2018-2019 Webinar Series

Webinar Series Home | Webinar Participation

ARCHIVED SERIES

2023-2024 |2022-2023 | 2021-2022 | 2020-2021 | 2019-2020 | 2018-2019 | 2017-2018 | 2016-2017

Listings of Past Webinar Series

The listings below document the efforts of past webinar leaders, as well as the evolving interests of online literacy educators.

Members may watch recorded webinars by clicking on the image accompanying each listing.

Webinar Descriptions

Pre-Designed Online Courses: What, Why, and How

Webinar Leaders: Catrina Mitchum, Shelley Rodrigo, & Chvonne Parker

Date of Webinar: April 11, 2019

Overview

As long as First-Year Composition remains an almost universally required course, writing programs will continue to design, develop, and deliver online writing (OW) courses to meet the growing demand of online undergraduate degree programs. All of the issues surrounding FYC and writing programs also transfer to online offerings, including considerations about curricular alignment, professional development, retention, and assessment. One of the ways writing programs have managed online writing programs is by implementing pre-designed courses (Rice, 2015; Rodrigo & Ramirez, 2017).

Webinar Plan

During this webinar presenters will share scholarship about and experiences with pre-designed courses (PDCs) as well as invite participants to share experiences and brainstorm ideas for improved PDC processes and products. Specifically, there will be interactive dialogues/activities focusing on: titles and other nomenclature (focusing on what is the pre-design of a pre-design course); actors and agency (focusing on the distinctions between design and delivery as well as teacher agency); and assessment (focusing on programmatic/institution assessment, including discussion of teacher observations and evaluations, course evaluation surveys, etc.).

Webinar Leader Bios

Catrina Mitchum is a Career-Track Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Arizona. Her research interests are in retention and course design of online writing classes. She has scholarly work published in The Journal of Teaching and Learning with Technology, MediaCommons, and Enculturation, and she was awarded, with other scholars, the CCCC Research Initiative Grant in 2017-2018. She teaches first-year writing courses as well as upper level undergraduate courses in Professional and Technical Writing entirely online.
Rochelle (Shelley) Rodrigo is Associate Director Writing Program, Online Writing, and Associate Professor in Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English (RCTE) in the Department of English at the University of Arizona. She researches how “newer” technologies better facilitate communicative interactions, specifically teaching and learning. As well as co-authoring three editions of The Wadsworth/Cengage Guide to Research, Shelley also co-edited Rhetorically Rethinking Usability (Hampton Press). Her scholarly work has appeared in Computers and Composition, C&C Online, Technical Communication Quarterly, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, EDUCAUSE Quarterly, Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy, Enculturation ̧ as well as various edited collections. In 2014 she was awarded Old Dominion University’s annual Teaching with Technology Award and in 2012 the Digital Humanities High Powered Computing Fellowship..
Chvonne Parker is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of English at Old Dominion University. Her research lies at the intersections of cultural rhetoric, online writing instruction, and hip-hop pedagogy. Her dissertation examines online writing instructors’ perceptions of their rhetorical agency in pre-designed courses. She has scholarly work in MediaCommons and In Media Res. She teaches first-year writing, literature, and courses in business, technical, and science writing both on campus and online..

How we Cultivate an Interculturally-Intelligent Online Pedagogy and Environment

Webinar Leaders: Mary De Nora

Date of Webinar: February 8, 2019

Overview

How we define/think of culture impacts the way we think about “intercultural communication.” This webinar establishes a dynamic definition for “culture” that allows educators to avoid potential issues related to cultural conflict, as well as better navigate and understand complex communication challenges. The webinar leader will provide an overview of theories (models for intercultural communication) taken from scholarship in the field of intercultural communication and discuss how these models apply to the way we teach and assess students. This webinar will cover ways to assess students, as well as provide an opportunity to discuss ways to engage students in thinking about intercultural communication competence. Participants will be asked to examine their understanding of constitutes culture in light of definitions and theory drawn from the field of intercultural communication ideally to help instructors better design course content, support student learning, and identify at what stage a student is at in their intercultural communication development. This webinar will include questions for the group to discuss, and will invite participants to share from their own experience and expertise.

Webinar Plan

The goal of this webinar is to establish a culturally-intelligent foundation for intercultural communication competence as it relates to the role of instructors. Instructors discuss how to better define cultural in a breakout session with other participants, followed by an overview of best practices and theory accepted in the field of intercultural communication, followed by a breakout session that includes a case study for participants to discuss, tackle and solve. Resources and readings will be made available to participants to augment the learning experience. These materials will include a reading list from scholarship in the field of intercultural communication for those interested in doing some additional reading and research, as well as a handout with resources (e.g. intercultural communication assessment test list, training sites, etc.).

