Composition Forum 41, Spring 2019
http://compositionforum.com/issue/41/

Fostering Community in Digital Composition Spaces: A Review of Writing in Online Courses: How the Online Environment Shapes Writing Practices and Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet

Megan Busch

Jackson, Phoebe and Christopher Weaver, editors. Writing in Online Courses: How the Online Environment Shapes Writing Practices. Meyers Education Press, 2018. 270pp.

Rice, Rich and Kirk St. Amant, editors. Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet. Utah State UP, 2018. 378pp.

As I approached Writing in Online Courses and Thinking Globally, Composing Locally, I was knee-deep in teaching my first fully online FYC course. While I had received prior training equipping me to lead the class, I was not prepared for the lack of community I sensed online. It was not the classroom environment I was accustomed to experiencing; instead, meaningful interactions with and among my students seemed few and far between. As Daniel Houcutt and Maury Brown describe in Glocalizing the Composition Classroom with Google Apps for Education, the vastness of the online environment “can seem alienating and disenfranchising, despite the ability of digital technologies to connect and empower” (336). This alienation and disenfranchisement within the course seemed palpable, and I was pleased to read that nearly every chapter in Writing in Online Courses and Thinking Globally, Composing Locally addresses (either explicitly or implicitly) the need to form and maintain a sense of community in digital environments, whether in the online classroom or through the web at large.

Focusing on the “positive impact that technology can have on teaching and writing,” Writing in Online Courses offers a collection of pedagogically-centered chapters designed to celebrate and enhance the digital learning environment (Jackson and Weaver xi). The research is accessible and relatable, and chapters in the collection range from narrow, detailed case studies (such as Phoebe Jackson’s The Reading-Writing Connection: Engaging the Literary Text Online) to survey-based quantitative studies (such as Chris Anson’s ‘She Really Took the Time’: Students’ Opinions of Screen-Capture Response to Their Writing in Online Courses). Many chapters, too, include experiential accounts from scholars who have spent decades in the digital writing classroom, watching the technology develop and grow over time. For instance, Nick Carbone in Past to the Future: Computers and Community in the Frist-Year Writing Classroom shares “teaching ideas that [he’s] found useful in helping teachers find more joy and promise in online teaching” (7). Addressing broadly the writing experience for users in a range of disciplines (not just in composition classes), the chapters successfully serve the purpose of the book—to be an “early step” as our field begins to “reflect on and analyze our teaching practices” (Jackson and Weaver xxv).

Thinking Globally, Composing Locally offers readers a more empirical approach and expands the conversation beyond the online classroom to the global setting of web-based communication. Like Writing in Online Courses, Thinking Globally, Composing Locally aims to be a starting point and an “invitation to engage in a greater discussion” (Rice and St. Amant 10). However, instead of focusing on the “positive impact” of technology in the classroom (like Writing in Online Courses), the chapters in Thinking Globally, Composing Locally address the problems that arise, and the contributing authors work to provide solutions to what the editors call “friction points” in global online communication (Jackson and Weaver xi, Rice and St. Amant 7). Although the contributors to Thinking Globally, Composing Locally present research that stretches far beyond the classroom, they do heed the pedagogical imperative, applying their widespread studies to composition instruction. Read in tandem, the two texts provide a fairly solid “model” upon which our field can approach composition in online ecologies with “borders or boundaries” that are “fluid and ever-changing, even hyperconnected” (Rice and St. Amant 5-6).

Despite offering various scholarship from numerous research projects, the two collections work overarchingly to address the subject of online communities, full of individuals enacting identities within and through multiplicitous digital networks. In Click, Tweets, Links, and Other Global Actions, Lavinia Hirsu provides a concluding statement to her argument that also articulates succinctly the purpose of both Writing in Online Courses and Thinking Globally, Composing Locally. Hirsu writes, “As we continue to define and describe digitally-born literate practices, we should also invent new modes of connecting to the world in order to build rather than always critique the networks we are part of” (273). Both collections offer ways to “define,” “describe,” and “invent” new methods for “build[ing]” networks online by addressing three key questions: How do online writers perform identities within digital communities? How do online writers engage with and understand digital discourse communities? And pedagogically, what is the role of the instructor in online communities? While no author purports to have a definitive answer to any of these questions, each scholar explores a sliver of these topics through carefully designed studies enacted inside and outside the composition classroom. Because I will not have the opportunity to discuss every author’s research, I will focus attention on the chapters that answer these prevailing questions most directly.

