Documenting the long, proud history of OWI pedagogy

I'm psyched to share that a Computers and Composition article I co-authored with my four fantastic colleagues Jessie Borgman, Amy Cicchino, Heidi Skurat Harris, and Casey McArdle has now been published: "From correspondence to cloud: The history of research and online writing instruction"(1). 

As we describe in the abstract, in the article "we explore the historical trajectory of OWI through five distinct eras." Starting in the 1980s, we provide a detailed review of "landmark publications, organizational initiatives, educational crises, and technological inflection points to trace how OWI evolved into a sophisticated area of inquiry and practice." For 40 years, OWI has been driving innovation in Rhetoric & Composition/Writing Studies, carving out its own clear existence as a field.

Thinking ahead, especially with the issues posed by AI/LLMs for writing instruction, we close "with recommendations for how OWI can build on its rich history to address new and ongoing challenges."

The article includes a timeline of significant technology, distance ed, and OWI events as well as an extensive bibliography. 

I hope you have a chance to check it out. And if all goes well, several of my co-authors and I will be talking more about it in a Computers and Composition-supported round table at CCCC in 2027.

Note:

1) Borgman, Jessie, Amy Cicchino, Heidi Skurat Harris, Casey McArdle, and Scott Warnock. "From correspondence to cloud: The history of research and online writing instruction." Computers and Composition 80 (June 2026).

Maybe someday, "I taught an LMS today..."--but not yet

AI--yep, it's been infringing on fundamentals of writing instruction, as almost every professional conversation in the field would indicate. Teachers are scrambling to find reliable plagiarism checkers. Blue books and oral exams are re-emerging. People are eyeing retirement so they don't have to deal with this.

I have clearly staked out territory in my career as an advocate for asynchronous online writing courses (OWCs), working from my conviction that the written digital exchanges among OWC students are arguably better for their learning than onsite courses. I wrote in my 2009 book Teaching Writing Online: "The online environment also provides us with an opportunity specifically because of the subject matter of the writing course [...] Our constant efforts to work with student texts are unique and irreplaceable, and our model of technology use can be perhaps the most humanistic in the academy" (xxi)

"Unique and irreplaceable"--I feel like this been a wheelhouse for writing teachers, and a space that allows us to maintain student writing--as well as identity--authenticity.

But recent coverage of the release of Einstein, an agentic AI program that allegedly connects with common LMS systems and basically completes all coursework for students, has (even) me wondering about the endeavor. As reported in a February 26, 2026 Inside Higher Ed article by Kathryn Palmer, Einstein "logs into Canvas every day, watches lectures, reads essays, writes papers, participates in discussions, and submits your homework—automatically.”

This program and others that will undoubtedly follow carry the threat of a non-human agent making its way through a course in ways that may be indistinguishable from a human. Damn, I could teach a bot!

Michelle Kassorla, Associate Professor of English at Georgia State University | Perimeter College, Dunwoody, provided a good write-up/review of Einstein on her Academic Platypus Substack. Kassorla signed up for Einstein using a debit card with no money on it and her son's computer (to avoid institutional IT woes). She immediately saw that it's pricey for a college student: The Plus plan, the apparently lowest-tier, is $40/month. She recorded her experience and then quickly (in 2 minutes and 30 seconds) discovered "that Einstein is just a wrapper over OPENCLAW! AAAAAAAH I had just installed an agent that runs in the terminal in my son’s computer—potentially exposing EVERYTHING on it to the agent. I got off the recording ASAP to delete the program from my son’s computer." (1)

You can read more about Kassorla's take on a program of which she says, "However, it is probably duping students, who have no idea how dangerous it is."

Yet she ends with a glimmer of hope--at least for now. Kassorla makes some suggestions that online writing teachers can certainly relate to: "What can we do about this? Design your courses carefully, scaffold, make them process oriented, and put in some hard stops where students have to do a hard thing that you grade before they can move on."

At this point, there's still teacher volition, and I want to emphasize that the IHE article perked up my antenna a little because it says Einstein (my emphasis) "can help with any subject, including math, physics, computer science, history, literature and economics, and even keeps working when students are asleep." In that list, I didn't see writing--I see all content courses.

We're still teaching humans. There are challenges out there, but we're not spending our time only making bits in Canvas "smarter," not yet. 

Note:

1) According to Wikipedia,"OpenClaw serves as an agentic interface for autonomous workflows across supported services. OpenClaw bots run locally and are designed to integrate with an external large language model such as Claude, DeepSeek, or one of OpenAI's GPT models."

