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Articles Conference Reviews |
K.36 Understanding State-of-the-Art Online Writing InstructionK.36 Understanding State-of-the-Art Online Writing Instruction: Results from the CCCC Committee’s National Survey on Best Practices The focus of this session as a whole was online writing instructor training and online writing course instructional design for traditional and non-traditional students. To gain a full picture of the overall importance of the session, one needs to understand that the presenters who are members of the Committee on Best Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI) have been active since 2008. Their three years of work culminated with the completion of a nation-wide electronic survey about online writing practices at colleges and universities. The presenters’ challenge for this year was to provide a concise yet comprehensive view of their three-year journey toward an understanding of national practices for online writing instruction using the survey data as the focal point. To overcome the limitations of the 75-minute forum, the chair made sure at the outset that attendees knew how to access a full-report of the raw survey data that would be available via CCCC’s website after Executive Committee approval. In addition to the session chair, there were four speakers; listed below are their names, professional affiliations, and presentation titles as provided at the convention session and the order in which they spoke:
Each of the speakers presented for approximately 10 minutes. One possible commonality that surfaced from each of the presenters was that current institutional support is directed more towards on online technology training rather than online technology pedagogy for particular student populations. Online technology training focuses on preparing teachers to make use of online courseware applications such as Blackboard, whereas online technology pedagogy focuses on how to teach in the online course environment. Highlights gleaned from the individual presentations are listed below. National Survey Results about State of the Art Practices in Online Writing Instruction: Fully Online Contexts Christa Ehmann Powers provided nuggets of information that highlighted “emergent themes” and faculty concerns relative to teaching fully online courses:
Her brief overview indicated that faculty teaching fully online courses may face more challenges and may express more dissatisfaction than faculty teaching hybrid courses. National Survey Results about State of the Art Practices in Online Writing Instruction: Hybrid Contexts Deborah Minter presented a synopsis of parallel “emergent themes” and faculty concerns about hybrid courses similar to those presented for the fully online courses. There were many commonalities among survey responses for the fully online and hybrid context survey data. With the exception of the last bulleted item, the following list represents unique points that were highlighted:
Based on the results presented above, one could sense that faculty who teach in hybrid contexts have a tendency to report a slightly greater degree of positive experiences in comparison to faculty who teach in fully online contexts. Looking Ahead: Best Practices for OWI Sushil Oswal’s initial speaking role, as he explained, was to report on best practices relative to meeting the needs of students with disabilities who were enrolled in online courses. Unfortunately— as evident by his tone—the survey results indicate that a large percentage of faculty who teach online courses do not have a purposeful focus on teaching or designing their courses for students with disabilities. Below are select highlights of quantitative findings that he was able share:
One should note that the speaker himself has a visual impairment, so his concern about the needs of other students with disabilities was quite evident. He summarized his presentation by making the point that any “best practices” for meeting the needs of students with disabilities are “at best questionable” because the nation-wide electronic survey about online writing practices reveals that most faculty are poorly informed about ADA pedagogical issues. Looking Ahead: Best Practices for OWI Webster Newbold focused on possible future guidelines that might be offered to help develop sound online pedagogical practices and to support the needs of online faculty. A select listing of future issues to be addressed include:
The speaker emphasized in closing that the committee’s national survey only captured the information provided by faculty instructors of online courses; therefore, a future study is needed in order to capture student perceptions of their experiences in online courses Comments and Questions from Attendees The chair of the session made it known that the brevity of individual presentations was purposeful to allow an abundance of time for questions and comments from the audience members. The number of attendees filled the majority of available seats and some individuals stood due to lack of easy access to the few available open seats. The number of individuals wanting to asks questions, offer comments, or respond to questions posed by other attendees still exceeded the number of minutes that were available. Listed below are some of the issues brought to the attention of the committee:
The large number of people and the many questions and comments that were shared demonstrate that the issue of online writing instruction is of significant concern to many CCCC members. Concluding Thoughts This presentation by members of the Committee on Best Practices for Online Writing Instruction provides a clear indication that online writing instruction will be an important concern for CCCC in the coming years. It also indicates that future research and analysis needs to take place to ensure that online writing and learning pedagogy receives the needed attention and support that it deserves. |