I don’t feel that this class has helped me improve my writing.

--Student response from national survey

1. Introduction

[1] The need to understand student perspectives of online writing courses (OWCs) led the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Committee for Effective Practices in Online Writing Instruction (hereafter called the OWI Committee) to task a student-survey working group¹ to develop and conduct a national survey for online writing students. The survey research sought to answer four research questions:

1. How are students prepared for, or oriented to, their online writing courses specifically?
2. How do students typically access their online writing courses?
3. What components of online writing classes do students find most helpful in improving their writing?
4. What components of online writing classes do students find least helpful in improving their writing?

[2] As the members of the student-survey working group began to analyze the student survey data ("A Report on a U.S.-Based National Survey of Students in Online Writing Courses”), something interesting happened. We read comments, like the student epigram at the beginning of this article, from student respondents who stated that they need online instructors to explicitly teach them to improve their writing skills. These comments made us realize that OWI instructors need to rethink pedagogical design practices for OWCs. The student survey revealed that even with the gains in research and understanding of effective practices in OWI (see OWI Committee’s [2013] A Position Statement of Principles and Example of Effective Practices in Online Writing Instruction, hereafter called the OWI Principles document), writing studies, composition, and technical and professional communication (TPC) educators need to consider effective pedagogy in online settings rather than simply migrating and/or adapting existing pedagogical models to online courses. While the OWI Principles document informs our research and theory, we do not always directly reference the principles as we discuss our research findings because we want to foreground the student experiences as shown through their responses. In addition, part of our goal of this article is to turn attention to the “how” of online writing instruction rather than the “what” and “why” that is the basis of the existing OWI principles.

[3] While students will always come to writing courses, particularly OWCs, with a range of preparation, life obstacles, and accessibility challenges that are, for the most part, beyond instructors’ control, instructors can control their presence within the learning management systems (LMS) and/or online courses. We use the word presence as it is defined in online education literature across disciplines. Presence means the sense that the teacher is in attendance or embodied in the OWC by virtue of connecting with students and being responsive to their needs.² The student survey data indicate that a purposeful pedagogy-driven course design in OWI is necessary. Purposeful pedagogy-driven OWCs “produce intellectually rigorous online learning experiences that are not weak replicas of onsite courses” (Cargile Cook, 2005, p. 51).

[4] In this article, we highlight some of the qualitative data from the open-ended questions in the OWI student survey. This data highlights ways to shift online teaching to better meet student needs with purposeful pedagogy-driven course design. We challenge current faculty pedagogical preparation in OWI, and we look to education and other fields for models of how to create purposeful pedagogy-driven courses. After providing an example of this approach, we offer next steps for OWI pedagogy and teaching. OWI has reached a point in its development that instructors and administrators need to move from what should be included in an OWC and why it should be included to how to improve pedagogical practices in OWCs. Furthermore, we argue that a purposeful pedagogy-driven course design must move away from focusing first on texts, assignments, or technologies and toward focusing on the students—the learners—as the necessary first step of effective course design.

2. Listening to Students' Voices

[5] As described in “A Report on a U.S.-based National Survey of Students in Online Writing Courses,” the majority of respondents to the national survey were upper level students who were taking a Technical and Professional Communication focused OWC (see the demographic section of the “A Report”). When asked “What is not included in your online writing class that would benefit the learning experience for you in relation to improving your writing?” only 28% (39 of n=139) were from freshman or sophomore-level students. It is not surprising that more advanced-level students responded and provided constructive feedback, especially since the majority of all students who participated in the national student survey had previously taken an online course.

[6] In the forthcoming subsections, we provide representative qualitative responses from the student survey on the following:

• Readings
• Quizzes and assignments
• Discussion boards
• Feedback from instructors and student peers
• Multimedia materials

These pedagogical components, which are crucial to OWCs, are referenced in the OWI Principles document (CCCC OWI Committee, 2013). These effective practices are also areas in which OWI has some available research.

[7] In each subsection, we define the pedagogical activity and then offer the number of qualitative responses to the following three questions:

• Please identify what work in your current online writing course is the most valuable or helpful to you in improving your writing and explain why.
• Please identify what work in your current online writing course is the least valuable or helpful to you in improving your writing and explain why.​³

[8] When analyzing these student comments as data points in the survey, it is important to note that the number of responses may seem small in relation to the total number of respondents. Yet, these student voices were critical to the survey results overall. We believe that if only one student took the time to write something about his or her OWC, instructors must consider that response as providing much-needed context for students’ reactions to and success within OWCs. Open-ended questions are expansion questions--the type of questions on a survey design that provide participants the opportunity elaborate on answers to forced-choice questions (O’Cathain & Thomas, 2004). These student voices are vital as instructors and researchers consider how to improve OWI for student learning. Furthermore, throughout this section, we forefront the voices of students who found learning activities “least helpful”. While there were just as many positive comments about OWCs regarding what students found helpful, these voices expressing dissatisfaction indicate that something about the OWCs was insufficient and bears scrutiny.

2.1. Readings

[9] Readings refer to the instructional materials provided in the online class, including selections from textbooks, articles (e.g., academic, trade, popular press), and supplemental materials (e.g., lecture notes).

• Students who commented that readings were helpful: 8% (n=25; total n=314)
• Students who commented that readings were unhelpful 11% (n=25; total n=226) ​

​Students’ negative responses about readings include⁴ the following:

Reading a textbook about writing is not helpful I think it takes more experience and practice to develop writing skills.

I think the course readings are somewhat hard to follow at times, especially since we can’t see an in-person demonstration or explanation of the material. There are times it feels like it would be quicker and easier to learn some of the book material in class, so we can learn from our peers and professor about our specific concerns right then and there in class.

The readings are hard to follow because the book doesn’t really explain terms very well.

The assigned textbook is the least helpful. The materials for this particular course that are being supplemented by the professor are of greater value and help than the text.

These student responses regarding reading illustrate problems with course design. Instructors in these classes may not have explained difficult terms or jargon or the relevance of the readings to their writing and to the overall course learning objectives.

​[10] Students expressed frustration with reading quizzes used to test whether they did the reading in particular because they did not know how reading about writing could improve their writing. Several students mentioned they did not want to read about writing; they wanted to practice it. They also noted that they were often left on their own to understand the readings, which may be a common feature in an asynchronous course but also may reflect lack of instructor engagement and presence in the course.

[11] Student responses about reading echo the reading difficulties that Beth L. Hewett (2015a) addresses, in particular the cognitive leaps students must make from what they read to what they write. Hewett asserts that reading issues are exacerbated in online settings where the teacher cannot intervene upon seeing or hearing student confusion. OWI teachers may see students struggling through their reading quizzes or in discussion board responses and essay assignments, but they cannot diagnose whether the struggle is a comprehension problem (whether the student has a lack of knowledge in the subject area or a lack of reading skills), a problem with the digital or textual presentation of the reading itself (an accessibility issue), or a design issue (the lack of explicit connection between the reading and the subsequent discussion board or essay).

[12] Instructors and course designers (or instructors as course designers) may fail to communicate tacit assumptions about how reading works in a college class and how students should use reading to improve writing. Readings must be integrated into an overall course design in a purposeful and explicitly stated manner. Where a reading directly advances a course objective, teachers need to explain to OWI students how and why it does so. If a reading does not directly advance a course objective, then it should be removed.

2.2. Quizzes and Assignments

​[13] We discuss quizzes and assignments together since they are both assessment instruments. Quizzes and assignments in OWCs generally serve three purposes:

1. They inform students what they are expected to write about to meet the course objective/s.
2. They walk students through the steps that they should take to complete a process (instructional).
3. They tell students how they will be evaluated on their processes/products (evaluative).

Quizzes in OWCs generally check students’ comprehension of assigned readings through forced-choice or open-ended questions. Quizzes might also evaluate skills that students have not yet covered in the class to assess student competency.