A mix of approaches in this term's asynch OWC

I'm again teaching an asynchronous first-year online writing course (OWC) this term, and in an environment of increasing AI apps in which teachers not only worry about academic integrity but have more fundamental concerns about what it means to teach writing, I have found myself working from established practices while still refining them to account for the fast-paced changes we're facing.

I'm engaged in a variety of practices to try to maintain a writing-heavy class environment, some of which I've written about individually before:

• I'm again using the "textual brew" of unusual texts and discussion prompts.
• I'm trying to strengthen the relationship between the discussion posts and the major course projects.
• Speaking of discussions, I'm using them in a tried-and-true way to see a great deal of informal student writing: It's mid week 4, and in a class of 20 we're already over 550 posts (including my contributions).
• Drawing on the fundamental nature of low-stakes, informal writing, I'm having students in mini  assignments--right on the discussions!--analyze and revise their own posts; e.g., revising out instances of the verb "to be" in a post they choose.
  
• I've included the stoplight approach to AI that I mentioned last time.
• I'm asking students to include a one-page metacommentary about their use of AI in conjunction with that stoplight approach.
  
• Working with several of my colleagues in a mini teaching circle, I've assigned a fantastic book that helps students take a critical look at technology, Jason Ohler's Taming the Beast.

How's it all going? Talk to me after the quarter is over. However, I'm enjoying it: The challenge is there. These practices have created a productive pressure on my pedagogical approaches.

GSOLE Principles and Tenets revision presentation at CCCC 25 in Baltimore

Since its founding in 2016, the Global Society of Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE) has continued to grow and evolve, expanding its membership, initiatives, and offerings.

A key example of this evolution has been a recent effort by the GSOLE leadership (you can see current leadership here) to revise GSOLE's Online Literacy Instruction (OLI) Principles and Tenets, which were approved and published by the GSOLE Executive Board on June 13, 2019. Somehow, over five years have passed since our group developed these initial guidelines for OLI.

In education generally and literacy/writing specifically, much has changed since June 2019, and many of those changes, especially pandemic-related online learning and now the impact of AI, need to be examined in terms of the way we approach OLI. 

I'm part of this revision effort, and a hardworking group mainly broke up the work into subcommittees to evaluate how the Principles and Tenets might change. My subcommittee focused on AI.

We just learned of the acceptance of our proposal for CCCC 25 in Baltimore to present both the results of this work as well as the process we took to get there. We'll be eager to share the way that what we believe were fundamentally sound--they really are!--initial Principles and Tenets have adapted in the face of major changes in the landscape of OLI.

Kairos publication: "OWI—A Future of Challenge and Possibility"

I was fortunate to work with ten talented colleagues as part of the recently published multimedia interview project "OWI—A Future of Challenge and Possibility" in Kairos (1).

This innovative publication placed experienced online writing instruction (OWI) teacher-researchers in dialogue with each other about key questions in the field.

Initially, project leaders Jason Snart and Jessie Borgman asked each "author" to post a question in a brief 20-second or so audio and/or video. Snart and Borgman helped matched each question with another participant, who responded with a lengthier audio, video, or text.

Adding another layer, a different contributor then had the option to provide a short reply to each question's response.

Snart and Borgman encouraged free play among the ideas from the beginning, communicating via email that even if the questions the 11 of us initially drafted were not used as written, they "bet the ideas will re-emerge as our question-answer conversation builds, not to mention the very late stage of everybody having another chance to come in and do new replies or comment on comments, etc."

The result is an overlay of thinking and commentary, a web-like representation of knowledge creation that well suits OWI.

It is also the kind of unconventional publication that is characteristic of the OWI mind, and I was glad to have been a part of it. Check it out.

Note

1) Issue 28.2. In addition to Snart and Borgman Jennifer Cunningham, Natalie Stillman-Webb, Joanna Whetstone, Heidi Skurat Harris, Casey McArdle, Cat Mahaffey, Lyra Hilliard, and Mary Stewart.

AI apps and student writing worries?: An old, reliable OWT practice can help

I wish I was writing about this cool, high-tech (and maybe high-profit!) way of dealing with the AI chatbot app storm and the implications for students submitting inauthentic texts in your courses.

But I won't leave you in suspense: I'm not.

Instead, to help increase the chances that you are reading authentic student texts, building on my last post, I suggest you lean heavily on three things:

1. A "text brew" of different, course-specific readings that students must synthesize into one piece of writing.
2. Students drawing on their personal writing and learning experiences.
3. A dialogic writing environment on message boards.

