1. Editor's Note
[1] As ROLE enters its second year, we are pleased to publish this issue that offers a provisional map of the landscape of online literacy education. You will come away from this issue with a heightened awareness of the fact that we are at a turning point in our research as online learning continues to grow. We do not yet know enough about the global contexts of our work, nor do we know enough about our students and their experiences in and with online courses. But this issue begins to map out some outlines of what that work might look like. I suspect this issue will generate discussion and point to future research that will shape our field for the decade ahead.
[2] As the G in GSOLE signifies, online literacy education takes place in a global environment. How well do educators understand this international landscape? What questions do we need to be asking about the international contexts of online teaching and learning? The first article in ROLE 2.1 presents a multivocal, collaborative response to these questions. Growing out of the 2018 GSOLE online conference, "Perspectives on Teaching Writing Online in Global Contexts: Ideas, Insights, and Projections" offers a provocative, wide-ranging discussion that readers will want to extend and continue in their own work. Yvonne Cleary, Rich Rice, Pavel Zemliansky, and Kirk St.Amant address a series of questions about the potentials, challenges, development, strategies, and projections for the future of global online writing instruction. The discussion, moderated by Jessie C. Borgman, offers a powerful call to think globally when we teach online. Readers are encouraged to consider how they might apply and build on the ideas presented here in order to expand both their understanding of and practices related to teaching in global spaces.
[3] Anchoring this issue are two articles that report on a 2017 survey of online writing students in the U.S. As the authors note, student voices have been largely absent from the conversation about effective practices in online writing instruction. When we do survey students, as the “Report on a U.S.-Based National Survey of Students in Online Writing Courses” does, we discover that “students valued instructor expertise and feedback” but “they did not know how the courses helped them improve their writing.” Authors Diane Martinez, Mahli Xuan Mechenbier, Beth L. Hewett, Lisa Meloncon, and Heidi Skurat Harris (with Kirk St.Amant, Adam Phillips, and Marcy Irene Bodnar) present an analysis of the survey data that should be required reading for all online instructors: “the potential to learn should not only be apparent to instructors and administrators in the form of course learning outcomes—it should be made apparent to students.”
[4] How do we begin to translate these findings into practice? This question is addressed in the second part of this survey project. In “A Call for Purposeful Pedagogy-driven Course Design in OWI,” Heidi Skurat Harris, Lisa Meloncon, Beth L. Hewett, and Diane Martinez highlight some of the qualitative data from the open-ended questions in the 2017 national survey. In short, this article asserts, “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.” “A purposeful pedagogy-driven course design,” as this essay argues, “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.” The article concludes with a series of next steps that will launch a discussion that may well animate and shape work in our field for years to come.
[5] Two expansive technology reviews offer assessments of affordable platforms for e-portfolios and a discussion on how to use VoiceThread to enrich online discussions; and five outstanding book reviews will help ROLE readers add to their to-be-read stacks. Happy reading!
