Alone and Online: Designing Content and Using PDCs

as an Adjunct Instructor of First-Year Writing.

Jessie BorgmanWestern Michigan University and others

CCCCS 2013

What the experts are saying… 

What the students are saying… 

What I am saying…  

Assignment examples…

Experts

Design assignments to encourage one-to-one interaction between student and instructor

Allow for advanced planning; develop a schedule with due dates and stick to it

Chunk information and content; use modules or small mini-lessons

Students

Think writing is difficult; do not have a lot of time; are balancing many things

at once

Want to pick their topics; want to research

and write research papers

Unsure about technology-basedwriting; still want to learn

to write academic essays

Assignments

Exploring Your Writing Process and the

Five-Paragraph Essay Genre

Two Part Research Project: The Effects of Technology on

Degree/Career Field

My Thoughts

Listen to our students; trust our guts and our own educational training

Heed the advice of experts and not get too crazy with technology; it overwhelms students, especially older students

Anticipate that they will need extra help; have available resources for each of the assignments

THE ASSIGNMENTS

“To make it possible for students to practice, value, and understand a full

range of literacies—emerging, competing, and fading—English composition teachers have got to be willing to expand their own

understanding of composing beyond conventional

bounds of the alphabetic...”

Cynthia L. Selfe, Writing New Media, (54)

COMPOSITION AS PUBLIC WORK

In what sense is writing public work?

How might composition, as a field and as a teaching subject, become more expansive, reaching out to diverse disciplines and to diverse publics?

At a time when considerable attention is being paid to improve “College Readiness,” what public role might composition on play to assist in the preparation of all students for college success?

“…writing like all literate practices, only exists because it functions, circulates,

shifts and has varying value and weight within complexly articulate social,

cultural, political, educational, religious, economic, familial, ecological, artistic,

effective and technological webs…”

Anne Frances Wysocki , Writing New Media (2)

WORKS CITED

 Allen, Elaine, I. and Jeff Seaman. Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States, 2011. Wellesley: Babson Survey Research Group, 2011. Print.  Gillman, Todd. “Designing Effective Online Assignments”. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 03.22 (2010): n. pag. Web. 15 January 2013.  Hewett, Beth L. The Online Writing Conference. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2010. Print.  Hewett, Beth L. and Christina Ehmann. Preparing Educators for Online Writing Instruction. Urbana: NCTE, 2004. Print. Smith, Robin M. Conquering the Content: A Step-by-Step Guide to Online Course Design. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 2008. Print.  Warnock, Scott. Teaching Writing Online: How and Why. Urbana: NCTE, 2009. Print. Wysocki, Anne Frances, et al. Writing New Media: Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition. Logan: Utah State UP, 2004. Print.