Welch, A. G., Napoleon, L., Hill, B., & Roumell, E. (2014). Virtual Teaching Dispositions Scale (VTDS): A Multi-dimensional Instrument to Assess Teaching Dispositions in Virtual Classrooms. Journal of Online Learning & Teaching, 10(3).

Category: Technology, Research Methods, Theory & Rhetoric, Communication Design

Summary:

The authors set out to create an instrument for measuring instructors to determine if they are predisposed on teaching online. Their resulting instrument contained four factors, and 25 criteria:

"Factor 1: Social Presence

• Social I am empathetic to the needs of my students.  
• I relate with students as people. 
• I am tactful with students in emotionally stressful situations.
• I am flexible in dealing with students' needs (due dates, absences,etc.).
• I try to establish a welcoming learning environment. 
• I understand the needs of my students.

"Factor 2: Virtual/TechnologicalPresence

• I adapt well in online delivery formats.
• I maintain genuine and meaningful contact in online formats.
• I project interpersonal skills in the online environment.
• I strive to continually improve performance in the online classroom.
• I maintain a highly visible presence in online formats.
• I am intrinsically motivated to master new information technology. 
• I utilize new technologies to enhance learning. 
• I communicate comfortably almost entirely through writing. 

"Factor 3: Pedagogical Presence

• I respond to student inquiries in a timely manner. 
• I return work to students promptly. 
• I create a schedule and stick to it. Pedagogical I am organized. I communicate clearly and effectively in writing. 

"Factor 4: Expert/Cognitive Presence

•  I demonstrate commitment to academic expertise. 
• I have a passion for education.
  I make content meaningful for the learner. 
• I anchor learning strategies in the context of my subject matter.
  I adapt learning strategies within the context of my subject matter. 
• I am very knowledgeable in my content area" (Welch, Napoleon, Hill, & Roumell, 2014, p. 457).

This document could help instructors determine if they are well-suited for online education. 

Pang, P., & Hung, D. W. (2001). Activity Theory as a Framework for Analyzing CBT and E-Learning Environments. Educational Technology, 41(4), 36-42.

Categories: Theory & Rhetoric, Technology, Communication Design, Research Methods

Summary:

Pang and Hung adapted an early iteration of activity theory to analyze digital learning. They established a foundation for future similar analyses with their ideas of using collaborative projects, mentoring, multiple perspectives, and peer teaching (they described as "contributing to other learners") to describe community. Their 'object(s)' in e-learning  comprised the environment, motivational components, the use of media, personalization, and tone. Under the category of division of labor, they identified four critical skills necessary for e-learning: technology competence, proficiency in writing, teaching style, and fluency in web-based instructional strategies. They concluded that learning was "not a decontextualized activity that is separated from work. Rather, learning is a human activity that is deeply embedded in the social matrix of people and artifacts" (Pang & Hung, 2001, p. 42). 

Citation-worthy:

"Activity Theory is a cross-disciplinary framework for studying different forms of human practices, factoring in the processes of context as developmental processes both at the individual and social levels at the same time, including the use of tools and artifacts (Kuutti, 1997). An 'activity' is undertaken by human actors motivated towards an object (or goal) and mediated by tools and the community. Activities are distinguished from each other according to their objects. It is the transformation of the object into an outcome that motivates the execution of an activity (Hung & Wong, 2000). ... In essence, tools mediate the processes between subject and object; rules mediate the processes between subject and community; and division of labor mediates the processes between community and object" (Pang & Hung, 2001, p. 36).

Boettger, R. K., & Palmer, L. A. (2010). Quantitative content analysis: Its use in technical communication. Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on, 53(4), 346-357.

Category: Research Methods

Summary & Citations:

Boettger and Palmer's article sought to increase the use of quantitative content analysis in the field of technical communication. They suggested that, "Quantitative content analysis can prove to be a more powerful method than surveys and interviews because of its nonobtrusive nature and its lack of reliance on subjective perceptions" (Boettger & Palmer, 2010, p. 346). This can decrease the bias inherent in qualitative studies. After making a case for greater accuracy in our research, they outlined the fundamentals of content analysis, and its focus on "fixed characteristics" (p. 347). Their information was presented for those new to quantitative research and outlined the steps of such research.

They then provided a list of ideas for technical communicators to consider how they might used quantitative content analysis, it "can be used to:
• evaluate transcripts from usability studies to identify common mental models held by users;
• reveal differences in communication strategies for intercultural audiences;
• assess bias in publications produced by government at the federal, state, and local levels;
• codify the images used in marketing communications;
• locate intent in the annual reports produced by corporations;
• identify and deconstruct the rhetorical strategies from successfully funded proposals;
• assess how the rhetorical qualities and characteristics of environmental-impact statements have evolved since the signing of the Environmental Policy Act of 1969" (Boettger & Palmer, 2010, p. 348).

Their article continued by surveying the primary journals of the field; they found that only 5% of the articles researched contained quantitative research. Then they provided an example this research method in a study of sheep and goat farming.

Rainey, K. T. (1999). Doctoral Research in Technical, Scientific, and Business Communication, 1989-1998. Technical Communication: Journal of the Society for Technical Communication, 46(4), 501-31.

Categories: Research Methods

Summary and Citations:

The second of Rainey's studies of technical communication doctoral research. He summarizes his findings brilliantly:

"The most significant result of this study is the identification of a robust theoretical, historical, and practical scholarly production of knowledge that buttresses technical, scientific, and business communication as a profession and solidifies its position among academic disciplines. A rich theoretical tradition is emerging from our study of language
and communication in all their highly ramified connections. Moreover, studies of the discipline itself verify that it has emerged as a viable scholarly pursuit. While in the 1992 study we found only five dissertations that addressed the history of technical communication, since then almost twice that number have emerged (see below). Many other areas of study also have witnessed an increase in the number of studies" (Rainey, 1999, p. 501).

"Second, a major finding of this study is identical to our finding in the previous article: research is occurring across a much broader range of departments and institutions than
those typically associated with professional communication as a discipline. ..." (Rainey, 1999, p. 501)

"Third, the number of studies in the field has increased significantly since 1989. ..." (Rainey, 1999, p. 501)

"Fourth, professional communication research continues to employ standard research methodologies, with a decided bias in favor of qualitative methods (see “Research methods used” in this article)" (Rainey, 1999, p. 502).

"Fifth, a number of areas for further research become evident while I was surveying the topics in these dissertations. Most notably, a number of studies early in the period
achieve negative results and need to be re-examined now to determine whether circumstances have changed. ... New foci for research have emerged since 1992, especially post-modernist, post-constructionist, and social construction interpretations of communication. ... The social/cultural/class impacts of computer-mediated communication
are clearly still to be assessed" (Rainey, 1999, p. 502).

"Studies of the profession itself remain to be made. The history of the discipline is still to be written, even though a number of historical studies have appeared. And in the international arena of technical documentation, studies need to be made of the emergence of standard curricula and national standards for certifying technical communication professionals. ... Doctoral studies of ethics in professional communication have not yet been made, as far as this search has determined. This area poses a rich field of investigation that would be useful to both scholars and practicing professionals, as well as to professional societies. A significant area for investigation is the scope of rhetorical studies; what is needed is a meta-analysis of all the research in rhetoric, both classical and modern, both theoretical and applied, both historical and contemporary (Rainey, 1999, p. 502).

"Finally, the richness of research surveyed for this article suggests both a continuing problem and a valuable opportunity for technical communication. Much of the research
discussed here is inaccessible to practicing professionals for the three reasons Kelly and I cited in 1992:
1. Potential users are not aware of it.
2. Even if they were aware of it, many assume that it is impractical and not understandable.
3. Researchers and their interpreters have yet to discover an efficient method to translate the results of scholarly studies into practical applications. (pp. 552–553)
"The problem is the continuing—actual or perceived—dichotomy between theory and application. Much of the research studied here is not immediately applicable to
workplace communication. What it needs are interpreters to analyze it and formulate ways in which it can be applied. And in that task lies the opportunity not only to
bring solid research into the economy of the workplace but also to demonstrate that even basic research as well as applied research need not be forever separated from
the very real and immediate concerns of practicing technical communicators in the workplace or in the classroom" (Rainey, 1999, p. 503).

Santovec, M. L. (2005). Counting the costs of distance education. Education Executive, 24(5), 5-6.

Category: Research Methods, Theory & Rhetoric, Technology

Summary:

Common belief currently stated that distance education is less expensive to institutions than traditional brick and mortal instruction. This article provided information and fiscal considerations for those institutions considering adding distance education courses.