• Students who commented that quizzes were helpful: 1% (n=4; total n=314)
• Students who commented that quizzes were unhelpful: 5% (n=10; total n=226)

​Students’ negative responses about quizzes—one kind of assessment—included: ​

Quizzes.... really?

Weekly quizzes are the least helpful as they are not critically assessing whether we understand how to apply the material but rather only measuring if we read the material.

Quizzes/Assessments/Test. To me, these are just spaces where you have to regurgitate the information that you have learned. If on these there were an application portion then that would be beneficial but otherwise it is mainly short-term memory skills that are being tested.

The quizzes don’t help me to improve my writing. They are just an added assignment. Practicing writing helps me to improve.

Students’ responses regarding quizzes point to frustration with how a course’s checkpoints may be integrated with the overarching course outcomes. Students may not perceive that checkpoints are connected to their writing process and see them instead as perfunctory—busy work instead of instruction that helps them develop writing skills. Indeed, this perception makes sense if the instructor has not connected quizzes directly to the writing skills to be developed (scaffolding) or if the instructor does not use information gathered from quizzes to address student learning in the class and to do so in overt ways that students find sensible.

[14] Assignments are summative assessments designed to have students show their level of competency related to a learning outcome. In OWI—or in any online course—assignments should be developed to evaluate how well students can meet the course learning outcomes.

• Students who commented that assignments were helpful: 8% (n=27; total n=314)
• Students who commented that assignments were unhelpful: 9% (n=21; total n=226) ​

​Students’ negative responses about assignments included:

Having to write so many papers in such little time was not helpful. It made things really tough and hard to complete assignments on time. (from a 5-9 week composition course)

I need more defined instructions for assignments.

[Need] clearly written assignment instructions. [as a response to what was not included in the course]

The discussion board assignment were least helpful...I think a simple handout would of sufficed for 4 weeks worth [of] the discussion board assignments.

Concerned that my fellow classmates and I aren't given a lot of context for our writing assignments, and therefore we do not put in a lot of time and energy into them...why we're writing is not made clear, in other words. How is a literary analysis going to help me do my job?

​While students did find and comment on the helpfulness of assignments, the number of students who shared thoughts like the ones above suggests a lack of integration between the assignments and other parts of the course. The comments about why an assignment was not helpful were much more specific than the positive comments about the helpfulness of assignments. For example, a representative comment about the helpfulness of an assignment is the following: the proposal was helpful because it was such a lengthy assignment. Students in OWCs should be given the opportunity to practice skills in the learning outcomes on which they will be assessed (perhaps using low-stakes assignments and quizzes) before major assessments. They should have ample opportunity to understand the assignment (which also is a reading demand on them) and to practice the needed skills before high-stakes assessments of those skills.

​[15] The students’ responses covered much ground about their dissatisfaction with assignments. Comments that indicated there was too much work in a compressed course suggest that the pedagogical approach may need to be considered when courses are compressed. Comments about the clarity of assignments indicate instructors must have specific training to help them be effectively present in an online course. Clear instructional materials are a genre just like poetry, fiction, or nonfiction (or “discussion boards” for that matter)—a genre most online instructors have not studied or explicitly learned (Hewett, 2015a). Instructors can demonstrate online presence not only through feedback but also through effective instructional materials that are clearly written and explained for both their student audience and the digital environment. Because the bulk of instructional materials in OWCs are written, instructions must be carefully composed to reduce or mitigate the cognitive reading load for students and instructors alike (Hewett, 2015a, pp. 59-65; Griffin & Minter, 2013). In an online setting, overt explanations must be made through the teacher’s writing or through video/voice lectures that clearly convey both expectations and educational strategies involved. ​

2.3. Discussion Boards

[16] Discussion boards refer to any pedagogical activity that takes place in the forum/discussion board area of an LMS (see the “Next Steps” section of this article for why this term is complicated).

• Students who commented that discussion boards were helpful: 7% (n=22; total n=314)
• Students who commented that discussion boards were unhelpful: 18% (n=41; total n=226)

Students’ negative responses about discussion boards included the following:

Discussion boards can help generate new ideas but don’t necessarily help my writing, in my opinion.

Discussion board posts don’t give much feedback as to writing improvement. But, this could be due to the topics of the DBs.

Discussion posts. They seem to be used as “filler” points for the class. I have yet to complete a discussion post that brings value to the course.

Discussions. I feel like I don’t get much out of the peer reviews and discussions because the other students in the course don’t give me feedback I find helpful.

The discussion board is the least valuable because I feel people just are writing to complete it rather than having meaningful discussion.

I have never found discussion boards to adequately replace in-class discussion, and I still feel this way about the discussion board posts we have done for this class.

No feedback from instructor on discussion boards.

Many survey participants expressed that discussion board participation was “forced,” resulting in thoughtless, meaningless responses. They reported not understanding how the writing they produced in discussion posts improved their overall writing skills for the course purposes, and they did not see how written discussions with peers could improve their writing in any meaningful way. Other students in this survey study expressed that they did not see discussion boards as an adequate replacement for face-to-face class discussions.

​[17] Nearly half the students in this survey indicated they were older than twenty-four, making them “non-traditional” students. Michael Gos (2015) argued that time-bound, non-traditional students particularly may find participating in discussion boards for more than limited amounts of time to be difficult. In a study of over 900 online students, Adam Selhorst, Mingzhen Bao, Lorraine Williams, and Eric Klein Selhorst (2017) found that “excess focus on online discussions may lead to fatigue, resulting in lower student satisfaction, and in turn, performance” (abstract).

​[18] Student responses from this study indicate that students do not see discussion boards as places that provide low-stakes writing practice (Warnock, 2007, 2010) or as replacing face-to-face discussion. When integrating discussion boards, online instructors should consider how particular discussion prompts explicitly connect to learning objectives, explain such connections to students, and forgo otherwise unconnected discussions and discussions created merely to make use of that function of the LMS as students may perceive them as wasting their time. Furthermore, they should model communicative presence for students to help them see how discussion board conversations can work fruitfully.

2.4. Instructor Feedback

[19] Instructor feedback refers to interactive response to student writing provided by the instructor of the course. This feedback can be formative (given on an early draft to identify areas for improvement) or summative (given on a final draft to indicate how the student has met the assignment and course learning outcomes).

• Students who commented that instructor feedback were helpful: 35% (n=110; total n=314)
• Students who commented that instructor feedback were unhelpful: 2% (n=5; total n=226) ​

Students’ positive responses about instructor feedback included the following:

In my opinion, instructor feedback is the most valuable or helpful. The instructor grades according to rubric and they explain why the paper may or may not have touched on all require information.

Direct comments on a written item from the professor. Its the most personal to me and can help me see my downfalls and where I need to improve. I think having students review work is positive, but value of reviews is often not that helpful for me personally.

Receiving instructor feedback is the most helpful in improving my writing, because sometimes students don’t have all the information that my professor has that could help me.

Students’ negative responses about instructional feedback included:

if we only turn things in and don't receive feedback from professor

Lack of feedback on writing

Generally, feedback, because I've received very little and what I did receive was snarky, or perhaps just abrupt.

In reading through all the open-ended responses, it is apparent that students valued instructors and their writing expertise, and students wanted feedback to improve their writing. Even though there were so few participant responses regarding instructor feedback as unhelpful, the fact that there were any such responses is problematic and points to the need to ensure that feedback is always offered as a means to help students improve their writing.

[20] Multiple studies have considered the relationship between instructor feedback and a positive perception of the instructor’s social presence (Cunningham, 2015; Eaton, 2005, 2013). Students demonstrated positive reactions to instructor feedback for collaborative projects (Alvarez, Espasa, & Guasch, 2012), on traditional assignments (Boyd, 2008; Cox, Black, Heney, & Keith, 2015), and OWI-based assignments (Hewett, 2004-2005, 2015b). Overwhelmingly, the survey respondents reported the most helpful aspect of an OWC was feedback from the instructor.

