Focused Discussions
For work that is best discussed or debated, rather than reported on through a formal presentation, these sessions provide a forum for an extended “round-table” conversation between an author and a small group of interested colleagues. Summaries of the author’s key ideas, or points of discussion, are used to stimulate and guide the discourse.
Piloting Online Writing for First-year Students at a Public Research University: Rewards and Challenges for Online Composition Instruction
Focused Discussion Stephen Rust
This presentation documents and reflects on the development of the online writing pilot at the University of Oregon between 2017 and 2019. Despite being the state’s flagship research institution, the UO lacks the robust technological and administrative support structure of competing schools like Oregon State University eCampus (consistently ranked among the nation’s best online universities). With minimal training and support, six experienced writing instructors have devoted our time and energy to develop individualized online sections of two required courses that offer accessible, rigorous, and rewarding experiences for our students. We have also partnered with the tutoring center to pilot an online tutoring lab. We offer 20 online sections per year to supplement 250 in-person sections. The online sections have been particularly appealing to nontraditional students, student-athletes, international students, and students with disabilities. Students must also be taking classes on campus to register. I will share background on the institutional history of our online writing pilot and demonstrate how current academic research in online writing education (see King, Keeth, and Ryan, 2018, for example) and inclusive pedagogy have informed our curriculum development. I will spend the second half of my talk sharing experiences and challenges I have faced piloting my own course. I will provide a resource list for the audience as well as teaching materials and examples from my own courses, which use traditional and digital tools to improve students’ rhetorical analysis skills through individual and collaborative assignments that bridge the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.
Lessons Learned from the Design, Build, and Run of Ohio University’s First Online Spanish Courses
Focused Discussion Matthew Barrile
In 2018, I began my position as Online Curricular Designer in the Department of Modern Languages at Ohio University in the U.S. I was hired to design and build the online Spanish program, as well as assist other faculty members interested in building online versions of their face-to-face courses. In this focused discussion, I describe my primary objectives as an online curricular designer, detail my design and build process, and explain how I approach effective e-Learning pedagogy that is suitable for both adult distance learners and traditional university students. I also discuss how I strive to design courses that are accessible: courses that are financially accessible (are the costs of the course materials accessible to learners of different economic backgrounds?), technologically accessible (does my course require any special skills?), and accessible to learners living with disabilities. I conclude with an explanation of the difficulties I encountered during the design phase and the execution of the courses as well as the hard lessons I learned, and I tell how I was able to channel frustration and embarrassment into specific plans for improvement by following the ADDIE Model, common in instructional design.
