Teaching Writing

Virtually, Flexibly, Compassionately

WIP is here to help writing-intensive courses adapt to flexible and multiple learning environments in the midst of the pandemic. On this page, you’ll find links to online resources, guidelines, webcasts, and more. If you have a resource you’d like to share or would like to arrange an email consultation, please email Lindsey Harding at lharding@uga.edu.


Teaching Writing Online

Guide to Asynchronous Writing Instruction

This document was created by the FYW summer instructors at UGA and contains helpful information for instructors preparing for remote and hybrid instruction. This document includes eLC organization, how to run student discussions, and helping students in need, among other useful tips.

Philip Gilreath

Weekly Announcement for Online Classes: Template

Feel free to use this template to structure a weekly email to your students. This can be a great way to establish structure in an online class and make sure everyone is on the same page to start each week.

Lindsey Harding

Where Do I Start? Getting Started with Online Writing Instruction: Website

We want you to know that this site is here to help you build an online writing class, get ideas for your current online writing class, and serve as a space for you to find great research, current articles, submit and share ideas, and provide a supporting online community for you and your students to succeed.


Technology and Support Needs for Online Learning: Student Survey

Created by Katie Hummel, University of Michigan. 

Language and questions adapted from Dr. Andrea Kaston Tange, Macalester College and Dr. Michelle McMullin, NC State University


The Online Writing Instruction Community

Books, resources, links, and more to support online writing instruction.

Jessie Borgman and Casey McArdle

Personal, Accessible, Responsive, Strategic: Resources and Strategies for Online Writing Instructors

Drawing on their novel PARS framework, Jessie Borgman and Casey McArdle explore the complexities and anxieties associated with online writing instruction. PARS offers an innovative way to support your own online instructional efforts as well as those of faculty members in programs that offer online writing instruction. Borgman and McArdle offer extensive examples of how to create assignments, syllabi, and accessible, productive learning spaces. Drawing on work in the design of user experiences, they explore how we can design online writing courses with our students’ experiences in mind. Borgman and McArdle encourage us to plan online writing courses strategically, and they reinforce the importance of iterating our course design and teaching practices continually with the goal of creating a better user experience for everyone involved with the course.

By Jessie Borgman and Casey McArdle
Copy edited by Don Donahue. Designed by Mike Palmquist.

Resources to Teach Writing in eLC: Google Folder

In it, you will find the following documents. At the top of each of these, you’ll see a table of contents so you can navigate the doc.

Documents included: 1) Peer Review, 2) Process and Project Checklists, 3) Reflection Assignments, 4) Videos

Folders included: 1) Assignments, 2) Commenting Forms, 3) Handouts, 4) Style Guides

Developed by Lindsey Harding

Online? Just in Time: Global Society of Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE): Resource Collection

Did you suddenly learn you need to teach online? Whether it’s a single class meeting or a full course redesign, GSOLE has you covered. This page is dedicated to providing Just In Time support for instructors having a wide range of experience teaching online and onsite courses.

Global Society of Online Literacy Educators

A Guide For Teachers Thinking about Moving Student-Centered Learning Online: YouTube Video

This video offers a guide for designing learning spaces – online and off – that give students the chance to learn from one another. Doing this online can be a challenge. But with some planning and selection of the right tools, online learning can provide rich opportunities for student-centered learning.

Bill Hart-Davidson

Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Resource Collection

Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities is a curated collection of reusable resources for teaching and research. Organized by keyword, each annotated artifact can be saved, shared, and downloaded. You can read DigiPed like a manuscript, or use it as a platform to create your own collections of digital resources.

Editors: Rebecca Frost Davis, Matthew K. Gold, Katherine D. Harris, & Jentery Sayers

Accessible TCP: Website for Teachers to Improve Course Accessibility

The strategies and practices offered in this website are not exhaustive but a place to begin considering accessibility in course design and within technical and professional communication practices.

