Conclusion
Online courses may be here to stay, but the beliefs that inform the best practices of modern composition pedagogy must not get lost in the rush to convert our courses into vastly different learning environments. For more than a generation, Cooper and others have explained the ecological nature of both individual writing and group cohesion, and with or without the language of ecology, compositionists have for decades recognized the complexity of communication and the necessity of adapting and coordinating one’s ideas with discourse communities large and small. Ironically, the embodied and ecological collaborative experiences we fear will be lost in the conversion to online composition classes are precisely what distance education theorists also insist are essential to any online student learning, making the job of course redesign even more important. Through projects like the one we describe here, we contribute to what we hope is a rich and fruitful period of conscientious pedagogical invention, the design of a new composition pedagogy, appropriate to technology-based courses but still fueled by the theories that inform the best of our traditional classes.