1. Letter from the Editor
[1] This issue of ROLE originated as a tribute to Michael Greer, a founding member of GSOLE, the founding editor of ROLE, and a foundational figure in the field of online writing instruction. Michael created ROLE in 2018 and served as the editor until 2020 when he suffered a stroke that damaged the communication center of his brain. In his time as editor and throughout his recovery, he was a gracious mentor to many scholars and practitioners working in online literacy education and a thoughtful OWI researcher and practitioner. In his editor’s note in the first issue of ROLE, Michael writes that ROLE was created to “provide a venue for new voices to speak and be heard,” “to complicate the theory-practice binary,” and to “bring together a more inclusive, interdisciplinary conversation about teaching and learning literacy online.” These commitments shaped the journal’s initial burgeoning identity and continue to shape its future.
[2] Michael passed away in 2023 after a battle with Stage 4 cancer, leaving behind a vibrant community of colleagues, collaborators, and friends who admired his intellect, his kindness, and his unwavering belief in the power of inclusive scholarship. At the 2024 GSOLE Conference, Heidi Skurat Harris (McCauley) honored Michael’s legacy during the President’s Welcome, offering a moving tribute to her research partner and friend. This issue stands as a continuation of that tribute and a testament to the many OWI community members who knew Michael as an admired scholar, mentor, and friend.
[3] We are grateful for the thoughtful tributes our contributors have shared reflecting on their relationships, both professional and personal, with Michael. In “Teaching and Editing as Empathy: The Legacy of Michael Greer,” Heidi Skurat Harris (McCauley) shares Michael’s impact on this journal, his university, his field, and teaching in general. In “Be Like Michael Greer: A Cheerleader, Not a Gatekeeper!,” Jessie Borgman and Casey McArdle reflect on the Michael’s role as mentor and the value of adopting a supportive mentorship orientation to the field, rather than gatekeeping. Greer, whom the authors met in 2014, served as a mentor and cheerleader during their development of the Online Writing Instruction Community resources website and the PARS framework. Jason Snart’s “Remembering Michael Greer: Working Together Closely. . . Far Apart” recalls the collaborative working relationship shared with Michael Greer, though that collaboration happened almost exclusively at distance, both asynchronously and synchronously. The fruitful collaboration influenced the ongoing success of Effective Practices.
[4] Alongside these moving tributes in this issue are articles that reflect the ethos Greer advanced in his work: agency, flexibility, accessibility, community, support, and innovative online literacy practices. Anne Marie Francis’s “Agency in Online Education: Providing Assessment Flexibility to Give Students Ownership of Their Learning” explores incorporating flexibility in online classes, for example, flexible deadlines. While recognizing the struggles faculty face between flexibility and structure, the article considers the benefits of controlled flexibility for students without creating more work for faculty, and how such a change gives ownership and agency to students. In her article “Exploring Student Success:Accessibility, Student Support, & Class Community,” Cat Mahaffey explores the impact of course modality on student success, accessibility, community, and support in first–year writing courses at a large urban public university. The study results suggest that implementing asynchronous design principles can enhance accessibility and community across all modalities. Finally, in “Fire Walk with Me, or the Metamodern Prometheus: Demythologizing AI Tools through AI Literacy,” Justin Cary uses the classical myth of Prometheus as a guiding metaphor to outlines a framework of AI literacy designed to demythologize these tools for student writers and educators.
[5] Together, these pieces reflect the spirit of ROLE and the legacy of Michael Greer: a scholar who believed in the power of community-driven inquiry, open access to knowledge, and multimodal scholarship as a means of expanding what online literacy education can be. This issue stands as a collective affirmation of the values he championed and the vibrant, inclusive field he helped shape.