[21] Instructors establish presence through feedback, and students see this feedback as directly helpful in improving their writing. Thus, how and when instructors provide feedback is critical. Stephanie Cox, Jennifer Black, Jill Heney, and Melissa Keith (2015) state: “Online writing students and instructors know each other primarily through the direct learning process, which brings certain benefits. A drawback to the online environment, however, is that the majority of individual student-teacher interactions occur as feedback to students about their writing, and this situation always contains some degree of evaluation” (p. 376). Yet, we believe that feedback to writing—which is often associated with assessment, whether it is formative or summative—cannot be the only place where instructors are present in a course, and the instructor should not rely on feedback as a primary means of providing instructional content. While instruction can happen in instructor feedback (see Hewett, 2015b), instructor feedback should not be the only place where students have direct contact with their instructor in the OWC.

​2.5. Peer Feedback

[22] Peer feedback refers to student-to-student commentary on writing. In the open-ended comments, some students saw peer-review as more helpful than unhelpful.

• Students who commented that peer feedback were helpful: 22% (n=68; total n=314)
• Students who commented that peer feedback were unhelpful: 15% (n=33; total n=226)

Students’ positive responses about peer feedback included the following:

I think the feedback is the most helpful because you get to see different opinions on it.

Definitely, feedback from my classmates. I was able to see what I was doing wrong or could improve on before submission to the teacher.

It was most helpful having feedback from peers and my teacher and being able to stay in constant communication because I was able to identify what needed work in my writing.

Peer reviews is hands down the most helpful asset in this course as it helps other students perfect their own work when critiquing others.

Those who experienced peer review as helpful indicated that peers provided an audience other than the instructor from whom they could learn different perspectives on their ideas and writing. On the opposite side of the spectrum, about half as many students found peer feedback to be the least helpful work in an OWC.

[23] Students’ negative responses about peer feedback included the following:

If I had to pick one, I would say peer feedback, just because peers are usually not trained in written response. The way they frame their comments can sometimes come across as rude or they comment on areas that aren’t that important, instead of areas that would be helpful.

I find that peer reviews tend to be the least valuable, because most students and simply participating for the credit rather than giving meaningful information to improve the documents.

Probably giving others feedback. If it were a paper I might have more insight. But for a couple hundred word discussion post, it’s sometimes hard to come up with something constructive to say. Obviously feedback from other students or the professor depends on the quality.

giving feedback to other students on their work is completely a waste of time. most of the time we are just BSing through it.

The difficulties some students had with peer feedback suggest that they saw the instructor as the expert in the class who should provide feedback to improve writing. Instructors should examine their courses for whether too much emphasis is placed on learners learning from each other; where, when, and how students provide comments; and what instructors and peers are commenting on. The rationale for peer feedback and explicit instruction in how to complete peer review need to be emphasized within the OWC, and these could afford instructors the opportunity to model this type of feedback.

​[24] Students’ self-reported emphasis on feedback raised questions about whether feedback is being used as a replacement for student-instructor interaction in the OWC. Peer feedback should supplement but not replace instructor feedback. Instructor-to-student and student-to-student feedback provides critical personal interaction that students appear to crave and can be missing in other components of the course, particularly in the asynchronous modality.

2. 6. Multimedia Materials

[25] Multimedia materials include any materials that incorporate print text, images, video, audio, and other non-alphabetic methods of communication. The questions regarding multimedia materials, like the questions about the discussion boards, reveal a fundamental problem in how instructors identify multimedia in technological rather than pedagogical terms.

• Students who commented that multimedia materials were helpful: 6% (n=21; total n=314)
• Students who commented that multimedia materials were unhelpful: 20% (n=46; total n=226)

Students’ positive responses about multimedia included the following:

Videos and PowerPoints can be helpful, and my professor is accessible for any questions that we may have, which is extremely helpful for me. We also have worksheets that help us understand each chapter, and our professor highlights the important details in the links to our assignments; this definitely helps me understand the material better, so there are ways to overcome obstacles that prevent face-to-face interaction.

Videos help me visually on what is being asked

PowerPoints [a one-word response to what was most helpful]

Poorly designed multimedia materials or those inserted into a text out of context (without instructor explanation or guidance) were considered less helpful.

Students’ negative responses about multimedia included the following:

Videos (and to a lesser extent, podcasts). They either move too quickly and require multiple repeats of content, or grind along at an excruciatingly slow pace that quickly grows tiresome.

I’m not fond of slides. I learn very little from that—sometimes it’s too condensed for me to make much sense of it.

I hate power point slides. They load slow and often just use the same words as in the textbook.

PowerPoint: unless there is sufficient explanation, slides without audio or accompanying reading assignments are vague.

The least valuable activities are the videos and PowerPoints. I don’t seem to learn from them.

As with responses about reading (reported above), a lack of context, a lack of knowledge of how to apply the information to their writing, and the amount of slides students received were common complaints about videos and slide presentations. The media used may have been used poorly or may not have appealed to these students’ learning preferences.

I found the video responses to be the least helpful to my writing abilities. They were more focused on responding to social issues but I find writing out thoughts to be a more productive source of learning.

creating videos. this helps my speaking skills but not my writing skills.

Videos because I usually don’t have the time to sit down and watch them. If I do, I am distracted and don’t learn anything from them

​Comments regarding videos appear to have involved both students who were producing videos and students who were consuming them. Thus, students were differentiating between videos as instructional content (to supplement or in lieu of readings) and video creation as assignments. The survey, however, did not make this distinction; this further indicates how instructors make assumptions about multimedia as a means of accommodating learners and providing content rather than as a tool that students can use to demonstrate learning outcomes.

[26] The OWI Principles document (CCCC OWI Committee, 2013) frames multimedia use as an accessibility issue. OWI Principle 1 states, “Online writing instruction should be universally inclusive and accessible.” Effective Practice 1.10 exhorted faculty to ​

offer instructional materials in more than one medium. For example, a photograph or other graphic on the course Web space should be described textually. For another example, critical textual material should be described orally using an audio feature. Similarly, a teacher’s video should be transcribed or closely paraphrased textually to accommodate a deaf student or one with auditory learning disabilities. Students should have a choice about whether to receive an essay response orally (through digital recording) or textually; alternatively, students might receive one essay response orally and the next one textually. If these practices seem onerous, it is helpful to remember that multimodality assists all learners and not just those with special challenges.[emphasis ours]

Nonetheless, while accommodating for disabilities is of key importance in an OWC, framing multimodal learning materials only in terms of accommodation discounts the pedagogical purpose of multimedia technology to benefit all learners. To summarize and paraphrase a wide body of work on what instructional designers call “the multimedia principle,” “people learn better from words and pictures [and sound] than from words alone” (Clark & Mayer, 2016, p. 67). However, students’ comments on multimedia materials in online courses revealed that they experienced better learning through multimedia only when that multimedia was instructor-led and carefully designed.

​[27] In the next section, we consider these student responses in light of existing literature in OWI as we move toward making a case for purposeful, pedagogy-driven course design.

3. Connecting Student Voices to Existing Literature

[28] When the student-survey working group reflected on the student data and what it might mean for OWI educators, we decided to return to the existing literature to consider how to address the problems that students had pointed out. In other words, we wondered what published literature says about how to teach in online environments.

[29] Education scholars appear to lead the way in research regarding purposeful online teaching and learning. Michelle Horton’s (2017) research examined the need for continuous development of pedagogical skills in an online learning environment. Horton’s qualitative study focused on five instructors in different disciplines (e.g., computer science, mathematics, nursing, psychology, and sociology), and her findings suggest that developing an organized course structure is a major key to student success. While Horton does not consider writing courses, her findings remind educators that online teaching requires ongoing work into developing the necessary pedagogical skills to teach effectively online.