Webinar Leader Bios

Mary D. De Nora is a PhD student in technical communication and rhetoric at Texas Tech University where she also teaches the technical communication service course and report writing. She has completed the minor in cross-cultural research methods, a graduate certificate in linguistics, and a graduate certificate in teaching technical communication. Her primary research interests include intercultural communication and intercultural communication assessment, programmatic assessment, accessibility, audience analysis and research methods. She has tutored and taught students in many educational settings (community college, state schools, private and public universities), as well as supporting the learning of native born ESL students and international students. She has led students abroad and also incorporated transnational projects in the classroom.

Training Novice Instructors to Teach Writing Online

Webinar Leaders: Kelli Cargile Cook & Keith Grant-Davie

Date of Webinar: November 14, 2018

Overview

This webinar will provide participants with practical and time-tested syllabi that approach training first-time faculty to teach writing online. Using strategies developed through 35 combined years of online teaching, the speakers will discuss how they design and deliver courses that train first-time online writing instructors. The presenters’ perspectives demonstrate how their courses have been taught in varying instructional periods (long and short semesters) and instructional modes (asynchronous and synchronous). They will discuss how projects in their courses are designed and describe successful projects students have completed.

Webinar Plan

In advance of the webinar, the presenters will develop a course shell for the seminar in which they will place course syllabi and assignment descriptions. Additionally, they will build pre- and post-seminar discussion forums to allow participants to engage in asynchronous discussion. Participants will leave the webinar with two syllabi models they can use when designing training courses for novice online writing instructors. They will have strategies for teaching these courses, including assignment descriptions and discussion thread prompts. They will also have the opportunity to reach out to the seminar presenters and ask questions in the post-seminar discussion forum.

Webinar Leader Bios

Kelli Cargile Cook is a Professor and Founding Chair of the Professional Communication Department at Texas Tech University. Prior to this appointment, she served as a Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric (TCR) from 2009-2018. During this time, she also served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in TCR, Director of Technical Communication and Rhetoric Program, and Associate Chair of the English Department. She co-edited two collections on online education in professional and technical communication: Online Education 2.0: Evolving, Adapting, and Reinventing Online Technical Communication (2013) and Online Education: Global Questions, Local Answers (2005). The 2005 collection received the NCTE Award for Excellence for Best Collection in Technical and Scientific Communication, 2006. Her scholarship has appeared in Technical Communication Quarterly, Technical Communication, Journal for Technical Writing and Communication, Programmatic Perspectives, and Business Communication Quarterly. She is a past president of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing and of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication.
Keith Grant-Davie, Utah State University (keith.grant-davie@usu.edu), is a Professor of English specializing in online pedagogy, technical editing, and the rhetoric of apology and crisis communication. His work has appeared in Rhetoric Review, the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Computers and Composition, and JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory. With Kelli Cargile Cook, he co-edited the two collections, Online Education 2.0: Evolving, Adapting, and Reinventing Online Technical Communication (2013) and Online Education: Global Questions, Local Answers (2005). For 12 years he was Director of Graduate Studies in English at Utah State University, where he chairs the curriculum committee for the online Master of Technical Communication program. He regularly teaches a graduate seminar for new and prospective online teachers.

Equity, Access, and the Next Decade of Digital Writing

Webinar Leaders: Troy Hicks

Date of Webinar: October 30, 2018

Overview

This webinar will engage participants with current understandings about digital writing and connected reading. The webinar leader will draw from research on “new literacies” and “digital writing” as a frame of reference. Then, looking at some examples of current scholarship, he will invite participants to think about how existing technologies commonly used in K-12 schools (e.g., Google Docs, Adobe Spark) can be used in innovative ways to help students better comprehend and create multimedia texts. In addition, a broader theme related to equity and access – as well as freely available technologies and other open educational resources – will be explored.

Webinar Plan

During the webinar, participants will have opportunity to briefly explore the process of making their own social media post using a freely-available tool, Adobe Spark, and to think heuristically about the decisions that they are making as readers, writers, and viewers. Ideally, participants in the webinar will have opportunity to share some of their creations. In doing so, again, connections to broader themes about access, in particular fair use and copyright, could be explored.

Webinar Leader Bios

Troy Hicks, PhD, is Professor of English and Education at Central Michigan University (CMU). He directs both the Chippewa River Writing Project and the Master of Arts in Educational Technology degree program. A former middle school teacher, he collaborates with K–12 colleagues and explores how they implement newer literacies in their classrooms. In 2011, he was honored with CMU’s Provost’s Award for junior faculty who demonstrate outstanding achievement in research and creative activity, in 2014 he received the Conference on English Education’s Richard A. Meade Award for scholarship in English education, and, in 2018, he received the Michigan Reading Association’s Teacher Educator Award. Dr. Hicks has authored numerous books, articles, chapters, blog posts, and other resources broadly related to the teaching of literacy in our digital age. Follow him on Twitter: @hickstro

!webmaster account!