Online Training Spiral

In "The Online Training Spiral", the first chapter of the book Preparing Educators for Online Writing Instruction: Principles and Processes, the authors evaluate five pedagogical principles used to train educators to teach online. Investigation, immersion, individualization, association, and reflection are highlighted in an effort to showcase the ways these principles can shape a "learner-centered framework". The chapter also provides trainers and directors with management strategies for utilizing these principles.

When addressing the immersion principle, the authors suggest that "teaching online necessitates training online," (11) and as such it is imperative that an online training program for educators should include an online component. While a simple assertion, the writers fully outline a series of useful strategies to achieve trainee immersion even when faced with trainee resistance to online tools. "Moreover, given the practical exigencies of employment requirements, budgets, and timelines, immersion helps to initiate new instructors with optimal efficiency" (12).

Reflection is the last principle addressed by the writers, in this chapter, and they suggest that it is important to "address demonstrable competencies" (23). As trainees come with a wide range of experiences and as they improve their skills it is important for them to receive feedback and be given time to "consider, question, and synthesize that feedback." "Such external and internal examination also is vital in the online teaching venue, not least because individuals are making sense, firsthand, of the distinctive nature of online learning" (20-21).

The authors offer the notion that "rigorously examining teaching and learning processes as they occur in naturalistic settings is essential to advancing any education-related program" (6) and suggest that a training program should build into its framework a way for the trainee and the program itself to conduct ongoing research and development. Any teacher orientation to online instruction should be fluid allowing for tweaks and evolution. "This stance is invaluable, given the collective need to rethink and theorize about broader education goals in the online environment - both beyond the particulars of specific platforms, and influenced by the potential instructional media that each new platform suggests" (25).

While this chapter is best suited for trainers and administrators, it does provide higher education instructors, in any subject area, with tools to orient student learners in the online environment. In addition, it effectively highlights the nuances of the adult-learner and best practices for facilitating learning in the online sphere.


Hewett, Beth L., Christa Ehmann. Preparing Educators for Online Writing Instruction: Principles and Processes. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 2004.

Teaching Writing in Asynchronous Environment

In chapter three of the book Preparing Educators for Online Writing Instruction: Principles and Processes, the writers take five pedagogical principles: investigation, immersion, individualization, association, and reflection, defined in chapter one, and apply them to teaching in the asynchronous environment. This chapter is intended to provide trainees - the main audience - and other educators with an orientation, employing the one-to-one asynchronous writing conference as the primary point of reference. It is also designed to provide educators with tools to create a program.

The chapter achieves this by defining the online writing lab (OWL) and asserts that asynchronous instruction has the ability to "represent a dialogue interaction as reflective of the social-constructivist and the related computer-mediated communication (CMC) paradigms" (70). The chapter also provides principles of asynchronous OWL. "These principles, tested both in the face-to-face and asynchronous online teaching modalities, are built on widely accepted beliefs about the writing process and serve to ground trainees within a common sphere of instruction" (72). The writers advocate a problem-based approach and address writing from the following principles: fluency, form, and correctness; they draw from audience, purpose, and occasion to manage the revising phase of the writing process.

Next, the writers apply the principles, offering five steps to help the instructor manage the time spent reading and responding to student writing, a concern expressed in our class discussions. Two of the steps stand out in my mind. Step 2 suggests that instructors have access to archives of previous writing submissions, while step 4 asks instructors to consider a student's requests for additional help and offers a few response suggestions. In addition, the writers offer asynchronous questions, summarize teaching techniques, and evaluate the online writing program that uses the asynchronous OWL.

As an instructor who has employed very few asynchronous instructional tools, I found that the chapter provides a comprehensive framework for this type of instruction from principles to evaluation techniques. Though more experienced instructors might find some of the information a bit basic, the chapter outlines online writing instruction in such a way that the beginner is given a road map with which to navigate program creation and execution, complete with an "advice for trainee" paragraph at the beginning of each section. It does this without dumbing down the language, providing pedagogical rational throughout the chapter. The authors also make a point of embracing long held practices by adapting them to the online environment. While the writers' intended audience in this chapter is the asynchronous instructor, I find that many of the things outlined could easily be applied in F2F and synchronous classrooms.


Hewett, Beth L., Christa Ehmann. Preparing Educators for Online Writing Instruction: Principles and Processes. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 2004.