[30] Liyan Song, Ernise Singleton, Jannette Hill, and Myung Koh (2004) surveyed graduate students to identify helpful characteristics of their online learning. Their findings are different from those of the undergraduate student survey reported herein and in “A Report on a U.S.-Based National Survey of Students in Online Writing Courses.” Song et al. found that course design impacts the success of the online learning experience, and there are challenges associated with understanding the learning objectives of the online course. Students indicated that course design affects the success of their online learning experiences.

[31] Prior to this national survey of students in OWCs, Patricia Webb Boyd’s (2008) research was one of the first (and still only one of a few studies) to ask students about their experiences in OWCs. Boyd’s first-year composition students wanted more interaction with their instructor, and they expressed they were uncertain as to why they were being asked to do certain tasks. She concluds that course design must be purposeful and explicit: “When creating online courses, then, the instructor must make her/his reasoning behind the course design clear—in other words, make visible the ways in which the course design itself challenges traditional conceptions of student-teacher interactions” (p. 240). In addition to purposeful and explicit design, instructors must throughout the course “provide meta-commentary about the purpose of the assignments and the learning principles upon which they are based” (p. 240). Boyd writes, “it might seem odd for me to focus so heavily on the teacher’s role in online classrooms” (p. 240), but Webb’s emphasis on the instructor aligns with our own growing concern that OWI still does not focus enough on how instructor presence impacts the OWC.

[32] Thus, research in education and some research in OWI led us back to instructors and their preparedness. We drew on key texts in OWI research and categorized the goals of that research. OWI research related to faculty preparation can be categorized into three broad categories:

• Holistic: Approaches that give instructors the basic building blocks for what to teach in an online writing course; these are merged with writing, literacy, and reading theories.
• Conceptual frameworks: Approaches that help instructors see process of online course development and online learning from a big picture perspective; these are intended to make the process of first starting to teach online more manageable.
• Practical: Approaches that are specific to providing different forms of faculty development for teaching online.

[33] Scott Warnock’s Online Writing Instruction: Why and How (2009, 2015) is a key example of an holistic approach, particularly the chapters on course lessons and organization. Another example is found in part three of Reading to Learn and Writing to Teach, where Hewett (2015a) offers specific tips and techniques for the written teaching processes of online feedback, writing assignments, and communicating with students. These books do not consider OWC course design specifically.

[34] Key examples of conceptual frameworks include the following:

• Beth L. Hewett and Christa Ehmann’s (2004) five principles of investigation, immersion, individualization, association, and reflection.
• Lisa Melonçon’s (2007, 2017) landscapes schema, which extend Hewett and Ehmann (2004) specifically to OWI; these are the different structures and people (institution, department, field, faculty, industry, pedagogy, program) that can affect the creation and delivery of OWI.
• Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch’s (2015) 4-M design approach to “moving” courses online consisting of migration, model, modality and media, and morale.

Other examples include Rich Rice (2015) and Jessie Borgman and Casey McCardle (n.d.). In each of these key examples, guidance is offered at the conceptual level to create and sustain OWCs. The same is true for “instructional principles” in the OWI Principles document (CCCC OWI Committee, 2013). For example, OWI Principle 2 states, “An online writing course should focus on writing and not on technology orientation or teaching students how to use learning and other technologies.” None of the example effective practices provide pedagogical guidance on how to teach writing online. Instead, the example effective practices offer instructors and administrators necessary information to make localized arguments that move OWI away from a focus on technology. Even OWI Principle 4, which states, “Appropriate onsite composition theories, pedagogies, and strategies should be migrated and adapted to the online instructional environment,” places the emphasis on “migrating” and “adapting” rather on the practical specifics of how theories can be adapted in online settings. The “instructional principles” are another example of conceptual frameworks. In other words, the research discussed in this section on conceptual approaches provides ample information for instructors who want to begin teaching online and what should be considered when decisions are made to teach writing online, but they fail to adequately identify the how in specific pedagogical terms and practices.

[35] Key examples of practical approaches include building and maintaining courses through a community of practice (Melonçon & Arduser, 2013; Melonçon, 2017) and mentoring (Jaramillo-Santoy & Cano-Monreal 2013). Additionally, some research exists addressing scaffolding assignments (Grady & Davis, 2005; Harris & Greer, 2016) and considering new approaches to course materials in online environments (e.g., Cason & Jenkins, 2013; Dutkiewicz, Holder, & Sneath, 2013; Thatcher & St.Amant, 2011; Tillery & Nagelhout, 2013).

[36] A growing body of OWI literature indicates that instructors and administrators need to consider the best way to deliver content online rather than simply porting face-to-face pedagogical practices into online environments (Cargile Cook & Grant-Davie, 2012; Hewett & DePew, 2015; OWI Principle 3, CCCC OWI Committee, 2013; Palmquist et al., 2008). Some of this work provides examples of how specific pedagogical practices focus more specifically on the affordances of online spaces rather than simply transferring face-to-face content to online spaces (Harris, Lubbes, Knowles, & Harris, 2014; Marshall, 2016; Skurat Harris, Nier-Weber, & Borgman, 2016). As one alumnae of an online writing program remarks, “There’s a difference between building an online class and putting something ‘online’” (Kuralt, Harris, Blackmon, Osborn, Haile, & Zamani, 2018).

[37] While this is not a comprehensive review of the OWI literature regarding online course design, it does provide an important perspective on the current state of research by trying to categorize the research into its overarching holistic, conceptual, and practical goals. In doing so, we recognized that while much OWI research implicitly discusses pedagogy and course materials, it does not directly move from what should be done in online course to how to actually accomplish it. In other words, OWI scholars have not yet adequately addressed how to teach writing in online settings (see the one example we could find: Bourelle & Hewett, 2017). We use data from “A Report on a U.S.-Based National Survey of Students in Online Writing Courses” to argue that online writing instructors must now work with students to identify how to best teach writing in online settings (Warnock & Gasiewski, 2018 provides an example and insights into one such approach).

[38] In the next section, we offer a framework—purposeful pedagogy-driven course design—for addressing how to teach writing in online settings, and then we provide an example of this framework in action. In the framework and the example, we stress the instructor’s role in creating the course content and facilitating the work of the course.

4. Purposeful Pedagogy

[39] The sub-field of OWI understands what makes OWCs successful. Early research has provided the theory on which to build (Cargile Cook & Grant-Davie, 2012, p. 1), but online writing instructors and scholars should focus on how to apply those theories in practice. Online writing instructors need to identify specific pedagogical approaches that arise from such theory and connect those approaches to practice that meets student needs, such as those indicated in the first section of this article and in “A Report on a U.S.-Based National Survey of Students in Online Writing Courses.”

[40] To put theory into practice requires an emphasis on how instructors construct their online writing courses. Currently, many OWCs are simply porting face-to-face instruction into the online environment without sufficient attention to the ways the content of the course is connected. That is, in online courses (more so than face-to-face courses), there is an increased need for the instructor to provide instruction and explanation on how the parts of the course go together and what students should expect to do and learn.

[41] In addition, current models of instructional design separate the design of the online shell from the content and the teaching practice. This approach continues the tradition of putting too much emphasis on technology rather than pedagogy.

[42] Thus, we argue that OWCs require purposeful and deliberate connection between course components through content and design to help students become better writers. While instructional designers may assist with the technological aspects of the design, instructors as writing experts need to be in charge and in control of content and how the content should work within and throughout the design of the course shell. These claims, when read alongside the data from students and OWI’s existing literature, suggest that instructors need a different type of preparation to effectively teach writing online than what they may currently receive.

[43] Therefore, we offer a framework that takes the what and why found in much of the literature and puts it into action by focusing on the how of specific pedagogical terms and practices for effective OWI classes.

