CFP: GSOLE’s Annual Online Conference

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CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Global Society of Online Literacy Educators

Eighth Annual Conference

Humans, Non-Humans, and Humanity

An Online Interactive Global Conference

Proposals Due: Friday, October 11, 2024

Proposal Decisions By: Friday, November 8, 2024

Submit Your Proposal

The Global Society of Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE) invites proposals for its eighth annual online international conference. This event will be hosted online with asynchronous presentations opening Saturday, February 1, 2024, and synchronous presentations starting Thursday, February 6, and Friday, February 7, 2025.

Online literacy education is an enduring and emerging field of practice and research. Our annual conference creates space for us to take stock of what we know, what we’ve learned, what has changed, and what remains the same. To that end, our conference aligns with GSOLE’s overarching mission and goals:

  • Promote literacy as the core of teaching and learning, no matter the delivery method—online, hybrid, or face-to-face

  • Ensure that online literacy education is accessible and inclusive for all students and educators

  • Amplify voices from all online educators, regardless of department or disciplinary affiliation, including students and writing center and writing program staff

  • Foster discussions across cultures, environments, time zones, and disciplines

The growing prevalence of generative artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and robotics is changing how we learn and teach literacy. These emerging technologies raise questions about authorship, creativity, and the role of human educators in an AI-enhanced world. Moreover, many of the digital components of the communication technologies that students and instructors use for online literacy courses also shape interaction in social media spaces—which affords users the ability to act upon their greatest kindnesses as well as their fears, anxieties, and biases.

This year’s theme "Humans, Non-Humans, and Humanity" invites participants to explore the evolving dynamics between human beings, non-human entities, and the broader concept of humanity within the context of online literacy education.

Topics of Interest

  1. Accessibility in Course and Assignment Design

  2. Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI)

  3. Inclusivity, Diversity, and Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) in Practice

  4. Global Teaching Practices and Instructional Design

  5. Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL)

  6. Learning Management Systems (LMS)

  7. Ethical Considerations

  8. Programmatic Considerations

  9. Writing Centers or Studios

  10. Labor Issues

  11. Media and Digital Literacy

This list is not exhaustive, and GSOLE wants to hear all voices. We invite questions and concerns to be addressed to Kevin DePew at vice-president

Questions that might guide proposals in these topics include (but are not limited to)…

  • How can administrators and teachers incorporate inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility (IDEA) principles into online literacy curricula, tutoring, and pedagogy?

  • What do we know about effective Online Literacy Instruction (OLI) and what has changed about our understanding of OLI?

  • As AI tools gain popularity, what do online administrators, instructors, tutors, and students need to know about using these tools in their writing, tutoring, and teaching?

  • How do online literacy instructors teach their students to be critical consumers of new digital technologies? How does one do this work through the technologies they are asking students to interrogate?

  • How does our understanding of effective OLI practices change depending on our local context, student population, educator population, or institutional identity? Additionally, how is OLI being practiced in non-North American countries?

  • In what ways do we need to reinvent writing instruction when we shift learning modalities and in what ways can we translate or adapt writing instruction across modalities?

  • What initial and ongoing professional development and institutional support systems do educators need as they teach and tutor online?

  • What innovative research and theories support online instructional and administrative practices?

  • What changes need to be made to online instructional labor to create more equitable OLI environments?

Presentation Format Options

GSOLE offers both asynchronous and synchronous options for presenting at its annual virtual conference.

As an international organization, we will do our best to accommodate reasonable presentation times for presenters from around the world.

.Synchronous Presentation Options: Present Live During the Conference

  • Panel Proposals: We welcome 40-minute panel presentations (3–5 presenters).

  • Individual Paper Proposals: We welcome 15-minute individual presentations (placed on panels clustered by topic).

On-Demand Presentations: 5 to 10-minute Pre-Recorded Presentations

  • Pre-Recorded Presentations: We welcome pre-recorded interactive presentations using digital tools like PlayPosit, Nearpod, and VoiceThread, to engage the audience in active learning as they watch your session.

