Things both great and small in synchronous online writing courses

I teach my online writing courses (OWCs) asynchronously, with only touches of synchronous elements, such as a first-week meeting (that I also record for those who can't attend). I have long discussed the reasons why I teach this way, including because in an asynchronous writing course, everything students do is in writing.

Our field, however, is giving increasing attention to the possibilities of synchronous courses. I recently had the pleasure of serving as a member of the dissertation committee of Kimberly Fahle of Old Dominion University, whose dissertation, "Collaboration and Community in Undergraduate Writing Synchronous Video Courses (SVCs)" explored a number of fascinating elements about learner experiences in asynchronous courses.

Fahle, who successfully defended earlier this year and is now the writing center director at York College of Pennsylvania, raises several major considerations and observations about SVCs, including some underlying reasons for students’ general reticence for verbal participation when compared with textual communication, the need for modality-specific training, and the general impact of interfaces on learning and teaching.

These major conclusions aside, one of the many strengths of her excellent dissertation was her exploration, through discourse analysis, of detailed aspects of learning in synchronous, online meeting-based environments.

I'll give you a great example. With regard to interface, Fahle wrote that students were sometimes reluctant to speak in class because in the web meeting app for their courses, the face of the last person who spoke would stay prominently on screen until someone else spoke. One of her students said, "I think also the fact that the last person to speak [...] the camera stays on them until someone else speaks [...] makes people maybe not want to speak."

Think about this in terms of an onsite class. It would be like when someone speaks, everyone turns to look at that person, staring zombie-like, until someone else takes the initiative to speak. You could see how that would stifle class dialogue and likely course community.

Through her students, Fahle highlighted such an interesting, and easy-to-overlook, observation. When you consider such a dynamic, you can see how for many students this would be challenging and for shy students possibly withering and debilitating. It also demonstrates how a web platform suitable for business-type meetings might operate in totally different way for education, particularly in courses aiming for discussion--such as an OWC.

Addressing concerns similar to this would take some serious user-centric consideration. As we further explore SVCs and any technologically-faciliated environments, these are exactly the kind of details, from the student eyes, that we need to consider.