The authors focus on the fixed costs of:
- Learning Management Systems (LMS) / Course Management Systems (CMS)

- Program administration like salaries, infrastructure, equipment, travel, supplies, and bandwidth.

and the variable costs of:
- Instructors
- Per-student costs

Santovec suggested that the best way to reduce costs is to negotiate the cost with vendors. She then stressed the importance of having systems that work so instructors spend their time on academic issues, not on technical challenges or problems.

Swan, K. (2003). Learning effectiveness online: What the research tells us. Elements of quality online education, practice and direction, 4(1), 13-47.

Categories: Research Methods, Technology, Communication Design

Summary:

Swan produced this literature review to explore the research on learning effectiveness in asynchronous online environments. She compiled a collection of significant research projects that indicated there is no significant difference (or positive differences) between online and traditional learning. Her review references over 355 reports, summaries, and papers to that effect. She also found some instances where studies reported significantly worse results in online courses. These were in the minority.

To address the differences in the studies and results, Swan examined and critiqued the current research from Rourke, Anderson, Garrison, & Archer's 'Community of Inquiry' model for online learning. Her three tables comparing research findings and implications for practice in the appendix may help online education practitioners to quickly understand the implications of her research.

Citation-worthy:

"LEARNING EFFECTIVENESS means that learners who complete an online program receive educations that represent the distinctive quality of the institution. The goal is that online learning is at least equivalent to learning through the institution’s other delivery modes, in particular through its traditional face-to-face, classroom-based instruction.. . . Interaction is key (Sloan Consortium Elements of Quality: The Sloan-C Framework. Needham, MA: Sloan Center for OnLine Education, 2002" (Swan, 2003, p. 1).

"Central to the concepts of both learning and computer mediation is the notion of interaction. Interaction refers to reciprocal events involving at least two actors and/or objects and at least two actions in which the actors, objects, and events mutually influence each other [27]. No matter what learning theories we hold -- behaviorist, constructivist, cognitivist, or social -- reciprocal events and mutual response in some form must be integral to our notions of how we learn" (Swan, 2003, p. 4).


Researchers concerned with computer-based education have identified three kinds of interactivity that affect learning: interaction with content, interaction with instructors, and interaction among peers. Interaction with content refers both to learners' interactions with the course materials and to their interaction with the concepts and ideas they present. Interaction with instructors includes the myriadways in which instructors teach, guide, correct, and support their students. Interaction among peers refers to interactions among learners which also can take many forms -- debate, collaboration, discussion, peer review, as well as informal and incidental learning among classmates. Each of these modes of interaction support learning and each can be uniquely enacted in online learning Environments. Of course, none of the three modes of interaction function independently in practice. Interaction amongstudents, for example, is supported by instructor facilitation and support, and, because it centers on content, can be seen as a variety of that type of interaction. Thus, a useful way of thinking about the  three forms of interaction is provided by Rourke, Anderson, Garrison & Archer’s 'community of inquiry' model of online learning. If one equates cognitive presence in this model with interaction with content, teaching presence with interaction with instructors, and social presence with interaction among students, it gives a good representation of how all three work together to support learning online. At the same time it should be remembered that both teachers and students have social presence, that in many online courses, both teachers and students teach, and that learning is always learning of content" (Swan, 2003, p. 4).

       Interaction with content section:

"Janick & Liegle have synthesized the work of a range of instructional design experts in these areas to develop a list of ten concepts that support the effective design of web-based instruction. These are:
• Instructors acting as facilitators
• Use of a variety of presentation styles
• Multiple exercises
• Hands-on problems
• Learner control of pacing
• Frequent testing
• Clear feedback
• Consistent layout
• Clear navigation
• Available help screens" (Swan, 2003, p. 5).

"Chickering and Gamson’s 'Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education,' updated for online learning, are based on research and practice in traditional undergraduate education. These include:
• Contacts between students and faculty
• Reciprocity and cooperation among students
• Active learning techniques
• Prompt feedback
• An emphasis on time on task
• Communication of high expectations
• Respect for diverse talents and ways of learning" (Swan, 2003, p. 6).

Keeton, Scheckley and Griggs have adapted and revised the seven principles according to
a survey of twenty years of teaching practices, basing their eight principles on the practices they find to have had the greatest impact on learning gains in higher education:
• Make learning goals and one or more paths to them clear
• Use deliberate practice and provide prompt constructive feedback
• Provide an optimal balance of challenge and support that is tailored to the individual students’ readiness and potential
• Broaden the learners’ experience of the subject matter
• Elicit active and critical reflection by learners on their growing experience base
• Link inquiries to genuine problems or issues of high interest to the learners to enhance motivation and accelerate their learning
• Develop learners’ effectiveness as learners early in their education
• Create an institutional environment that supports and encourages inquiry" (Swan, 2003, p. 6).

"These sets of organizing concepts seem to have in common, then, is that they suggest online developers and instructors provide:
• Clear goals and expectations for learners,
• Multiple representations of course content,
• Frequent opportunities for active learning,
• Frequent and constructive feedback,
• Flexibility and choice in satisfying course objectives, and
• Instructor guidance and support" (Swan, 2003, p. 6).

"Carol Twigg [26] gathered together a group of innovative online faculty and administrators in a Pew sponsored symposium to discuss paradigm changes in online learning, their overall conclusion was that individualization was the key to innovation in distance
education. Better quality learning, they agreed, would result from the greater personalization of learning experiences for all students. Symposium participants identified five key features of pacesetting programs that support personalization of learning:
• An initial assessment of each student's knowledge, skills, and preferred learning style
• An array of high-quality, interactive learning materials and activities
• Individualized study plans
• Built-in, continuous assessment to provide instantaneous feedback
• Appropriate, varied kinds of human interaction when needed" (Swan, 2003, p. 7).

       Interaction with instructors quotations:

"Research on learning through interactions with instructors, however, has yet to clearly document relationships between online teaching behaviors and student learning. Research to date is preliminary but intriguing. It has mostly been correlational and based on interview and survey data and faculty and student perceptions, but these do hint at important relationships between instructor activity and student learning. Initial investigations of instructor roles in online environments also seem quite promising.
Nonetheless, much work still needs to be done in this area" (Swan, 2003, p. 10).

"Several researchers have attempted to categorize the roles online instructors perform to reflect the ways in which they project their presence. Berge, for example, maintains that moderators of online discussions must fulfill four major functions -- managerial, social, pedagogical and technical. Paulson reduces these to three sets of functions -- organizational, social, and intellectual. Rossman provides empirical support for similar categories through the analysis of over three thousand student course evaluations. He found that student comments and complaints concerning their online instructors clustered into three major categories -- teacher responsibility, facilitating discussions, and course requirements (Swan, 2003, p. 12).

      Interaction with classmates quotations:

"Socio-cognitive theories of learning maintain that all learning is social in nature and that knowledge is constructed through social interactions. Online education seems particularly well constructed to support such social learning because of the unique nature of asynchronous course discussions. To begin with, all students have a voice and no student can dominate the conversation. The asynchronous nature of the discussion makes it impossible for even an instructor to control. Whereas discussion in traditional classrooms is, for the most part, transacted through and mediated by the instructor, online discussion evolves among participants. Accordingly, many researchers have found that students perceive online discussion as more equitable and more democratic than traditional classroom discourse. In addition, because it is asynchronous, online discussion affords participants the opportunity to reflect on their classmates’ contributions while creating their own, and on their own writing before posting it. This tends to create a certain mindfulness and a culture of reflection in online courses. However, as Eastmond reminds us, computer-mediated communication is not inherently interactive, but depends on the frequency, timeliness, and nature of the messages posted. Ruberg, Moore and Taylor found that computer-mediated communication encouraged experimentation, sharing of ideas,
increased and more distributed participation, and collaborative thinking, but also found that for online discussion to be successful, it required a social environment that encouraged peer interaction facilitated by instructor structuring and support" (Swan, 2003, p. 13).

"Some communication researchers argue that differing media have differing capacities to transmit the non-verbal and vocal cues that produce feelings of immediacy in face-to-face communication. Short, Williams & Christie refer to these capacities as “social presence,” or the “quality of a medium to project the salience of others in interpersonal communication.” They contend that low bandwidth media, such as text-based computer-mediated communication, have less social presence, and by extension promote less learning, than media with greater communication potential. Media richness theory reaches a similar conclusion, as does Picard's more recent notion of "affective channel capacity". Researchers experienced with online teaching and learning, however, contest this view. Participants in computer-media communications, they argue, create social presence by projecting their identities into their communications. Walther, for example, argued that participants in strictly text-based electronic conferences adapt their language to make missing non-verbal and vocal cues explicit and so develop relationships that are marked by affective exchanges. What is important, these researchers contend, is not media capabilities, but rather personal perceptions of presence" (Swan, 2003, pp. 14-15).