  • Praxis Post(er)s: A Praxis Post(er) is a presentation demonstrating a particular teaching practice or assignment in the virtual classroom or during online tutoring sessions. For more information, you can also visit GSOLE’s Praxis Poster Guidelines or watch a previous asynchronous online workshop

  • ePortfolio Gallery Submissions: With attempts to spotlight voices and stories in OLI, this submission type invites educators with professional electronic websites to share tours of their sites with the GSOLE community. Individuals who completed ePortfolio sites as part of the GSOLE certification program are especially encouraged to apply. For more information, you can also watch a previous ePortfolio tour.

Depending on interest, GSOLE will host synchronous workshops and distribute resources assisting presenters in building these asynchronous presentations. A workshop will cover design, development, and recording in popular visual presentation platforms. Consultations are also available upon request. Please note the length requirement on these formats, which is an important feature of presentation accessibility.

Submission Guidelines

All presenters are required to confirm GSOLE membership as part of accepting an invitation to present.

A limited number of scholarships are available for participants and attendees. If interested in applying for a scholarship, please email Kevin DePew at vice-president for additional information.

Conference proposal writers are welcome to use Generative AI technologies, such as Copilot and ChatGPT, to assist in developing their proposals. However, you are still responsible for assessing any AI-generated content for accuracy and relevance to the GSOLE community. You should ensure the final submission reflects your ideas and work. While disclosure of AI assistance is not required, proper citation methods, such as those suggested by MLA or APA, can be used where applicable.

Proposals should be prepared for anonymous review without authors’ names and institutional affiliations in the abstract. Where applicable, use anonymous descriptors to discuss institutional contexts and presenters (e.g., “large two-year college”; “English department at state university”; “WPA”; “adjunct faculty member”; etc.).

NOTE: Please submit no more than two proposals total. If submitting two proposals, they should be of different presentation formats.

The proposal form asks prospective presenters for the following information:

  • The type of presentation

  • The presentation’s title: For panel proposals, prepare one panel title; individual presenters may have their own titles, which may appear in the abstract.

  • Presenter(s) name and affiliation: For panel proposals, list all presenters.

  • The contexts of literacy education: K-12, general education, two-year college, university, technical/professional online education, OLI in the disciplines, graduate education, educator professional development, tutoring center, other.

  • An abstract for the presentation: The abstract is limited to 2800 characters (approximately 400 words). As noted above, omit identifying information in this section.

    • Those submitting an ePortfolio proposal should focus the abstract on what attendees will learn or gain from viewing your ePortfolio. This might include the types of artifacts you include, insight into OLI practice in your context, insight into your identity and experiences as an OLI practitioner, the specific ways your ePortfolio bridges theory and practice, etc. Please keep in mind your ePortfolio is being published in a public space, so you’ll want to ensure you are not violating copyright law or sharing student work without permission.

  • Identify which topics your presentation/panel discusses (select no more than two from the topic list above

Proposal Scoring Rubric

1. Relevance

When evaluating this criterion, consider the following questions to make an assessment:

  • Does the proposal align with OLI and/or the idea of Humans, Non-Humans, and Humanity? Is the proposal a good fit for our conference?

  • Does the proposal present ideas that are timely and relevant to current theory and practice of online literacy education?

  • Does the proposal have the potential to contribute to multiple literacy areas (writing, reading, digital)?

  • Does the proposal contextualize the work within the scholarly dialogue treating online literacy education?

2. Contribution

When evaluating this criterion, consider the following questions to make an assessment:

3. Focus

When evaluating this criterion, consider the following questions to make an assessment:

  • Does the proposal have a clear focus?

  • Does the proposal sufficiently explain the approach to the topic or a presentation plan?

  • Taking into consideration the proposed format, is the planned presentation appropriate and feasible? (Individual Papers will be 15 minutes each on panels of three; On-Demand presentations will be 5-10 minute pre-recorded presentations.)

Example Proposals

Examples can be helpful in that they show possibilities to a writer; however, examples can also be limiting if the writer believes these possibilities are the only options for success. Below we feature (with permission) a variety of past proposals so that you can see what GSOLECon proposals can look like in practice. These examples are one way—not the only way—to approach successful proposal writing. We encourage you to use them as they are helpful with the understanding that GSOLE welcomes you to innovate, subvert, or diverge from these examples.