This approach won't solve all your problems, and it takes me back to one of the first posts I ever composed for this space, back in September 2005: using message boards!

During my winter '23 course, I realized what most of us have: When assigning writing assignments, we cannot now do what we've always done. Short response papers, canned/recycled essay topics, papers that are just exams-disguised-as-writing--AI chatbots can easily, and sometimes expertly, respond to them. We need to be nimbler and more innovative.

Make no mistake, these assignment adjustments will require preparation time. We need to find texts that speak to a topic you want to discuss, develop a prompt about those texts, and then have the students write and respond to each other on threads. However, we may find ourselves increasingly replacing the time we spend assessing/grading "big" papers with more closely looking at these types of student texts.

I taught a first-year writing course in the winter, and I ran some of my prompts through ChatGPT; I was struck by the inability of the app to respond. In simple terms, I knew who was on the other end: No one.

For instance, I used this combination of texts several times:

1. Two articles from the excellent anthology series Writing Spaces, which contains chapters about writing written for a student audience.
   
2. An article from The Atlantic Monthly magazine; I had assigned an issue of the magazine as a class text.
3. A student-authored reading from something special we have at Drexel: A long-standing annual publication The 33rd, which features award-winning student writing and faculty writing in various genres and disciplines.

I shook up this "brew" of texts and wrote message board prompts asking this of students:

1. Address a specific aspect of writing discussed in the Writing Spaces chapter.
2. Use the Atlantic and 33rd pieces to provide specific examples of that aspect of writing.
   
3. Describe their own specific writing experiences in the context of this conversation.
   

Of course, this was happening on message boards, so part of the writing requirements were that they respond directly to each other in context. Note that the posts are evidence-driven; I even ask that they provide brief works cited/resources lists. Also, I emphasized that message board posts are informal: I don't expect them to be mechanically perfect.

On a given thread, students wrote substantively, sometimes easily surpassing 1,000 words in multiple posts.

My prompts aren't foolproof, but based on my sample runs, ChatGPT didn't have command of Writing Spaces texts and had zero "knowledge" of The 33rd, so its efforts to respond to my prompts were awkward at best. Because of my "informal" guideline, the AI-generated texts also stood out and looked odd.

What I'm suggesting isn't perfect. Right now, nothing is. But tilting my class away from "traditional" papers to dialogic writing helps me feel that when I look at student writing, what I get is, well, theirs.

ChatGPT and online writing environments

Like many of you, I've been inundated with information about ChatGPT. For some, the sky is falling. For others, these generative AI language modeling technologies represent opportunity.

For many of us in the writing instructional world, the response is kind of this: Told ya so.

ChatGPT is more powerful than other AI apps, stretching way back to that old chatterbot Eliza. It can wow and amaze--to a point. If you ask it canned school writing topics/prompts, you'll get back canned responses. What's been surprising to me is how many people will say, "This looks like what a student could have written." That depends on what you've asked those students to write.

If you put students in conversational, multi-audience writing environments in which they write to discuss a variety of texts, not to prove knowledge mastery (or even that they've simply read), even another human trying to help a student cheater would struggle.

Such environments are the foundation of many online writing courses (OWCs).

In online writing instruction (OWI) workshops I conduct for faculty, I have a slide for when people inevitable express concerns about about plagiarism in the type of asynchronous OWCs we focused on. The slide would initially be blank, and then using a Powerpoint animation, a big red heart appears. "Colleagues," I would say, "If someone else is doing all this work, it's gotta be love!"

My point was that the work being done in my asynchronous writing courses was so extensive and involved that anyone who tried to replicate it, week in and week out, for another student would basically have to take the whole course in that student's stead. They would really have to like that person! I guess I could have alternated my big heart with a dollar sign, because such substitute studenting could only be done for love or money.

We may be worried about ChatGPT's ability to respond to writing questions/prompts such as "Describe Hamlet's indecision" or "provide reasons why you are for/against gun control," but teachers should always be concerned about student responses to these kinds of prompts.

To paraphrase crudely: It's the assignment, stupid. (I wrote about this in lay terms on my other blog.)

If you have students writing in multi-audience, multi-text environments such as class message boards, you're going to provide them with very specific rhetorical situations that it would be difficult for someone to engage in without clearly appearing out of place.

I'm back almost to day one on this blog: Use discussions/message boards and other asynchronous environments. Here is a brief example of a prompt I used in my first-year argument writing course plugged into ChatGPT and the AI model's response; I include comments in the text:

Peer review challenges [*My prompt]

Dear class, 

DePeter’s chapter focuses on providing “meaningful” peer review (Reid mentions review too). What has your experience been like through your school years as a peer reviewer? In terms of being a reviewee, what sort of specific revision challenges do you tend to encounter during the drafting process? How do you work with those challenges? 

