ABSTRACT

Introduction

Institutions of all kinds are moving to transcend the limitations of “brick-and-mortar” instructional spaces. Many workplaces are, for example, transitioning much of their training into 100% electronic delivery methods. Likewise, a number of colleges and universities hope to prepare graduates for an increasingly web-based and tech-oriented work environment by providing their students with some “e-learning” experience. Some institutions see web-based courses as an integral part of their outreach missions because the courses allow them to reach a population of learners who, restricted by time and/or distance, might not otherwise have access to course work. And many state institutions who have responded to post-9/11 budget cuts by increasing student enrollments see courses taught via the web as one way of addressing the problem of diminishing “seat space” posed by record high enrollments [1] . According to the Sloan Consortium’s most recent survey, the “online enrollment growth rate is over ten times that projected by the National Center for Education Statistics for the general postsecondary population,” and the percentage of schools who identify online learning as a part of their “critical long-term” strategic plan rose from 49% in 2003 to 56% in 2004 [2].

While my focus in this webtext is on 100% web-based courses, there are, of course, many other distance course models which can allow institutions to offer courses at a distance:

• “Hybrid,” or “blended,” courses have students and instructors meet part of the time on site and part of the time via a web-technology--either through simple email and/or message board technologies or through a more fully-developed e-platform with integrated email, message board, chat rooms, and other features such as multimedia presentations and a drop-box for assignments.
• Courses taught via web conferencing allow the sharing of visuals via the web and synchronous (real-time) audio communication.
• Courses can be taught via videoconferencing with a camera on a live instructor, who lectures and facilitates discussion, and cameras on students at various locations around the state or country, who can raise their hands and ask and answer questions in a synchronous exchange.
• Course material can be delivered via CD-ROM, accommodating extensive multimedia applications: pre-recorded lectures, Flash-animated demonstrations, and audio.
• Finally, courses can be run at a distance via printed materials and run primarily through an exchange of assignments via email or snail mail, without the support of a course website or other web-based course platform.

Writing-intensive programs, in particular, present some interesting opportunities for thinking about the potential for and challenges of web-based course delivery methods. Indeed, because writing courses share the basic goal of teaching more effective communication through writing as a top priority, there are issues specific to their learning objectives which must be considered: If learning to write more effectively is an over-arching goal for writing courses, for example, how might course designers and instructors most effectively use text-based e-learning technologies to help students reach that goal? Can a text-based online platform be used effectively—alone or combined with some on-site meetings--for such courses?  How can web-based course designers respond to the heightened anxiety of writing students—many of whom may be adult learners who are returning to school after many years, many of whom have not had formal writing instruction in some time, and many of whom have never taken a web-based course?

As the Sloan Consortium’s survey details, a growing number of writing programs have developed online courses in recent years--sometimes for traditional students as a supplement to existing on-site programs and sometimes for non-traditional students as a corollary to on-site programs. Hybrid programs like Texas Tech's ICON program, or "Interactive Composition Online," integrate interactive web-based teaching tools via a locally created Course Management System (CMS) called “TOPIC” to decrease the number of on-site class meetings, enabling the University to increase class size and make it possible for larger numbers of first year composition students to matriculate each semester. Begun in 2002, ICON uses "peer-interactive process instruction" and “document instructors” (who never meet the students) with sections of first-year writing courses which meet one day a week instead of two.[3] The on-site class time is supplemented by synchronous and asynchronous web-based course activity—peer response, small group discussion, and chat room discussion. Fully web-based writing programs, like the one that I coordinate at West Virginia University, often extensively use the support of a locally created or widely distributed CMS to meet the various goals of the courses. The courses in the program I coordinate were designed with the financial support of our Office of Extended Learning to support the outreach mission of the WVU by serving a population of part-time non-traditional students who are constrained by time and/or distance. We currently offer seven writing courses 100% on-line: the two writing courses required of all students earning undergraduate degrees (Composition and Rhetoric I and II), a web-design course, and four advanced writing courses (Advanced Rhetoric, Editing, Professional Writing, and Technical Writing), which students can take individually, as a part of a multi-disciplinary major, or to complete a minor/concentration or certificate in “Professional Writing and Editing” (PWE).  For students earning a PWE minor/concentration or certificate, we also offer a web-based internship cap-stone course.

Through a discussion of the methodology and resources used to design two 100% web-based writing courses at my home institution, this webtext argues that web-based course designers need to be thoughtful about and critical of the technologies they choose for writing instruction. Simply moving on-site course assignments into a web-based environment and/or making use of the most sophisticated technological tools available for content delivery and class interaction do not make for a successful course. On the contrary, the most pedagogically sound choices for web-based writing course delivery can sometimes be the ones which are not the most technologically advanced. Careful consideration of the target student population is, furthermore, very important to maintain the pedagogical integrity of writing courses.

Simply put, web-based writing course designers need to stay focused on their primary goal: creating a course via technologies which will most effectively enable the target student population to meet the established learning objectives of the course. The choices made about which technological tools should be used for any given distance writing course ought to be informed by careful reflection on the unique characteristics of the course's target student population and that population's familiarity with and access to the technology needed to meet course goals. In configuring the programmatic and course designs for the seven courses I coordinate at WVU, my decision-making process was always explicitly framed by my understanding of our specific adult-learner population’s demographics: the kinds of computers and internet connections they had, the extra-curricular time commitments to jobs and people, and their economic situations.

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