Individual Proposals

  • “Creating community in the hybrid classroom: Putting my research into practice,” Nikki Chasteen, Nova Southeastern University

As Jennifer Sheppard (2021) noted, “2020 saw a historic period of tumult” (p. 60). Careful consideration of online writing instruction pedagogy was overlooked while colleges and universities across the United States transitioned from face-to-face to online courses. According to Sheppard (2021), “many instructors and programs have remained largely unfamiliar with these contributions, even during the pandemic’s widespread transition online” (p.62). Despite the existence of CCCC’s position statement on online writing instruction (2013), and the plethora of resources developed by GSOLE, there was little to no time for departments to train and educate instructors on how to transition face-to-face courses to an online format.

In Fall 2020, I was asked to teach two core courses for the B.A. in Communication: Communication Traditions and Persuasion. Due to the ongoing pandemic, and courses being offered as hybrid (synchronous, virtual), I was able to implement the best practices I learned from the results of faculty interviews conducted in 2019. At the 2020 Global Society of Online Literacy Educators’ (GSOLE) conference (pre-pandemic), I presented four best practices for creating a sense of community in online basic writing courses. Part two of my research seeks to provide participants with how I implemented community-making best practices for creating community amongst students in hybrid courses. My aim is to highlight what worked and what did not work by supplying evidence such as student feedback about not only me as an instructor, but the class and coursework overall.

Drawing from scholars like Jesse Borgman and Casey McArdle (2019), Scott Warnock and Diana Gasiewski (2018), and Hewett and DePew (2015), it is critical to examine how students navigated expectations in ways they were not previously familiar, such as receiving feedback via Zoom meeting or participating in peer review via breakout rooms.

References

Borgman, J. C. & McArdle, C. (2019). Personal, accessible, responsive, strategic: Resources and strategies for online writing instructors. University of Colorado Press. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/practice/pars/

CCCC Committee for Best Practices in Online Writing Instruction. (2013). Position statement of OWI principles and effective practices. https://cdn.ncte.org/nctefiles/groups/cccc/owiprinciples.pdf

Global Society for Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE). Online literacy instruction principles and tenets. https://gsole.org/oliresources/oliprinciples

Hewett, B. & DePew, K. E. (Eds.). (2015). Foundational practices in online writing instruction. Parlor Press.

Sheppard, J. (2021). Pandemic pedagogy: What we learned from the sudden transition to online teaching and how it can help us prepare to teach writing in an uncertain future. Composition Studies, 49(1), 60-83.

Warnock, S. & Gasiewski, D. (2018). Writing together: Ten weeks teaching and studenting in an online writing course. NCTE.

  • “Using Community Building Exercises to Teach Digital Writing Skills,” Abir Ward, Boston University

Turāth is an Arabic word that stands for heritage, legacy, tradition, or patrimony. We chose it for our community building project in Beirut, Lebanon but chose to write it with the number “2” to change it to verb form. To rāth, then, is to preserve our heritage. This project seeks to educate students in digital composition and to enhance Wikipedia’s content on Arab authors. This project started by recognizing a need to create articles about Lebanese and Arab authors, poets, and literary figures from Lebanon and the Arab region who have little to no presence on the web and who are at risk of becoming forgotten in today’s digital age. 2Rāth also seeks to bridge both the cultural and gender gap in representation of Arabs on Wikipedia.

The project was launched in 2019, and the 18 articles created since then have garnered 14.9 million views. With help from Dr. Matthew Vetter from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) and in collaboration with Dr. Helaine Blumenthal from Wikipedia Education, we launched this project at the American University of Beirut to help digitize Lebanese and Arab literary heritage. Students create articles in English and sometimes translate a few from Arabic or French if the articles are available in these languages.

Project Background

Every Fall semester, students enrolled in composition classes at AUB are invited to take part in a rigorous training with Wikipedia Education in how to edit and create Wikipedia content while abiding by the strict Wikipedia regulations on plagiarism and notability. In addition to improving encyclopedic content and working on preserving Arab literary heritage, this project also enables participants to practice crucial skills related to critical thinking, digital literacy, online source evaluation—determining which sources are most authoritative (considering publishers, formats, dates of publication, and author bias), and writing for a global audience. Since most AUB students are multilingual, they also translate Wikipedia articles from Arabic and French to English and edit articles in various languages. In this project, we have utilized digital tools to teach composition and writing and build a community.