[44] Purposeful pedagogy-driven course design creates environments where each reading, activity, assignment, and assessment correlates with the course learning outcomes. This deliberate integration of different parts of an OWC offers students the opportunity to practice writing and to learn and develop the skills necessary to meet the course learning outcomes—in other words, to help students improve their writing. We borrow part of the phrase “pedagogy-driven” from Kelli Cargile Cook (2005), who was one of the first in OWI to talk specifically about the need to focus on pedagogy in online settings rather than on technology. She argues that “pedagogy-driven online education has its own set of underlying assumptions and values, which require instructors to re-evaluate and articulate their theories of learning, their instructional strategies and course activities, and their assessment strategies before choosing delivery technologies and moving a course online” (p. 51). Thus, we should reconsider the current practice of simply “moving” courses into online environments without carefully and thoughtfully considering what additional instructional materials need to be added to ensure that students can see how the component parts of a course work together.

[45] Cargile Cook’s pedagogy-driven approach aligns with research in education that argues for “constructive alignment” (Biggs & Tang, 2011, p. 109). In a “constructively aligned system, all components—intended learning outcomes, teaching/learning activities, assessment tasks and their grading—support each other, so the learner is enveloped within a supportive learning system” (p. 109). To achieve this pedagogy-driven learning system, we add the term purposeful to shift the focus away from texts, assignments, or technologies and toward the learners—the students—at the heart of the course as the beginning of effective course design.

4.1. Components of Purposeful Pedagogy-driven Courses

[46] The overarching argument that we are making—that OWI educators must focus on how they teach writing online—might prompt some defensiveness from current online writing instructors who have had success in their OWCs. We understand, of course, that instructors are teaching OWI and many are doing so with pedagogical successes and student satisfaction. Yet, we believe more can be accomplished by focusing on how one teaches OWI rather than what one should be teaching. To that end, purposeful pedagogy-driven course design helps OWI educators understand the critical relationships between teacher presence in the class and the course design. Figure 1 is a visual representation of this framework. ​

[47] By reconfiguring a linear model of a syllabus and schedule (or a sequence of units or modules) into a connected shape that emphasizes the connections between different pedagogical parts of a course, A Framework for Purposeful Pedagogy in OWI can be used in any type of course, which is one reason for the broad emphasis. Figure 1’s triangular shape emphasizes the connections among different pedagogical parts of a course. The Framework places the learning outcomes at the center of the encompassing triangle and within its own centralized triangle to indicate that primary focus in an OWC must regard what students need to learn or to do by the end of the term. The three other triangles within the overarching triangle illustrate how the outcomes can be met through the pedagogical components that instructors can control (even when using a standardized course shell):

• Activities and Assignments: Activities are the discrete scaffolded exercises that build to that assignments that assess those skills.
• Writing and Feedback: Student writing and instructor and peer reading of student writing comprise the main component of an OWC course.
• Readings and Materials: Foundational texts, articles, slide presentations, lecture notes, and the like provide students essential background information to assist them with activities, assignments, and their writing development.

The connections among these different parts of an OWC are the heart of purposeful pedagogy-driven course design. Without considering the OWC in these terms, instructors risk leaving students to make the connections themselves, which they may not have the skills, understanding, or even the interest to do on their own, as evidenced by survey answers where students did not understand why they were being asked to do things in their OWC (see also Hewett, 2015a).

[48] The double-headed arrows outside of the overarching triangle in Figure 1 represent the iterative process of teaching. Instructors need to consistently reflect on the specific content or expertise required from students and instructors’ own teaching approaches to determine how to make connections for the students. More so than in face-to-face courses, these sorts of pedagogical considerations are vital for online learning—particularly asynchronous but also synchronous OWCs—because of the lack of immediate physical presence of the instructor and peers. In other words, OWI educators must pay attention to how the course fits together but, just as importantly, to how they structure the language, their own writing (per Hewett, 2015a), and the pedagogy that ties them together. Such attention helps to embody the course with the teacher’s ongoing, visible presence. Without these connections as indicated by double-headed arrows, the OWC risks becoming a series of disconnected modules that merely must be completed rather than a scaffolded, coherent writing course taught by a present instructor and designed to help students improve their writing.

[49] Through this student survey reported herein and in “A Report on a U.S.-Based National Survey of Students in Online Writing Courses,” students have expressed what they need and want in their OWCs. Overwhelmingly, the qualitative comments about helpful and least helpful aspects of the course revealed the significant complaints of students—not lazy students who did not want to be engaged in online courses—who wanted instructor participation and clearly expressed course planning to enable them to understand why they were doing the work they were being assigned. These students wanted to see the connection between the structure, content, and their learning in an OWC. In short, they wanted instructor-led classes driven by purposeful pedagogy.

4.2. Purposeful Pedagogy in Practice

[50] We have included two examples—​a literacy narrative assignment and an assignment for a typical TPC service course—that provide more specific information of how to put purposeful pedagogy into practice. In what follows, we describe the changes made to a literacy narrative assignment to move it to a purposeful pedagogy-driven assignment. ​

[51] 

4.2.1. A common genre-focused assignment: literacy narratives. 

In a genre-focused assignment, a disconnect between the assignment and its goals becomes clear. In the genre-focused class, students might read some literacy narratives composed by professional writers and be quizzed on the readings. Either the instructor or an automated system would score the quiz, possibly not explaining the results, and it would not be referred to again in the course. After the quiz, the instructor would ask students to write a draft of their own literacy narrative and share it with the class in a discussion board for peer feedback. Using such peer feedback, the instructor would require students to revise their drafts and submit them for feedback and/or a score. The instructor might then allow or require students to write a revised version of the literacy narrative for a portfolio or final grade. Thus, a unit in a traditional genre-focused class would look something like the simple, linear process depicted in Figure 2:

[52] This reading, quiz, writing, discussion for feedback, and revision sequence assumes that students are able to do the following on their own:

1. Read critically and analyze the components of an unfamiliar genre (understand how the author is writing).
2. Repeat the content elements in a quiz scenario.
3. Understand how to transfer those components from professional readings to their own writing, making a cognitive leap to apply the components of the genre of “literacy narrative” as they brainstorm, write, and revise their own writing.
4. Discuss their written draft (the genre of literacy narrative essay) using the literary and revision terminology necessary to convey what has been accomplished well and what needs to be addressed in revision.
5. Use their knowledge of the genre of literacy narrative to complete an effective critical analysis of the writing of others in the genre of the discussion board.
6. Use the feedback provided by others to critically assess their own writing and revise based on that feedback.

These necessary skills are tacitly implied in a relatively straightforward literacy narrative assignment (and they echo common learning outcomes in writing courses taught in any environment). Yet, such skills often require a great deal of guidance and modeling from teachers and much practice by students. These abilities, in turn, can develop only with strong instructional writing skills on the teacher’s part (Hewett, 2015a).

[53] Our professional observation of OWCs, research into OWI, and the OWI student survey reported in “A Report on a U.S.-Based National Survey of Students in Online Writing Courses” strongly suggest that OWCs do not include sufficient, explicit, and direct instruction in most of the above elements. Instead, instructors might insert supplemental links to external resources (instructions from another course or program) without an explanation of how those resources connect to the steps of the writing process. Then, the instructors may ask students simply to read these resources (intuitively) and compose based on their largely implicit understanding. Upper-division and graduate students may transfer explicit instruction on these tasks from previous classes (see, for example, Anson & Moore, 2016; Ford, 2004; Schieber, 2016; Yancey, Taczak, & Robertson, 2014). But many students, including most first-year students, will need to have these skills explicitly taught to them in the OWC and may need overt explanations regarding why these skills are beneficial and how they will help students meet course learning outcomes and improve their writing. ​

[54] 

4.2.2. Purposeful pedagogy-driven literacy narrative assignment. 

In purposeful pedagogy-driven design course, the instructor would begin with the skills the students need to accomplish and ask, “Where in the OWC does the student receive explicit instruction, feedback, and assessment for each of these skills?” Readings and materials teach skills practiced in activities, reinforced by feedback and instructor-student and student-student interaction, and are assessed in assignments that clearly evaluate student demonstration of course learning outcomes.

