Introduction
- In June 2020, instructional designer Flower Darby wrote
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If there’s one big takeaway from the COVID-19 crisis for higher education, it’s that teaching well online is increasingly, and vitally, important. Maybe you’re thinking: Well, once this global health threat recedes… online learning will diminish in prevalence and I can go back to teaching entirely in person. Not likely. The virtual train has left the station. And it’s to your advantage to be on it. (Darby, “Sorry Not Sorry”)
There has perhaps never been a better time to study online writing instruction than in 2022. Afterall, nearly every college writing instructor in the U.S. gained experience teaching online during the COVID-19 pandemic over the prior two years. Courses have been offered across a spectrum of synchronous, asynchronous, and hybrid online/in-person modalities. Instructors have utilized existing and newly emergent technologies and developed innovative pedagogies for interacting with students. Campus trainings, disciplinary workshops, and online educator networks have become widely available to support instructor preparedness and new classroom practices. This diversity of experiences provides researchers with a rich context for investigating evolving approaches to online writing instruction (OWI)
And yet, teaching conditions during a still unfolding pandemic have hardly been ideal. As Bessette, et al., (2020) suggested, despite the “remarkable ways in which many institutions mobilized the expertise in campus teaching centers, libraries, IT departments, and instructional design offices to help faculty members become familiar with virtual teaching tools and environments very, very quickly,” we are still in many senses in the middle of “pedagogical triage” rather than the careful, deliberative work usually required to develop quality online courses. In addition to retooling pedagogy and redesigning courses for online delivery, the physical, emotional, social, and economic toll of the pandemic, combined with the mysteries of what is still to come have left many instructors exhausted.
Despite our unknown future with COVID-19, though, there is little doubt that online course offerings will continue to expand. States like California have already budgeted permanent increases in online offerings in their two- and four-year college and university systems (Smith, et al., 2021). Instructors, students, and institutions alike have experienced the benefits (and challenges) of online learning and leaders at many institutions across the country acknowledge that going back to the predominantly in-person educational model of pre-2020 is unlikely (Anderson, 2021). Not only can online offerings provide geographic, economic, and temporal flexibility but they can also afford new opportunities for classroom accessibility, student engagement, and writing experience with a variety of digital literacies, media, and modalities.
To better understand our current moment with OWI and how we might build on our pandemic teaching experiences, this article reports on findings from a survey of writing instructors working in a large, multi-campus state university system in the western U.S. This study investigated online instructional experiences, professional development activities, and uses of instructional and composing technologies in online writing courses during the first two years of the COVID era (academic years 2020-2021 and 2021-2022). Respondents reported a wide range of training for and practical experiences with OWI pedagogies and online classroom technologies. My analysis identifies both best practices and gaps in pedagogical preparation and ongoing professional development. These findings call for reflective practice and suggest opportunities for iteration to strengthen OWI and professional support for faculty, writing programs, and graduate student education moving forward.
The practice of OWI and related disciplinary research has a “rich history… in the writing studies field that dates back more than 30 years” (Borgman & McArdle, 2019, p. 10). Scholars have examined classroom practices (Borgman & McArdle 2019, 2021; Darby & Lang, 2019; Warnock 2009; Warnock & Gasiewski, 2018), faculty preparation (Cargile Cook, 2005; Cicchino et al., 2021; Hewett & DePew, 2015; Rice, 2015), teaching technologies and modalities (Blair 2015; Borgman & Dockter, 2018; Mick and Middlebrook, 2015; Snart, 2015), and more. Research and best practices have become staples in writing studies journals and conferences and have been enshrined in disciplinary position statements (CCCC, 2013) and guiding principles (Global Society of Online Literacy Educators, 2019). As Borgman and McArdle (2021) have suggested, “we have moved beyond validating OWI as a field” (p. 10) and toward the realization that, even before COVID, “in this day and age, we’re all online writing instructors” (Borgman & McArdle, 2019, p. 1).
Despite this scholarly and pedagogical history, online writing courses offered prior to the pandemic were primarily taught by instructors who intentionally chose and prepared for online educational experiences. As the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s (CCCC) “Position Statement of OWI Principles and Effective Practices” outlined in 2013, research suggests that instructors for OWI should self-select so that they can “develop, thrive, and meet OWI students’ needs” (Hewett, 2015, p. 66). Online and hybrid courses offer a number of affordances for writing instruction, but they also require substantial time, particularly up front, to teach well. This significantly impacts workload as instructors engage in additional professional development, prepare digital materials, and monitor, participate in, and respond to a higher volume of student writing, interaction, and media usage. As Hodges et al., (2020) pointed out, it often takes instructors many months of planning and course design to feel comfortable teaching online. Further, given the heavy course loads and high student enrollment caps for many writing instructors, especially in public institutions, the added work of redesigning pedagogies and curricula can be daunting, even without a global pandemic.
The rapid and unplanned shift to OWI throughout higher education beginning in March 2020 represented an unprecedented change for many instructors and now offers researchers an important window into understanding the practical and pedagogical choices instructors made in their online courses. Further, as new and existing technologies found their way into significantly more writing courses during the online year(s), it is important to investigate not only what was used and why, but how instructors perceived their effectiveness in relation to students’ learning and composing practices. While many technologies may have supported expansion of students’ literacies, both written and digital, others may have created challenges to learning, access, and equity. Documenting experiences from a variety of institutional contexts is critical for scholars as we seek to understand how OWI and student learning were impacted during the COVID era. Such research and reflection will help us to improve pedagogies, professional development, and instructional technology integration for teaching writing in an uncertain future.