  • “Labor-Based Contract Grading Goes Online,” Mikenna Sims, University of California Davis

Recent scholarship on writing assessment has focused on the creation and implementation of more socially just assessment practices; namely, labor-based contact grading. Labor-based contract grading is a method of assessment in which students are given grades based on the labor they put into the course; that is, the time they spend completing assignments, the number of assignments they complete, and the attitude with which they complete their assignments. While instructors do provide their students with feedback on the quality of their writing when using a labor-based grading contract, this discussion of quality is made entirely separate from how final course grades are determined. Because of this, labor-based grading contracts are seen as a more equitable and socially just method of assessment, and Inoue (2019) has theorized they are particularly advantageous for students of color, working class students, and multilingual students.

Given the diverse learners that populate online writing courses (see Borgman and McArdle, 2019; Cleary et al., 2019), labor-based contract grading has the potential to create more equitable assessment ecologies within our OWCs. However, despite this potential, there is presently little scholarship on the use of contract grading in online contexts. Laflen & Sims (2021) detail their own use of labor-based grading contracts in their OWCs, while Mick & Middlebrook (2015) call for the use of social contracts in OWI, and Sapp & Simon (2005) emphasize the importance of fairness in online writing assessment. Given this limited scholarship, additional dialogue surrounding this method of assessment is needed, particularly to support instructors who may be considering implementing a labor-based contract grading in their OWC.

In this session, the speaker will share her experiences using labor-based contract grading in her online first-year writing courses. She will begin by detailing the design decisions she made when migrating her grading contract from a f2f to an online writing course, and will then describe the strategies she employed to help facilitate the use of this alternative method of assessment. The attendees of this session will learn various strategies to help them implement labor-based contract grading in their own OWCs. For example, we will discuss how instructors might “hack” their LMS grade book to communicate important grade information to their students, how to design supplemental documents that may be used to facilitate students’ understanding of labor-based contract grading, as well as how to involve students in the process of co-creating a course grading contract. This session will additionally provide attendees with the space to work through any apprehensions that may have kept them from trying out labor-based contract grading, and empower them to implement this method of anti-racist writing assessment into their own practice.

  • “Zines and Antiracist Work in a Fully Online, Asynchronous Course,” Christine Martorana, Florida International University

In this presentation, I discuss my approach to teaching ENC 4930: Zines, Racial Equity, and Social Justice in a fully online, asynchronous environment at an HSI. I focus on the particular assignments, texts, and platforms I utilize to engage my fully online students, strategies for incorporating a physical, DIY genre such as zines into a fully online course, and the potential for zines to offer an accessible form of activism in which students can participate.

Zines, as DIY, self-published texts, can bypass traditional gate-keeping mechanisms that silence non-dominant voices and perspectives. As a result, zines offer a platform upon which people of color are using words, images, and other non-violent discursive practices to advocate for racial equity, build and sustain community, and mobilize activist efforts. In this presentation, I spotlight one way in which these efforts can inform writing pedagogy and curriculum design in a fully online, asynchronous class.

After giving an overview of the course goals and learning outcomes, I spotlight two particular texts that served as pedagogical frameworks for this course redesign: Performing Antiracist Pedagogy in Rhetoric, Writing, and Communication and Storytelling for Social Justice: Connecting, Narrative, and the Arts in Antiracist Teaching. Next, I discuss strategies for integrating zines as primary texts within the fully online college writing classroom, including how we engage with online zine distributors, the ways in which we leverage social media, and how I invite students to distribute their zines amongst our class and. within their home communities. I then share specific writing assignments and digital platforms that can be used to invite our online students to create and share zines that give voice to the marginalized and use words, images, and other non-violent discursive practices to advocate for racial equity.

In this presentation, not only do I share pedagogical resources that other online teachers can use, adapt, and revise for their own teaching, but I also discuss why it is not enough for us to invite students to learn about and discuss race-related issues in our classes. This is undoubtedly important; however, students must also recognize the ways in which they themselves can act as agents of change. They must see the potential for their own voices, experiences, words, and writing to contribute to racial equity efforts, and they must be given the opportunity to take meaningful action.