​[55] In this example, we demonstrate how online instructors can use purposeful pedagogy to teach the literacy narrative, focused on student experiences and the learning outcomes in the course. The unit first identifies common student learning outcomes that address the skills that students will need to practice and on which they will be assessed in the literacy narrative (see Appendix A for the learning outcomes and the complete learning sequence details).

[56]This example assignment sequence can be used with almost any assignment. To implement the assignment online, we draw on the categories listed in Figure 1 and provide the following instructional steps to integrate purposeful pedagogy-driven design.

1. Explain how the assignment meets the course learning outcomes.
2. Assign sample student literacy narratives as well as some sample professional literacy narratives.
3. Develop appropriate activities and assignments. Examples include: discussion board conversations about how to understand literacy narratives; brainstorming exercises to develop possible scenes for literacy narratives with the instructor overtly modeling options and responses; writing assignments that ask students to develop drafts of literacy narratives; revision ideas through instructor feedback; peer review and feedback of a second draft through small groups or whole-class discussion boards; teaching how to accomplish peer response and providing model peer response for imitation.
4. Self-reflection letters to accompany final drafts.
5. Provide feedback and final grade or other assessment measures

[57] The instructor’s work is not yet complete at this point, however, because the connections between the parts of the assignment still need to be made explicit. For example, the student survey revealed that students are frustrated with discussion board assignments because they do not see how these assignments transfer to valuable writing experiences. In face-to-face classes, not every exercise is graded, but students typically have immediate feedback that clarifies how activities connect to assignment goals. The same experience needs to occur in an online course.

[58] In this example, students might only respond to drafts for one particular learning outcome (something connected to the skills practiced in the discussion board about reading analysis, for example) rather than being asked to participate in a full peer review. Yet, they would do so with the instructor to guide their work. Furthermore, after completing the discussion boards, the instructor should provide a summary of those discussion boards (perhaps as a welcome announcement the following week) that explicitly discusses how the exercise builds on the readings and how the discussion boards will help them begin to write their literacy narrative. This step is crucial for student learning and addressing the expressed students’ concerns in the survey. Instructors might also point back to one or two students’ posts as model posts for the genre of discussion board post and one or two students posts as excellent brainstorming for the narrative, which centers student writing as the core of the class.

[59] Finally, instructional approaches should be reviewed to connect readings and materials directly to the writing and feedback. Whenever possible, feedback should direct students back to the resources in the class. If students have a hard time incorporating details into their narratives, they should be directed back to one of the student-produced literacy narratives for the class. Instructors should ask permission of students who produced really excellent narratives and share them as examples for the class to read. Additionally, students might be asked to share their final narratives to class discussion board so that they can see how other students approached the topic without having to review or judge that writing. The instructor can then enter the discussion board to model making connections between the student writing in the class and the readings/examples that were used as models. Instructors should constantly work to connect student writing to the reading that they’re doing and reinforce genre conventions whenever possible.

[60] Purposeful pedagogy would include discussions that practice genre analysis and model close reading with overt instructor participation. In short, purposeful pedagogy would follow the cycle detailed in Figure 3.

[61] Purposeful pedagogy includes discussions that practice genre analysis and models close reading with instructor guidance. All of the lower-stakes activities in the course would practice the skills being assessed in the final assignment: the literacy narrative. See Appendix A for the complete literacy narrative assignment and Appendix B for a second extended example of how purposeful pedagogy can be implemented in composition courses and technical writing service courses. The extended examples provide the what, why, and how of purposeful pedagogy.

​[62] OWI educators can take a lesson from one student who reported that the instructor seems to be working toward a purposeful pedagogy-driven course design: ​

There are times it feels like it would be quicker and easier to learn some of the book material in class, so we can learn from our peers and professor about our specific concerns right then and there in class...We also have worksheets that help us understand each chapter, and our professor highlights the important details in the links to our assignments; this definitely helps me understand the material better, so there are ways to overcome obstacles that prevent face-to-face interaction.

A well-designed purposeful pedagogy-driven OWC will come together like a perfectly designed puzzle where goals, objectives, activities, readings, and assignments fit together students move from where they are at the beginning of the class to where they need to be at the end.

5. Next Steps for Purposeful Pedagogy-Driven Course Design

[63] In this section, we discuss key elements that instructors and their administrators and instructional designers should consider for creating purposeful pedagogy-driven courses.

[64] Guidelines to support instructors in creating effective OWI classes:

• Administrators must keep labor issues at the forefront of OWI and consider pedagogy in terms of labor issues.
• Instructors must emphasize pedagogy over technology.
• Administrators and instructional designers must provide purposeful-pedagogy training and professional development beyond the traditional teaching practicum course and beyond a course on how to use the LMS.
• Administrators and instructional designers must offer professional development that specifically addresses instructor and student displacement in online courses.
• Researchers need to expand OWI research to include more, and more in-depth, accounts of student experiences.

5.1. Administrators must keep labor issues at the forefront of OWI and consider pedagogy in terms of labor issues.

​[65] We frame the discussion of faculty preparation realizing that large-scale initiatives for such efforts primarily must come from administrators. The issues around faculty preparation and pedagogical approaches are complicated—through no fault of the instructors themselves—when viewed through the lens of labor.

[66] Andres Magda, Russell Poulin, and Davide Clienfelter (2015) indicated that 29% of institutions where Writing Studies online classes are taught use adjuncts or other part-time/contingent instructors to teach; that number rises to 49% at two-year institutions. Of those institutions, over 50% allowed adjunct faculty either to create their own courses or to have 100% customization over a previously developed class (p. 9). Only 35% of these institutions required instructor-led training in effective online pedagogy and only 26% required self-paced training regarding effective online pedagogy. This study helps to contextualize data regarding how many of those courses are taught in online settings, whether fully online or hybrid, and how faculty are prepared to facilitate these courses. A recent study of contingent faculty in composition and TPC asked instructors about their teaching loads, including teaching online. The study found that 53% of the contingent faculty surveyed taught online (Melonçon, Mechenbier, & Wilson, 2018), and while no field-wide data exists on the number of graduate students teaching online, it is important to consider this segment of “contingent faculty” in discussions of labor.

[67] The OWI Principles (CCCC OWI Committee, 2013) addressed labor issues with specific recommendations that we emphasize as key to purposeful-pedagogy driven course design.

• OWI Principle 7: Writing Program Administrators (WPAs) for OWI programs and their online writing teachers should receive appropriate OWI-focused training, professional development, and assessment for evaluation and promotion purposes.
• OWI Principle 8: Online writing teachers should receive fair and equitable compensation for their work.

As these two OWI Principles clearly stated, all faculty—and, we argue, especially the contingent faculty that studies indicate may teach more than half of all OWCs—should receive adequate training and compensation when asked to teach online the first time, as well as ongoing support when OWCs remain part of their standard teaching load. Indeed, all faculty, including those contingent faculty in relatively stable teaching contracts, need specific training in OWI beyond simply how to use the LMS and who to call for technological issues.

[68] We realize that we write from positions of relative power within higher education. We have more stable positions and can choose to research, write, and publish. Not all faculty or instructors are in such a privileged position. To the end of arguing for OWI training, we understand that purposeful pedagogy must be contextually framed within the needs of those who teach at least half of all OWCs: faculty whose ongoing work is contingent on institutional financial exigency, student enrollment, and—sadly—occasional departmental whimsy.⁵ Indeed, no discussion of OWI can be complete without direct attention to labor issues, and to the ends of developing a responsible, overt, consciously held purposeful OWI pedagogy, such attention is critically and ethically necessary.

5.2. Instructors must emphasize pedagogy over technology.

[69] The language educators adopt to describe a complex collaborative and community-building feature of online classes displaces instructors and students and foregrounds the tools and technologies. Moreover, using a singular term as if its use and meaning are clear compounds the confusion around multiple research studies on the same tool. For example, the student-survey working group made the error of asking students their thinking about “discussion boards” as if that description of a course tool did not have a wide range of uses and instructional approaches.