How do online writers perform identities within digital communities?

For many of the contributors, online learning environments serve to help students perform multiple identities in networked communities. In Facework: Negotiating Identity Through Writing in Online Class Discussions, Linda Di Desidero argues, “By creating and managing discussion effectively, the professor can...facilitate students’ development of identities—personal identity, academic identity, and professional identity...” (127). Using the psychosocial framework of “face,” which she defines as “the public self-image that individuals assert for themselves,” Di Desidero presents three case studies in which students exhibit identity development through online discussions (127). The discussion forum is integral to the formation of student identities, and the medium, which stores a record of that formation, allows Di Desidero to study these students’ identities. Her thoughtful research reveals that when professors create opportunities for students to perform various identities, the result is not merely personal development for the student but an avenue to “build community” (151). Identity formation is integral to establishing an online course’s community.

Paired with Di Desidero’s piece in Writing in Online Courses is Creating and Reflecting on Professional Identities in Online Business Writing Courses by Patricia Webb Boyd. Boyd outlines her curriculum for an online business writing course that focuses on professional identity creation through a series of writing assignments and discussion board prompts. Like Di Desidero, Boyd recognizes the importance of identity formation in digital spaces and attributes this learning to the design of the course and the opportunities created by the instructor that encourage such development. Through her course, Boyd expands Di Desidero’s notion of building community through a discussion of “sentient communities,” invoking Petriglieri and Insead’s Identity Workspaces: The Case of Business Schools (90). Sentient communities established in the online classroom provide students with an imaginative community that mimics the business world to safely experiment with their emerging professional identities. The curriculum Boyd offers develops a promising link between identity formation and community building in digital spaces.

Moving from the traditional digital classroom as a research space, Suzanne Blum Malley’s Ludic is the New Phatic: Making Connections in Global, Internet-Mediated Learning Environments explores identity development within a global online learning community that includes students from the United States, South Africa, and Russia. Malley’s extensive research project, analyzing the work of 663 students over a five-year span, reveals the importance of performing a playful identity in peer-to-peer introductions in order to build a foundation for more in-depth discussion within the community later in the course. Malley explains, “The playfulness of the ‘nonsense’ in texts in online exchanges has been recognized as a means of performing identity and of creating and maintaining social relationships online” (120). Without this playful identity enacted in online introductions, community development suffers. The discussion boards in Malley’s online course allow students to engage in introductory conversation humorously to establish relationships, and in her results, she notes that those students who engaged in “phatic, relational rhetorical moves” were able to form better connections with other users and engage more fully in the digital community (137). Like Di Desidero and Boyd, Malley includes a direct charge for instructors to facilitate this identity formation in order to create a thriving online community: “In fact, if we do not teach students how to make facilitative connections, we are failing to teach effective communication for global online environments” (137). Malley’s research shows the inseparable link between individual identity, connection with others, and participation in a digital community.

As Di Desidero, Boyd, and Malley pose, online environments are rich spaces to study the relationship between identities and the digital community. Each author suggests that instructors should develop courses and learning objectives that encourage students to reflect upon and enact their identities to connect with others and to become a part of the community. As Malley’s research alludes, though, with her emphasis on “facilitative connections,” identity is interconnected with the interlocutors who witness it (137). So if students are learning to perform various identities online, who are they performing these identities for? The next section explores discourse communities online as presented in Writing in Online Courses and Thinking Globally, Composing Locally.

How do online writers engage with and understand digital discourse communities?

Nick Carbone and Kristine Larson (featured in Writing in Online Courses), and JC Lee, Liz Lane and Don Unger, and Katherine Bridgman (featured in Thinking Globally, Composing Locally), address discourse communities in online learning. In Past to the Future: Computers and Community in the First-Year Writing Classroom, Nick Carbone argues that the online space allows students to “establish some essential ideas for understanding an academic discourse community: sharing and acknowledging writing” (11). He contends that the online environment functions as a miniature discourse community that teaches students how to join the academic conversations in their future respective fields (9). Practically, he proposes assignments that encourage students to cite their peers and to turn to online discussion boards as part of their research (12-13). The online writing classroom becomes the setting for students to practice writing in discourse communities.