Panel Proposals

  • “Take That to the Bank: The Checks and Balances of Participatory Course Design,” Ashlyn Walden and Meaghan Rand, University North Carolina at Charlotte

Prior to the pandemic, accessibility as an intentional, proactive choice in course design was steadily gaining momentum in technical/professional communication, online literacy/writing studies, and composition (CCC 2011; CCC 2013; CEUD 2014; Oswal & Meloncon 2014; GSOLE 2016). Enter March 2020. In short order, faculty began to uncover what many instructional designers, teacher-researchers, and professional organizations already knew about accessibility: it is a means of responding to and preparing for student learning needs at the forefront of course development (Foley & Ferri 2012; CCC 2013; CEUD 2014; GSOLE 2016; Hewett & DePew 2015; Oswal & Meloncon 2014; Hitt 2018; Mahaffey & Walden 2019). Many sought to address the rising need for quality online course development to varying degrees of success.

One such response, led by our institution’s center for teaching and learning, sought to help departments think strategically about launching online courses to serve the growing need for flexibility by offering training and mentorship in curricular design and delivery. The process itself was very structured, and while well-intentioned, it became apparent early in the process that there was a gap in values between the subject-area faculty who designed the courses and those who oversaw the process. This presentation will explore how the stakeholders’ (instructional designers, our Center for Teaching and Learning, our department, Quality Matters, etc.) goals can oversimply course development replicating a banking model of teaching and learning (Friere 1991). Despite both our objections to that model and our expertise in designing tech-mediated writing courses, we were hamstrung in part because we were offered excellent compensation that contingent faculty on a regular basis do not receive; in short, the work we usually do is unpaid as a part of our teaching responsibilities was finally being recognized as worthy of additional compensation. We faced a dilemma: to what extent do we appease stakeholders in order to 1) design a course that we believed was a strong representation of our department values and one which was focused on accessibility and choice, and 2) fulfill our contractual obligations and be paid for our labor. We hope to use this opportunity to discuss some of the successes and tensions we felt, as well as think through ways in developing institutional professional development opportunities which both honors faculty agency and expertise in curriculum design and supports students successfully in online writing courses.

  • “The Potential of Pre-Designed Online Writing Courses as Instructor Training in Multimodality,” Catrina Michum, and Kristin Winet, University of Arizona

In the Writing Program at a large public institution in the southwest, a designated HSI, we use a pre-designed course (PDC) with established course outcomes for our online courses. These PDCs are designed to streamline the online teaching experience for new instructors–both graduate students and lecturers from a variety of disciplines with English–as well as offer help and support as they learn to navigate their online writing courses. In the fall of 2019, we developed a multimodal argument assignment for the second first-year writing course in a two course sequence that instructors could choose in place of a more traditional research essay; however, many of our new online instructors still opt for the traditional essay and remain hesitant to include multimodal composition or discuss the transferability of these skills in their courses.

Although writing studies scholarship has long advocated for the inclusion of digital or multimodal composition (Selfe, 1999; 2004; Selber, 2005; Ball, 2004), research shows that instructors who might try a multimodal assignment in a face-to-face course are even less likely to try it online (Blair, 2015; Borgman, 2019). Even if instructors do feel comfortable enough because they are working with a pre- built curriculum, many do not know how to articulate how these multimodal projects can transfer to other writing situations (DePalma, 2015). To mitigate these uncertainties and encourage faculty to try teaching this module, the pre-designed course and instructor resources were designed to mitigate uncertainty in teaching these assignments by focusing on scaffolding the final project and explaining the rationale behind certain activities.

In order to assess the usefulness of our pre-designed course and instructor materials, we tracked a variety of new online instructors in Spring 2021 who chose to do the multimodal module to see how well they: 1) felt prepared to teach multimodal projects after teaching the course; 2) understood the transferability of the skills learned in multimodal projects; and to find out 3) whether or not they needed additional professional development. This presentation will share survey results from our study and focus on how we might mitigate additional fears (Borgman, 2019) instructors may have, increase the level of accessibility and inclusiveness in the course and instructor materials, and enhance their comfort with teaching multimodality. We will conclude with strategies that other Writing Programs might consider when preparing and supporting faculty to teach pre-designed multimodal assignments in online courses.

