Toward the future of online training

Online teaching and learning have become common to many organizations.  For example, many traditional colleges and universities currently conduct academic courses -- such as rhetoric and technical communication -- in the online environment. Many times, students need acculturative exercises to assess their "readiness" for the online environment as well as possible follow-up orientation.  In the same vein, those who are teaching online and administering such programs also need orientation and training for their own "readiness" in the online environment. They need training at the organizational and programmatic levels not just for technical platform-specific skills development, but more importantly for the practical and theoretical transfer of pedagogical principles and practices to online environments.  Similarly, non-traditional educational institutions and corporations that provide learning assistance or market to, for example, distance learners also conduct employee training and development.  They provide online consumer-based education in common subjects as well.  In any of these cases, online training quite often occurs at a distance and it engages distance learning principles and processes for online instructors much like that which their distance-based students will experience. 

In this commonality across varying types of organizations resides a crucial concern: what kinds of educational principles and processes address the very real challenges that arise when an institution conducts some or all of its training and professional development online using the Internet and other online modalities? 

Some of the best theoretical models and practical strategies most likely are being practiced already at institutions that have concentrated on developing effective online instructors. We hope that by sharing some of our experiences and the principles that have guided our program development strategies, others will join us in a broader discussion that helps to articulate, define, and theorize online training processes for both writing instructors and other educators. Sharing might come about through such journals as Kairos, Computers and Composition, Writing Program Administration, and Technical Communication Quarterly (TCQ), to name but a few. Readers might also consider the forthcoming TCQ Winter 2007 issue that focuses entirely on the questions about developing and administering online training programs in both traditional and non-traditional educational settings.

There is much that needs to be said about how educators are orientating and preparing educators for online writing instruction. We invite readers to join us in articulating and exploring these very important subjects.