"The concept of social presence leads to that of virtual learning communities. Virtual learning communities have been variously defined by differing authors, and variations
on the term, such as 'virtual classrooms',  'computer-supported knowledge-building communities', or "communities of inquiry' confuse the issue even further. Most conceptualizations, however, seem to center on one of two foci relating to research on learning communities in general. Some researchers focus on learning, more specifically, they focus on Scardemalia and Bereiter's notion of learning as collaborative knowledge building. ... Other researchers base their work on Lave and Wenger's groundbreaking
research on learning communities and on the social relationships that support them" (Swan, 2003, p. 17).

"What does the research tell us about learning effectiveness in asynchronous online environments? On the one hand, it tells us that online environments support learning outcomes that are generally equivalent to those resulting from traditional, face-to-face instruction. On the other hand, the research suggests that unique characteristics of the medium may afford and constrain particular kinds of learning. Such affordances and constraints, in turn, suggest certain strategies and approaches that might enhance the learning effectiveness of online instruction. These are summarized in Tables 1 through 3
which connect what we know, or think we know, about learning in asynchronous online environments with suggestions for practice that might either capitalize on unique their affordances or ameliorate their unique constraints (Swan, 2003, pp. 22-23).

Thacker, C., & Dayton, D. (2008). Using Web 2.0 to Conduct Qualitative Research. Technical Communication, 55(4), 383-391.

Category: Research Methods

Summary:

Thacker and Dayton presented their ideas about how to use Web 2.0 tools to gather data, conduct research, and further technical communication studies. They discuss a recommended design for a Firsthand Report website (FHR). Their article contains an effective table (not available below) worth reading that explores the differences between interview-based qualitative research and a firsthand report website.

Citation-worthy:

"To improve qualitative data gathering using Internet-mediated communication, researchers would benefit greatly if they had a Web site that enabled them to: [1] Impose some unifornity of structure on and embed metadata in the textual information as it is collected; [2] Facilitate timely interaction to clarify and elaborate the texts first presented by informants; [3] Provde data exploration tools built into the primary data collection platform; [4] Enable teams of researchers to work closely together to collect and analyze information presented over time by many informants. The technology to build such Web sites already exists, and it is being implemented widely" (Thacker & Dayton, 2008, p. 384).

"The FHR Web site has three primary functions: (1) to collect information from numerous people on a relatively narrow topic; (2) to enable easy search and retrieval of the knowledgebase thus created; and (3) to build the social cohesion and communication that characterize healthy virtual communities" (Thacker & Dayton, 2008, p. 386).

"Users of the FHR Web site will interact with fellow community members and the information on the sit through a relatively small set of key functions.

• Profile: A personal profile space that features all of the user’s relevant demographic and psychographic information. The profile is also the main gateway for users to interface with an informant’s first-hand reports, blogs, and discussion.  Firsthand Report: Structured narrative accounts generated from a uniform sequence of prompts created by the research team.
• Search: A search engine that queries the site’s database to find relevant information from the inputsand preferences of the user.
• Forum: The site’s threaded message board that is accessible to the public. The message board is designed for members of the community to discuss topics in an open forum, interacting with guests—visitors to the site who have not joined the site or have not been approved for membership in the site by the principal investigator (PI) and/or the research team.
• Help: A wiki that addresses common issues pertaining to the site. The wiki will be initiated and maintained by the research team, but any member will have the ability to comment on any page, and some members who volunteer for the role will be able to edit pages" (Thacker & Dayton, 2008, p. 386).

 "The views of Blakeslee and colleagues (1999) are consistent with the quality criterion of authenticity, although they do not use that term. They keep their discussion within the
literature of technical communication in arguing for a similarly participative ideal in evaluating the validity of qualitative research. Contrasting their stance to the views of several other scholars in technical communication and in composition studies, they state '[W]e need to view validity as being more than a matter of determining whether, in fact, we are measuring what we think or say we are measuring, which is how many
scholars continue to define validity' (128). Paraphrasing the views of Kirsch (1992, 257), Blakeslee and colleagues (1999) agreed that researchers doing qualitative studies in technical communication 'should open up our research agendas to our participants, listen to their stories, and allow them to actively participate, as much as possible, in the design, development, and reporting of our research' (132). They acknowledge the difficulties of implementing that vision of participatory research (Thacker & Dayton, 2008, pp. 387-388).

Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Category:  Research Methods

Summary:

The author's explaination was straightforward and accurate. "This book advance[d] a framework, a process and compositional approaches for designing qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research in the human and social sciences" (Cresswell, 2013, p. xix). Cresswell succeeds in his endeavor with amazing clarity. Any potential researcher could benefit from the precise definitions, processes, outlines, and suggestions he provided.

Author's note: I am omitting the "Citation-worthy" section in this post because this book would be of better use on a bookshelf than summarized on a blog. It is more a reference manual than scholastic, theoretical work. I highly suggest purchasing it if you are looking for "how-to" research. Trying to put the most helpful quotations down would copy a majority of the text.

Hughes, M. A., & Hayhoe, G. F. (2010). A research primer for technical communication: Methods, exemplars, and analyses. New York: Routledge.

Category: Research Methods

Summary:

An upper-level undergraduate or entry-level graduate introduction to real research in the technical communication field. Fundamentally sound definitions, principles, examples, and principles. Hughes & Hayhoe cover research phases, a literature review, quantitative and qualitative studies, surveys, and analysis of each of those methods. The authors included enough detail for readers to feel like they understand the fundamentals of a concept, but not enough to write a thesis or dissertation without further training or study. One glaring oversight is the lack of any in-depth approaches or examples to mixed methods studies; the subject is glossed over when it probably deserved a chapter of its' own.

Citation-worthy: 

"In essence, the linking of actions, decisions, or advocacy to observable data is what research is all about. In this book, the term research is used to mean the systematic collection and analysis of observations for the purpose of creating new knowledge that can inform actions and decisions. Let us look at what this definition implies:
– Research is systematic — repeatable, one that has protocols and safeguards.
– Research involves the collection of analysis of data — it is important to note that these are two separate activities
– Research creates new knowledge — research should advance our collective knowledge of our field
– Research should inform actions and decisions" (Hughes & Hayhoe, 2010, p. 4).

"Methods:
– Quantitative: Primarily involves the collection of data that is expressed in numbers and their analysis using inferential statistics. This is the usual method employed in empirical research involving hypothesis testing and statistical analysis.
– Qualitative: primarily involves the collection of qualitative data (data represented by text, pictures, video tape, and so forth) and its analysis using ethnographic approaches. This method is often used in case studies and usability test in which the data consists of the words and actions of the test users.
– Critical theory: relies on the deconstruction of "text" and the technologies that deliver them, looking for social or political agendas or evidence of class, race, or gender domination. This method is usually employed in post modern research.
– Literature review: primarily involves the review and reporting on the research of others, often including the analysis and integration of that research through frequency counts and meta-analyses. This method can be applied to any research goal that aims at integrating prior research.
– Mixed methods: research approaches that combine a mixture of methods, usually quantitative and qualitative. Mixed methods are often found in research involving usability tests, which are a rich source of quantitative data, such as time to complete tasks or frequency of errors, and qualitative data, such as user comments, facial expressions, or actions" (Hughes & Hayhoe, 2010, p. 11).

"The actual phases of conducting a research project very closely parallel the structure of the final report:
– Identifying a research goal
– Formulating the research questions
– Reviewing the literature
– Designing the study
– Acquiring approvals for the research
– Collecting the data
– Analyzing the data
– Reporting the results" (Hughes & Hayhoe, 2010, p. 25).

"One of the most important reasons for reviewing the literature is the heuristic function of this task: discovering what others have already done in your area of interest will give you insights into aspects that you want to investigate and suggest contributions that you can make to the field.… Knowing what research has already been done on your topic of interest also helps you discover what remains to be studied. What are the gaps in existing studies that still need to be filled in? What are the areas that have not been explored at all" (Hughes & Hayhoe, 2010, p. 39)?

"Validity can be divided into two types: internal validity and external validity. Internal validity addresses the question, "Did you measure the concept you wanted to study?" External validity addresses the question, "Did what you measured in the test environment reflect what would be found in the real word world?"… Validity is controlled through test design:
– Internal validity can be managed by taking care when you operationalize a variable to make sure that you are measuring a true indicator of what you want to study. Ask yourself whether other factors produce or affect the measurements you intend to take that are not related to the attribute or quality you're studying. If so, your study might lack internal validity.
– External validity can be managed by taking care when you set up the test that the conditions you create in your test environment match those in the general environment as much as possible. This design element includes ensuring that the same group itself is a fair representation of the general population of interest. (We discuss the effect that sampling can have on test design later in the chapter)" p. 59).