I asked you this week to read Mai. What peer review advice might you offer this author? 

Thanks,
Prof. Warnock 

ChatGPT response 

As a language model, I do not have personal experience as a peer reviewer or reviewee [*AI honesty]. However, I can provide information on best practices for peer review. 

DePeter and Reid [These are readings from Writing Spaces, a superb anthology series designed for student writers to help them think about and study writing as subject matter] emphasize the importance of providing meaningful feedback during the peer review process [*Peer review is only mentioned tangentially in Reid's chapter]. This includes focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of the manuscript [*The word "manuscript" doesn't appear in Reid or DePeter--it's a jarring, out-of-context word] , providing specific and actionable suggestions for revision, and approaching the review with a constructive and supportive attitude [*This is nice,  highly general stuff about peer review but not specific to DePeter; in short, anyone could have written it, and it doesn't answer the prompt]. 

In terms of specific revision challenges, authors may struggle with organization, clarity, and coherence of their manuscript [*Again]. They may also have difficulty with grammar and punctuation. To work with these challenges, authors should review their manuscript for these issues and consider seeking feedback from beta readers or a writing group [*Both of these terms are also jarring and acontextual considering the readings. These comments are, bluntly, much less interesting that what actual students said, some of whom had visceral, emotional experiences with peer review].

As for offering advice to Mai [*Mai is an award-winning first-year student essay found in Drexel's in-house annual publication, The 33rd], I would recommend that they [*They AI smartly chooses "they"] focus on the organization and coherence of their manuscript [Again, "manuscript"; Mai's piece is clearly an essay or even paper]. They may also consider seeking feedback from beta readers or a writing group [*Again, both of these terms are jarring considering the readings] to help identify any areas that may be confusing or unclear. Additionally, It's important for them to be open to feedback and willing to make revisions based on the feedback they receive. [This advice is obviously not specific to Mai's essay. Students in my course provided advice about her use of personal reflection as well as the kinds of sources she used. Responses like this make it evident the respondent did not read Mai's essay].

ChatGPT is indeed amazing and teachers are finding great applications for it: I've already collected scores of links. Teachers, it won't ruin our lives--but it may sharpen our teaching, if we let it.

Notes on getting going in my remote classes

We're never going back to where we were. We know that know. Many components of what we have been doing as online and remote teachers will remain with us, offering new ways for us to challenge and work with students. 

I've kept some notes about how I get things going in my remote classes, which for me means synchronous, Zoom-based courses. (Comment: I normally teach small-sized online writing/literacy courses, so everything here may not scale.)

Paper. I like computers. They are wonderful. They make me happy. However, paper and pencils remain great technologies. I always have brought hard-copy notes with me into my onsite courses (I have "packets" of notes going back to the 1990s), and I have maintained that practice in remote teaching. Interestingly, it often feels easier to refer to and use those notes when I'm on Zoom, where any paper shuffling is off screen.

Cameras on!? I still don't have a consistent "policy" or approach. Some days I think, "They all need to have their cameras on!" Other days, I agree strongly with those who have commented how intrusive and uncomfortable that can be for students. So I have let it go: They can choose whether they want a camera on. This term, I usually have about a quarter or a third of students with cameras on.

Jotting down names as students enter class. As students appear in the class, I jot down their names in the margin of those hard copy notes. It gives me a reliable attendance list. I also greet each student each day, and I knew everyone's name, pronunciation, and spelling from the go. This list of names also gives me an easy way to keep track of...

...Participation. In a strategy that will also work well for onsite teaching, I use that list to easily record participation. I've always had a participation component, even if it's just extra credit, and now I can write down a check or a + next to a student's name. I do hear those who suggest not grading participation (such as James Lang in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article), but for me participation can take many forms, including a chat comment or working together in breakout rooms (which I always virtually "stroll" through to see if they have questions).

Quizzes. I almost always start class with an easy reading quiz. All they have to do is read. (I wrote about this here a long time ago.) They take these timed quizzes for the first eight to ten minutes of class. In Blackboard, completed quizzes appear in the Grade Center under Needs Grading. While students are finishing, I start grading a few of them, which is not only a time saver, but it helps me make sure I haven't asked a bad question. The quiz opens two minutes before class starts so early risers can get at it. When everyone is finished, which I can see in Blackboard, we immediately review the answers; my hope is students have done well and feel good starting the class.

