The Conference on College Composition and Communication Committee for Best Practices in Online Writing Instruction. (March 2013). A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI).

Though I have never taught online, I have certainly thought about it and prior to securing my current position had applied to participate in training to teach online at the community college where I worked as an adjunct. In reading the OWI Principles then, I am responding to them more hypothetically than based on experience. A few of the principles really stood out to me. The first principle, “Online writing instruction should be universally inclusive and accessible,” is such an important one. Distance education often gets touted as offering increased access to learning and education, but its often more complicated that that. Having worked at a community college, I’ve seen first hand that the digital divide is very real, and questions of access are still very relevant in an online course--even if students have access to a computer, they may have slow internet access or don’t have the money to afford Microsoft Office which could impact their ability to fully engage with the content of an online course. I was also really struck by the the idea of “flexibility in use” in universal design principles. I think it could be easy to rely solely on text-based communication in an online course, which could negatively impact those that don’t learn best this way. Medina’s notion of engaging multiple senses comes to mind here.

I was also struck by the second OWI Principle: “An online writing course should focus on writing and not on technology orientation or teaching students how to use learning and other technologies.” This one struck me because, while I see the point being made, that a writing class should focus on writing, it seems to be that not providing instruction of technologies being used could impede a student’s ability to write and/or successfully complete an assignment. In teaching a developmental course at my community college face-to-face, I frequently had to take time to explain features and usage of a word processor program. Though this may not qualify as writing instruction, it helped my students be more successful in my course and in their other courses. My thought is that not providing explicit instruction in any technologies used that are appropriate for first-year composition could leave students frustrated.

As a writing center coordinator, I was also interested in principle 13 about appropriate support resources. The suggestion that OWL support should match the course modality and media” makes sense, but it also made me wonder how often this is actually the case. It reminded me that infrastructure choices about incorporating distance education need consider implications beyond the classroom and be able to support through training and funding resources like the writing center.

Miller-Cochran, S.K. & Rodrigo, R. (2006). Determining effective distance learning designs through usability testing. Computers and Composition, 23, 91-107.

What struck me most when I first started reading this article was the refusal to take compliments at face value. I so appreciated the curiosity in spite of receiving comments that indicated the course was well set-up. This really demonstrated to me that sometimes problems to be investigated might not be jumping up and screaming, “this is a problem that needs to be fixed in your class” and instead I may need to look closer at things that appear to be “working” not only to test whether this is true, but to find ways that the course can continue to be improved.

This essay also gave me a great model of very focused research that answered clear questions that wasn’t trying to “do everything.” I think the notion that your research doesn’t have to be enormous was really hammered home for me with the fact that this study used 5 participants and clearly indicated that the results could not be extended to all online courses. I tend to bite off more than I can chew in articulating a research question (making me guilty of exactly the thing I try to help students avoid when writing their own research papers). This article was really helpful in seeings a successful SoTL project.