"Reliability describes the likelihood that the results would be the same if the study were repeated, either with a different sample or with different researchers" (Hughes & Hayhoe, 2010, p. 60).

"We talk about two different kinds of statistics: descriptive and inferential. Descriptive statistics describe a specific set of data. For example, you could record the education level of the attendees at a technical communication conference and calculates that their average education level was 16.8 years. That average would be a descriptive statistic because it describes that specific data set.
Inferential statistics, on the other hand, make inferences about larger population based upon sample data. For example, we might learn that the average educational for attendees at an instructional designers conference was 16.2 years (another descriptive statistic). It would be tempting to infer from those two descriptive statistics that the average education level of technical communicators in general is higher than the average for instructional designers in general. But you cannot make such leaps unless inferential statistical techniques are applied to help you gauge the reliability of those inferences" (Hughes & Hayhoe, 2010, p. 60).

"Two basic principles underlie all of these formulas, two principles even a beginning researcher can and should grasp.
Principle one: the smaller the variance in the data, the more reliable the inference.…
Principle two: the bigger the sample size, the more reliable the inference" (Hughes & Hayhoe, 2010, p. 62-63).

"In a quantitative study we assess the internal validity by essentially asking "Did you measure the concept you wanted to study?" In a qualitative study, where data is not measurable, we look more to the credibility of the data; that is, do the participants truly represent the population or phenomenon of interest and how typical are their behavior and comments" (Hughes & Hayhoe, 2010, p. 79)?

"In quantitative research, external validity addresses the question "Does the phenomenon you are measuring in the test environment reflect what would be found in the real world?" In qualitative research the question is essentially the same, with the substitution of "observing" for "measuring." The question could also be stated, "How natural or authentic was the environment in which the study took place?" Sometimes, "natural" is difficult to achieve, in which case the emphasis needs to be on "authentic." Authentic means that the context of the behavior being studied is consistent with the context of the real-world situation in which the actual behavior would occur" (Hughes & Hayhoe, 2010, p. 79).

"As with the quantitative counterpart, reliability, dependability refers to the confidence with which the conclusions reached in a research project could be replicated by different researchers. In qualitative studies, more so than with quantitative studies, it is more difficult to turn off the researcher's own subjectivity; therefore, qualitative researchers must be careful to ensure that their conclusions have emerged from the data and not from the researcher's own preconceptions or biases. Unlike quantitative studies, which can rely on procedural, statistical methods to do this, qualitative studies must rely on more humanistic protocols. The literature on qualitative research discusses many techniques that can be applied to verifying the conclusions produced by such research. In this discussion, we try to summarize them into the following categories:
– Depth of engagement
– Diversity of perspectives and methods
– Staying grounded in the data" (Hughes & Hayhoe, 2010, p. 80).

Kynell, T. (1999). Technical communication from 1850–1950: Where have we been?. Technical communication quarterly, 8(2), 143-151.

Categories: Communication Design, Research Methods, Technology, Theory & Rhetoric

Summary with citations:

Kynell's article explored the foundational, historical issues that brought about the field of technical communication. She traced the discipline of engineering beginning with its time as an apprentice-based vocation. Then she discussed the the shift when land grant colleges offered middle class students the opportunity to learn a professional trade. After that time period, the shift to a profession began with the formation of the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education (SPEE). This aimed to alter the problem of many engineers being nearly illiterate at graduation. They did not succeed until they tied reading to the student's interests.

"Samuel C. Earle, a professor of English at Tufts, offered one foundational model of change in his 1911 paper 'English in the Engineering School at Tufts College'. ... Early proposed four separate 'abilities' that he believed would believe would make English more relevant to engineers: (1) the ability to put into words an abstract thought; (2) the ability to describe, in writing, an object not present; (3) the ability to write for different audiences; (4) the ability to give a concept full treatment by demonstrating understanding in writing" (Kynell, 1999, p. 146).

In the 1920s, English and engineering departments attempts create a productive, effective technical writing course met continual resistence from all parties involved. Textbooks by T. A. Rickard, Sada Harbarger, and Sam Trelease & Emma Yule helped resolve this concern, but did not solve the difficult of unqualified instructors for the field. This problem would not be sufficiently addressed until Derby suggested teacher training for technical writing or technical exposition.

The second world war brought about greater need for engineering and communication between engineers. The war machine required competent individuals to provide technical writing about the products and weapons produced. For the first time, technical communication was a profession.

Following the war, questions arose about the curriculum's lack of theory and sole focus on practical knowledge. This, combined with the improved and increased technology that would soon alter the field and create exigence for the profession as we see it today.

Cook, K. C., & Grant-Davie, K. (Eds.). (2005). Online education: Global questions, local answers. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

Categories: Communication Design, Research Methods, Technology, Theory & Rhetoric

Summary & Citations:

Cook and Grant-Davie's first collection of papers addressing Online Education sought to answer four questions: (1) How do we create and sustain online programs and courses? (2) How do we create interactive, pedagogically sound online courses and classroom communities? (3) How should we monitor and assess the quality of online courses and programs? and (4) How is online education challenging our assumptions? 

The book's audience consists primarily of those online educators in the technical and professional communication field, introducing those unaware of the arguments, issues, and discussions with starting point for both understanding and research. The research from many of the chapters became the foundation for further research in the follow-up collection Online Education 2.0, by the same authors.

Some of the important themes of the book stressed the importance of pedagogical technique over the use of technology. 

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Davis, M. T. (2005). Applying technical communication theory to the design of online education. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 15-29) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Marjorie Davis opens by making the case that technical communication teachers are ideally prepared to be leaders in the field of online education, showing how the knowledge domains of technical communication equip them to guide the development of good online programs" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, pp. 4-5).

"Unlike teachers in many other disciplines, however, technical communicators have a strong knowledge base that will provide excellent strategies for designing online education. This knowledge includes the following areas and their related knowledge domain:
– The broad dimensions of rhetoric as applied to all aspects of communication but especially the analysis of audience and purpose;
– The understanding of an iterative design process that includes prototype development and testing for usability
– Familiarity with a broad range of tool technologies, along with a willingness to experiment and learn more; and
– An understanding of business environments involving collaboration, marketing, and project management" (Davis, 2005, p. 17). 

"In spite of some misguided intentions, there are some excellent reasons to design an online education program. Those who do so have a set of complex reasons and purposes. One of the most difficult tasks is to state explicitly and in some detail exactly what your purpose is. Such a statement should address the following issues:
– Why the department, institution, or company wants to engage in online education;
– What the program will attempt to accomplish;
– Why the program is needed;
– What benefits the program will offer students and employers through online education;
– What specific target audience the program will reach;
– How to know that the audience wants or needs your educational program; and
– What benefits the faculty expect to gain from engaging in this effort" (Davis, 2005, p. 20).

"In the preliminary design model, it is imperative to take the following steps:
– Sketch a description of content—the boundaries and depth of the knowledge to be delivered;
– Plan the instructional design—the learning objectives, materials, and methods of instruction and interaction;
– Describe the different alternatives in delivery methods—the research on advantages and disadvantages of various media;
– Forecast methods for dealing with evaluation and accreditation issues—the design for testing and evaluating the students' achievement of learning objectives and the instructors' delivery of educational services;
– Describe the infrastructure of support needed for teachers, students, and administrators—the availability of 24/7 help and technical support, of instructional media or support staff, etc." (Davis, 2005, p. 22).

"Various business models of a product development lifecycle typically use stages such as these: plan, design, procure, produce, deliver, service. Technical communicators are probably more familiar with Hackos's model of the publications development life cycle. Developing an online education program is similar in many ways, so these steps can help to manage the project:
– Information Planning
– Content Specification
– Implementation
– Production
– Evaluation" (Davis, 2005, p. 26).

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Eaton, A. (2005). Students in the online technical communication classroom. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 31-48) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Angela Eaton ... asks who online students are and reports on a survey of these students, describing their demographics and the aspects of online education that they like and dislike, suggesting the survey's implications for the design and marketing of online programs" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 5).

Survey results from the 6 institutions were as follows:
– 54% pursuing Master of Science degree
– 38% pursuing Master of Arts degree
– 5% pursuing Bachelor of Science.
– Eleven students age 20-29
– 14 students 30-39 years old
– 9 students 40-49 years old
– 2 students 50-59 years old
– Ten male respondents
– 26 female respondents
– 60% work more than 40 hours a week in addition to coursework
– More than 90% work 30 or more hours per week
– Most take one online class per semester (68%)
– 24% vary between one and two classes per week
– 9% take two online classes per semester
– Eleven students had taken one or two semesters
– Ten had taken five or six semesters
– Nine respondents had taken seven or eight semesters of online courses (Eaton, 2005, pp. 32-33).