I have not required students to have cameras on during these quizzes; however, you can’t take the quiz if you’re not "in" class! I do think well of my students, and I assume they are not going to cheat. However, I can mix up questions at times through the use of Blackboard Questions Sets, which allows teachers to create random quiz questions. Again, the point of the quizzes is that they are fast-paced and easy--read and you're in great shape!--so I hope that discourages cheating.

Moderators, I've recently discussed using chat moderators. This is a good practice, even if the chat is often quiet.

ClassNotes file. I have a ClassNotes Word file to cut-and-paste text into the chat. It makes the flow in class smoother for breakout group instructions: I have the instructions readily available to clip into the chat.

Questions? After the quiz review, I always take a moment to ask if there are any questions. I'm patient, and I allow my "Any questions about what's going on?" question to linger for a minute or so before we get into class.

These are a few strategies that have helped me get my remote courses started. Some are carry-overs from onsite teaching. Others will help me with onsite teaching. And, of course, some just help me become a better teacher overall--which is the spirit of online writing and literacy instruction.

Syllabus language for participating in an online or remote course

I have included versions of the following on my online course syllabi for many years, and I recently further crafted this information to account for our collective move to remote learning. The goal is to address straightforwardly at the start of the term some primary concerns students have about learning online. 

Participating in an Online Remote Course 

As you know, [course name] is an online remote course. We will meet both synchronously and asynchronously, using the many educational technology tools available. Synchronous meetings, which include classes at the listed times as well as one-on-one conferences, will take place via Zoom or Blackboard (Bb) Learn Collaborate Ultra [your video platform]. We will try both and see which one works best for you. For asynchronous interactions, we will work primarily on [your LMS] Discussions. Such conversations are a component of most of my classes, and I especially use them in online courses. [Describe other asynchronous methods you might use.] 

Those of you who are nervous about working in this way should contact me immediately. [Describe here briefly your experience teaching online if you like.] 

Video Presence 

Unlike your typical class experience in which you sit in a classroom, you will be participating in much of this course via synchronous video media, and, in many ways, you have more freedom to choose how you present yourself. Consider that your instructor and your peers can see and hear you: How will you want to present yourself and your environment?

While I would like you to use your camera as much as possible, I am empathetic to those who do not want their cameras on at all times. You don’t need to have a reason. However, if you don’t have your camera turned on, you must periodically post a comment in the course chat. 

Factors to Help You Succeed in an Online Course 

This may be your first time in an online remote course. You’ll no doubt find this a different experience than that of an onsite class. Following are some things to consider as you begin this online learning course. 

*Follow the course schedule.* I create a careful course schedule to help you stay organized. If you closely read and follow the schedule, you significantly increase your ability to succeed in the course. 

Deadlines. It is crucial that you adhere to the class deadlines. 

Motivation. Research about student behaviors in online courses has shown that students who participate early in these courses, particularly on message boards, have higher grades in the courses overall. You can’t control everything, but you can control when you get involved in class discussions. Post early—and often—during our online asynchronous conversations! 

Contact. You can contact me via: [Tailor this based on your communication preferences.]

• Phone. Don’t hesitate to call the number listed on the syllabus. 
• Discussions. We can have conversations on our Bb Discussions. 
• Email. You need to become familiar with your school email account. That account can easily be forwarded to another account, but I will use your school account to send you mail. We’ll do a lot of corresponding that way. 
• Chat. Sometimes we will correspond via chat, particularly the day before an assignment is due. 

I will spend time checking email and Discussions for course messages each day. Basically, I will be quite plugged in to what is happening in the course. 

You may be tempted in an online course to think of your professor as a robot who never sleeps. While you are college students, and you may do some of your most productive work at 2:00 a.m., I am an old(ish) man who goes to sleep at 10:30 p.m. Remember that when you email me in the wee hours of the night. If you want to meet in person, the three-dimensional me can be found in [office location].

Space and time. You’re working online. Where should you do this work? Sitting at a desk or a table in a space with minimal distractions is ideal. 

There is a big difference between working at home and homework. While we will work in a primarily synchronous way, when we have asynchronous work, you need to treat that time when you are writing and thinking about the class material as real class time, and, again, you need a quiet work space. In fact, you will have a lot more success in college if you learn to carve out a space when you study. When possible, ask your friends, roommates, and/or family to give you a break during a set time each day. I know you are probably all skilled multi-taskers, but if you get into bad study habits early on, they will be hard to break later. 