Website developed by Sherena Huntsman and Lisa Melonçon

Teaching Amidst Disruption

Teaching with Compassion & Focus amid Disruption: Collaborative Google Doc

Faculty and faculty development offices across the US are scrambling to create and share ideas about how to keep teaching when campuses are moving to remote instruction with very little lead time.  At UVM, both the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Writing in the Disciplines program have started creating local resources, and we’ve been sharing links in a UVM teaching continuity Facebook group as well. This page collects useful resources so that faculty who want to dive a little deeper have places to start.  

Document started by Susanmarie Harrington, University of Vermont, 10 March 2020

Teaching Effectively During Times of Disruption, for SIS and PWR: Online Handbook

Jenae Cohn, Academic Technology Specialist for PWR, jdcohn@stanford.edu 

Beth Seltzer, Academic Technology Specialist for Introductory Studies, bethseltzer@stanford.edu


Pivoting

Completing a Face-To-Face Course Online Following A Campus Mandate: Blog Post

Converting a course from face-to-face to an online format is a challenging process in the best of times, and we are certainly not in the best of times at this moment. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous universities have suspended face-to-face classes, imposed temporary closures of campuses, and asked faculty members to convert face-to-face courses to an online format, all with very little time to prepare. Making this significant switch midsemester is difficult. We offer a few considerations that may make the end result smoother for both faculty and students.

Todd Zakrajsek, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Kathryn Smith, International Teaching Learning Cooperative

Quick Tips for Mid-Semester Transfer of Offline Classes to Online: PDF

Developed by Pat Gehrke, University of South Carolina (gehrke@mailbox.sc.edu)


CGC Community Doc for Online Teaching: Google Doc

This is a crowd-source document to aid those moving oral and written graduate communications courses online in the wake of COVID-19.

Consortium on Graduate Communication

Stockpiling for COVID-19, Teaching Resources: Google Sheet

Compiled by Sarah Laiola, Coastal Carolina University


Conferencing Online

The Online Writing Conference: A Guide for Teachers and Tutors: Book Available Online

More writing courses than ever are being taught online, and effective online writing instruction requires teachers to communicate deliberately and clearly in order to have productive relationships with their students. In The Online Writing Conference: A Guide for Teachers and Tutors, former chair of the CCCC Committee for Effective Practices in Online Writing Instruction Beth L. Hewett articulates the how and why of one-to-one online writing conference pedagogy. Complete with an instructor’s study guide and informed by the principles set forth in the CCCC Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for OWI, her updated text provides examples and transcripts of synchronous and asynchronous instructor-student interaction, targeted lessons, and conferencing action plans that help instructors hone their pedagogical practice, from formatting comments to showing regard for students.

from page created by Karita dos Santos; last modified by Jennifer Bilello on Mar 19, 2020

Using Digital Tools

Using Slack for Learning Engagement: Medium Article

by Shawn Day


Notes on using Google Docs for writing, learning, teaching and collaborating in HE: Google Doc

Please think of this Google Doc as an online space in which to share ideas about writing in Higher Education. This could be in your learning and teaching, your writing and research, in collaborative writing, or the other exciting ways that you may be using Google Docs. 

Sophie Nicholls, Teesside University and sophienicholls.com

99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Videos: YouTube Playlist

The videos in this playlist support the book 99 Tips for Simple and Sustainable Videos by Karen Costa.


Instructional Materials

Writing Infographic

Jenn LaRue, a WIP TA from Music, made this infographic on the writing/research process through canva.com. She wanted to create something quick, easy, and visual that students can refer to whenever they need it. Note: this is a draft version and walks students through the research process to the first draft. In creating a customized version, you might consider adding steps (or loops) to show students the drafting process, as well (i.e., opportunities for feedback, revision, editing, and proofreading). 

Jenn LaRue

Ray Boxman’s Lectures on Communicating Science: YouTube Playlist

If per chance you are teaching scientific writing classes, particularly on-line, please note that I have three lectures on youtube:

1.      How to write a good journal paper (or thesis)

2.      Conference presentations: how to make the most of 15 minutes

3.      Writing winning research proposals

Ray Boxman