Dennis Koyama

COVID-19’s impacts revealed that teaching writing online was no longer merely an issue of convenience or economic necessity—it was critical to public health and equity concerns as well. Now higher education faces one of its greatest historical challenges, expanding online offerings to fully engage and support students around the world. Gathering together educators who teach writing at college and graduate levels using creative hybrid, blended, and online/remote/virtual modes, this book should be required reading for all teachers and administrators. The volume features those new to online teaching alongside experienced online writing teachers. Referencing the latest research in online teaching and writing, contributors share stories of crucial successes as well as unforeseen difficulties. Essays address compelling concerns such as engaging diversity and cultural inclusivity, social justice, as well as global learning in online writing courses; radically reshaping graduate seminars for online delivery; flipping classrooms to promote more successful writing instruction; fostering greater community within online writing classrooms; examining the problems and possibilities of Learning Management Systems for teaching writing; sustaining remote writing-centered archival research; avoiding Zoom fatigue in writing classes by using design thinking; utilizing expressive arts in online writing classes; mentoring doctoral students online; constructing meaningful approaches to online peer writing feedback; as well as making access and inclusivity central to online writing course design.

In the current volume, the selected studies have been grouped into three thematic sections, presenting readers with a set of distinct but related research on meaningful issues for a modern learning experience. The first three chapters present professional and teacher development perspectives and collectively shed light on how to develop, maintain, and improve pre and in-service teacher training and professional development. The second set of four chapters provide research findings that describe the results of direct applications of modern learning elements through course assignments and teaching approaches. The final five chapters focus on critical thinking and range in their focus from classroom-based studies to full-scale curriculum reform.

In the current volume, the selected studies have been grouped into three thematic sections, presenting readers with a set of distinct but related research on meaningful issues for a modern learning experience. The first three chapters present professional and teacher development perspectives and collectively shed light on how to develop, maintain, and improve pre and in-service teacher training and professional development. The second set of four chapters provide research findings that describe the results of direct applications of modern learning elements through course assignments and teaching approaches. The final five chapters focus on critical thinking and range in their focus from classroom-based studies to full-scale curriculum reform. The collection of chapters presented in this volume represents the eclectic nature of modern learning experiences and demonstrate its applicability across educational contexts and disciplines. It is my hope that the chapters will resonate with other educational researchers in search of novel ways of creating, facilitating, and investigating modern learning experiences.

<jats:p>The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted traditional approaches to education and forced educators to adopt and adapt technologies to allow institutions to remain open, offer courses and other services to enable students to continue their education. This rapid shift to online teaching and learning has shone a light on the need for institutions to support students in working out how to maintain autonomy through meaningful interaction in the online world. In this paper we discuss the transition of a face-to-face university writing center to a synchronous online writing center that is hosted in the videoconferencing application Zoom. In doing this we explain the rationale that informed our thinking throughout the transition process and how sound pedagogical principles and a focus on the student experience guided our decision-making. Preliminary findings regarding how self-regulated learning was maintained and nurtured in the virtual writing center are presented and discussed.</jats:p>