Feeling isolated? Remember, while our class is online, I’m a real-live human being. If you have concerns, reach out to me.

Students paying it forward

How will students know what to expect in your online writing course (OWC)? How will they know what they have to do to succeed?

Let them hear from students past.

While I have many activities and instructions early in the term to help my students understand what they need to do to do well in our course, I began to realize that perhaps the best way for them to understand what the class would be like would be to hear from those who had already done it! (1)

So, at the end of the term, I offer students this discussion board extra credit opportunity:

SUBJ: Advice for extra credit
Hi all,
Some of you have asked about a little extra credit. There's so much work--and so many grades!--in the course, plus you get extra credit for high-level participation on the Discussions--which many of you have earned--that I'm always reluctant to give other extra credit.

However, in the spirit of the final week, let's do this: If you can write a succinct, one-sentence piece of advice that you would provide to a student in a future iteration of Prof. Warnock's online English 102 course, I will provide you with a little extra credit.
Curious to see these,
ProfW

In response, they give smart, focused advice to future students.

For instance, they provide specific information about the so-important discussions:

• The amount of thought and originality you put into discussion boards posts will equal the amount you enjoy the class. 
• The path to success in this class relies on a personal decision to be proactive on the discussion boards, and a strong drive to gain from other views. 
• My advice would be to take the discussion posts pretty seriously because they're a major part in this class and they make the writer think before writing. There are many posts that are designed to help you become a better writer and also learn from other students. 
• My advice would be: Be early and active in the discussions.
• A big part of the discussions that Prof Warnock likes (but many forget) is citing sources and using them in order to support your claim.
• Don't treat discussion board posts as homework, treat them as actual discussions, try and get involved in actual discussions. (It goes by much quicker when you do that) 
• The key to earning a good grade in this online course is to stay on top of the course discussions, they are responsible for the majority of your grade and all it takes is to log in once a day and share your thoughts. 

They have some thoughts about time management:

• Also, start doing your work as soon as possible instead of doing it all at once. 
• My advice would be to stay up-to-date on reading and writing discussion posts and to reach out for help in the early stages of projects and assignments if needed.
• If you came into an online class expecting to do less work then a traditional class, you are greatly mistaken.
• Do not wait until the very last moment to start your posts for the week because you will forget about the deadlines and miss them.  

They give some ideas about reading:

•  Read the homework readings closely and carefully, this will help you on quizzes and discussion boards but will also truly benefit your writing overall. 
• My advice would be to read everything -- your classmates can be your biggest asset. 

The even offer general advice about writing in a first-year course:

• Try to develop a passion for what you are writing about because it will certainly help you with writing a paper and it will make the final product better… 
• My advice would be to not let yourself get intimidated when it comes to writing, you'll get more out of the course if you start off just letting yourself write freely. 

I offer a curated version of this ever-growing list to students at the beginning of the term. I feel that while of course I hope they listen to me as I prepare them for the weeks ahead, there's no better way for them to set some expectations than to hear from those who have been down that virtual road already.

Note:
(1) This was the thinking that drove Writing Together: Ten Weeks Teaching and Studenting in an Online Writing Course, which I co-authored with former student Diana Gasiewski.

GSOLE crisis support for remote writing instruction

Many of you have experienced the recent upheaval of having to convert/migrate your courses into remote formats.

A few weeks ago the Global Society of Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE) began building resources and support for teachers and schools faced with sudden CoVID-19-related campus closures. Little did we know that that would soon mean almost everyone.

GSOLE now has available a robust set of materials to help:

• The Just In Time Hub is a gateway to our various resources, including those below as well as excellent written materials to help you think through course conversion/migration. This material has continued to be updated: www.glosole.org/justintime.html
• Just Ask GSOLE provides a direct link to discussion forums moderated by GSOLE online writing/literacy instruction experts who can answer your specific questions: www.glosole.org/justaskgsole.html
• Walk-In Webinars is a direct link to live Zoom sessions hosted by GSOLE members. Every week, the schedule of facilitators is listed there along with specific topics: www.glosole.org/walkinwebinars.html

Specific questions can be directed to JustAskGSOLE@glosole.org. You can also follow GSOLE on Twitter @gsoleducators for updates on GSOLE's efforts and visit our general website at www.glosole.org for other material and information.

