As you know, technology is the new wave for this generation of 21st century millennials. The fact of the matter is that “old-fashioned” teaching no longer measures up when it comes to trying to educate this new era 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 is not for everyone, and no one likes carrying three-kilo books with them. What everyone likes are short trips and carrying three to four pound Macbooks and PCs. So the first tip I have for first-year writing instructors when considering new digital age classes is to assign more readings from short online PDFs. Students will read more 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 Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay. Short reads have a good chance of making students' and instructors' lives easier and less stressful. Additionally, because the readings will cover interesting topics that students enjoy, they will be more likely to actively participate and be more engaged in class. As a personal supporting experience, my first-year writing course was a lot like this. My instructor, Dr. Rudewalker, mostly assigned small readings that were very relatable and engaged us as readers and writers. The short readings she assigned were always very interesting, fun, informative and allowed us to better understand the objectives of the course. When we entered class we discussed the readings which we sometimes repeated during class because the readings were so engaging. Within class discussions, we would learn the goals of the day and end up learning more about ourselves as people or writers than one would normally learn from a lesson teacher who only talks about reading a book for the whole class. Furthermore, it engaged us in topics relevant to our lives and today. This class is probably the best I've had so far at Spelman for these reasons. I think more instructors should adopt this type of lesson organization. As the professor or course instructor, it is up to you to decide how to evaluate students on the readings or learning objectives of the class. “Old-fashioned” tests and quizzes have been shown to not show the full extent of student understanding of reading topics or lessons covered in class. I think it includes how students participate in the lesson when discussing topics. This may be more difficult for larger classes, but again the quizzes may be more engaging with the context of the reading or topics. For example, they could be one-question quizzes that will allow students to think about and even reflect on the readings just discussed during the class period. Quizzes might also ask students to relate to the readings or lessons in a personal way. I believe that becoming more involved and involved in our reading and understanding it makes even a biology major love an English class! In my first-year writing class, the grading process went very well as we were graded on the readings we had just done discussed in class. The questions were never “difficult” but they allowed us to think like people, readers and also as writers. Through these evaluations we have learned.