OWI as a way into institutional politics

I'm gearing up to visit a couple schools this spring to talk about OWI initiatives, and thinking about these visits led me to reflect again on the great potential I think OWI can represent for WPAs and compositionists.

Institutions rarely move to hybrid and online writing (mainly first-year) courses for reasons that are intrinsic to the writing program or English Department in which those courses reside. Instead, external pressure, as I described in the article “And Then There Were Two: The Growing Pains of an Online Writing Course Faculty Training Initiative" (1), pushes/forces programs to offer their courses online. Classroom space. Efforts to recruit students beyond the immediate geographic area. Cost savings. These factors drive, and pedagogy, if you are lucky or very hard working, jumps in the back seat and gets to offer some direction.

This can understandably breed resistance, but I'm reminding us that OWI can allow us to make arguments about what we do, to make us visible in new ways that can help the entire writing instructional mission. (To be fair, I should point out that there's a premise or better yet an assumption at work here, which is this: Online and hybrid writing courses are as good or better than onsite writing courses.) If you are moving to online courses, you don't want department in-fighting to detract from a unified focus on what is ultimately inevitable; you will waste time, energy, and good will and you may lose the ability to create these courses with the scaffolding and support so they will help you in the bigger sphere.

You don't want any of that, because the benefits for the classically disenfranchised comp program could be tangible. Let's take classroom space. If your institution is going digital because it's crunched for classrooms, keep track of exactly how many classrooms you have saved each term. Do a simple calculation: How much did that cost? Now, when conversations about resources arise, remind people of the contribution the writing program has made to this institutional problem. Is faculty training an issue? You could use administration-mandated online courses as a way to pay for more faculty training offerings (and, since pedagogy and technology should always be linked, this training can cover all areas). You may find ways to improve your part-time-full-time ratio, arguing for a commitment to the technology that a full-time faculty would better meet.

You could also use these new courses modalities to create conversation and energy about what is happening in the writing program. People get excited about new technologies, and these courses could be a tangible, visible way of opening the door for probably long-overdue campus-wide conversations about the teaching of writing and the role of writing courses in general.

WPAs want better working conditions, and we wish the hard work of our programs was self-evident. But, as Ed White points out, "... all administration deals in power; power games demand aggressive players; assert that you have power (even if you don't) and you can often wield it" (2). Technology-facilitated courses can open a door for WPAs, providing us with new ways to argue for the good of our programs -- and for the good of all of those teachers who really need us.

Notes
1) “And Then There Were Two: The Growing Pains of an Online Writing Course Faculty Training Initiative,” published in the Proceedings of the Distance Learning Administration 2007 Conference.
2) In "Use It or Lose It: Power and the WPA" in Ward and Carpenter's The Allyn & Bacon Sourcebook for Writing Program Administrators.

Talking topics online

Online class forums such as message boards, because of their textual nature, can allow students really to "hear" each other and to have conversations that might be tricky or difficult face to face. Writing teachers have seen this advantage of these forums since the earliest days of computers and composition. One particularly constructive conversation students might have in an asynchronous forum is about their writing project topics. I have always been a fan of having students spend lots of time at the invention stage in their major projects, and I think my approach became even more productive when I moved the process online.

I typically ask students to submit topics to a message board with a prompt that looks something like this (the project topic below asked for a rhetorical analysis of the message of a person who influenced them):

Conversation about Project 1 topics
Hi everyone,
I am a big, big believer in using writing to discover ideas and learn.

I want each of you to post here at least one potential idea for Project 1 by Wednesday (see the Weekly Plan). This counts as a primary post. Some of you will want to build on your strong question posts from last week. Your post should fill out your idea as much as you can, including by asking some provocative questions. You might also describe the sources or evidence you might use.

Obviously, we can all help you a lot more if you give us something to work with.

That's right, "we."

