Hacking the Lecture

This case study will detail the experience of one composition instructor and her efforts to adapt a collaborative, student-centered freshman composition course to the online environment using a lecture video-focused course delivery. Lectures can be understood as “content lectures” or “presence lectures,” which are recorded lectures meant to model writing skills or communicate concern and support, rather than delivering information to be recalled on an exam. Effective composition pedagogy, because it is often more emotionally labor intensive than lecture-based pedagogy, can be compromised if online writing classes are only conducted textually. Auditory and visual communication creates richer social presence than text-only interactions, but it also introduces logistical challenges of creating an authentic digital space and ensuring the materials are accessible to all learners. To overcome these obstacles while still giving students a feel of the instructor's social presence, pre-recording short presence lectures can be a useful compromise as writing instructors explore the potential of online learning.

Using Online Writing Communities to Teach Writing MOOCs

The immense enrollment capacity of massive open online courses (MOOCs) radically decenters student and teacher authority in the writing classroom. However, online writing communities teach each other how to write effectively within that community, a type of writing instruction which could be leveraged in a MOOC. The author qualitatively coded the types of writing questions and feedback posted on a technical writing forum, Technical Writing World and discovered that writing questions focused on technical writing genres, style guides, documentation practices, lower order concerns, and revision or outsourcing of work. Responses often directed the original poster to research the rhetorical situation within a specific company. The author then outlined three pedagogical approaches for writing MOOCs: students could ask writing questions from professionals on similar writing websites, conduct qualitative studies of similar online writing communities to learn their underlying writing values, and participate in MOOCs that were organized to be communities of practice.

What's a “Technician” to Do?

Karl Marx wrote about the importance of the worker in the role of machinery. Further, Marx discusses how machines replace the role of the factory workers. With the workers replaced, the care of the machines is left to technicians, who continually repair and maintain the machines. MOOCs exist under similar circumstances. Just as a machine may replace workers on a production line, a single MOOC replaces classroom instructors. Thus, the teacher/designer, the one who maintains the MOOC, exists in similar conditions as Marx's worker and Ellul's technician. Using a Marxist lens, one can examine closer how these sorts of theoretical concerns espoused by Marx, Ellul, and other thinkers in technology consider the design and use of MOOCs. The MOOC must either be constantly updated (with new and fresh information) or perish (to be replaced by a better MOOC). In this chapter, the author will flush out other challenges within the scope of MOOC maintenance, delivery, and other concerns as they connect to MOOC infrastructure and issue of maintenance.

Contact and Interactivity in Televised Learning

This chapter revisits earlier studies on interactive television performed at the same institution in order observe any changes that may have occurred in the types of interaction and contact that students in these types of distance courses experience. This study also compares the findings to an asynchronous, web-based distance course to better understand how interaction and contact change across delivery methods. Findings suggest that little has changed in the ITV classroom, with results being very similar to the original study. When comparing ITV results to the asynchronous class, findings show that, while contact may be lessened due to the lack of synchronous presence, there are still instances of lively interaction that can occur. Asynchronous students do, however, wish for increased use of video-based delivery of course content.

What Online Writing Spaces Afford Us in the Age of Campus Carry, “Wall-Building,” and Orlando's Pulse Tragedy

Theorizing about twenty-first century writing spaces, the authors argue that online writing environments offer particular affordances to writing teachers when navigating challenging subject matter at complex, political moments. Alongside narrative theorization, the authors provide stories about their writing experiences alongside their students, while offering strategies for complicating and extending our field's discussions of the possibilities for online writing in the age of massive online open courses. The authors conclude that, while online spaces cannot offer “safe spaces” for writing instruction, they may offer “braver” spaces as students and instructors alike grapple with challenging, political landscapes.

A (Critical) Distance

The increase in demand for higher education has resulted in a surge of online courses and degree programs across the US and worldwide. Calls for open access learning options and more cost-effective higher educational opportunities have contributed to this rapid increase, especially in the form of Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. For educators and scholars, the evolution of MOOCs and the enthusiastic rhetoric surrounding them necessitates a critical examination. One such area for examination is the relationship between MOOCs and the contingent faculty crisis, especially how the evolution of MOOCs could hurt or help online contingent faculty. Arguably, the concept of the MOOC as a mode of delivery may present opportunities to subvert instructional delivery methods and other elements of the online distance learning status quo that create challenges for contingent faculty online. Ultimately, this chapter offers insight into the issues faced by part-time instructors teaching online, especially in terms of the material realities of the work they do and how their experience is distinct from that of the face-to-face (f2f) contingent instructor. Important to this discussion is how a shift in our conception of MOOCs as an instructional approach may offer new perspectives for online contingent labor in higher education. Overall, the goal of this work is to raise awareness and to advance scholarly discussion of this topic, understanding MOOCs as one potential site of resistance and change.

Reshaping Institutional Mission

This chapter examines the relationship between online writing instruction (OWI) and the material and pedagogical impacts of OWI on institutions and their missions, using the author's regional campus to illustrate those impacts. First, the chapter explores the institutional mission and context of the author's institution, exploring how OWI works with and against the university's mission and how the growth of online instruction reshapes that mission. Second, the chapter asserts the need for professional development by exploring campus-wide resources for instructor training and then by detailing the writing program's efforts to provide discipline-specific training that emphasizes pedagogy and collaboration. Finally, the chapter asserts that writing program administrators are uniquely situated stakeholders on their campuses who can make a significant impact on the implementation and ongoing development of OWI on their campuses.

Digital Citizens as Writers

As much of life is spent in digital spaces, information literacy now includes a personal responsibility for digital citizenship. This chapter focuses on how students can best become literate, successful learners in the age of MOOCs by embracing a personal responsibility for information literacy. The need for information literacy embedded into MOOCs is imperative because literacy, particularly writing, has rapidly changed in global digital participatory culture and continues to evolve. The shift from traditional classrooms filled with primarily print materials toward mobile devices and instant access to information in real time has revolutionized literacy within a historically short time period. The idea of good writers being also good readers may still hold true in new media formats; however, the concept of the student as a “prosumer” (both consumer and producer of content) in an age of disposable social media and constant connectivity requires a new vision of writing and literacy.

Conducting Programmatic Assessments of Online Writing Instruction

Individuals seeking to evaluate the efficacy of online writing instruction (OWI) within a larger writing program must consider the unique challenges and opportunities of this method of teaching. This chapter describes the use of the Conference on College Composition and Communication's “A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction” (2013) as a framework for assessment. The discussion focuses on the methodological process that led to the implementation of these principles in a local programmatic study, as well as the results of this analysis. This chapter ultimately argues that the application of the CCCC's principles can be particularly beneficial for administrators seeking an accessible heuristic for assessing fully online and hybrid writing courses.

Training Instructors to Teach Multimodal Composition in Online Courses

This chapter addresses practical strategies for training teachers to teach multimodal composition in online courses. Specifically, trainers should focus on at least four skill sets: developing and scaffolding multimodal assignments; creating multimodal instructional tools; incorporating technology labs within the curriculum; and adopting and adapting the multimodal ePortfolio as a reflective document for showcasing student learning. Teachers particularly benefit from these skill sets, which enable them to guide students in acquiring such multimodal literacies as learning to design rhetorically effective multimodal projects for various audiences and purposes. The chapter offers theoretical and practical advice for trainers where the instruction will occur in online settings as well as the training itself. This advice also is useful for teachers of face-to-face (onsite) multimodal courses when using a robust learning management system (LMS) for student support.