Kristine Larsen supports Carbone’s notion of online communities as discourse communities in Getting Down to Earth: Scientific Inquiry and Online Writing for Non-Science Students with a case study of her online course. Larsen argues that “online science courses provide a unique opportunity for non-science majors to engage in scientific discourse,” which she demonstrates by following several of her students’ dialogues in the discussion forum, noting their willingness to discuss scientific ideas and “come to learn that there is no one right answer, which helps dispel the erroneous simplification of science as a single, well-trodden road toward a monolithic point of view” (179, 186). For Larsen, the online community developed among novice science students allows for those students to move beyond the assumption of the field as one of facts to an understanding of it as a field of scholarly discourse. As Carbone theorizes that online communities can mimic discourse communities, Larson demonstrates how—in her online science course—the discussion board becomes a space for academic discourse.

Expanding research about digital discourse communities beyond the classroom, JC Lee studies “Caudata, an international, public online forum community for newt and salamander hobbyists” in his chapter Lessons from an International Public Forum: Literacy Development in New Media Environments (56). In this compelling research, Lee traces the conversations of several Caudata contributors, focusing on how new contributors learn the rules of the discourse community on this particular platform. Because of its international status and the high presence of ESL users, the guidelines for posting on the forum require that posts from English speakers use standard conventions and the scientific names for species (61). Lee’s study shows that new posters learn the rules of the community often from other users, rather than moderators; he connects this with the online classroom by suggesting strategies to encourage students to learn and continually develop the discourse community of the course, including routine engagement and clear forum rules enforceable by members of the community (66-67). Lee uses a platform far-removed from the classroom to reveal how contributors writing online in particular spaces can create a discourse community that can potentially be replicated in an online learning environment.

To demonstrate how digital discourse communities are interconnected with non-digital communities, Liz Lane and Don Unger, in Considering Global Communication and Usability as Networked Engagement: Lessons from 4C4Equality, detail the formation of 4C4Equality (4C4E), an activist initiative that is part of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). When Lane and Unger began creating 4C4E, they discovered that success would come from a process of merging discourse communities—the academic and the civic—to appeal to the multiple audiences that 4C4E was trying to reach. In a practice of “networked engagement,” the team piloting 4C4E intently studied the multiple audiences involved in their project. Lane and Unger explain that their audience was both CCCC conference attendees around the world (who needed to be reached through “internet-based” communication to build support for the 4C4E initiative) and the local community in the conference location of Indianapolis (which they met via face-to-face interactions) (97). Lane and Unger chronicle their maneuvers between the two discourse communities (academic and civic) through the two mediums (online and face-to-face) in order to understand how the two work together together to form a successful initiative that they later replicated at CCCC conferences in Tampa and Houston.

Katherine Bridgeman, too, traces the merging of discourse communities online and face-to-face as she follows the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 and the global activism of protestor Gigi Ibrahim in Connecting the Local and the Global: Digital Interfaces and Hybrid Embodiment in Transnational Activism. Like Lane and Unger, Ibrahim moves between discourse communities online and in the physical world, and Bridgeman studies the protestor’s “hybrid embodiment” of these two spaces (279). The discourse communities that emerge online do not just exist in the digital sphere; they are influenced by and contribute to the conversations happening in physical locations as well.

The merging of online and physical discourse communities increases reach, participation, and support of various initiatives from Egyptian activism to the formation of 4C4E. If online discourse communities can function to mimic and symbiotically intermingle with other, physical discourse communities, how can instructors facilitate classroom-level discourse communities that draw students into the conversation, both academically and globally? The next section explores the role of the professor addressed in both texts.

What is the role of the instructor in online communities?

Evident in both collections is a trend in online instruction that diminishes the role of the instructor as she takes a backseat in the digital community to create a “de-centered” classroom (Jackson 161). While the instructor creates the environment for online learning, participation in the discourse community positions the professor as one of many participants in the classroom. Phoebe Jackson, in The Reading-Writing Connection: Engaging Literary Texts Online, explains:

A distinguishing feature of the online teaching environment is the opportunity to have a truly de-centered classroom, allowing the instructor to step to the side to relinquish a prominent position. When the role of the professor is de-emphasized in this way, students must of necessity become more active participants of their own learning. (161)