We have been chugging away for about three weeks with this project, and it is important that I share with you the names of the people behind this effort. Following are the primary contributors, including their role in GSOLE and institutional affiliations:

• Amanda Bemer, Webmaster, Southwest Minnesota State University, is facilitating our interfaces and communications.
• Collin Bjork, Member, Massey University-New Zealand, is facilitating Walk-in Webinars.
• Amy Cicchino, Executive Board At-Large Member and Affiliates Chair, Auburn, is coordinating and curating many of the Just-in-Time resources.
• Jenae Druckman Cohn, Webinar Co-Chair, Stanford, talked with me about the initial ideas for our response and is helping coordinate the Walk-in Webinars.
• Jennifer Cunningham, Member, Kent State, is facilitating Walk-in Webinars.
• Kevin DePew, Certification Committee Co-Chair, Old Dominion, is facilitating Walk-in Webinars.
• Miranda Egger, Executive Board At-Large Member, University of Colorado Denver, is coordinating and moderating the JustAskGSOLE email and message board questions.
• Tess Evans, Secretary, Miami University of Ohio, has contributed to the Just-in-Time resources.
• Brendan Hawkins, Florida State University, has contributed to the Just-in-Time resources.
• Lyra Hilliard, Member, University of Maryland, is facilitating Walk-in Webinars.
• Cat Mahaffey, Treasurer, University of North Carolina Charlotte, is facilitating Walk-in Webinars.
• Kim Fahle Peck, Communications and Membership Chair, York College of Pennsylvania, is coordinating the social media communications for this effort.
• Dan Seward, Vice President, Ohio State, developed the Just-in-Time web presence and interface and is the point person for maintaining it.
• Jason Snart, Online Literacies Open Resource Editor, College of DuPage, is facilitating Walk-in Webinars and has helped with our communications.
• Mary Stewart, Webinar Co-Chair, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, has created the schedule and plans for the Walk-in Webinars is facilitating Webinars
• Natalie Stillman-Webb, Member, University of Utah, is facilitating Walk-in Webinars.
• Jessi Ulmer, Executive Board At-Large Member, Texas Tech University, has contributed to the Just-in-Time resources.

I’m really glad that the resources and support that this group has provided have been useful to members of our professional communities, and we're going to build on these materials as we  continue what for all of us are untrodden educational paths.

Accessibility in your OWC -- and a tool for Blackboard users

Recently, a good friend and colleague visited my office to discuss a problem she was having with an upcoming online writing course she was to teach. Our institution's Disability Office was asking her to verify that her course was accessible.

While course accessibility is not only a key function of that office but an obligation of institutions and teachers, the problem was a disjunction between the way Disability wanted to examine/confirm accessibility and the way her teaching materials were designed.

The disjunction had several causes, and primary was the expectations of course "evaluators" and the course design/pedagogy of an online writing course.

Disability asked my friend, repeatedly, to deliver "documents" to them so those "documents" could be reviewed for accessibility.

But in an OWC, class artifacts often don't exist as discrete, file-like content to be delivered to students or others, especially if the course is well designed in conjunction with the LMS, in our case Blackboard Learn. That's just not the way many of us work. We don't lecture through slides. We don't provide canned modules. Courses are built dynamically around student written dialogues.

So, in my friend's class, many of her materials were embedded in or incorporated into the course interface, making it impossible to package and "send" them to someone to review. In looking at these materials, I found they were indeed well woven into the LMS.

So what was she to do?

Well, aside from our conversations, she went to our IT department. As I've mentioned to anyone I can, we have great IT support. They introduced her to Blackboard Ally, which, according to Blackboard's site, "is a revolutionary product that integrates seamlessly into the Learning Management System and focuses on making digital course content more accessible."

Ally is indeed an interesting accessibility product. It provides an "accessibility percentage" next to the artifacts and components of a course, and in many cases it includes helpful detail when items are not 100% accessible as to why, from uncaptioned images to tables without headers to the absence of ALT-text.

Some will especially love Ally's interface, as the use of percentages kind of gamifies the process: You can continue to "up" your percentage by uncovering and then addressing the accessibility obstacles in your course.

With Ally, my friend was able to verify the accessibility of her course. There was still a bit of a frustration, though, as Disability wasn't in clear contact with IT: This made me realize that Disability offices need to understand the kinds of on-campus tools that can help create accessible courses.

In the end it worked out well: She was able to help Disability understand there was a new tool to help with accessibility. Most importantly, she was able to offer an accessible OWC for her students -- while learning about a new tool that she can use proactively in the future.

How well do we know them?

How well will we know the students in our online and hybrid courses?

Teachers often express this concern to me. Will they be able to achieve the same level of community, perceived or real, as they do with students in onsite courses? Will students' interactions with them feel the same? How about students' interactions with each other? In the future, will they recognize and remember these students? What replaces the experience of knowing that takes shape when students sit in front of them day after day?