After you post your idea(s), I want you to review at LEAST one of your colleagues' topics and give that person some feedback. You might address some of the following questions:
1) Is the rhetorical situation clear? Are the purpose, audience, and theme of the project clear?
2) Does the writer seem clear about focusing enough on the analysis of their interactions, or does the project seem mainly about the person who influenced them?
3) Can you think of ways to organize the project to increase its potential impact?
4) Would you like to write this (or a piece like it)? If not, why? (Answer this in a way that is helpful to the writer.)
5) Can you suggest any source material from our texts? What primary evidence might the writer use? How about any other sources?

Your suggestions can be succinct, but, basically, try to help each other out. Your response counts as a secondary post, and that should be posted by Friday.

Let's see what you've got in mind,
Prof. Warnock

Now, I have to tell you that during topic week I really earn my keep as a writing teacher, as I comment extensively on each topic proposed, incorporating the responses from other students in my comments. I then write up a summary post of commonalities I see in their projects.

It's worth it, though, as they do amazing work on these topic threads. The students get a great deal out of what are basically peer review conversations about their writing topics. They have time to think through the topic in earnest and bolster each other, sometimes by making personal connections about a topic. They can ask questions. They often suggest specific sources or even organizational strategies. They can have their collective game raised by seeing what their peers are doing (my students regularly re-think simplistic topics after seeing their peers' topics). Because students are proposing topics not just to me but to the whole class, they may be more inclined to think through carefully for this broader audience what they have to say. And when they are way off-base on a topic, other students often point that out, so I'm not seen as the squasher of their ideas.

Overall, they work together, and they learn in the process that they have some smart, helpful colleagues.

I should run an experiment one term in which I don't handle topics on the forums in one class but do in another; I believe there would be a noticeable difference in the quality of the final projects. But, alas, in my "do no harm" approach to teaching, I feel that in such an experiment I would be doing the "control" group a tremendous disservice.

Pedagogically, I hope to send a clear message with this approach: At the crucial stage of invention, you should get some input about where you are. Your project will be better, and your learning experience richer, because of that conversation.

Patience -- don't be a technodefeatist

This summer Steven Corbett wrote a great piece in Inside Higher Ed about technology and teaching titled, appropriately enough, "Technology and Teaching." Corbett, a tech savvy teacher who says he was a "late bloomer" in using digital tools, describes "The Ups" and "Potential Downs" of using teaching technologies. Reading this, I thought again that despite the views of extremists on both sides, the obvious center ground is that there are good reasons to use technology in your classes -- and there are reasons not to.

Corbett recommends that teachers be patient learning/implementing new technologies. Good advice, and I would add that no digital teaching technology I have ever used was so convoluted that the smart teachers I know couldn't use it. Period. Indeed, be patient, because the "faculty resistance to teaching with technology" Corbett describes I think often emanates from psychological barriers people create. This is not so much technophobia as technodefeatism: the tendency to view digital technology applications as a series of barriers; when users reach one of these barriers, in a type of self-fulfilling prophecy, they throw up their hands in despair.

Digital technology seems to occupy a particular niche in our teaching mindset. Most teachers are innovative: They regularly try new teaching methods, incorporate new texts, or create different assignments for their courses. When they make these changes, they invariably end up with some teaching challenges as a result. A new method, text, or assignment creates responses from students and raises questions about course material that you cannot anticipate. Sometimes they even create issues in the overarching structure of the course.

So why make changes, especially if we like our curriculum? Again, most teachers alter their approaches because that's their nature. They try something new in the hope it will stimulate their students' learning and thinking in different ways. Those broad goals are well worth any obstacle encountered along the way.

Why don't we adopt the same approach/frame with new technology? Introduce a new technology because you believe that it can help you achieve your teaching and learning goals more effectively. I mean, believe that. If you don't (and you're not being forced to incorporate digital technologies into your classes, which is a different, and sadder and more frustrating, story that I won't pursue now), then the answer is simple: Don't use the technology.

If you look at a digital tool as an added burden, a dark, spooky cave full of glitchy goblins, then wait until you're so enthusiastic about the prospects of the new application that no obstacle could deter you. If one unexpected problem would lead you to feel crushed -- and maybe you would self-righteously think, "I knew this would happen!" -- then you're not ready. Try the technology another day.