[70] As Scott Warnock and Diana Gasiewski indicated (2018), however, the part of the LMS we call “discussion boards” can be used for any of the following activities:

1. Have a conversation about assigned texts/media.
2. Write-to-learn about specific content (and in writing about writing, that content is often writing itself).
3. Work on/explore a specific aspect of writing.
4. Generate ideas for writing projects.
5. Metawrite:
• About their own texts: write about their own writing.
• About texts (usually Discussions, but sometimes projects) composed by other students.
• About the course itself.
6. Argue about a topic.
7. Reflect.
8. Develop course community/meet one another.
9. Understand/work through course logistics. (p. 52)

We add to that list such tasks as coordinating collaborative activities, completing peer review projects, and sharing finished writing with peers. The term “discussion board” stands in for this myriad of pedagogical purposes all represented with the label, supplanting the name of the LMS tool for what can be a broad range of learning experiences. The student survey reported here and in “A Report on a U.S.-Based National Survey of Students in Online Writing Courses” illuminated the struggle that Writing Studies faces with substituting technology terms for pedagogical practices in OWI. Given such a wide range of uses for discussion boards, we wonder whether instructors might, like some students in this survey, assume the narrower range, reducing a technologically-rich tool for teaching and learning to required drudge work disconnected from student writing.

[71] The same reductionist impulse occurs with “multimedia materials.” In their qualitative responses, students had a wide range of views on slide presentations, podcasts, and videos, but the focus was on the materials themselves and not the purpose for which the materials were created—learning composition in some manner. In fact, despite two pilots of the survey, the OWI student survey working group conflated various types of media under the term “multimedia materials.” The students’ confusion came not necessarily from the clarity of the materials but rather from instructor’s shared fuzziness about the pedagogical purpose. For example, a talking-head introductory video with a screenshare of a course LMS pages serves a different purpose (i.e., orientation to course navigation; see Dockter, 2016) from an annotated or voice-over slide presentations (i.e., presenting an instructional concept or term). A video might introduce students to course concepts, provide instruction on a particular concept or skill, or offer a tutorial on how to use class technology. VOIP technology also allows simple synchronous communication that then can be recorded and viewed multiple times. The description of these delivery modalities demonstrates a need to be more precise in instructional language and in descriptions of how technology use achieves learning outcomes. Both the OWI educators and students suffer confusion when language is imprecise.

5.3. Administrators and instructional designers must provide purposeful-pedagogy training and professional development beyond the traditional teaching practicum course.

[72] The obvious implication is that OWI (and writing pedagogy more generally) educators need to rethink and reconsider how initially training faculty to teach writing-intensive courses is approached and, more importantly, how to provide ongoing professional development.

[73] With a large number of contingent faculty teaching OWCs, the field can no longer make assumptions about pedagogical practice. Even with master course shells or standardized curricula, all OWI instructors benefit from training and professional development in course delivery, not just course design. We advocate for professional development and training that includes pedagogy-driven course design at its core.

[74] In particular, with so many instructors not having control over their online course shells, program administrators need to be trained in this practice so that the design and content are intimately connected and adhere to the Framework for Purposeful Pedagogy because the standardized “one-size-fits-all” course shell is not serving students nor allowing instructors to teach.

[75] In addition to “ongoing professional development to keep up with new pedagogies and technology” (Melonçon & Harris 2015, p. 422), continuing professional development should focus specifically on how to design courses using purposeful pedagogy “that is transparent. . . , providing clear learning outcomes but also information about how those outcomes will be achieved and what is required of students” (p. 425). Instructors must be trained to explicitly identify the how of the online course in student orientations, which will help them to understand how scaffolded readings, quizzes, assignments, and the like work together to help them improve their writing. At the beginning of online courses, we recommend emphasizing “an overview of the assignments, activities, and requirements in a class” (p. 418). However, educators need to go beyond these “what and how” orientations to include a “why” orientation; furthermore, educators should provide continuing re-orientation that connects the individual units of the course to learning outcomes and reminds students that what they are required to do has explicit purpose. Students need to know why they are asked to do these activities, readings, and assignments and not others. They need to be told why and how one activity or assignment leads to the next. Additionally, when instructors explain “why” the course is constructed as it is, they have the added benefit of better seeing the gaps in the course design, enabling them to realign course learning outcomes, activities, assignments, and assessments.

[76] In short, OWI educators need instructor training that is more robust and directed to OWI as both an environment and a process. Many institutions require faculty to attend some sort of training to teach online, but the “The State of the Art of OWI: Initial Report of CCCC Committee on Best Practices for Online Writing Instruction” (CCCC OWI Committee, 2011) clearly revealed that the majority of that training for OWI instructors is rudimentary technology-based information that tends to follow the Quality Matters rubric, emphasize the LMS or technology, or provide general instructions that may not address the needs of online writing students. In addition to those kinds of technology trainings or orientations, it is important to attend to writing instruction concerns such as Beth L. Hewett and Rebecca Hallman Martini’s (2017) work on using Jungian personality types to design better writing-specific professional development for online instructors (see also Jaramillo-Santoy & Cano-Moreal, 2013; Melonçon, 2017; Melonçon & Arduser, 2013; St.Amant, 2018).

5.4. Administrators and instructional designers must offer professional development that specifically addresses instructor and student displacement in online courses.

[77] In composing this article, we discussed the results of the OWI Student Survey and asked ourselves: “Where is the teacher in this class?” Despite two pilots and a fully collaborative process engaging multiple experienced OWI educators and outside experts, we managed to construct the survey without interrogating the assumption that “online class” mostly referred to the content in the LMS shell. Looking back at our initial research questions, we focused on the students’ needs and, therefore, the instructor was absent from the questions. Yet, questions such as “What components of online writing classes do students find most helpful in improving their writing?” suggest that the course itself can exist outside of the interactions of the humans involved in it—an assumption that seems ludicrous in relation to face-to-face classes. The instructor needs to be present both in our research questions and in the OWCs themselves. The survey data suggested both that the survey missed this important component and that OWI instructors may be missing from their own courses.

[78] Thus instructors need faculty development that helps them be present and limits instructor and student displacement or the shift away from the humans at the center of the course as “the classroom changes its configuration when it is altered from a traditional course” to an online course (Melonçon, 2009, p. 106). This displacement impacts instructors and students alike, and online course presence is not a skill for which many OWI instructors have been trained (as evidenced by published literature).

[79] Because the instructor can be displaced in the online class simply by not being present in the same physical space as the students, instructors need to learn strategies to put themselves back into the online classrooms, including strategies that help them communicate with students in ways that further elucidate course learning outcomes and the how of the online writing course. In particular, online instructors need to have professional development in writing specifically for the online environment, including (1) how to write effective instructional materials, (2) how to write effective assignments, (3) how to write effective feedback, and (4) how to write in such a way to reduce cognitive load on students in a reading- and writing-heavy medium (Hewett, 2015a; Hewett & Ehmann, 2004).

[80] As Ken Gillam and Shannon Wooten (2013) stated: ​

The best parts of composition pedagogy are precisely what’s missing in most online learning situations. Indeed, the very characteristics of online learning that make it most attractive in university recruitment campaigns—the convenience of learning outside of real time, the ability to work from home or on the go—are the very things that disembody learners, separating them physically and temporally from their professors and classmates. (para. 4)

Gillam and Wooten’s statement sheds light on the problem inherent in the Quality Matters rubric and other rubrics that separate design from delivery. In the traditional onsite classroom, the instructor must be—whether he or she ascribes to a decentralized classroom—actively present in the class. In the online classroom, educators seem to discuss the class as if it could stand alone without the instructor. The online class therefore can displace both instructor and student, whose needs are not addressed without an instructor’s presence, making connection and community-building a struggle and reducing the “class” space to the equivalent of an online textbook with activities. There are a number of approaches that can be used in conjunction with the framework for purposeful pedagogy-driven course design such as the community of inquiry (e.g., Stewart, 2018), which focuses on presence for both instructors and students. The OWI Principles document (CCCC OWI Committee, 2013) framed the idea of presence within issues of building community in OWCs. OWI Principle 11 stated that “Online writing teachers and their institutions should develop personalized and interpersonal online communities to foster student success,” and an example practice is to develop a course community. If a teacher walked into a traditional onsite classroom, handed out a textbook and some assignments, and sat silently at the front of the classroom while students read and wrote, Writing Studies educators would be shocked. However, when the equivalent happens in an OWC, they may shift blame to the students, indicating that students—and not themselves—need to be more active and engaged in the course.

