syllabus
calendar
blackboard
student.email resources

last.updated 5.30.12

 

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.


Instructional Tool Review

Mark and Eric will be presenting their instructional tool reviews and fielding questions.

Freewrite–Reflections upon synchronous learning

For the first ten minutes of class, respond to the following prompt:

If you were to design the asynchronous class that you just experienced over the last week, what would you have done differently? Why? Use your experiences and your understanding of good writing pedagogy to justify your answer.

Debrief–Asynchronous Class

We will use the first part of class to discuss the following questions about your experience with the synchronous class:

  • Describe your experience. What worked well? What did not work well?
  • How did the technological afforances faciliate the work that you were asked to do? How did it limit your ability to do this work?
  • In way did the pedagogical design work well for the asynchronous approach and the technological affordances?
  • Based upon what we have read so far, what would Warnock say about the design of this class?
  • The instructor placed some artifical constraints on how you should conduct class? In what ways did you "cheat"?
  • How would your redesign the assignment you were asked to do for this class and why?

Discussion I–Questions about Labor

What questions do you have about the readings about labor? We will use time to address your questions or comments on these readings?

Discussion II–The How & Why of Teaching Writing Online

We will discuss the following questions about the Warnock book:

What questions, comments, or concerns do you have about Warnock's book so far?

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?