Certainly, like any new teaching component, from a reading to an assignment to an approach, a technology could surprise you and alter your teaching in fundamental ways. Our tools can change our behaviors. If that's not a welcome experience, you're also not ready for the change.

Sure, I like technology and that gives me an edge in trying new digital tools. But know that my real technophile friends scoff at my actual nuts-and-bolts tech skills. My expertise, such as it is, is in the pedagogical uses of the tools. I used asynchronous tools to facilitate dialogue among students because I wanted them writing more in conversational ways. I have used the rubric/assessment software Waypoint to respond to my students' writing because I find it the best way for me to communicate with them and to evaluate their work. And so on.

Perhaps we need to stop placing capital T technology into its own mental bin and include it in a broader category almost all of us have and regularly use: teaching innovation. Introduce a digital tool when it makes sense for your goals. Sure, there's more whirling and humming with a computer, but in essence and philosophy, this is no different to me than if I had realized, in some long-ago time, that I needed a way to write publicly for my students in an onsite class and discovered I had the opportunity to use this weird new thing called a chalkboard.

Connecting, connecting: The beauty of asynchronous teaching

Some teachers are fast on their feet teaching in front of a face-to-face class, always having the right response, also remembering that perfect connection. Some days, I'm one of those teachers. Other days, not so much.

A big advantage of teaching writing online in asynchronous environments is that students have the ability to spend time thinking through their responses and contributions. When managed well, discussion in the course becomes deeper and richer, more reasoned and thoughtful. Of course, this dynamic also works for you, the teacher. On days when that splendid information processor above your neck can't quite make connections at lightning speed, you have the time to sit back, mull over the conversational thread, and then respond.

As I've mentioned, your posts in the message board environment are not just another way for you to have the kind of interaction with students that most good writing teachers have. Your responses also do a lot to shape yourself as the audience. In your posts, you can do some amazing things to connect with them, to reach out to them, to clarify your audience role.

You can simply connect their posts to something you recently read or saw. Sharing that specific knowledge provides not only a content connection, but it shows them what you are reading and watching, maybe just that you are reading at all. By providing them with a direct link--it's the Web, right?--to such a resource, you expand the space of the class. Part of online learning, when done well, is to think regularly outside the course walls. Of course, teachers have always connected with students and have always found ways to build on relationships they had with good students from the past. But because I see so many of their ideas written form--not just in their major projects--those ideas tend to stick long after class is over, sometimes many terms later. Students have noted in online evaluations that I had contacted them a few terms after our course ended with readings related to something we had written about together.

The inherent connectivity of this environment also makes every writing course a unique blend of information and conversation. While our outcomes, our top-level goals in a course, are consistent, the students' experiences will be different because each course has its own personality, and by the end of an online composition course, you will have a one-of-a-kind series of links and connections.

Of course, you are bound by the same "problem" that students are bound by in this environment: The Web is present, so we can't ignore it. While in onsite conversations all of us at some point might say, "I remember reading about ___ once," or "I saw this ___ once," online that doesn't work. The artifact or resource must be found. As a teacher, one of my main goals is to build an evidence-based argument, so I have to model that practice by never shooting from the hip conceptually in our online discussions. I need to find that evidence.

So when you interact with them with these splendid, simple message boards, what you're doing is connecting with them in all sorts of ways. Connectivity. It's a crucial part of what we do when we teach writing online.

Maybe f2f writing instruction is the real virtual education?

I often read (and hear from) critics of online learning who view that learning modality as being lesser, what they call a "a virtual experience," with a real pejorative sense to the word "virtual," along the lines of "less real."

But when it comes to teaching people how to write more effectively, isn't what we're doing in those "real" brick-and-mortar rooms often itself a kind of virtual education? If the goals are to help students learn to write and to use writing as a way to unlock critical thinking, how much of what goes on inside the walls of a composition classroom--for that hour or hour and twenty minutes--is actually geared toward those objectives?

