Lessons of experience: Labor habits of a long-time, contingent online technical communication instructor

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic made nearly every teacher and student online teachers and students in some capacity. This article presents a case study of an experienced, contingent technical and professional communication (TPC) instructor showing how she sets up, presents, and, most importantly, labors in her course for the benefit of her students and herself. This article ends with recommendations for other online TPC teachers and program administrators to support online TPC courses.

KEYWORDS:

• Pedagogy
• labor
• online writing instruction
• online communication
• technical communication

Acknowledgements

Thanks first and foremost must go to Brett Templeton, the subject of this original research article’s case study, for generously contributing to this study at multiple points (responding to a call for focus group participants, agreeing to be a case subject, and allowing me to survey her students), essentially making this article and the larger research project it is drawn from possible. Brett truly is an educator worth learning from, and my time with her certainly made me a better teacher, as well. I must also extend hearty thanks to my dissertation chair, Dr. Patricia Sullivan, and the rest of my dissertation committee composed of Dr. Samantha Blackmon, Dr. Thomas Rickert, and Dr. Peter Fadde for mentoring me through the project of designing the study this article draws from, conducting it, and writing the dissertation that formed the basis of this article. I would also like to extend thanks to the editor of Technical Communication Quarterly, Dr. Rebecca Walton, and my peer reviewers for their generous and considerate feedback and attention to this piece. I would also like to thank Dr. Courtney L. Werner, my colleague at Monmouth University, without whose mentorship, feedback, and shared commitment to weekly Zoom writing meetings this piece would not have been submitted in a timely manner. Finally, I must thank my wife and partner Dr. Brittany Biesiada, the first reader of all my work, whose generous and tireless feedback makes my writing into the best version of itself every time. I am honored to benefit from Brittany’s brilliance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patrick Love

Patrick Love is an Assistant Professor in the Monmouth University English Department. Patrick specializes in professional and technical communication, digital rhetoric, and writing program administration research and studies the overlaps of communication theory’s influence on empiricism, online writing instruction, social justice, and economic policy decisions. Patrick’s work appears in Platforms, Protests, and the Challenge of Networked Democracy published by Palgrave Macmillan and SIGDOC proceedings. Patrick received his Ph.D. concentrated in Rhetoric and Composition from Purdue University in 2019.