Reasons students chose online education:
– 94% Fit schedule
– 82% Participate in distant program
– 78% Improve skills
– 64% Save commute
– 61% Work from home/work
– 33% Employer pays
– 19% Retain job
– 19% Diverse classmates
– 10% Better faculty
– 4% Easier coursework (Eaton, 2005, p. 35).

Least liked features:
– 59% Lack of face-to-face interaction with classmates
– 65% Lack of face-to-face interaction with professors (Eaton, 2005, p. 36).

Advice for current and future online education instructors:
– Respect students' time
– Be involved
– Structure courses carefully (Eaton, 2005, pp. 36-40).

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Cook, K. C. (2005). An argument for pedagogy-driven online education. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 49-66) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Kelli Cargile Cook argues that we need to notice the impact of technology on writing practices and on instruction and to adapt instruction to the new medium, but to avoid letting technology determine pedagogy. She provides a pedagogy-driven heuristic for developing online courses" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 5).

"Such dialogic activities in which the teacher is facilitator and students work together as collaborators to create and share their knowledge are more difficult to implement with the more popular online delivery applications. Consequently, instructors who base their pedagogies upon constructivist and social theories of learning have sought additional online teaching and learning features that support the kinds of activities and assessment opportunities that they employ commonly in their onsite classrooms" (Cook, 2005, p. 53).

 "Pioneering technical communication instructors noted these problems—disconnections between available online delivery applications and their preferred teaching theories and pedagogies—in their first reports of online distance classes, appearing as early as 1994. Their accounts describe how they worked to resolve these problems, searching for technological solutions and online activities that support the pedagogies and activities with which they were comfortable. Among these pioneers were technical communication instructors: Elizabeth Tebeaux, Texas A&M University; David Leonard, Mercer University; Raymond Dumont, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth; and Linda Jorn, Ann Hill Duin, and Billie Wahlstrom, University of Minnesota" (Cook, 2005, p. 53).

"By the nineteenth century, the technologies available for instruction began to change the way writing instruction occurred. Paper became less expensive; printing became more readily available and less costly; and pens and pencils were less cumbersome and more efficient to use. Less expensive paper and enhanced printing capabilities also meant greater textbook availability. With the use of these new technologies, class time was no longer needed to dictate rules to students (rules were now printed in textbooks), and professors "[exploited] the potential of the new writing tools to some extent by having students write often and much." More class time was thus devoted to practice in the forms of drills, exercises, and composition" (Cook, 2005, p. 55).

"To promote a good fit between instructors' values, learning theories, and technologies, [I outlined] a five-step reflective process for designing pedagogy-driven online courses, a process that begins with careful articulation of instructors' preferred pedagogical theories and practices. ...Step 1: Define course goals and delivery models...the focus should be on the goals of study: what should students know or be able to do after taking the course? ...After articulating course goals, instructors then need to consider how they will ask students to accomplish these goals...Step 2: Define activities for goal achievement...When students need to access course materials, read or study these materials, and test their knowledge at varying stages throughout the course, then presentational activities will best meet their needs. Online activities that support these needs include the following: Referring to an online class calendar; using textbooks, webpages, electronic slide shows to access course materials; listening to audio clips or lectures; viewing videos, art/graphics, simulations, or presentations; reading and completing assignments; and taking examinations. ...To promote exchanges, interactive activities can include the following: Asking and answering questions through various communication tools, such as chat rooms, MOOs, discussion threads or email; sharing/exchanging writing, presentations, and other materials using text-sharing or file-transfer technologies; meeting in small groups in chat rooms or MOOs to discuss readings, other course materials, or student postings; and meeting in large groups to discuss readings, other course materials, or student postings in chat rooms, MOOs, or through discussion threads. ...Step 3: Evaluate assessment opportunities for course goals. To evaluate assessment opportunities, instructors should determine how many and what kind of assessment opportunities they have integrated or can integrate into their curricula. Specifically, instructors should analyze and consider how much formative and summative evaluation they want to provide to students, and they should consider how much formative evaluation they expect students to provide to one another. Given this information, instructors can then determine how and when they will assess their students online. ...Step 4: choose instructional technologies that support the course's pedagogical goals, activities, and assessment strategies...determining what technology is available for course delivery and considering if and how technology choices can enhance learning and goals. ...Step 5: Consider student needs in terms of goals, activities, and technologies...the final phase of course planning is to reconsider all these choices from students' perspectives" (Cook, 2005, pp. 59-63).

"These similarities might be considered an agenda for online distance education:
– Distance education courses need not be weak or impoverished replicas of traditional classroom courses; rather, such courses should be rich, stimulating, and nourishing learning spaces in their own rights.
– At the same time, distance education courses must be as rigorous as their onsite counterparts, incorporating the same course goals and requiring students to use their intellects and demonstrate their knowledge and skills through adequate and appropriate assessment opportunities.
– Finally, to achieve these goals, distance education courses must be pedagogy-driven, not technology-driven—courses wherein instructors plan and implement pedagogically sound goals and appropriate activities that are supported by technology choices" (Cook, 2005, p. 65).

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Rude, C. (2005). Strategic planning for online education: sustaining students, faculty, and programs. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 67-85) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Carolyn Rude ... reviews the issues and questions that a teacher or administrator should consider in order to set up a program that is supported by theory and driven by pedagogy rather than technology" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 5).

 "If a program is to be sustainable, both as it encourages and attracts students and rewards faculty for their efforts, it must first of all offer quality education. ...Quality depends on a match of the pedagogy with course goals, faculty who meet qualifications for teaching, students who are qualified for the study, and course and degree requirements that are equivalent to those for a campus-based program. In short, program design needs to build in assurances that online students will receive the same considerations that their onsite counterparts take for granted" (Rude, 2005, p. 72).

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Coppola, N. W. (2005). Changing roles for online teachers of technical communication. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 89-99) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Nancy Coppola reviews the literature on faculty roles to explore ways in which cognitive, affective, and managerial roles change as instructors learn to teach online" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 5). 

"We all play many roles in our lives, and these roles change over time. Roles are concerned with the expected behavior of a person in a particular social status or position within a social system. We all arrive at higher education with an understanding of clearly defined roles that have been formed by our common educational background as students and/or teachers. Role theory, which offers perspectives from social psychology, sociology, and anthropology, gives us a framework for understanding these behaviors and characteristics. Organizational role theory purports that role expectations are developed through a combination of organizational and individual factors. When the organizational context of instruction shifts dramatically, as it does in the change from the traditional classroom to the online classroom, then we should expect shifts in role enactment from the instructor. When roles change, the instructor must cope with shifts in self-perception and thus must find strategies for coping with the situation. ...A review of research suggests roles that are enacted by instructors in face-to-face settings. Among the many roles mentioned are cognitive role (conveying content knowledge), affective role (influencing the relationships between students, the instructor, and the classroom atmosphere), disciplinary role (enforcing policies, resolving conflicts, and controlling student behavior), managing role (organizing, planning, and setting up the course), evaluative role (measuring learning outcomes), performing role (presenting material in a dynamic manner), facilitator role (promoting active student learning), gate-keeper role (setting standards and evaluating progress), and boundary-spanner role (making connections between disciplines)" (Coppola, 2005, p. 90).

"This chapter suggests that the roles enacted by instructors in traditional settings are also enacted in online environment, though each of these roles is transformed. This analysis shows that the specific faculty rules related to cognitive, affective, and managerial activities do not change. The cognitive role, which relates to mental processes of learning, information storage, and thinking, shifts to one of deeper cognitive complexity for virtual professors. The effective role, which relates to influencing the relationships between students and the instructor in the classroom atmosphere, required instructors to find new tools to express emotion, yet they found the relationship with students more intimate. The managerial role, which deals with class and course management, requires greater attention to detail, more structure, and additional student monitoring. Anticipating evolving overall role changes is perhaps the best advice for new teachers in online environment. One professor in the Coppola et al. study captures this evolution: "It takes time. An online professor is not born; they evolve from this and it takes a long time" (Coppola, 2005, pp. 97-98).

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Grady, H. M. & Davis, M. T. (2005). Teaching well online with instructional and procedural scaffolding. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 101-122) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Helen Grady and Marjorie Davis ... draw on principles of instructional design to show how instructors can create an authentic interactive, collaborative learning environment online by providing students with visual, verbal, textual, and procedural scaffolding" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 5). 