Several chapters in Writing in Online Courses and Thinking Globally, Composing Locally address the nuances of this de-centered instructor role in online learning environments. Nick Carbone transforms Jackson’s assessment into practical application, explaining that an “early mistake many instructors make” is “trying to respond to every post in a discussion” (9). For Carbone, this “turns a discussion into an expectation of a teacher’s attention, putting the teacher at the center of things” (9). Removing the instructor from or minimizing her voice in an online discussion board allows students to communicate directly with each other (which, over time, strengthens the online community). In Shifting Again: Electronic Writing and Recorded Speech in Online Courses, Christopher Weaver suggests a workshop approach to writing, which “displac[es] the centrality of the teacher as primary (or only) responder,” and Andy Buchenot, in Revising the Defaults: Online FYC Courses as Sites of Heterogeneous Disciplinary Work, complicates the connection between the limitations of online interfaces and “student-centered pedagogy” (Weaver 48, Buchenot 69). The common goal among these authors is translating a de-centered instructor and a student-centered pedagogy into the typical online learning environment in order to build a thriving online community.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing studies about the role of a de-centered instructor in the two texts is The MOOC as a Souk: Writing Instruction, World Englishes, and Writers at Scale by Clinnin, et. al. The chapter chronicles the design of Writing II: Rhetorical Composing as a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) (141). The research and course-development team use the principles of participatory design to de-center the instructor (who could not possibly adequately respond to all of the students enrolled) and give enhanced agency to the student. Seeking to remove the stigma of MOOCs as “massive content delivery systems rather than spaces for massive teaching and learning opportunities,” Clinnin, et. al. create a pedagogy via the principles of participatory design that is not merely “student-centered” but “student-built” using engaging discussion forums and peer review workshops (159, 146). While the instructors of Writing II: Rhetorical Composing are highly involved in the design of the course, they are more hands-off in their feedback to students and as voices in the discussion boards (and they indicate that in the future, a set of TAs who have completed the course in a previous semester will be active in the discussions, not the instructors) (158). In other words, the course is not designed simply to be a “content delivery machine,” but to be a space of collaboration and student-centered learning and development (145).

For most of the collaborators in both collections, the instructor’s role is to build the ecology of the online classroom and encourage students to cross-talk and to practice their own identities by collaborating and teaching each other. This is no easy task, though. While the authors explore ways to encourage community through the instructor stepping back from discussion, fostering productive student participation in online discussion boards and peer review is never guaranteed and difficult to successfully achieve. The student-centered learning communities and collaborative practices revealed in Writing in Online Courses and Thinking Globally, Composing Locally seem to represent the ideal—those classes that did work and those communities that did form. While instructors can and should learn from these ideals, it is important to understand that following the lead of these authors will not work in every online course, with every body of students, every time. Said another way, the role of the instructor—whether she chooses to be hands-on or hands-off—will depend highly on the individual situation of the learning environment each semester the instructor teaches and each day she logs in to her online course.

A Conversation Moving Forward

Writing in Online Courses and Thinking Globally, Composing Locally—in providing many methods for creating community online—left me (in the midst of my online course) challenging my pedagogy, assignments, and more in my digital classroom. Were my students engaging in dialogue and collaborating on their own? How did I attempt to actively foster a sense of community among students? Did their identities develop as scholars through their experience in my digital classroom? Upon reflection, I found that in many ways, there were successes, but there was vast room for improvement, too. These two collections pushed me to examine, even more pointedly than usual, the outcomes of online learning and the implications of my digital pedagogies. For encouraging me to be critical and to revise my methods, these collections have become valuable texts on my library shelves with ideas I intend to revisit as I develop and approach future courses.

Each semester, online classroom interfaces change, students change, the political climate changes, and so the classroom environment changes, the role of the instructor morphs to meet the needs of the students, and the pedagogical methods shift to fit the situation at hand. With the research presented in Writing in Online Courses and Thinking Globally, Composing Locally, we (as instructors) can be better equipped for the trial and error of writing pedagogy, as we hope for teachable moments to emerge and for a productive community to develop within our online courses. These two collections offer methods, ideas, and starting points that I hope teachers and researchers take up, try out, fail at, learn from, and build upon to expand the field’s corpus of innovative pedagogical strategies for digital composition instruction and of researched insight into how humans write and communicate in an ever-evolving online space.

Works Cited

Anson, Chris. ‘She Really Took the Time’: Students’ Opinions of Screen-Capture Response to Their Writing in Online Courses. Writing in Online Courses: How the Online Environment Shapes Writing Practices, edited by Phoebe Jackson and Christopher Weaver, Meyers Education Press, 2018, pp. 21-46.

