Chris Harwood

This chapter explores the design and deployment of online writing centers (OWCs) to cater to the evolving needs of diverse undergraduate and graduate student populations. Leveraging platforms such as ZOOM, OWCs provide effective writing support, especially for individuals facing challenges with in-person services. The chapter discusses the historical integration of technology in writing centers, writing center pedagogy, and highlights ZOOM's pedagogical benefits. It also emphasizes the significance of webforms for streamlining administrative processes and supporting self-regulated learning. Insights regarding how to engage students in writing consultations are discussed alongside the evaluation of the effectiveness of OWCs in beta testing. The purpose of the chapter is to empower educators in establishing OWCs in their contexts, which are tailored to promote accessibility and effective online learning for their students.

This paper explores the technological affordances of using Zoom for pedagogical purposes in the context of one-to-one writing center tutorials. First, the theoretical pedagogical framework that informs writing center tutorials is explained and the salient mediating affordances of Zoom technology are outlined. Then, tutor and student qualitative feedback from the beta testing of a virtual writing center hosted in Zoom are presented and briefly discussed. The feedback suggests that Zoom has a range of technological affordances that can be employed by educators to host and conduct meaningful writing center tutorials in an undergraduate EMI context.

This chapter focuses on cooperative learning in an undergraduate English for academic purposes context and discusses the pedagogical factors that educators should consider when moving a face-to-face cooperative learning activity online. In the discussion, a text-based academic literacy activity is used to illustrate how the principles of cooperative learning should incorporate pedagogic concepts and approaches from group-based online learning to facilitate cooperative learning online. Factors within task structure, and the importance of teaching presence and social presence in fostering cognitive presence in an online learning environment are discussed. Then, recommendations for how to cultivate positive interdependence, promotive interaction, individual accountability, interpersonal and small group skills, and group processing in online activities are proposed.

Reflective practice has long been considered an important part of professional development for educators; however, accounts of utilizing reflective practice with groups of experienced teachers remain scarce. We consider reflective practice to be an important means of fostering professional discourse among experienced teachers regarding their pedagogical beliefs and practices. To that end, this paper describes a reflective practice innovation introduced in an undergraduate English composition program in a Japanese university. In what follows we, as experienced teachers, detail how a reflective-practice routine (RPR) was established and used to evaluate the efficacy of existing curricular materials to inform adjunct-faculty onboarding and professional development. In closing, we make several recommendations related to scheduling, maintaining focused and constructive interactions when implementing an RPR, and we provide examples of how the results of the RPR were applied to improve our onboarding process, teaching practices, and course materials.