Online Literacy Instruction Theory

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic provoked substantial shifts to online learning, literacy educators have been developing praxes for teaching literacy in online learning environments. As an adjunct instructor in the early 2010s, I taught my first online literacy course (OLC): a hybrid half-in class and half-online developmental writing course at a local community college. For many of our students at our AANAPI (Asian American, Native American, and Pacific Islander) Serving Institution worked off-campus at least part time. Many students were returning to their college education after exploring other career and vocational options, had caretaking responsibilities, and were often first-generation college students. They needed access to learning environments that would be adaptive to their individual life circumstances, which brought about early models of online learning in our community. While I lacked any formal training for teaching an OLC, I quickly came to understand that online literacy instruction (OLI) should not merely be about replicating a face-to-face class in a learning management software space. Rather, it would require a reconceptualization of what literacy is and how it could be taught within new and dynamic learning environments.

Drawing on the Global Society of Online Literacy Educators’ Online Literacy Tenets and Principles, I define online literacy instruction (OLI) as literacy education that takes place, at least partially, outside of traditional, brick and mortar classrooms by way of computer-based, internet, or intranet settings. While literacy is commonly defined as the ability to read and write in a target language, here I conceive of literacy beyond what this binary (either you have the ability to read and write in a language or you don’t) and toward Pat Belanoff’s notion that literacy is, instead, “a web of interconnectedness” (414). When I began my teaching career, especially in traditional face-to-face classes in brick and mortar learning spaces, it was easy to imagine literacy as Belanoff’s binary; my goal as an educator (I imagined) was to move students beyond that binary toward more complex, rhetorical understandings of literacy. But literacy instruction in OLC’s forced me to reckon with literacy as a more complex process than what I had previously imagined. As GSOLE explains, online literacy instruction requires three core literacies: reading-centered literacies, writing-centered literacies, and modality-centered literacies. Given the vast array of OLC deliveries--hybrid delivery, fully online delivery asynchronous and synchronous temporalities, various LMS’s and hosting spaces--my understanding of literacy began to reflect Belanoff’s ‘web of interconnectedness.’ Gone were the days in which I could teach only reading- and writing-centered literacies within a narrow constellation of teaching practices. Instead, I began to see that I was responsible for facilitating students’ interconnectedness with one another (and the worlds that surround them), in part by honoring the role that modality-centered literacies play in the development of writing- and reading-centered literacies.

My time in the GSOLE Certification Course has given me the space to more fully articulate how I can (and do) teach literacy as a web of interconnectedness among reading, writing, and modality literacies. My guiding principle is to foster an understanding of this interconnectedness by considering the affordances and constraints of composing in any given medium, with an emphasis on digital composing, and how we can leverage these opportunities to make meaning of the world around us. To achieve this goal, my own theory of OLI positions three central principles that must be present in order to scaffold and support this larger practice of literacy instruction.

Principle 1: OLI Instructors and WPAs must engage in iterative online course design.

The first principle that guides my approach to OLI is that OLI instructors and writing program administrators (WPAs) must engage in iterative course design, development, assessment, and revision. I am certainly not the only OLI instructor who never took an online class and, without those experiences, there are conceptual and experiential gaps in our understanding of what it’s like to learn in online classes. The digital divide between both instructors and students (Chelliah and Clarke), as well as between students with privileged or marginalized access to digital writing tools due to socioeconomic, racial, ableist, or other forms of privilege (CCCC) emphasize OLI instructors’ and WPA’s needs to attend to common practices and assumptions about the teaching of writing in traditional brick-and-mortar classrooms and how it must be adapted to the online learning context. Writing instruction can have a tendency to be very text-dependent (CCCC). When adapted wholesale to the OLC, this tendency can create various access barriers for students and replicate models of the teaching of writing that can reiterate racist language practices. When designing online literacy courses then, the task is not simply to take an existing course and duplicate it in a digital learning management system. Rather, it requires instructors and WPAs, and all university stakeholders (see GSOLE Principle #2) to commit to:

• Designing OLCs that reflect best practices from established scholars and professional organizations in the field;

• Developing OLCs by way of a participatory model in which faculty (tenured, tenure-track, lecturers, adjuncts, and graduate assistants) are equitably compensated for their labor;

• Assessing OLCs on a regular basis to ensure curriculum is assisting students in meeting the student learning outcomes and to ensure the course is inclusive and accessible; and,

• Revising OLCs by way of participatory models and providing the professional development required for all OLI instructors to understand and feel confident in new course requirements.

Iterative course design embraces literacy as a web of interconnectedness by honoring the participation and insight of many professions and experts. Course revisions can come to reflect the literacy practices and expertise of many educators, thus extending the web of connections that become the bedrock of any course design. For example, as I prepare to transition into WPA-positions at my current institution, the GSOLE webinar that I attended is becoming part of how I am reimagining what our OLC can and should be. My time in the GSOLE Online Basic Certification Course has allowed me the time and space to begin understanding where my own work with this principle will begin. This work includes:

• Course 1, Module 2, Applying Readings to Practice

• Course 1, Module 4, Attend a GSOLE Webinar

Principle 2: OLI must center access as a grounding principle.

