Blended Writing Courses: The advent of online learning courseware presents new opportunities to present content, assign activities and gauge student success. New technologies offer an opportunity to present learning objectives and meaningful experiences that can be measured. When teaching tentative students to embrace the writing process, use of online tools helps provide dynamic, interactive content and collect data to assess my students’ ability to analyze, synthesize and evaluate essays written by others – as well as their own.
Building Student Confidence: Teaching non-writers to love the writing process can be a bit frustrating, and one semester seems hardly enough time to overcome student fear and reluctance, especially regarding exciting components such as syntax, usage and grammar. Students who take a full course load and are also employed face additional time constraints in dealing with writing – a subject that has proven challenging to them in the past. Digital resources are convenient, and students are drawn to them.
A Faster Feedback Loop: I stress to my students that multiple rounds of self-evaluation, editing and re-writing sessions will benefit them and result in a more polished final product. Online platforms such as Google Docs and Blackboard Collaborate can shorten the feedback loop by providing an effective communication channel that enables students to extract more value from the back-and-forth of the writing process.
Digital Intervention: Online tools also help me to identify students who require intervention; I always want to keep struggling students connected to the learning process to offer support and feedback in real-time. Assisting students in the digital space can enhance the traditional writing interventions focused on tutoring resources, peer writing labs, and remediation for students who are unprepared for college-level work. Busy students need as many opportunities possible to meet the demand for enhanced learning.
Enhanced Engagement: Student engagement is the single most important predictor of success in both online and on ground courses. In this regard, digital platforms can add a new dimension to a course. When I express my own excitement about using technology to teach writing, students respond. They recognize and appreciate efforts made on their behalf to incorporate online tools and resources into the course. In my experience, students are more engaged when challenging, time-consuming writing assignments are aligned with computer-based learning.
At Miami Dade College, one of the tools I’ve used to engage my students is the Toolwire Writing Games. The interactive learning modules immerse students in real-world, workplace situations that require them to apply one or two targeted learning objectives and provide immediate feedback via characters who serve as “virtual mentors”.
Based on surveys from more than a dozen post-secondary institutions last fall, 79 percent of faculty believed that this digital courseware intervention increased student confidence, which I find to be an especially important factor related to student motivation and persistence.
These tech-enabled strategies demonstrate the potential to improve writing outcomes in higher education. The business community is telling us they want to hire effective communicators and are counting on postsecondary institutions to strengthen the pipeline. At this critical moment, technology is helping us to re-imagine writing instruction for the 21st century and support students where they need it most, when they need it most.
By realizing the potential of digital tools to transform the way we teach, I believe we can galvanize students for success in their academic careers and beyond.
Professor Goldberg is the head of the Two Year College English Association-Southeast (TYCA) – Florida State Chapter. He also serves as a Review Team Member for Quality Matters, the quality assurance organization for online courses.
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