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last.updated 5.24.10

 

Teaching Writing Online, Part 1


Purpose

Scott Warnock's book, Teaching Writing Online: How & Why, provides it audience of beginners with some practical strategies for designing a course with online pedagogical elements, as most distance learning have. This is a good artifact to look at from two different perspectives: a text that can help us think about how to design distance education courses and a text–and one of the few–in the field that specifically advise instructors on how to teach with the tools we use to mediate distance education.


For this class we will all meet virtually in the Adobe Acrobat Connect classroom. The class will be divided into two sections. During the first ninety minutes of the class we will meet in break-out groups and use the chat function to address the respective questions. After a ten minute break, we will use the video function of the program to talk about the experience and the readings.

Activity–The How & Why of Teaching Writing Online

Each group will discuss the following questions

Group Members Questions
1 Cynthia, Susan, Danielle, O'Neika,

Content

  • What are some of the principles that Warnock uses as a foundation for this book? Does his articulation or portrayal of distance learning speak to you and your experiences? Explain.
  • How well do you recognize your own writing pedagogy in what Warnock presents? How does this affect your reading of the text?
  • What suggestions have you found most useful? Why?
  • Based upon the topics covered, what would you like to see the text do that it has not done?

Presentation

  • What are Warnock's goals for this book? Based upon what you have read, in what ways does this text fulfill it goals?
  • Do you feel like you were the intended audience of this book? Explain. If not, what would a text written for you do or look like?
  • What features (e.g., structure, modeling, epistemology, tone) do you find most/least useful? Why?
2 Christie, Tesha, Diane, Kevin
3 Nathan, Nancy, Chevonne, Zsuzsanna

Discussion

Using the video chat function we will discuss the questions that you have about the text, as well as the answers your groups came up with for the questions above.