A second principle that directs my approach to OLI is that the OLC can facilitate students’ increased appreciation for and application of accessibility as an essential element of literacy. Access, as a physical or architectural principle, tells us what kinds of bodies are invited to inhabit a space. As an education tenant, access charges educators to create learning opportunities in which all students, regardless of disability, gender, race, nationality, citizenship, or language backgrounds. Accessible design cannot be treated as ‘when-I-have-the-time’ wishful thinking. It is a matter of ensuring equal access for all students. Furthermore, online classes have opportunities to minimize some of the inaccessibility some disabled students face in traditional face-to-face classes, especially for students with print impairments that can be accommodated through digital technology (Oswal). While attending to the legal basis for grounding OLCs in accessible design, my goal is to move beyond this minimum standard. Access, in the words of Mia Mingus, Alice Wong, and Sandy Ho, is love (Disability Visibility Project).

When we approach access as a necessary component of educational platforms, materials, and intersections with the recognition that honor the access needs is an act of love, our OLC’s can be transformed into powerful learning spaces. All students enrolled in any class should be embedded into the web of student connections within the class; however, inaccessibility creates barriers to many students’ interconnectedness in the classroom. My commitment to ensuring access extends beyond building online classroom spaces that meet the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C’s) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) or treating access as a checklist that can be accomplished and then forgotten. Instead, I approach access as a constantly shifting and evolving practices that anticipates student needs while remaining flexible and responsive to the students before me.

Access is not only about making content available for all learners regardless of disability. Access is also implicated as we consider curricular design from multilingual, transnational, and racialized perspectives. This must include a commitment to developing antiracist writing instruction (Gonzalez & Butler; Martín). Through the GSOLE Basic Online Certification Course, I have worked on integrating accessibility as a grounding principle that can increase students’ interconnectedness in my own OLCs. For example, In my ROLE Technology review, my goal was to discuss a platform for discussion boards that could be more accessible for students. In so doing, I hoped that create more equitable access to OLC course requirements while promoting students’ connectedness with one another. Some evidence of this work can be found in:

• Course 1, Module 3, ROLE Technology Review Proposal

• Course 1, Module 5, Learning about my Community

Principle 3: OLI should focus on developing students’ online literacy skills.

The third principle that guides my approach to OLI is that OLC’s should focus on teaching students’ online literacy skills. The Global Society of Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE) argues that at least three core literacies at play in digital settings: reading-centered literacies, writing-centered literacies, and modality-centered literacies. The world wide pandemic has drastically shifted the ways in which we in higher education learn and teach. Many, if not most, courses are shifting to online educational environments without much notice or sometimes preparation. In such moments and under various educational constraints, it can be easy to attempt to replicate face-to-face classrooms within a virtual platform. And yet, attempting to retrofit online learning to teach literacies practices that do not match the educational environment is like attempting to fit the proverbial round peg into a square hole.

Such an approach not only is impractical; it undermines students’ vast online literacy experiences, knowledge, skills, and habits. Instead, my approach is to teach reading and writing skills that are appropriate to the educational environment, that honor students’ lived experiences, and that prepare students for the kinds of writing that they will likely continue to engage with in their lives and careers. This means de-emphasizing paper-based compositions that replicate essays students are more comfortable being graded on in order to invite students to engage in rhetorical composition practices rooted in digital composing practices and genres. In alignment with my second OLI principle (grounding in accessibility), multimodal assignments are composed in platforms that students have access to through the university, open-source platforms, and students always have options in how to compose to allow for individual preferences and nuanced accessibility needs. Most importantly, multimodal composing reinforces the web of interconnectedness among the various literacies activated by online literacy instruction and encourages students to make connections between different composing types and genres rather than see them as separate literacy practices. For example, in my writing unit I present in Course 2, Module 1, students are invited to compose digital documents that communicate a public health message for a specific audience. In so doing, students must consider how meaning is made across discursive, visual, aural, and haptic elements of digital design. Students must weave webs of interconnectedness among different composing elements in order to create a persuasive public health text. During my time in the GSOLE 2020-2021 Basic Online Certification course, my work has emphasized these commitments, as seen in the following artifacts:

• Course 2, Module 1, Writing Course Unit (Instructor-facing and student-facing materials)

• Course 2, Module 2, GSOLE Ignite Talk

Works Cited

Belanoff, Pat. “Silence: Reflection, Literacy, Learning, and Teaching.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 52,

no. 3, 2001, pp. 399-428.

Chelliah, John and Elizabeth Clarke. "Collaborative teaching and learning: overcoming the digital divide?" On the Horizon, vol. 19, no. 4, 2011, pp. 276-285. DOI 10.1108/10748121111179402.

Conference on College Composition and Communication Committee for Best Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI)."A Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (OWI)." Conference on College Composition and Communication. March 2013.

Disability Visibility Project. "Access is Love." 1 Feb 2019. https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2019/02/01/access-is- love/.

Martín, Cristina Sánchez. “Teaching Writing Online: Translingual and Antiracist Pedagogies.” Global Society of Online Literacy Educators Webinar Series. https://gsole.org/webinars/2020-2021-series. 9 Oct 2020.

Global Society of Online Literacy Educators. "Online Literacy Instruction Principles and Tenets." Global Society of Online Literacy Educators. https://gsole.org/oliresources/oliprinciples.

Gonzalez, Laura and Janine Butler. "Multilingualism, Multimodality, and Accessibility." Composition Forum, vol. 44, 2020. https://compositionforum.com/issue/44/multilingualism.php.

Oswal, Sushil. "Physical and Learning Disabilities in OWI." Foundational Practices of Online Writing Instruction. Eds. Beth L. Hewett and Kevin Eric DePew. 253-289.

World Wide Web Consortium. "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview." World Wide Web Consortium. https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/

Reflection on Developing a Theory of Online Literacy Instruction

Questions?

Contact anglesey@shsu.edu to get more information.