  • “Strategies for Using Critical Reflection to Close Opportunity Gaps in Online Literacy Courses,” Joanne Giordano, Salt Lake City Community College, and Cassandra M Phillips, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Online learning has broadened educational opportunities for a widely diverse range of students, including many who would otherwise have limited or no access to higher education. Many of these students enroll in online programs at two-year colleges and other open-access institutions, but they are also present in other types of colleges and universities. Effective online literacy educators need to be prepared to support students whose pathways through education are different from learners whose needs are met through traditional teaching practices. This presentation will introduce attendees to critical reflection activities that help online literacy educators support diverse learners and close educational opportunity gaps for students who experience inequities that create learning challenges.

Critical reflection in teaching refers to thinking processes that help teachers learn from their previous experiences for the purpose of improving student learning. Stephen Brookfield describes critically reflective teaching as “the sustained and intentional process of identifying and checking the accuracy and validity of our teaching assumptions” (Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, p. 3). Brookfield explains that “critical reflection happens when we build into our habit of constantly trying to identify, and check the assumptions that inform our actions as teachers. The chief reason for doing this is to help us take more informed actions so that when we do something that’s intended to help students learn it actually has that effect” (pp. 4-5). This kind of self-awareness and critical thinking is crucial for becoming an equitable and inclusive online literacy educator.

The presentation will begin with a framework for critically self-assessing online teaching practices to improve learning for students from diverse cultural, social, racial, linguistic, and educational backgrounds. The presenters will then provide a set of reflection questions and resources that will guide online literacy educators through the process of evaluating their assumptions about student learning and their online instructional practices based on principles for equity and inclusion. The framework will help instructors develop organized strategies for using course analytics, formal assignments, low stakes learning activities, students’ reflective writing, and communication with students to identify opportunity gaps that create barriers to learning and/or reinforce structural inequities in higher education. Participants will learn how to apply these strategies to improve online instruction for individual students and for an entire class. Attendees will leave the session with a short guide to using critical reflection for equitable teaching in online literacy courses.

Praxis Posters

  • “Serving the Community while Fostering Community: Service Learning in an Asynchronous Technical Writing Course,” Megan McKittrick, Old Dominion University

In this Praxis Post(er), the presenter will discuss the migration, from a face-to-face delivery to an online asynchronous modality, of a client-based service learning course designed to meet the objectives of an introductory scientific and technical writing course for Old Dominion University’s Perry Honors College. Service learning was employed to foster a sense of community among students within the LMS, while connecting students to practitioners and stakeholders in the region of Coastal Virginia.

From the Spring of 2020 to the Spring of 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, students turned their energy toward the local community, aiding an environmental engineer at the City of Norfolk in his efforts to expand the city’s ongoing collection of research on the latest storm water management and restoration technologies and practices. Students were introduced to the basics of coastal resilience and were invited to collect, summarize, and analyze the academic research related to it. Together, they engaged in the research process, moving from research questions to annotations to review of literature, while exploring common genres of scientific writing. The products they generated will help local practitioners protect our community from rising waters.

Community is important to the learning process (Walker, 2005), but it can be difficult to achieve in online settings (Mick & Middlebrook, 2015, p. 130). To foster community, much attention should be paid to collaboration and discourse in pedagogical design (Garrison & Vaughan, 2008). As students worked toward the larger goals of this shared topic, they engaged in low-stakes, interactive work that invited them to share and process their resources, collaboratively collecting and synthesizing complex information. This collaborative research process was framed by their execution of the writing process, where students provided feedback to one another during peer review via the discussion board, as well. Collaboration throughout the writing process is vital for writerly progress, and it represents an important moment of community building. The fact that students were working to support the efforts of local practitioners further motivated them to engage in coursework, making service learning a powerful way to combat the challenge of community in online education.

References

Garrison, D. R., & Vaughan, N. D. (2008). Blended learning in higher education: Framework, principles, and guidelines (1st ed). Jossey-Bass.

Mick, C.S., & Middlebrook, G. (2015). Asynchronous and synchronous modalities. In B. L. Hewett & K. E. DePew (Eds.), Foundational practices of online writing instruction. Anderson: Parlor Press, LLC. (pp. 129-148).

