full extent of students' understanding of reading topics or lessons covered in class. I especially think about how students participate in class when they discuss topics. This might be more difficult for larger classes, but even then the quizzes might be more tailored to the context of the reading or topics. For example, these could be single-question quizzes that will allow students to think and even reflect on the readings that were just discussed during the class period. Quizzes could even ask students to relate to the readings or lessons in a personal way. I believe that becoming more engaged and involved in our reading and understanding the readings makes even a biology student love English class! In my first grade writing class.