"If we think of what we are building when we design online instruction, we can see it as a body of shared knowledge (including both theory and practice). We can begin to envision the purpose of scaffolding in a way that can help us develop strategies. Consider, for example, all the uses for scaffolding in constructing a building:
– to hold pieces together; to lay out the boundaries true and straight;
– to support the structure while it is being built;
– to support the workers, specifically in the early or difficult stages of the project; and
– to raise workers up so they can reach high places.
The scaffolding is never the important part of the building — it is removed when no longer needed. While in place, however, it is critical to the strength and integrity of the construction. [The] instructional scaffolding for online courses ...must answer three questions:
– Where are we going? (learner and task analysis);
– How will we get there? (instructional strategy and medium); and
– How will we know we have arrived? (assessment and evaluation) " (Grady & Davis, 2005, pp. 103-104).

The syllabus provides the framework or scaffolding, including course introduction, overall goal and learning objectives, and course schedule. Another significant decision is the instructional unit design, as well as the course environment design (Grady & Davis, 2005, pp. 109-113).

Scheduled online chats require:
– Weekly meeting time
– Planned agenda and discussion timing
– Moderated discussion
– Interaction protocols
– Chat logs
– Discussion boards
– Teams and leaders
– Occasional telephone contacts (Grady & Davis, 2005, pp. 116-120).

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Carter, L. & Rickly, R. (2005). Mind the gap(s): modeling space in online education. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 123-139) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Locke Carter and Rebecca Rickly discuss the ways in which space (physical, virtual, and cognitive) is transformed in an online classroom and examine how online instructors need to look out for the gaps or differences that can occur in this virtual space—gaps that can become obstacles if ignored or opportunities if give the right attention" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 5).

"In a recent editorial in T.H.E. Journal, Sylvia Charp noted that electronic learning courses are particularly powerful because they are
–Portable —they are available on the web, at any time, from any place;
–Modular—they consist of multiple units, making it easy for learners to digest the material; and
–Interactive—learners must respond, and students are able to chat with their peers and teachers.
Yet many educators will note that the same descriptors might well be used for traditional face-to-face (onsite) classroom instruction as well as e-learning. Since most educators who find themselves in an e-learning environment have, at one time or another, taught in a face-to-face classroom, it might be beneficial to begin with some sort of comparison of e-learning and a traditional face-to-face learning, if only to see how we might learn from one and apply it to the other. However, if we make such a comparison, even as a starting place, we must also be wary of re-creating problems, of trying to take pedagogy's that work and one medium and apply them to another uncritically and without reflection, and not considering how the content of the course, the delivery, and the audience (class members) might interact" (Carter & Rickly, 2005, pp. 123-124).

"Think about the gap between the London underground platform and the actual train; if there were no gap, the train would be unable to move; if there were too much of a gap, passengers would not be able to board the train easily. Other options might be a temporary or movable bridge, but such constructs are simply not cost-effective. The solution? Customers are merely told to "mind the gap" as they board. How they choose to mind it is up to them. Similarly, we want to stress that identifying and examining gaps doesn't always mean that these gaps must be filled or bridged, or mended; often, they barely need to be minded.  Participants need to be mindful, adjust to things observed, and adapt proactively" (Carter & Rickly, 2005, p. 125).

"One particular type of gap might be seen as of somewhere to the cognitive dissonance theory as put forth by social psychologist Leon Festinger. This theory, in effect, concerns the relationship among "cognitions" or pieces of knowledge. Much of what we know is the irrelevant bits of cognition or the consonant cumulation of our various cognitions. However, when bits of cognition seem to be in direct opposition, distance occurs, and according to Festinger, humans have a basic desire to avoid dissonance, so basic that it rivals our need for food and shelter. When dissonance occurs, an unnatural or unpleasant state that Festinger compares to hunger, the individual experiencing it is motivated to reduce it, which can only be done when the dissonance is examined and the factors causing it identified. It can then be reduced in one of the following ways:
–Rejecting the new cognition: if the new idea is rejected, dissonance disappears;
–Changing cognitions: if two ideas are competing, we can simply change one to make it consistent with the other;
–Adding cognitions: the magnitude of cognitions can be changed by adding one or more consonant cognitions; and
–Altering importance: by examining the cognitions, more or less importance can be attributed to each, long the weight to make the distance less so.
Cognitive dissonance, then, can be a powerful catalyst for eliciting a change in a learner, and thus the wise instructor might do well to create such dissidents in the online education classroom — and we might even go so far as to call this dissonance a gap.
Lev Vygotsky added a social component to the concept of cognition/learning with his explanation of the Zone of Proximal Development, or ZPD, which he defines as
'... The distance between the actual level of development as determined by independent problem-solving [without guided instruction] and the level of potential development as determined by problem-solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.'
In short, it is the difference between what the learner can do on her own and what a learner can do with guidance. By hearing, understanding, and then utilizing the various levels of development of those around her to solve a problem, a student will increase her ability to do so on her own, by imitating the structures, or scaffolding, she has been exposed to; ultimately, she will be able to engage in recursive, reflective metacognition to solve her own problems" (Carter & Rickly, 2005, p. 131).

Preparation:
– Over prepare everything
– Think globally when you've got to students from various time zones, cultures, and technologies.
– Learn about your students
– Heed the real world, especially if the virtual world is quite different from the real world.
– Have an explicit back up plan or standard operating procedure (SOP)
– Consider special needs
Preparation:
– Use more than one mode of communication
–Make the structure and purpose of your course something open to discussion and even amendment
– Set norms for deliverables, and communicate these expectations clearly
– Give more or more frequent assessment and feedback to online students
Context:
– Try to provide personal context in order to supplement the missing physical component
– You can also try to provide instructional context, explaining what you're doing from a pedagogical or curricular perspective
– Be aware of the rhetoric of the medium
– In order to remediate, find out about your students' experience early in the course
(Carter & Rickly, 2005, pp. 134-137).

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Breuch, L. K. (2005). Enhancing online collaboration: virtual peer review in the writing classroom. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 141-156) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch ... shows how virtual peer review differs from peer review in traditional, face-to-face classrooms arguing that, while the pedagogical assumptions remain unchanged, the practices need to be modified for peer review to work in the virtual classroom" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 5).

"In terms of time, the difference of virtual peer review practice can be stated bluntly: traditional peer review occurs immediately while virtual peer review is delayed. This difference requires more explanation regarding the technologies used for virtual peer review, and here I note that virtual peer review, as I am defining it, does not rely on any one particular technology. Rather, virtual peer review can be conducted using synchronous technologies (such as chats and Multi-User Domains or MUDs), asynchronous technologies such as email, integrated courseware programs programs that integrate HTML, wordprocessing, synchronous and asynchronous technologies, and even specially designed programs that facilitate peer review. One of the beauties of virtual peer review is that there is a degree of technological flexibility in the exercise; it is driven by goals of the writer and reviewer rather than by any particular technology" (Breuch, 2005, p. 145).

"In virtual peer review, participants are often not physically present in front of one another as they would be in face-to-face peer review. Computer-mediated communication scholars have suggested that one consequence of moving online is the lack of non-verbal cues and other forms of feedback that result from a face-to-face environment. Thus, it could be said that moving peer review online means a reduction of the types of feedback students may provide one another – feedback in the form of smiles or frowns, nods of agreement, looks of confusion, size, voice intonation, etc." (Breuch, 2005, p. 147).

"How can instructors better prepare students for virtual peer review?... I propose the following goals as options for virtual peer review workshops:
–To brainstorm with readers on ways to improve writing;
– To provide a thorough, detailed reader response on specified criteria; and
– To provide global perspective on writing and a sense of overall strengths and weaknesses of one's writing.
In articulating these goals, I do not mean to suggest that each virtual peer review workshop should aim to achieve all of these goals. On the contrary, I suggest that virtual peer review workshops be arranged to focus on one or two goals at the most. The reason is because certain technologies work better for some goals than others. For example, synchronous technologies work well for encouraging students to brainstorm ideas and receive immediate feedback. However, synchronous technologies may not work well for providing detailed reader response, particularly when synchronous chats lead to an overwhelming amount of off-task talk as Jeffrey Sirc and Tom Reynolds discovered" (Breuch, 2005, pp. 149-151).

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Lang, S. (2005). Replicating and extending dialogic aspects of the graduate seminar in distance education. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 157-175) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Susan Lang considers how the student-centered discussion that is typically the core activity of a face-to-face gradate seminar in technical communication can be recreated in an online class, arguing for the importance of synchronous discussion" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 5).

"The graduate seminar of the late twentieth/early twenty-first century has valued dialogue over lecture, student led presentations over teacher centered discussions, and incrementally sequenced assignments over the single term project. In teaching graduate courses via online education, one tendency has been to attempt to replicate this model of the graduate seminar and thus to create a multi-voiced interchange of ideas or concepts that transcends the traditional lecture-based course. ...to understand the extent of the task, consider the four guiding principles for good conversations offered by Von Krogh et al. Effective conversation managers should:
– Encourage active participation;
– Establish conversational etiquette;
– Edit conversations appropriately; and
– Foster innovative language" (Lang, 2005, pp. 157-169).