Hey, I am not saying that what is going on a lot of the time is bad. Within those walls, seated at those desks, students talk. They listen to a professor talk, and sometimes that professor's topic is in fact writing. They laugh. They work together. Sometimes they read. Occasionally they write. Many of these activities--including the laughing--can help the students reach their goal of writing more effectively (if that is the goal, and not simply to move quickly through a no-doubt-required course). But what often takes place in that room is of questionable value to learning about writing. (My belief that the time spent in composition classrooms was not always productively geared toward writing prompted me to adopt a writing studies/writing about writing approach to writing instruction, in which writing as topic is placed at the center of the course.)

In other words, I wonder if in the thousands of writing courses across the country, most of the time what is going on is only loosely related to writing.

These students of ours are so busy, so overbooked. We have to jump on the time we have. In an asynchronous online (or hybrid) writing course, the hours students and I have together are largely spent on writing. Not only are students simply writing themselves, but they are working in a meta-way commenting on each others' written work and using writing to think through their composing and thinking processes. Almost all of their interactions in the course are written.

As I've mentioned here before, we at Drexel have reviewed some of our hybrid and online courses and quantified the amount of writing students created in these courses. The numbers were significant: Students are writing thousands of words in asynchronous environments each week, in addition to their major projects/papers in the course and to emails and other communications.

Without question, we need to know more about the effectiveness of online learning, especially when that learning modality is adopted purely for economic reasons, with pedagogy only a dim light of motivation. Rob Jenkins calls for such accountability in a recent The Chronicle of Higher Education article, saying that the low "success rates" in online courses should spur inquiry: "But isn't it time that we had an honest national conversation about online learning?" (1). (I won't wade into Jenkins' broader points, but I must say that "success rates" for online courses when compared to f2f courses may not take into account population: Some people in online courses may never, ever have even thought of taking a f2f course, let alone have the ability to get to that desk.)

Many teachers get into a style of teaching, and that's where they stay, but we might look outside our walls when it comes to teaching. As Dawn Hogue wrote recently about computer classrooms, "I've learned that when 28 students are typing it sounds like learning" (2). We have to listen for that "sound" of learning--regardless of modality.

Notes
1) In "Why Are So Many Students Still Failing Online?" The Chronicle of Higher Education. May 22, 2011.

2) In "Taking the Leap across the Digital Chasm." The Council Chronicle. September 2010. Page 29.

Wimba and other online classroom environments

Those of you who even occasionally follow this space know I am a believer in asynchronous approaches to online writing courses, as they enable students to interact primarily with writing. However, say you want to have a synchronous classroom experience? There are great tools to provide learning spaces in which all students are present at the same time and can interact via writing, speaking, and video.

My experiences providing workshops, particularly several NCTE workshops last year, showed me how effective these environments can be for dialogue. For NCTE, I used a platform called Elluminate, which has now joined forces with another tool, Wimba. Dozens of people could participate in various ways in the workshops. As online classrooms, they are incredibly easy to use--you're ready to go in just a few clicks-- and they have a variety of capabilities:

• Voice: Participants can use their mics to talk with each other.


• Video: Participants can share video feeds of themselves.


• Chat: Participants can type comments into a chat box.


• Screen-sharing: Presenters can share their screens, which is a handy way to walk students through an online course site.


• Whiteboard: There is a shared whiteboard space.
  


• Presentation window: The presenter can easily present a PowerPoint.

These tools also provide other functionality, such as letting participants use icons for basic "emotional" responses--such as clicking a smiley face to let the presenter know things are going well. Teachers can create polls and surveys. The whole sessions can easily be archived and recorded.

Years ago, I began introducing my courses with video; I used Camtasia's screen capture software to record an intro in which I clicked through the class and talked to the students. Students could watch the video when they liked.

I now use Wimba, which at Drexel is built into our Blackboard Vista CMS, to introduce my courses, providing a measure of what my colleague Kristen Betts calls OHT, Online Human Touch. I display a video of myself in the corner in the beginning of the course intro (I take it down after a few minutes, because they certainly don't need to see me the whole time). I talk to them using Wimba's voice capabilities, reviewing the course guidelines and policies. I share my screen to show them the course Bb Vista site and some course documents. They can ask questions via voice or by chatting. If they want to share their own video feed of themselves, they can. If they can't sign on during our planned meeting time, the session is archived for later viewing.

