THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, COMMUNITY, AND VALUES
Warnock, Scott. Teaching Writing Online. How & Why. Council of Teachers of English: 2009.
Review by Jeffrey Barlow
Scott Warnock's Teaching Writing Online is simply an excellent book and should be read by anyone who teaches writing, whether face-to-face or online. It will be particularly useful to those who are contemplating teaching writing online, whether within a fully electronic environment or in a hybrid or blended classroom incorporating both face-to-face and synchronous or asynchronous environments.
Many teachers might believe that the pedagogical mysteries of learning to write well, and to teach others to write well, simply cannot be performed in an impersonal electronic environment. Warnock argues persuasively that not only is this incorrect, but that writing often can be taught better online than in conventional teaching environments.
The book, while intended for an audience of writing teachers, is also very useful for anyone who works with written materials at all. While a historian, I myself remain a teacher and inescapably work with student writing. While the book is not really intended to improve everybody's writing, it certainly could improve writing in the unfamiliar environment of the World Wide Web.
Warnock is very well qualified to make these arguments. He has directed Drexel University's Freshman Writing Program for several years. Drexel has long had one of the most extensive distance learning programs, including degree programs, of any university [1]. Warnock was responsible for taking the residential freshman writing course online and has rich experience in working with a variety of teachers and teaching styles.
This is a very dense book for its size (235 pages) and not meant to be read sequentially, but rather for the reader to select those chapters of particular interest to him or her. There are, of course, some key points, which are repeated throughout. Probably the central one is that the online instructor must deliberately create an online personality, which should be founded in one's native personality, but should be shaped for the electronic environment. As odd as this advice might seem, Warnock repeatedly makes its importance relevant to the teaching tasks he discusses.
The work also embodies the author's key beliefs in that it is written very much as though the audience is one of the teachers with whom he has worked in the past. For those actually desiring interaction with Warnock, he has had an extensive blog on the subject of online writing available since fall, 2005 [2].
In addition to hundreds of very practical tips, Warnock also shows a very strong understanding of the literature of the field of teaching writing, and especially of teaching it online. The bibliography of nearly two hundred entries has familiar canonical works in it such as the very well received Writing With Power of Peter Elbow and, in addition, the writings of those who, like Warnock, are heavily engaged in the practice and the theory of teaching electronically. It is hard to imagine the teacher who might find this work inadequately stimulating or too general, but the references could lead such committed souls down any number of highly specialized paths.
The work is also adapted to any conceivable electronic environment. Whether an institution provides (or requires) a full Coursework Management System (CMS) such as "Blackboard", or the instructor is largely on his or her own with off-the shelf or on-the-web applications, Warnock has useful advice. His preference seems to be for a relatively lean electronic environment comprised of email and a bulletin board/message board. He believes in using a blended or hybrid classroom when possible. He also provides, however, useful introductions to a variety of CMS and even to emerging technologies such as on-line interactive video.
Many current teachers naturally want to know what all the fuss is about; why should I change my approach, particularly change it so dramatically as to move from my familiar classroom to the unfamiliar, somewhat challenging if not downright eerie electronic environment? How will I keep my students from cheating? How often should I respond to them? Am I going to wind up working 24-7 like many of those who send me email at 2 a.m. seem to? Must I be their "buddy"? I don't know how to do all that! Or why I should, either!
There are, fortunately, a wide variety of appropriate responses to such questions—one of the reasons why Warnock continually cautions us to purposively adapt our personalities to an on-line teaching environment—and they are all covered in this work.
There has always been something of a false dichotomy between reading and writing in the classic sense—which for centuries has meant that the essential medium would be some form of paper—and in digital environments. The move to digital materials has caused a great deal of anxiety because of that assumed dichotomy: paper or bytes? The reality is, however, that there is much more in common to reading and writing on paper and online than many choose to believe.
This is not to minimize real issues: there is a digital divide; there are issues of authority and legitimacy in online materials, etc., etc. But at the last, readers and writers have switched media many times over the millennia, and the essential acts of inscribing one's words—writing—before an audience of readers remains essentially the same. Scott Warnock's Teaching Writing Online is a wonderful introduction to new possibilities and new environments.
[1] See the online catalogue at: http://www.drexel.com/online-degrees/degrees.aspx
[2] http://onlinewritingteacher.blogspot.com/
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