The Modern Writing Course

With the advent of asynchronous online education and MOOCs, students are often more isolated than ever in their attempts to master basic skills such as writing academically. Research indicates that student engagement is directly related to success, and 21st century students need to engage not only with content, but with each other. This can be accomplished even in an asynchronous online class by promoting a consortium of learners--blending sections of f2f learners, hybridized synchronous learners, and independent asynchronous learners...by developing an LMS that "invites" active participation and interaction among peers. If your school does not use Canvas, Blackboard, D2L, or a similar LMS, then Facebook groups or other social media platforms can be employed to give large groups of students an opportunity to interact with one another "outside" the bounds of a physical classroom or a single course shell with a maximum enrollment of a few (or a few dozen) learners. The practicality of openly inviting students to interact with others who share goals (ie: first-year writing SLOs) has been demonstrated in my class for the last dozen years, and the informal findings to date indicate that students are more willing to share ideas and perceptions electronically than they often do in a live on-ground class. This is, after all, the age of electronic engagement.

Incorporating service learning into the college writing class can prove beneficial to the student as well as the college and the community. Service learning has been defined by many institutions as a high impact practice which promotes success beyond the classroom. Several years ago, I had a young lady who wanted to major in Criminal Justice. I was able to secure for her an internship at our local Sheriff's Department and allow her to complete graded coursework for English Composition One which was based primarily upon her observations and interactions while working with the SO. This internship (and her eventual degree) turned into a career for her, and she is now gainfully (and happily, at her last report to me) employed in local law enforcement. There are a myriad of opportunities for the writing instructor to incorporate real-world and practical experiences into the instruction of college-level writing.

My writing students frequently find themselves writing about opportunities to serve the larger community. My class is not solely focused on grammar and writing instruction; we include "projects" that range from making gift baskets for the elderly residents of a local assisted-living facility to campus clean-up, where I work alongside them with a rake or shovel to police the grounds and participate in campus beautification projects. Then, we write! Using our service projects as an impetus, we explore the ramifications of our endeavors, the benefits to the college and the community, and the implications for these service-learning projects in an academic setting.

One-on-one consultation with the instructor is a staple of every level of education, from kindergarten through college. For educators who have, as a principal component of their workday, the privilege and professional obligation to meet with students (academic advising), this component of the education process has, since the pandemic, become a real challenge. Fortunately, there are work-arounds which can be helpful in arranging one-on-one sessions with students who are struggling to master course objectives or with those who are simply seeking academic advice, even if your school is operating remotely during a shut down or if students are enrolled in asynchronous online classes.

Today's students may not always respond to email, nor will they often answer a telephone call. A viable alternative could be contacting students by text. Some schools have a text alert system which can be utilized by faculty to send brief SMS messages directly to students (mine does), or you can simply use your own device. If you're reluctant to contact students using your personal number (it's personal for a reason, after all), you can easily acquire a Google Voice or similar VoIP application which will allow you to maintain a healthy distance between your personal and professional lives. I have found that students who are reluctant to communicate with me through ordinary means will quite often respond readily to a text. I routinely publish my secondary number (without indicating it as such) in my syllabus, and students are comforted knowing their professor is a cellphone call or text message away.

In-person meetings during the pandemic migrated to teleconferencing, using platforms such as Zoom. This have proven to be an effectual and convenient way to interface with others, and it has the added benefit of allowing accommodation for the sometimes hectic schedules of the modern student. Hybridized remotely-taught classes were ubiquitous during the last two years, and so too has the one-on-one conference call between the student and instructor. Academic plans can be formed via teleconference just as readily as additional reinforcement of course objectives, and both participants can engage in screen-share to facilitate meaningful and guided discourse. Document-sharing websites can readily be integrated so that participants can interact virtually with one another on the same "page," so to speak.

Virtual office hours, which became a mainstay of higher education during the pandemic, could well be here to stay. Students who opt for asynchronous online course delivery can benefit immensely from virtual access to the instructor. We should continue to endeavor to accommodate our students, using extant and emerging technologies, whenever possible.

Bettinger, Eric P., et al. “Virtual Classrooms: How Online College Courses Affect Student Success.” The American Economic Review, vol. 107, no. 9, 2017,

pp. 2855–75, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26527929.

Eric Bettinger (et al.) assert that online writing courses do not, as of yet, offer the same rigor and level of instruction as in-person writing classes, a dismal observation given the wide-scale transition to online or remote instruction during the pandemic. As these classes continue to evolve, however, and as more research is made into this uniquely twenty-first century modality of college instruction, we all have an opportunity to meet the ever-changing needs of our students in this modern technology-rich environment.

Furness, Rachelle, and Eric J. Paulson. “Ideas in Practice: Service Learning to Motivate College Writers.” Journal of Developmental Education, vol. 42, no.

1, 2018, pp. 16–21, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44987508.

Furness and Paulson explore the connection between service learning (a high-impact practice) and college writing courses. First and second-year writers can benefit from writing in the disciplines as well as writing for an exigent purpose. I outline a case study in one of my testimonies which delineates the efficacy of incorporating service-learning with the instruction of first-year college writing.

Vanderbilt Center for Teaching. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/ Vanderbilt University.

Vandy's CFT offers a plethora of insightful articles and resources (many of them OER) to facilitate the education process at all levels. From a top-ranked college at a first-rate school, Peabody College at Vanderbilt University has earned distinction with global initiatives and foundational research into teaching and learning. Over the past several decades, many colleges and universities have embraced the concept of promoting shared governance in education by creating centers for teaching and learning, and Vanderbilt offers a superlative collection of shared and shareable resources.

OER (Open Educational Resources) Commons. https://www.oercommons.org/ ISKME.

Similar to Vanderbilt (and other universities') CFT, OER Commons endeavors to provide free (open) access to "tens of thousands" of educational resources. Like a wiki, (a site which encourages open collaboration among users), this source invites practitioners to share their own best-practices and offers open access to them all. Teaching is a sharing profession, after all!

Phillips, Elizabeth D. “IMPROVING ADVISING USING Technology and Data Analytics.” Change, vol. 45, no. 1, 2013, pp. 48–55,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/23595212.

Phillips suggests in this article that the advising process is fraught with difficulty and frequently with failure, and points to some viable options, such as eAdvisor. While many colleges have adopted a variety of technological platforms which assist students and their advisors with the planning process, the human element is still a crucial one. Any aspect of academic planning and goal-setting which can be automated thereby frees up time for the important face-to-face (or to-screen) interactions which mean so much in collegiate mentoring.