[81] Students can interpret instructor displacement as a lack of caring and support. In a recent study of online students at one southern public university, Glazier and Skurat Harris (2018) analyzed student perceptions of instructor rapport (defined as instructor friendliness, willingness to communicate, and empathy for students) in online classes. They then used predictive modeling based on institutional data on GPA and demographics to prove that moving an average student from a low-rapport class to a high-rapport class improved their chances of passing the course with a C or better by 30%. In university-wide surveys regarding the “best” or “worst” classes students have taken (n=2009), online students identified the instructor as the single factor that contributed the most to their ranking a class as “best” or “worst” (when given the options of interest in the subject, instructor, assignments, personal circumstances). Online students were more likely to identify good instructors as “available” and onsite students were more likely to talk about good instructors as being “friendly or kind.” Qualitative responses in the survey indicated that students wanted clear and relevant content clearly explained. Students desire and need information that they believe will be beneficial to their careers and lives, and they want faculty to explain such information well and assess their own work fairly. The Glazier and Skurat Harris study aligns directly with our student survey, particularly as seen in student comments related to feedback and poorly contextualized readings, discussion boards, and multimedia materials.

5.5. Researchers need to expand OWI research to include more, and more in-depth, accounts of student experiences.

​[82] Melonçon and Harris (2015) originally recommended that the Writing Studies field should conduct more research on the profiles and demographics of students in OWCs (2013, p. 424). While we still support this type of in-class research to help design classes that meet student needs, we refine that recommendation here to say that the field needs more large-scale, across-classes and institutions research about student experiences and needs that is not survey driven and that provides a deeper understanding of the online student experience.

[83] Recent research on writing programs and courses has been critical of the survey (Melonçon, 2018) because of the mismatch between the question/problem being asked/addressed and the survey as a method. However, many questions around pedagogy in online environments require more in-depth information from both teachers and students, which would be better answered from qualitative studies that cross several institutions.

[84] Surveys are a useful method for reaching large numbers of people, and they can then provide valid and reliable data for generalizable claims; indeed, survey research regarding specific questions suited to quantitative results still are needed, However, as the national student survey in OWI has shown, innovative strategies for student recruitment need to be developed.

[85] The data from this student survey strongly indicated that feedback is an important component of OWCs, yet OWI research has too little research in this area. OWI educators need more research on feedback (see Melonçon, 2018) and what that means for OWI. Specifically, OWI scholars know little about the types of feedback currently being used in classes and whether and why the students think it is (un)helpful; more studies of feedback in this context should be a first priority for OWI researchers. It also is important to conduct studies on how peer review is being taught and facilitated, and the effectiveness of peer review on student revision strategies (see Hewett 1998, 2000).

[86] Research regarding online writing course design and delivery should be rigorous and well-conceived. One of the issues that emerges repeatedly regards studies that are unable to be compared and assessed together. More attention must be paid to research study design, which is a “systematic and reflexive approach to designing studies in ways that emphasize the connection and integration between the research question and the chosen methodologies, methods, and practices used to examine a topic . . . with an intense and transparent focus on ethics” (Melonçon, 2018, p. 213; see also Haswell, 2005, regarding the ongoing need for replicable, aggregable, and data-supported [RAD] research). An increased attention to better research study design will produce better research results that are more useful and much needed data for faculty and administrators to increase understanding of OWI. For example, OWI needs studies that examine course design and instructor presence and how they impact student success and retention. OWI research such as this could potentially show the effects of such pedagogical approaches as the use of discussion boards from the variations of how they are used to how they impact learning outcomes would be helpful. Designing a rigorous study regarding discussion boards for OWI purposes likely would involve experimental design involving a type of study that could be ported across institutions; the resultant data would likely provide stronger conclusions on how to effectively engage the discussion board (in its many pedagogical functions) in purposeful pedagogy-driven OWCs.

6. Conclusion

[87] We have reported on student concerns regarding their OWCs, and we have connected those concerns to existing OWI literature. In doing so, we exposed a problem with OWC design in that OWI education has not addressed the design of online courses adequately through a pedagogical lens. OWI scholars have discussed the what and why of OWI, but not the how. Purposeful pedagogy-driven course design offers an example of what pedagogy in online courses can look like in practice. Finally, we examined some implications for OWI education as it moves forward with an emphasis on purposeful pedagogy-driven course design.

[88] Much of the student data reported here and in “A Report on a U.S.-Based National Survey of Students in Online Writing Courses” pointed to a need to help OWI educators make stronger connections among learning outcomes, activities and assignments, readings and materials, and writing and feedback as noted in Figure 1. Program administrators may assume that OWI instructors already know how to teach writing, yet they may not be aware of how such teaching differs in online settings (Hewett, 2015a; Warnock, 2009). However, with high numbers of non-tenure track faculty and graduate students teaching online, these assumptions cannot be made. Administrators must acknowledge the strong connection between faculty preparation and pedagogical approaches, and they should use this connection to encourage and develop purposeful pedagogy-driven course designs for their OWCs. This type of course design and orientation must occur not only at the beginning of the class but also throughout the course to orient students continually to the class and to inform students at each juncture how they can best succeed in the class. In doing so, OWI education can develop better ways to prepare faculty so that students’ concerns raised in the national survey of OWI can be addressed.

[89] One of the most significant aspects of this student survey project is that the results can help OWI instructors add the necessary connections in their pedagogical approaches to more effectively implement the ideas presented in the OWI Principles document (CCCC OWI Committee, 2013). As importantly, purposeful pedagogy-driven course design advances research across all of distance education, entering OWI educators into broader conversations about how to teach online more effectively.

[90] The next step for research in purposeful pedagogy-driven course design includes the rigorous studies mentioned in the section on research above. Ideally, researchers will conduct empirical and data drive research studies to determine the effect of instructor presence in purposeful pedagogy-driven course design ideally in multiple courses. Surveys of student perceptions of purposeful pedagogy-driven courses will not suffice. Instead, we have to create research conditions that allow us to pinpoint how purposeful-pedagogy driven classes most effectively improve student writing.

[91] The opening epigram of this article (I don’t feel that this class has helped me improve my writing) encouraged the student survey working group and the authors of this article to read the student responses alongside existing research, and we realized that students’ views of the OWC circled back to instructor preparedness and institutional support for online teaching. Some of the students essentially were asking, “Where is the instructor in my OWC?” We hope the pedagogical framework provided will begin to answer this question.

7. Endnotes

1. The authors of this article were members of this student-survey working group.
2. The concept of teacher presence also is discussed in literature about Communities of Inquiry, which is one way to establish presence. For a discussion of communities of inquiry in relation to OWI, see Stewart, 2018.

3. Not all students answered one or both of these questions.

4. The concept of teacher presence also is discussed in literature about Communities of Inquiry, which is one way to establish presence. For a discussion of communities of inquiry in relation to OWI, see Stewart, 2018.

5. We realize that some/most online faculty will be teaching an insane course load—some as many as 7-8 online classes at multiple institutions at one time—in order to survive economically. We understand that instructor presence and interaction are greatly curtailed in such situations simply because there are only 24 hours in a day and only so much one faculty member can do to teach 100+ students in any kind of interpersonal way. This problem is exacerbated in online settings where interpersonal connection crucially separates an OWC from a self-taught learning model.