Addressing MOOCs with the CCCC OWI Position Statement

Last time, I posted about MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), suggesting some good ideas/practices that might emanate from massive courses. Now, I'm looking briefly at how writing MOOCs can be viewed in the context of A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI), published last year by our CCCC Committee for Effective Practices in Online Writing Instruction (again, I'm co-chair of this hard-working group).

Many people in higher ed, of course, are up in arms over MOOCs. Many good reasons exist not to like these courses, but I think fear and helplessness driving many criticisms: People rightly feel helpless in the face of this tide of depersonalized instruction. Teachers and whole institutions are scrambling. However, as I’ve said, some of education’s resistance to MOOCs is hypocritical because we’re complaining about depersonalized learning experiences even though for decades we've herded students into 500-seat lecture halls and allowed our writing courses to be taught by people without offices who make about $150/week per course (if that).

The principles and practices in the OWI Position Statement can help writing teachers and WPAs by providing evidence and conversational scaffolding. The Position Statement, by design, can help potential writing MOOC teachers think through these courses; it might help some argue against MOOCs. Briefly, here are a few specific principles and how they might operate in this context:

OWI Principle 2: "An online writing course should focus on writing and not on technology orientation or teaching students how to use learning and other technologies." This means that for MOOC students, who are, by the definition of "open," not necessarily part of an institution, the learning platform has to be really easy to use. Students can’t spend their term figuring out how to manage the technology – there will be little teacher or IT support for them.

OWI Principle 5: "Online writing teachers should retain reasonable control over their own content and/or techniques for conveying, teaching, and assessing their students’ writing in their OWCs." Principle 5 addresses MOOCs in several ways, but especially with this: With 80,000 (or even 800) students, teachers have no control over assessing their students’ writing.

OWI Principle 6: "Alternative, self-paced, or experimental OWI models should be subject to the same principles of pedagogical soundness, teacher/designer preparation, and oversight detailed in this document." A MOOC can't result in the cutting of pedagogical corners (for those feeling institutional pressure...).

OWI Principle 13: "OWI students should be provided support components through online/digital media as a primary resource; they should have access to onsite support components as a secondary set of resources." A MOOC problem is that if you like MOOCs and work from that paradigm, you end up with support services that might replicate the same lack of institutional contact. If a 40,000 to 1 ratio is good enough for instruction, why not counseling, advising, and registrar ratios? Since the C stands for "course," institutions will have to make sure students understand what they get with "Open."

OWI Principle 9: "OWCs should be capped responsibly at 20 students per course with 15 being a preferable number." Those seeking a line-in-the-sand principle could find it here. Remember, C in MOOC is for "course." According to Principle 9, with 40,000 students, it can't be a "course." But maybe it can be a MOOE, with E for “experience.”

We designed these principles to help educators with OWI, including new approaches to teaching writing online. MOOCs are only one example. Massive courses aren’t good or bad, but teachers have to believe in a certain type of teaching to make them work. The Position Statement can help support or at least think through the kind of teaching that Massive Open Online Course represents.

Writing MOOCs -- what are they good for?

If you follow higher education even a little, you know about MOOCs: Massive Open Online Courses. These courses – a look at early MOOCs is here – have been promoted for all sorts of reasons. I’m not against MOOCs, but, like others who are wondering if this trend will run its course, I don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves.

First off, these courses represent, by and large, technologically-facilitated ways to deliver lots of content to lots of people. And why not? Schools have been looking for ways to streamline content delivery for a long time, including the well-entrenched giant lecture hall experience. Shifts to distribution-of-knowledge have always been viewed with skepticism. I mean, the book, writing itself, was once seen as a threat to traditional oral knowledge distribution systems, yet we now live in a time when sitting alone reading a book is a mark of erudition. Things change.