Boyd, Patricia Webb. Creating and Reflecting on Professional Identities in Online Business Writing Courses. Writing in Online Courses: How the Online Environment Shapes Writing Practices, edited by Phoebe Jackson and Christopher Weaver, Meyers Education Press, 2018, pp. 85-102.

Bridgman, Katherine. Connecting the Local and the Global: Digital Interfaces and Hybrid Embodiment in Transnational Activism. Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet, edited by Rich Rice and Kirk St. Amant, Utah State University Press, 2018, pp. 278-297.

Buchenot, Andy. Revising the Defaults: Online FYC Courses as Sites of Heterogeneous Disciplinary Work. Writing in Online Courses: How the Online Environment Shapes Writing Practices, edited by Phoebe Jackson and Christopher Weaver, Meyers Education Press, 2018, pp. 67-81.

Carbone, Nick. Past to the Future: Computers and Community in the First-Year Writing Classroom. Writing in Online Courses: How the Online Environment Shapes Writing Practices, edited by Phoebe Jackson and Christopher Weaver, Meyers Education Press, 2018, pp. 3-20.

Clinnin, Kaitlin, Kay Halasek, Ben McCorkle, Susan Delagrange, Scott Lloyd Dewitt, Jen Michaels, and Cynthia L. Selfe. The MOOC as Souk: Writing Instruction, World Englishes, and Writers at Scale. Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet, edited by Rich Rice and Kirk St. Amant, Utah State University Press, 2018, pp. 140-160.

Di Desidero, Linda. Facework and the Negotiation of Identity in Online Class Discussions. Writing in Online Courses: How the Online Environment Shapes Writing Practices, edited by Phoebe Jackson and Christopher Weaver, Meyers Education Press, 2018, pp. 127-157.

Hirsu, Lavinia. Clicks, Tweets, Links, and Other Global Actions: The Nature of Distributed Agency in Digital Environments. Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet, edited by Rich Rice and Kirk St. Amant, Utah State University Press, 2018, pp. 257-277.

Hocutt, Daniel and Maury Brown. Glocalizing the Composition Classroom with Google Apps for Education. Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet, edited by Rich Rice and Kirk St. Amant, Utah State University Press, 2018, pp. 320-339.

Jackson, Phoebe. The Reading-Writing Connection: Engaging the Literary Text Online. Writing in Online Courses: How the Online Environment Shapes Writing Practices, edited by Phoebe Jackson and Christopher Weaver, Meyers Education Press, 2018, pp. 161-178.

Jackson, Phoebe and Christopher Weaver. Introduction: Why Do You Teach Online? Writing in Online Courses: How the Online Environment Shapes Writing Practices, edited by Phoebe Jackson and Christopher Weaver, Meyers Education Press, 2018, pp. xi-xxvi.

Lane, Liz and Don Unger. Considering Global Communication and Usability as Networked Engagement: Lessons from 4C4Equality. Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet, edited by Rich Rice and Kirk St. Amant, Utah State University Press, 2018, pp. 93-114.

Larsen, Kristine. Getting Down to Earth: Scientific inquiry and Online Writing for Non-Science Students. Writing in Online Courses: How the Online Environment Shapes Writing Practices, edited by Phoebe Jackson and Christopher Weaver, Meyers Education Press, 2018, pp. 179-194.

Lee, JC. Lessons from an International Public Forum: Literacy Development in New Media Environments. Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet, edited by Rich Rice and Kirk St. Amant, Utah State University Press, 2018, pp. 56-71.

Malley, Suzanne Blum. Ludic if the New Phatic: Making Connections in Global, Internet-Mediated Learning Environments. Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet, edited by Rich Rice and Kirk St. Amant, Utah State University Press, 2018, pp. 117-139.

Rice, Rich and Kirk St. Amant. Introduction—Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Re-Thinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet. Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet, edited by Rich Rice and Kirk St. Amant, Utah State University Press, 2018, pp. 3-11.

St. Amant, Kirk and Rich Rise. Afterward—Navigating Composition Practices in International Online Environments. Thinking Globally, Composing Locally: Rethinking Online Writing in the Age of the Global Internet, edited by Rich Rice and Kirk St. Amant, Utah State University Press, 2018, pp. 340-346.

Weaver, Christopher. Shifting Again: Electronic Writing and Recorded Speech in Online Courses. Writing in Online Courses: How the Online Environment Shapes Writing Practices, edited by Phoebe Jackson and Christopher Weaver, Meyers Education Press, 2018, pp. 47-66.