Walker, K. (2005). “Activity Theory and the Online Technical Communication Course: Assessing Quality in Undergraduate Online Instruction.” In Cargile Cook, K., & Grant-Davie, K. (Eds.). Online education: Global questions, local answers. Baywood Pub.

  • “A design for student leadership in discussion boards in asynchronous courses,” Kate Moss, CUNY School of Professional Studies

I teach in a public university’s School of Professional Studies, in an online asynchronous program designed for “completers”—students coming back to finish their bachelors’ degrees. In 2021, my course was part of a larger NACE initiative emphasizing career-readiness skills in general education classes. I was asked to add an assignment to my writing-intensive Digital Literacy course which would require students to practice the NACE career-readiness skill of “Leadership” with goals defined by NACE as the ability to:

  • Inspire, persuade, and motivate self and others under a shared vision.

  • Serve as a role model to others by approaching tasks with confidence and a positive attitude.

  • Motivate and inspire others by encouraging them and by building mutual trust.

Without otherwise changing the discussion topics and prompts, I created student moderation roles which allowed the discussion to become more student-centered. Assigning students to leadership and moderation roles in online asynchronous discussion boards has been found to increase student participation (Xie et al. 17). This practice can also change the nature of students’ engagement. Ouyang and Chang found that “when instructors encouraged students to engage in top-level planning, decision making, and learning coordination, some students autonomously transformed from peripheral, inactive participants to active leader participants” (1408).

Students were asked to take a turn to be a Discussion Leader for one week, working in groups with three different roles that involved guiding and encouraging others during the class discussions in different ways during the week.

My Praxis Poster will describe the way this assignment was designed and implemented, and a qualitative description of the outcomes I have seen so far (the course ends in December 2021). While most faculty are probably not trying to implement the NACE skill of leadership, the assignment appears to have positive effects in terms of student participation and engagement.

Works Cited

National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). What is Career-Readiness? https://www.naceweb.org/career-readiness/competencies/career-readiness-defined/

Ouyang, Fan, and Yu-Hui Chang. “The Relationships between Social Participatory Roles and Cognitive Engagement Levels in Online Discussions.” British Journal of Educational Technology, vol. 50, no. 3, Wiley Subscription Services, Inc, 2019, pp. 1396–414. cuny-bb.primo.exlibrisgroup.com, https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12647.

Xie, Kui, et al. “Impacts of Role Assignment and Participation in Asynchronous Discussions in College-Level Online Classes.” The Internet and Higher Education, vol. 20, Jan. 2014, pp. 10–19. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2013.09.003.

ePortfolio Proposals

  • “Inclusive, Engaging, and Empathetic Online Writing Instruction: An ePortfolio”

Madeline Crozier, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

This contribution to the ePortfolio Gallery will provide a tour of an OLI ePortfolio created as part of the 2020-2021 GSOLE Basic OLI Certification program. The ePortfolio demonstrates one effective way to approach the creation and implementation of an OLI-specific ePortfolio, a professional development and pedagogical practice of interest to many members of the GSOLE community, particularly graduate students, staff professionals, and early career faculty. The ePortfolio will provide a comprehensive overview of the presenter’s theory of OLI, which centers inclusive, engaging, and empathetic online writing instruction. The presenter will discuss these central tenants of her OLI theory in relation to her teaching philosophy, providing insight into the process of composing a theory of OLI that builds on instructors’ driving pedagogical beliefs. Further, the in-depth descriptions of the theory of OLI will underscore how the presenter bridges theory and practice in her pedagogical approaches, modeling how to use such a statement to guide decision-making in the online writing classroom. Then, the presenter will share an overview of the OLI artifacts in the ePortfolio, which include a key terms concept map, literature review of antiracist pedagogies, and an infographic resource about building community in online courses. The presenter will discuss how these materials and knowledge have shaped her instructional practices. In particular, the presenter will describe how equitable assessment and liberatory practices informed the content of her OLI ePortfolio and practices of online writing instruction. The presenter will also share how the theory of OLI, artifacts, and OLI Certification program have positively impacted her pedagogical beliefs and practices over the last two years. After viewing the ePortfolio Gallery submission, viewers will take away an understanding of tangible steps they can take toward the creation of their own OLI ePortfolios as well as a developed sense of how to compose a theory of OLI actionable in writing classrooms across modalities, contexts, and student populations.
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