""By etiquette, we do not mean politeness above any other form of behavior or old-fashioned good manners," state Von Krough et al. when speaking of establishing productive workplace conversations.
– Avoid unnecessary ambiguity
– Avoid intimidation
– Avoid exercising authority
– Avoid premature closure
– Help other participants to be brave" (Lang, 2005, p. 160).

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Zachry, M. (2005). Paralogy and online pedagogy. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 177-190) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Mark Zachry  ... [argues] that graduate students in technical communication need to have their trust in principles of clear communication challenged by the discovery that real communication is not logical but rather paralogical, causing clarity of meaning to be unpredictable. Asynchronous online discussion, Zachry argues, is the ideal medium in which students can experience how easily their best attempts at clear written communication can fail" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 5).

"Human communication is paralogical rather than logical because in any given example of communicative interaction, a superfluity of potential understandings is only temporarily and locally arrested when the participants involved in the communication "come to terms" over meaning so that they can interact. In other words, human communication is paralogic in the sense that meaning is not established by rules of logic, but by a sort of parallel but ultimately faulty system the closely resembles logic.  The paralogic nature of human communication has been actively discussed for many years now, though this discussion has influenced writing instruction in only a sporadic and limited way. Those exploring connections between paralogy and writing instruction typically site the influence of Lyotard, who provocatively explored paralogy in conjunction with the postmodern collapse of metanarratives for legitimating knowledge. Lyotard's work has proven generative for a handful of scholars and composition theory and, to a lesser extent, professional communication. On a larger scale, Kent offers a general theory of rhetoric based on the paralogic nature of human communication and Taylor uses paralogy as a framework for theorizing complexity in the cultural "dynamics of information." In general, however, those who approach the study of human communication with in a paralogic framework sure set of common ideas.
First, they insist that communication always occurs in the presence of an "other" via communicative interaction. That is to say, meaning does not reside in texts. Although this point may seem rather obvious it is not exactly what most people implicitly assume. Specifically, in many theories of communication (particularly in writing theory), the communicator is assumed to be a communicating in the act of forming sentences, paragraphs, texts, etc. Consequently, the act of writing become synonymous with communicating. Such encoding in symbolic forms, however, is something that happens prior to communicating from the paralogic perspective. Until another intelligence has engaged the communicator in that give-and-take of constructing meaning, communication has not occurred.
Second, because words have no inherent and necessary connection to reality, communicative interaction is the only way ideas can be validated. Contrary to the assumption that skilled communication (oral or contextual) somehow offers facts about the world, the paralogist works from the relatively radical perspective that words (and indeed all symbolic forms, including such things as numbers) have no correspondence to reality apart from the connections that are locally and temporarily established when two or more intelligences are engaged with each other.
Third, meaning is never predictably constraint because communicative interaction is always defined by ongoing interpretive acts.… In contrast, paralogists contend that nothing is codifiable about communication in the sense that any given rule, guideline, or strategy — regardless of it's complexity — cannot offer a fail-proof way for moving ideas from one mind to another.  Communication, therefore, is never static" (Zachry, 2005, pp. 179-181).

"To engage in voluminous and robust communicative interaction in an online classroom, participants work best in virtual space is that support multiple types of interaction" (Zachry, 2005, p. 187).

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Rubens, P. & Southard, S. (2005). Students' technological difficulties in using web-based learning environments. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 193-205) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Philip Rubens and Sherry Southard [recount] their early efforts to create an online classroom environment that could easily be accessed and used by all students, including the technologically impoverished. They discuss the problems their students encountered and ways they solved them" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 6).

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Walker, K. (2005). Activity Theory and the online technical communication course: assessing quality in undergraduate online instruction. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 207-218) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Kristen Walker ... [shared] her experiences with undergraduates. Drawing on activity theory as a guiding principle, she reminds us to consider all the possible variables that might be in play in an online class and that might require teachers to make allowances or modifications" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 6).

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Grant-Davie, K. (2005). An assignment too far: reflecting critically on internships in an online Master's program. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 219-227) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Keith Grant-Davie [shared] ... the story of an attempt to create a research internship in a graduate technical writing program. Though the assignment was eventually shelved as too ambitious for the existing resources, he uses the story to demonstrate the importance of praxis—the practice of continually reflecting upon and improving instruction—as we continue to discover the best practices of online education" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 6). 

"This story of expansion followed by retraction is also about the value of engaging in praxis — critical reflection on practices, with a view to improving those practices. We wanted to teach our students to engage in praxis for their internship projects, taking a scholarly, inquiring approach to the communicative practices of their workplace,… Continual praxis – the kind of critical, theory-driven or theory-forming reflection that leads to revisions and improvements in curriculum and pedagogy — is essential to the assessment and improvement of instructional quality in any program" (Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 219).

"An internship can be given greater relevance to students who are already situated in non-academic work places by giving it a research purpose, but that achieving this purpose depends on students having a foundation of scholarly knowledge that is better taught to a group of students in a seminar than to individual students" (Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 227).

"Increasing the academic rigor of an assignment may be laudable but is not always practical if it over burdens faculty already stretched by teaching online" (Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 227).

"It is critically important for online programs in these still-early days of online education to engage in praxis — a continuous cycle of application, reexamination, improvement, and reapplication — in order to cope with the inevitable mistakes and dead-end passages that characterize the exploration and development of online instruction" (Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 227).

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Cook, K. C. & Grant-Davie, K. (2005). Online course and instructor evaluations. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 229-244) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Self-reflection is one of a number of methods of assessing online instuction that Kelli Cargile Cook and Keith Grant-Davie review[ed] ... They note the richness of the data available for assessment in online class archives and discuss whether online assessment should look for evidence of minimal standards or of excellence" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 6).

"Six key measures of quality online instruction can be summarized as follows:
– Before enrolling in an online course, students should receive information about course expectations, about required study skills and personal motivation for success, and about minimal technology requirements
– Online courses should have clearly articulated expectations or goals appropriate to the degree or certificate to which the courses apply
– Given these expectations, students should be able to focus their time on completing well-defined assignments that directly relate to goal achievement
– To complete assignments, students should engage in a variety of learning activities, including interactions with their instructor and other students in the course
– When assignments are completed, students should receive timely feedback from their instructors
– Through these interactions with their instructor and others,  students should feel themselves a part of an academic community that includes student support services, such as library research facilities and technological support
These guidelines or benchmarks are not so different from popularly cited measures of effective traditional or on-site education, such as the seven principles developed by Chickering and Gamson, who note that effective teaching at the collegiate level:
– Encourages contact between students and faculty;
– Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students;
– Encourages active learning;
– Gives prompt feedback;
– Emphasizes time on task;
– Communicates high expectations; and
– Respects diverse talents and ways of learning
In many ways, these seven principles are applicable to the online learning environment, yet a few significant differences are noteworthy. For example, online learning requires a different kind of student discipline than on-site learning where instructors may provide less scaffolding (see Grady and Davis in this volume) and more time-constricted activities. Additionally, online courses require that students possess access to technology to receive course information and, at least, a modicum of technological literacy (see Rubens and Southard for more on students' technological difficulties). Students need to be aware of these requirements prior to enrolling in the course because, without this knowledge, they may be unable to attend even the first class" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 231-232).

"Who should evaluate online instructors and inspection?… Ratings of students' perceptions about and satisfaction with online instruction can be an important indicator of the instructor and of course quality.… Students can respond to a variety of teaching quality questions. For best results, these questions should correlate with the benchmarks for quality online instruction and request information from students that will assist instructors in better meeting these benchmarks. Addressing these benchmarks may mean that an institution's standardized forms for traditional, on-site inspection are not directly applicable to online instruction; new questions will most likely be needed to supplement and address online-specific issues. ...Evaluations should probably request the following kinds of feedback from online students:
– How well were students informed about course objectives and activities, technology requirements, and other online learning requirements prior to the course's beginning? (This kind of information might be provided in course catalogs or brochures, on program websites, or through pre-semester email messages sent directly to enrolled students.)
–Was the course's organization and structure (scaffolding) apparent to the student from the beginning of the course, and was it easy to follow through the course's duration?
– What types of online interactions did the student have with the instructor and with other students? (Answer prompts might be added here, such as email, telephone conversations or voice mail, threaded discussions, chat room conversations, etc.)
– Through these interactions, were students able to develop a rapport with the instructor and other students? (Stated more specifically, in what kinds of community-building activities did students participate, did they have a sense that the instructor was fully involved with the class and cared about students' learning, and how much did other students contribute to the learning experience? These kinds of questions are important to ask because a sense of community and rapport between students and instructor in online classes is established largely through online interaction, without the assistance of such other signals as body language, tone of voice, and being physically present together in the same room during class meetings.)
– How effectively to the instructor manage the online discussion forum? (For example, did the instructor stimulate student discussion without dominating it? Were students provided the right amount of time and virtual space to discuss topics?)
– In what kinds of learning activities (reading, discussion, homework, collaborative assignments, etc.) did online students participate? Did the instructor make effective use of the available technological features of the course to facilitate these learning activities?
– How clearly did the instructor articulate course goals, facilitate learning activities, and explain and use communication channels?
– How challenging was the course and its workload?
– How accessible was the instructor? How promptly did students receive feedback from the instructor about questions, assignments, or examinations, and how clearly was the instructor's feedback communicated to students?
– How usable was the course's technology and its technology interfaces?
– How well did the course meet students' space expectations and needs?
–What were the strengths of the course, and in what areas could it be improved?
Questions like these, whether open-ended or revised to a closed form for more standardize responses, are the kinds of questions that target the effectiveness and quality of instruction in online courses" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, pp. 232-234).

