For both students and instructors, one of the greatest challenges in teaching and learning online is the potential loss of the social aspect that is central to first-year writing courses, courses that value:
- A focus on writing and the writing process
- Development of a community of writers
- Student-centered learning environments
- Collaboration and co-creation of knowledge
- Inclusive discussions
Often, it is the development of community that determines the success of many of the other elements. In the traditional, or face-to-face classroom (f2f), physical presence and visual cues, both of the students and the instructor, as well as the shared experience in the classroom can help to build this sense of community and to foster a level of comfort among peers. In the exclusively online writing course, however, this opportunity for spontaneous community is limited or, perhaps, nonexistent and inevitably impacts the students’ experiences and potentially their development as writers and thinkers.
Given the virtual nature of the online writing course, much of the communication and interaction exists in writing alone, whether that communication is facilitated by email, synchronous chats, or asynchronous discussion board postings. If we draw from Simmons and Grabill’s (2007) assertion that “people can write to change communities,” presumably communities of which they are a part, we can envision how this rhetorical act in the online writing course can begin to define the community in which we would like our first-year composition students to participate.
At the heart of Simmons and Grabill’s (2007) argument, however, is the more immediate concern that despite a citizen’s desire to contribute to change, the interface complicates and even prohibits that process (p. 432). Research in online teaching and learning reveals that this difficulty exists for online students as well, often resulting in frustration, disconnection, and even withdrawal from the course. In order to realize the possibilities for online writing courses, some of which include the:
- Potential for student-centered learning
- Co-learning and co-teaching by students and the instructor
- Co-construction of knowledge among participants
- Greater access and convenience (Canada, 2000; Cooper, 1999; Knowlton, 2000)
members of the course community must enact a civic rhetoric to ensure student success; students must become active participants in the course, must be responsible for identifying and solving problems, and must draw from a common understanding of course objectives and course goals. As a means to this end, I further claim that it is through feminist teaching—both in the course design and delivery—that instructors of online writing courses can facilitate the kind of civic action among students that leads to community building