Writing in Online Courses: Disciplinary Differences--Call for Papers for a Proposed Edited Collection (Jan. 31, 2011)
Writing teachers know that writing itself is not a neutral act of articulating knowledge, but a highly contested act of constructing oneself in relationship to one's environment. We are also aware of how online spaces differ from traditional spaces and how those differences affect the way that teachers and students construct themselves in relationship to each other. This edited collection will look at how teachers in different disciplines have grappled with these issues and what they can tell us about writing as an act of negotiating identities.
Possible topics:
• What role does writing (either by teachers or by students) play in the construction of a disciplinary identity? How important is it in your classes that students write as "themselves" or take on an academic persona? Do these questions of identity function differently when you teach online than when you teach F2F?
• We want students to learn the rules of a discipline as well as to question those rules and to view the discipline critically. How does teaching online—and particularly the way that writing is used online—change the way you think about this tension?
• Are certain disciplines more likely to make use of "content-rich" resources available through multimedia? As those resources become more prevalent, how does this affect the way that writing is used in such courses?
The goal of this edited collection is to hear how academics in different disciplines address writing issues in their online courses. We are not interested in "how-to articles. We do welcome interdisciplinary and/or co-authored articles.
Please send abstracts of approximately 500 words to Phoebe Jackson (jacksonp@wpunj.edu) and Chris Weaver (weaverc@wpunj.edu) by January 31, 2011. Completed essays should be 15-20 double-spaced pages. Inquiries are welcome.