CFP for the Edited Collection

Best Practices in Undergraduate Online Writing Instruction (OWI): A Showcase of Techniques

Deadline for chapter manuscripts: January 30, 2012 (Response by the end of March 2012)
Deadline for final chapter manuscripts: June 1, 2012

Many composition teachers at the postsecondary level are feeling pressure to deliver fully online writing courses because campus administrators facing dwindling budgets know that online education is an area of growth. In fact, the Sloan Consortium predicts a growth in online enrollments of up to 25% in the coming year. Yet, research also suggests that teachers desire more training in order to effectively deliver fully online writing instruction (OWI).

For instance, the March 2011 “Initial Report” of the College Composition and Communication Conference (CCCC) Committee for Best Practice in OWI, uses a nationwide survey to identify needs that must be met for postsecondary OWI to achieve the Sloan Consortium’s “quality pillars” for online instruction which include “learning effectiveness,” “cost effectiveness and intuitional commitment,” “access,” “student satisfaction,” and “faculty satisfaction” (See: Moore, Janet. The Sloan Consortium Quality Framework and the Five Pillars. The Sloan Consortium, 2005. Web.).  At least four of the needs identified in the CCCC report are highly relevant to this proposed edited collection. Those needs include:

 *   “Teachers and administrators, to include those in writing centers, typically are simply migrating traditional face-to-face writing pedagogies to the online setting—both fully online and hybrid. Theory and practice specific to OWI has yet to be fully developed and engaged in postsecondary online settings across the United States." (Hewett, et al., 7)
 *   “Training is needed in pedagogy-specific theory and practice in both fully online and hybrid settings, but particularly in fully online settings because of its unique complete mediation by computers.” (Hewett, et al., 7)
 *   “Online writing centers are not developed by enough institutions to handle the needs of students in both fully online and hybrid online settings. To that end, training is insufficiently developed to the unique setting as it is, re above, migrated primarily from the face-to-face setting.” (Hewett, et al., 7)
 *   “Instructors are dissatisfied with the levels of support they receive regarding technology, course caps, training, pay, and professional development/interactions relative to OWI in both the fully online and hybrid settings.” (Hewett, et al., 7)

Best Practices in Undergraduate Online Writing Instruction (OWI): A Showcase of Techniques aims to meet these needs for more professional development and support. Authors are invited to submit manuscripts that focus on any level of fully online undergraduate writing instruction such as first-year composition, ESL composition, developmental composition, upper-level writing courses, and professional writing courses such as business writing, technical writing, and journalism.

In their manuscripts, authors should provide specific examples of fully OWI practices that are grounded in theory and seek to meet the Sloan Consortium’s “five pillars” for effective instruction. Further, authors are encouraged to craft their chapters so that they clearly address a question or questions in one of the following three categories:

 1.  Best Practices in Course Design For Fully Online Writing Instruction (OWI)
    *   What pedagogical strategies are effective for OWI? How do we know?
    *   What pedagogical strategies are ineffective for OWI? How do we know?
    *   What platforms are most effective for OWI? How do we know?
    *   What kinds of students are best served by OWI? How do we know?
    *   What kinds of students may need more support to succeed in an online environment? How do we know? How do we support these students?

 2.  Best Practices in Course Management For Fully Online Writing Instruction (OWI)
    *   How can teachers best manage their time so that they are responsive to their students without being online 24 hours a day, seven days a week?
    *   What are the best ways to retain students and keep them engaged in a fully online course?
    *   What strategies are effective for managing some specific aspect of an online course? Authors should feel free to discuss any strategy of their own choosing. Some suggested topics include the uses of: discussions, chats, peer review, group projects, instructor feedback to student work, prewriting, revision, research, and the use of readings, games, videos and/or audio to support instruction. 

3.  Best Practices in Assessment For Fully Online Writing Instruction (OWI)

    *   What makes OWI different from face-to-face instruction? In what ways are those differences significant? How do we know?
    *   What makes OWI effective? How do we know?
    *   What makes an OWI teacher an effective one? How do we know?
    *   What resources do teachers need to be effective online writing instructors?
    *   How do we know that students are learning in an online writing classroom?
    *   What do students think about OWI? What expectations do they have for such courses? What do they like and dislike? How do these student attitudes impact learning?
 

My plans are to publish the collection with a peer-reviewed press, so authors should be sure to get, if possible, written permission from the student for any student work that they use and follow the Institutional Review Board (IRB) guidelines of their home institutions regarding such permissions.

Manuscripts should be formatted per the most recent MLA guidelines (7th edition) and should be about 15 to 25 double spaced pages in length. Manuscripts should also include a 200-word abstract of the chapter.

Please direct questions and manuscripts in Word or RTF to: Teresa Henning, Southwest Minnesota State University, teresa.henning@smsu.edu