Wimba can also be a handy place for students in fully online courses to meet together if they are working on team projects. The Wimba icon is on the homepage of my course, and students are welcome to click on it whenever they want to conduct a meeting.

These live classroom e-spaces can allow you to do many other things depending on your teaching style. For me, they support my efforts to make a personal connection with my students in the beginning of the term and to help them get comfortable with my course. From there, I still want them writing, so soon after, we're off to the textual adventures of the message boards.

Course content and "lessons" in the comp course

I think about the idea of "course content" in the context of composition teaching a lot; these thoughts have become more acute since the emergence of the "writing about writing" (WaW) (or writing studies) approaches to composition that we've been taking at Drexel (1); I'm oversimplifying, but for us WaW has helped encourage a set of content learning for first-year courses (which takes many forms among our faculty). I think we have used this approach, where students study writing as the content of the curriculum, to improve significantly our three-course first-year sequence at Drexel.

Anyway, I realized last month that I haven't specifically written about content delivery in this space. That isn't just complete oversight. In fact, the impetus for my book was the realization that few resources dealt directly with the specifics of the writing interactivity of the online writing course, while methods of delivering content have been handled well in many books and resources about online/distance instruction (2).

Of course, so much student learning in our courses is indeed through the complex, multi-audience writing they are doing. But you still have content: You want them to understand logical fallacies or you want to teach them the rhetorical appeals or you want them to understand not just the logistics but the rationale behind citation. You have plenty of options to communicate such lessons:

• Slide show-based presentation, no multi-media. A clean, clear self-paced PowerPoint can be great, especially if you use even minimal animations to create additional interactivity.
• Slide show-based presentation with audio and video. Many tools now enable you to provide a slide-based video lesson with sound. Impatica allows you to package PowerPoint slides easily with accompanying audio. Camtasia and other screen capture programs allow you to create easily videos of your slides with your voice-over.
• Synchronous classroom. Since I've been keeping this blog (nearly five years!), the possibilities here have increased significantly in sophistication. I use feature-rich Wimba regularly to introduce my online class, and I am struck by how easy it is to use for me and students. You may have issues getting students all in the same place at the same time, but Wimba and other software like Elluminate (now part of Wimba) allow you to archive the session, so students who couldn't attend my intro session were able to watch it, including the chat and voice comments and questions. These tools allow you to show documents, share your desktop, and interact with chat or voice.
  
• Structure a message board conversation in a lesson-like way. I'm a big fan of message boards for conversation, as previous posts here indicate. Using them in a lesson format may require you to be a different kind of moderator than you normally are, actually taking more of the conversational reins and being more directive.
• Use word processor or PDF documents. I have colleagues who have created all kinds of readable, user-friendly documents (e.g., Word, PDF) for students. You can package many simple course lessons around these types of materials. Sometimes, though, we can get too slick for our own good, especially if we don't have good design skills.
  

I'm just touching on the options here. To take a broader look for a moment, I see us moving toward new models of content delivery. With several institutions offering free online course content, educators are recognizing the Web as a way of matching the interested learner with the desired content. Web 2.0 technologies continue to proliferate. Presentation tools continue to improve, with multi-media thresholds dropping consistently. Apps for smart phones and other devices will only expand content offerings.

I might add that as these things change, my optimism about online writing instruction just grows. Composition instruction means that our courses are always unique, based, as they are, in our professional, and largely non-reproducible, expertise in interacting with the specific students in our courses. Good content delivery just helps us do the things we already do best, and those practices are only magnified in the online environment.

Notes
1) As I've mentioned, the text that lead me to this approach is Douglas Downs and Elizabeth Wardle's "Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions: (Re)Envisioning 'First-Year Composition' as 'Introduction to Writing Studies'" in CCC. Derek Owens does a good job of describing how "writing studies" has evolved in an article on the St. John's Website.

2) Some books to help you get started include Ashburn and Floden's Meaningful Learning Using Technology, Conceicao's Teaching Strategies in the Online Environment, Henderson and Nash's Excellence in College Teaching and Learning, and Ko and Rossen's Teaching Online: A Practical Guide. Also check out MERLOT.