Immersion, Reflection, Failure: Teaching Graduate Students to Teach Writing Online

ABSTRACT

A common challenge facing those who prepare graduate students to teach writing online is the need to help those students connect online writing instruction (OWI) theory with their classroom practice. The authors present how graduate students are prepared to teach writing online at three universities and then synthesize those approaches to highlight three principles that can guide effective OWI preparation for graduate students in any program: immersion, reflection, and failure.

KEYWORDS:

• Graduate students
• online writing instruction
• pedagogyreflection
• teacher preparation

Notes

1. Other notable contributions to the literature of professional development in OWI include the CCCC OWI Committee’s (2011) “Initial report of the CCCC Committee for Best Practice in Online Writing Instruction (OWI): The state-of-the-art of OWI,” its 2013 “A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction,” and its 2015 anthology Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction (Hewett & DePew, 2015) as well as Bourelle (2016) and Harris (2017), for example.

2. In fact, this article began as a panel presentation delivered at the Conference on College Composition and Communication Annual Convention in Houston, TX (Grover, Cargile Cook, Skurat Harris, & DePew, 2016).

3. Texas Tech University (TTU) is currently the only other regionally accredited institution (see details below).

4. Some students at both graduate levels take the course solely because it fulfills a programmatic requirement.

5. In his 2015 edition of Experiential Learning, Kolb presented three models for this process. The Lewinian model, the process model most attributed to Kolb’s theory of experiential learning, examined the recursive nature of learners inductively reflecting upon concrete experiences to form abstractions and generalizations that they then test with future concrete experience. Kolb explained, “Immediate personal experience is the focal point for learning, giving life, texture, and subjective personal meaning to abstract concepts and at the same time, providing a concrete, publically shared reference point for testing the implications and validity of ideas created during the learning process” (p. 32).

6. The Department of Rhetoric and Writing at UALR offers a BA in Professional and Technical Writing (PTW) and a MA in PTW online and on-campus with concentrations in technical writing and nonfiction (the on-campus degree also includes an editing concentration). The Graduate Certificate in OWI can be taken as a stand-alone program or as a concentration in the MA in PTW program.

7. Students in the first year of the Graduate Certificate in OWI took composition theory. The program has now expanded to include a choice from rhetorical theory, composition theory, theory of technical communication, language theory, nonfiction theory, or adult learning theory.

8. UALR uses the Blackboard LMS and is a Google School, and students are encouraged to experiment with these tools as well as a variety of LMS products and WYSIWYG web editors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephen David Grover

Stephen David Grover is a doctoral candidate in technical communication and rhetoric at Texas Tech University.

Kelli Cargile Cook

Kelli Cargile Cook is the director of Undergraduate Studies in Technical Communication and Rhetoric and an associate professor in the Department of English at Texas Tech University.

Heidi Skurat Harris

Heidi Skurat Harris is the coordinator of the Graduate Certificate in Online Writing Instruction and an assistant professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Kevin Eric DePew

Kevin Eric DePew is the graduate program director and an associate professor in the Department of English at Old Dominion University.