"When instructors are interested in formative feedback to improve their course during its delivery and confidentiality is not highly important, then direct contact with students is a simple and effective way to gather information. Using technology such as email, threaded discussion boards, and chat rooms can provide venues for formative evaluation questions" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 236).

"Summative evaluation processes, however, are often more formal and standardized because they are typically used by administrators to help make personal decisions, such as those concerning tenure and promotion status. Evaluative questions, therefore, need to be asked in such a way that data from all students can easily and quickly be gathered, analyzed, and presented to administration or personnel committees. For this reason, summative evaluation rating scales usually take one of three forms: omnibus forms (a fixed set of stated course goals), goal-based forms (students rate their learning or the course based on stated course goals), or cafeteria system forms (questions are derived from a bank of standardized forms). According to the literature on course evaluation, using more standardized forms such as these results in higher reliability and validity among student ratings and provides what some instructors and administrators believe to be a sounder basis for personnel decision-making. … Finally, because instructors and administrators want students to give their honest opinion about the instruction they have received, summative evaluations are most frequently confidential. Issues of confidentiality are important because research in on-site summative evaluation has shown that "students who identify themselves in ratings are expected to be far more generous, especially if the forms are returned to the instructor before final grades"" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, pp. 236-237).

"In addition to student information, peers, outside experts, and administrators can effectively review components of effective online instruction" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 237).

"Reviewers can evaluate course materials, including the instructor's choice and sequencing of reading materials, course activities, and individual and collaborative assignments. They can also look at the instructor's responses to the student questions and feedback on student interactions [in] a discussion of peers' traditional evaluation of on-site courses" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, pp. 237-238).

"Reviewers of online instruction also need to come to terms with the fact that they can evaluate online courses more comprehensively than on site to review worse. In almost all instances (voice mails, telephone conversations, and perhaps emails excepted), online interactions between an online instructorand the students in the course are archived within the course environment itself.… In the sum, the entire course is available for evaluation in all its richness and complexity" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 238).

"A final means of gathering information about an online course's effectiveness is through an instructor's self-analysis and report of the course and its outcomes instructors can provide both descriptive and reflective accounts of the courses" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 240).

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Avery, C., Civjan, J., & Johri, A. (2005). Assessing student interaction in the global classroom project: visualizing communication and collaboration patterns using online transcripts. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 245-264) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"The richness of online course archives is also the subject of the final chapter. ... Cassie Avery, Jason Civjan, and Aditya Johri describe the development and performance of a new computer application that creates a graphic representation of patterns of student interaction within the copious records of online discussion, helping instructors locate places in the archive where they might find evidence of particular kinds of interaction" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 6).

"Informal assessment is an important way that instructors measure the progress of a course and ascertain if their instructional goals are being met" (Avery, Civjan, & Johri, 2005, p. 247).

"In an online classroom,...there are fewer sensory indications to help form impressions the participant personality or enthusiasm for contributing to a constructive discussion. The lack of sensory cues makes it more difficult for instructors to get a reliable impression of what is happening in their classes.… The lack of sensory feedback also fails to give students a sense of what is going on around them. Information about other students can help in forming groups, facilitating teamwork, and increasing overall interest and participation levels in a course; yet, most online courseware provides minimal support for such signals" (Avery, Civjan, & Johri, 2005, p. 247).

"It is possible to create reproducible and reliable means by which to carry out analysis of electronic transcripts using the very tools that create them — digital technologies. Using digital technologies, researchers have employed several methods to analyze online communication with the assistance of computational algorithms: log-file analysis, content analysis, social network analysis, and information visualization" (Avery, Civjan, & Johri, 2005, p. 249).

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Herrington, T. & Tretyakov, Y.  (2005). The global classroom project: troublemaking and troubleshooting. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 267-283) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Herrington andTretyakov describe the Global Classroom Project, a jointly developed project in which students from the United States and Russia interact online. The authors ... caution against trying too hard to clear up [lack of unifying theories and clear descriptions], arguing instead for the value of experiential learning--learning to cope with the mess--which may be the best method of achieving 'contextual functionality'" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 6).

"While it may not be completely impossible to eliminate chaos and confusion in teaching and in transmitting information from one culture to another, methods that impose order to eliminate chaos and transfer information in a way that privileges order over student participation imply a dictatorial imposition of ideas and thinking processes. Participants who are required to implement an instructor's agenda would produce mimicry and rote repetition of authoritarian concepts rather than their own projects shaped by actual communication and collaborative negotiation of ideas. As instructors, we motivate members of collaborative teams to communicate with each other, to share responsibility and control over communication content and processes, rather than mimic processes or create products we have outlined for them. Collaboration that encompasses ideas from opposing viewpoints may not be efficient, but it can lead to a richer, deeper, more fully developed product. Because efficient collaboration is difficult to develop when crossing cultural, technological, temporal, and linguistic boundaries, confusion and chaos are natural results. The chaos may be uncomfortable, but it is real and it is necessary (in the sense of both "unavoidable" and "beneficial") when struggling to reach cooperative goals" (Herrington & Tretyakov, 2005, pp. 275-276).

"Effective functional technical communication is not located in one place, genre, class, or program. It is disbursed. It gains its power as a field not in theoretical isolation.… Rather, it comprises multiple kinds of thinking brought together by the common thread of functionality. It is possible to define and/or describe the context of a class, workplace setting, or other communication setting, and it is possible to isolate functional goals. But to research and test the actual communication that occurs and to teach students authentic communication practices of applied experience, both context and functionality are required. This is why technical communication research and teaching cannot focus on one area of literature or one example of discipline. Although embracing this kind of complexity is difficult, it allows freedom to develop" (Herrington & Tretyakov, 2005, p. 282).

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Faber, B. & Johnson-Eilola, J. (2005). Knowledge politics: open sourcing education. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 285-300) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Brenton Faber and Johndan Johnson-Eilola in Chapter 17 ask us to rethink the ethical and political implications of turning educational technology developed at universities into profit-making enterprises. They argue that open source software ... is more consistent with the principle that knowledge developed in an academic environment should be freely disseminated rather than marketed for financial gain" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, pp. 6-7).

"Our argument is as follows. First, we review the transition from commodity-based capitalism to knowledge-based capitalism, noting the consequences that knowledge-as-capital has for educators, researchers, and others who have been working in knowledge environments. Second, we discuss the relationship between knowledge-as-capital and online education, course building, and dissemination. Third, we offer an alternative to proprietary online education by discussing open source software and the open source development process" (Faber & Johnson-Eilola, 2005, pp. 286-287).

"The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a nonprofit corporation that manages and promotes the Open Source Definition and certifies software to be "open source" through its "Certified Open Source Software certification mark and program." The definition of "Open Source" has nine features. We include them here in summary form but encourage readers to view the definition and full of the following location, open source definition (http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.html):
– Free redistribution
– Source code
– Derived works
– Integrity of the author's source code
– No discrimination against persons or groups
– No discrimination against fields of endeavor
– Distribution of license
– License must not be specific to a product
– The license must not restrict other software" (Faber & Johnson-Eilola, 2005, pp. 293-294).

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Wahlstrom, B. J. & Clemens, L. S. (2005). Extreme pedagogies: when technical communication vaults institutional barriers. In K. C. Cook & K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education: Global questions, local answers. (pp. 301-318) Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

"Billie Wahlstrom and Linda Clemens call on technical communication teachers to expand their leadership roles in another direction and set national standards for lifelong learning. They argue that online education can give us the means to remain in touch with former students, continuing to share new knowledge with students long after they have graduated and joined the workforce" (Cook & Grant-Davie, 2005, p. 7).