Literature review

A brief review of the professional literature reveals that a need certainly exists for ongoing professional discussion about the principles and processes that ground successful online training programs for writing instructors. Often, such discussion can be applied across disciplines, although composition-specific discussion at times seems necessary. In particular, in our work with preparing educators for online writing instruction, we reviewed the professional literature for an understanding of the theoretical groundings of various training programs as strategies, as well as for empirical evidence in support of certain strategies. Finding a distinct gap in the literature, we eventually wrote Preparing Educators for Online Writing Instruction: Principles and Processes (2004). In this section, we provide a brief overview of the aforementioned “gap” as part of our on-going call to colleagues to take up and advance the professional discussion about online training.

There is an ever-growing pressure to use educational technology to cut costs, streamline training, and increase retention (see, for example, Twigg; Cheville). Such high stakes outcomes demand that those who use online technologies to do their jobs -- whether for teaching and professional development in either traditional and non-traditional educational settings -- must develop their practices in robust ways. It is all too often the case, however, that those who teach and train online are sent to online instructional settings under-prepared for the task and then asked to throw their darts, so to speak, with little-to-no guidance. The pressure for educators and other professionals to use technology is ever increasing, and contemporary traditional and many corporate-based educational institutions share various needs:

• To succeed in online environments and with online media, professionals cannot solely rely on methods deemed "successful" in traditional, brick and mortar situations; rather, they need new instructional approaches that address distinctive qualities of teaching and learning online.
• As such, professionals need adequate orientation about online teaching and learning approaches.
• Of equal importance, the individuals responsible for creating/organizing orientation for colleagues must also consider training methodologies that are most appropriate for this type of professional development.

A brief review of relvant literature confirms that the need for critical discussion and research about online training and development is pressing. For example, according to the U.S. Department of Education, in 1998, 1,680 academic institutions offered approximately 54,000 online courses, which was an increase of about seventy percent over such courses in 1995. With about 1.6 million students enrolled in those courses in 2000, it is clear that any trend upward of these figures is significant to educators (Boehle, Dobbs, and Stamps 34). Indeed, according to I. Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman of The Sloan Consortium (2004), 1,971,397 college-level students took at least one online course in fall 2003, while 2,634,189 were predicted to take at least one online course in fall 2004 (5).

Despite the obvious need for educators who have received training and practice in online educational philosophies and strategies, instructors tend to be insufficiently prepared to teach or to train others in the online environment. For example, Lester Faigley contrasts the effectiveness of educators who are adequately prepared for online instruction with the likelihood that they "are probably the most poorly supported" of all professional technology users (138). In our recent book, we argue that such support ideally requires educators to meet their trainers online and, at a minimum, in a simulated distance setting that immerses them into the online experience and models the setting and experiences common to their students (Hewett and Ehmann). Indeed, even in corporate professional development programs that are unrelated to postsecondary education and use online instruction more frequently, too little training occurs that actually employs the online media through which employees will conduct their work. John V. Moran and Haidee E. Allerton agree, citing that in 1999, "only 2 percent of training was Web-based . . . [and] 75 percent of that was in information technology. Of $63 billion spent on training, only $1.14 billion of that was over the Web" (31; see also Barkley and Bianco). Such statistics illustrate that many who use online media to teach and train are under-prepared for working with others in an online setting. Although financial resources are devoted to the development of online learning platforms, software, and online learning objects, we think that, "precious few dollars are spent on teacher training, particularly on training that supersedes learning how to navigate a specific electronic platform and that addresses, instead, the pedagogy of online teaching and learning" (Hewett and Ehmann xiii).

Such online education also is called "e-learning," which we conceptualize "as the formal and informal delivery of learning and professional development activities (including training), processes, and associations via any electronic methods including but not limited to the Internet, CD-ROM, videotape, and DVD" (xv; see also de Leeuwe and Stockley, from whom we have drawn for this definition). The online education that occurs in traditional, distance-based, and even in some corporate educational endeavors, is too important and pervasive to ignore at the level of training those who will teach and train others using electronic methods. Yet, critical work that addresses professional development in online settings is scarce. Some valuable exceptions exist in particular collections (see, for example, Beason); through their work with Corous (www.corous.com), Gilly Salmon and Jim Flood have addressed "e-learning" and "e-training" within UK contexts. These discussions represent a strong beginning to a fuller understanding of online training, yet more work is needed toward developing and advancing such discussions.

Even professional journals and books with interests in preparing online writing instructors tend to have few discussions about online training and professional development. For example, Computers and Composition Online (CCO) has published only a few online training-specific articles since its inception. In 2003, Evan Davis and Sarah Hardy authored "Teaching Writing in the Space of Blackboard," which does address some teaching tips. Generally, however, CCO's Professional Development section presents somewhat esoteric offerings at best (see http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/prodev.htm). Similarly, the print journal Computers and Composition has long addressed issues relevant to contemporary views of social responsibility in teaching with technology (see, for example, Smith), but has published little about preparing educators for online teaching and learning. Barbara Dufflemeyer's article about preparing teaching assistants for computer-based pedagogy is a critical exception. In the same vein, Technical Communication Quarterly has not tapped the issues surrounding online training and professional development. The Special Issue of Winter 1999, for example, entitled "Technical Communication, Distance Learning, and the World Wide Web," included only one essay on training and training tools relevant to technical writing (Driscoll and Reid). Even webtexts for Kairos have not tended to address the general training and preparation needs of potential and new online instructors. For example, Deb Brown and David Elias consider the socio-political issues in the online classroom and appear to assume that other essential training has been addressed, although Cynthia L. Walker offers a useful set of tips for online instructors that she gleaned from student feedback, and Cheryl Greene, Teryl Sands-Herz, Zach Waggoner, and Patricia Webb consider how students need ample preparation for participating in their online writing courses. 

Kelli Cargile Cook and Keith Grant-Davie's useful compilation of articles that respond to the broader issues of online education is one exception to these apparent trends (see, for example, Rude regarding programmatic concerns; see also Grady and Davis for a discussion of pedagogical scaffolding that applies the authors’ institutional setting to more universal concerns of online instruction). Pamela Takayoshi and Brian Huot’s book also provides introductory articles to online instruction (see especially Eldred and Toner), and our own book addresses training online writing instructors and providing them with professional development models. We believe that the relatively scant literature relevant to online training and professional development highlights the need for focused attention on, and sharing about, these issues.