At the end of my hybrid FYW course last term, one of the course's solid students, Gabriella, made this provocative comment on the course discussion boards: "After this term I feel like I know people's names, values & viewpoints but I truly do not know them because of our 'cyber-interactions.'"

As I mentioned in a subsequent exchange on the boards, this fascinating comment prompted some serious thinking and reflection on my part.

On the one hand, the trifecta of "names, values & viewpoints" seemed to represent a very successful construction of a learning community in the course.

After all, in most onsite classes, students only know a few of their classmates' names -- in fact, I'm struck by how many students come to our writing center and can't even provide their professor's name! Add to this the knowing of "values & viewpoints," and it would seem that our course developed a level of intellectual familiarity that surpasses onsite learning, except perhaps in small, advanced seminars.

However, Gabriella's comment demonstrates that despite how well she felt she became acquainted with her classmates, she still did not "know them because of our 'cyber-interactions.'"

So, at the end of the term, she was torn: She had, in a hybrid modality, interacted with students both in class and in tiered, rich discussion boards. She knew important things about their thinking. She knew what they stood for. But, for her, "cyber-interactions" still got in the way.
 
I mean, how well do I know them? I feel I do know my OWC students well. I even glanced at the folder containing the scores of recommendation letters I've written, and I notice that I have written many letters for students I encountered only in hybrid and fully online settings.

Yet, this brief, provocative comment by this smart student makes me realize we must continue to overcome the barriers that digital learning poses for our students. Part of that, perhaps, is that we must find ways to help students and teachers recognize that they are in fact already seeing around those barriers.

Writing Together book coming out soon

The new book that I co-authored with former Drexel student Diana Gasiewski is coming out soon. Writing Together: Ten Weeks Teaching and Studenting in an Online Writing Course will -- fingers crossed! -- be ready by CCCC in Kansas City.

Diana and I are excited -- to say the least -- about the book. It's a narrative of a teacher and student's experience in a first-year OWC. It's written somewhat as a "call and response": I describe in great detail how I approached and taught the course that term, and Diana describes her experience as a student -- we draw from Mary Louise Pratt in calling her experience "studenting" -- that same term.

NCTE, especially Kurt Austin and Bonny Graham, has been a great partner, from concept to cover art.

We hope that our narrative approach to composition scholarship is informative as well as engaging, and that it helps open up new channels of inquiry about the student experience in OWI.

We also would like this book to help refine and enhance not just how we see OWCs and teach them, but how we see our students as collaborators in knowledge-making about our field. We write in our intro, citing many other voices in composition, about how absent student voices can be in our conversations, but we're not picking on comp/rhet: This issue is widespread in education.

Our book aims to be a story of teaching and studenting, of how writers came together in a virtual educational community to work and learn together. Above all, we hope you enjoy it.

Inside the node

Researchers in many fields have been studying and mapping networked interactions among groups and individuals, particularly in social media spaces. But I believe no one is better equipped than those of us in OWI in general and composition specifically to study what happens in the nodes themselves. Yes, there is so much in the node for us.

My co-author Diana Gasiewski and I have just submitted to NCTE the final manuscript of our book "Writing Together: Ten Weeks Teaching and Studenting in an Online Writing Course" (more about that very soon). For some of the weeks in the OWC we describe in the book, we provide simple maps of course discussion threads to give readers a glimpse of those interactions -- and how they became more involved as the course progressed. Here is a blown-up piece of one thread:

Many fields, e.g., computer science or sociology or communications, have provided fascinating insights into the black squiggly lines -- how (and sometimes why) entities interact and connect in webs of networks. Software tools have been developed to do this mapping, even do-it-yourself apps like NodeXL (1). Through these analyses, we can see how individuals behave in networked settings, whether it is dozens of students in a class or hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter.

But while comp/rhet folks are also interested in these webs of interaction, we are also uniquely equipped to look within the nodes, as, for us, each contains the artifact we study best: writing (or multimedia).

We can complement and augment the work in other fields that investigates these network maps by describing what happens within these nodes in the context of the overall environment, essentially using our field's tools of inquiry.

I think this gives us a tremendous niche from which to work. Analyzing the links and spaces between nodes is valuable for sure; it shows us in new ways how human beings interact. But in the node, in the node we may find out what we’re thinking, and how specifically that thinking inspired the response -- or the leap to the next node.

Note:

1) See https://nodexl.codeplex.com/