But a MOOC to learn statistics or history or poetry or game theory is one thing. Bring on that slick, video content! Learning the skill of writing in such an environment is different. Several institutions are offering writing MOOCs for thousands of students. Some are being run by quality, experienced writing faculty. I had personal experience with one of these courses, and while I remain underwhelmed by these efforts, I believe MOOC-like thinking might yet drive some ideas for writing instruction:

1) Improving the online writing group. If I'm working on a high-stakes writing project and you are working on a high-stakes writing project, we could get together, even by email, and work together quite productively to help one another, yes? MOOCs might help us develop new tech platforms and logistics for facilitating such interactions. Maybe, even better, we will break through with new approaches, pedagogies, and philosophies about peer review.


2) Parallel/"piggyback" writing experiences. I'm putting "experiences" in Italics for a reason -- I'm not thinking of courses. MOOCs are helping us think deeply about how students are educated. Many disciplines lament their students' writing, yet how to fix it within a curriculum? Adding courses is not an option in many cases. Students at Drexel, for instance, are already faced with a tight curriculum. But what if you created an online writing experience -- again, not a course -- that students could encounter in parallel with their other courses? Students could "unlock" progressive components while working on documents and writing skills integral to their success in their particular program. This wouldn't be Massive. It wouldn't be Open. But it could provide students with a structured way to help students write. I have been working with Drexel's School of Ed on exploring something like this for graduate education programs.

3) Rethinking gateways and competencies. Drexel's College of Nursing and Health Professions has been using what some have been calling, somewhat unfortunately, "mini-MOOCs." (Forget the mini-massive contradiction; the idea is good.) Students can enroll in a small cohort for a kind of free gateway course. I'm oversimplifying, but if students succeed in the course and then enroll in the program, they can then be awarded credit for the experience. Lots of students want equivalency credits for writing, and I think this is a potential way to address this problem, which I found nettlesome during my time as Drexel's Director of First-Year Writing. If students can enroll in an open course, they can demonstrate proficiency in ways that could later be counted/certified.

4) Providing highly focused writing instructional experiences. I don't think much of a composition course let alone an entire writing curriculum as a MOOC, but what about running an ongoing four-week course in creating job documents (e.g., cover letter, resume, thank you letter -- very focused)? This course could use the power of peer review productively (and perhaps its development could even be backed/supported by an online resume company). You could design similar courses for highly focused writing contexts.

5) Assessment of student learning. We still have a lot to learn about how teaching is connected with student improvement in writing. Some folks in composition are looking at this very question, based on the early writing MOOCs. The MOOC delivery model may open new avenues of inquiry for us.

Many ideas and technologies are fueling "massification." We, writing teachers, should be working to develop ways of using these concepts and tools, because, if we don't, without a doubt, ideas not of our own will be imposed upon us.

Why OWI?

I’ve had many opportunities over the past year to talk in depth with colleagues from around the country about teaching writing online, and it's made me realize that there’s a good question for the online writing teacher to return to: Why are you teaching writing in these digital environments?

What is driving your teaching of writing online? Are you doing it because you want to? Because you have to? Is this a step in your professional development? Curiosity? Finances?

While self-reflection itself is a good thing, this is not just an effort to know thyself. The answers to these questions can inform what we do in the classroom – and they may help us to uncover in ourselves what I think of as an under appreciated aspect of teaching: teacher satisfaction and, well, happiness. (And our institutions should help us; see OWI Principle 12: "Institutions should foster teacher satisfaction in online writing courses as rigorously as they do for student and programmatic success.")

These questions about our own motivation can also lead to similar queries about programmatic OWI initiatives. In the midst of the mad rush to, ah, I have to say it, explore MOOCs, schools themselves might engage in some productive conversations about origins and goals. Why have schools and their programs explored OWI? What is to be gained for their students? What is to be gained for their faculty? How might OWI shift programmatic and institutional identity?

I believe that understanding who you are as a teacher comes first in your migration to teaching writing online, and part of that understanding is your motivation. Do you love writing? Do you love working closely with students? Are you are seeking the fame and fortune associated with first-year writing instruction? Schools can grapple with the same type of issues for their programs.

As we work through the details first of learning to teach online and then refining our pedagogy, it is worth pausing and asking that core question: Why am I doing this? The answer, carefully considered, perhaps on a slow summer day, will I believe help us do what we do more effectively for ourselves and our students.