Information About the Online Courses

In the Spring of 2002 both of us taught online sections of English 102, the second course in a two-semester FYC requirement. In order to keep our results as consistent as possible, we kept our course content as similar as we could. We each used the same text and the same four major writing assignments, focused around argumentation. The students led discussions over course readings on a rotating basis. We each established peer review groups for our students, and kept them constant throughout the semester. Most of the course interaction took place in WebBoard, a courseware forum no longer used by our university. It allowed for both synchronous and asynchronous exchanges. We each maintained syllaweb sites for our courses to supplement the WebBoard discussions. In addition, we each provided individual feedback to students via Email throughout the course of the semester. Maintaining these similarities between both online sections of English 102 allowed us to focus on the pedagogical frameworks that informed our course design and see how these face-to-face pedagogies fared online.