SLUWP

Spring 2020 Writing Program

Teaching Writing Online at SLU 
Prepared Friday, March 13, 2020

This document offers best practices for teaching composition online at Saint Louis University
in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Spring 2020. While it includes resources from online
learning contexts and research, we should not consider the rapid transition to online teaching
in a crisis to be equivalent to well-prepared online courses. We can only do our best with the
situation at hand, as we do every day in our in-person classrooms. 

Additionally, we are collating various resources in an editable Google Sheet. Please consult
this and consider adding resources that you run across or develop.

Contacts
Nathaniel Rivers, Writing Program Coordinator
nathaniel.rivers@gmail.com
703.772.7690 (cell)

Office Hours
Tuesdays, 1200-100 (ADJ 127)
Wednesday, 1000-1100 (Zoom)
Thursday, 1200-200 (Zoom)

Sharee Langenstein, Writing Program Graduate Assistant

sharee.langenstein@slu.edu
618.528.0030 (cell)

Office Hours
Mondays, 1000-1200 (Zoom)
Tuesdays 1000-1200 (WP Office)

Paul Lynch, Associate Professor (additional pedagogical support)

paul.lynch@slu.edu
314.740.2345 (cell)

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Core Writing Program Assignments
First and foremost, it’s a writing class, so most of what we do is assign, respond to, and reread
writing. That’s mostly what you’ll be doing for the rest of the semester.

• The Dissoi Logoi project can mostly be kept as is. Indeed, a writing-intensive task such as
the DL is relatively easy to translate online. The key will be how you provide and arrange
feedback. I strongly suggest breaking the Dissoi Logoi composing process into stages.
Rather than waiting for full or nearly-complete drafts to respond, have the students
compose in short chunks that you can quickly respond to throughout the process. In short,
make the Dissoi Logoi more iterative. For example, you might consider asking students to
write a chunk that deals with just two of their sources. You can comment quickly on that
while giving them suggestions on how to move on to the next sources they want to include.
This will both distribute the work of responding in a more manageable way, and it will go
some way to simulating the kinds of informal feedback we often offer in class. Also, keep in
mind that library access has just been significantly curtailed. If your students cannot
incorporate the full range of library sources you’d normally include, that’s fine. Work with
what they’ve already read. The point of this assignment is not simply to compile sources,
but to think through contrasting takes on a given issue. Doing that with the sources you’ve
already read is sufficient for the purposes of this assignment.
• The Evaluation Argument can more-or-less stay the same. That said, you might consider
having the students include/address the particular circumstances of this semester (i.e.,
English 1900 in the time of COVID-19).
• The real trick is dealing with the Multimodal Project. The Compass Lab will be inaccessible
for the remainder of the semester. This means that students will necessarily be working only
with the tools they have available. Students should still be free to work within the medium of
their choice, provided it is born digital (a podcast, an infographic, a video). That is, analog
or non-digital projects are, generally speaking, out as there is no way to submit them (in a
way that allows the instructor to fully engage them). Exceptions can be made, but keep
them limited and consult with me first. The other main adjustment to make is our
expectations in term of production quality. I think we should expect less than polished
projects and instead look for a solid proof of concept. That is, I think an A project feels
something like “this would be excellent were the student have had better equipment and
time in class to produce and polish this production.” The emphasis here, as elsewhere, is to
simplify, simplify, simplify.

Quick Tips for Online Classes

• Plan for a main “command center” where students will know to check for the day’s
activities. This could be your class LMS site, a Google doc for the day, or even just an email
you send out each day.
• Be accessible to your students. Respond to emails promptly (within 24h), and be
understanding about their tech and life situations.

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• Stay in your comfort zone. We’re sharing a variety of resources, but no one would expect
you to master a new tool in a week. Stick with what you are familiar with.
• Keep it simple and prioritize main assignments. Provide activities and assignments for
students to maintain progress on these tasks.
• Be prepared for tech challenges. Plan ahead and have a back up plan. Some free
resources may be overwhelmed by extra traffic.
• Be patient. Give students and yourself time to adjust to a new platform. Don't assign a
high-stakes assignment on a new platform.
• Be flexible. Students may be traveling, sick, lacking access to wi-fi or technology at home,
etc. When possible, provide multiple access options and flexible deadlines and policies.
Consider time zone differentials for students abroad or on another U.S. coast.
• Consider accessibility. Here's a great resource..
• Consider your own schedule. Depending on what else is going on (elementary school or
daycare closures? Caregiving duties? Sick yourself?) you might choose primarily
asynchronous methods to give you more time flexibility. If your schedule permits, you can
maintain your regular class schedule and use Zoom (or other tools) to conduct a
synchronous class. 
• Consider your own personal boundaries. Some instructors might be ok with students
contacting them via phone or text, some not. Respect your own needs here.
• Check in with students about access. Send a short survey like the one we have previous
shared.
• Just do your best. This is not the time to hold yourself to the highest standard, or to
develop a fully online course. No one is expecting you to. Try to stick to 10h/course/week. 

Communicate Early, Often, and Repeatedly

1. Tell your students your plan for adapting the course and how things will change or
remain the same.
2. Be sure students know what you expect, when you expect it, in what format, and how to
send it to you.
3. Tell them how to reach you, as office hours will likely not be an option (email, online
office hours, etc.). Let them know if you need a certain amount of time to respond to
emails (say, 24 hours, next business day, etc.). Encourage them to contact you early with
any questions.
4. Send students reminders before each course item is due, as well as the day it’s due.
Send those out via email and post them as announcements in your LMS (Blackboard. If
you aren’t using Blackboard, strongly consider creating a Tumblr page for your course for
the purposes of posting announcements). Repeat your expectations and availability in
each of those reminders.

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Plan for Accessibility & Engagement
1. Shift to asynchronous communication and learning as much as possible. Asynchronous
will create fewer technical issues and will be easier for students to access if their internet
connection or available technology has trouble supporting live video. Use synchronous
where essential for course outcomes and learning experiences, of course, but only where
essential.
2. Opt for platforms with mobile apps. Computer access may be harder for some students
when off-campus, but they may have a smartphone. LMS mobile apps may not be great,
but in many cases they work better than the mobile version of their website. Some video
platforms have excellent mobile apps. (I prefer YouTube and Zoom for this reason.)
3. Use familiar and easy tools as much as possible. Students probably are comfortable with
your LMS, they likely use YouTube, and they probably have existing strategies for
accessibility and accommodation with those platforms. Zoom is easy to learn and use.
4. Include closed captioning with any videos you produce. Closed captioning improves
learning for many students, regardless of their hearing. Some schools provide closed
captioning for instructor videos (your center for teaching excellence, distance ed office, or
tech services should be able to help). Otherwise, you can use the reasonably decent
automated closed captioning in YouTube.
5. Ask students to communicate their needs to you early. As soon as you have a plan for
adapting the course, communicate it to your students and ask them to let you know if they
foresee any needed accommodations or difficulty accessing technology. Be proactive with
them and with the campus disability services, technology services, and student success
offices. Likewise, some faculty (especially contingent faculty and graduate teaching
assistants) may not have robust technology at home (or even in their offices). If you are an
administrator, be sure you reach out to them and help them access what they need.
6. Get yourself on camera. Regardless of your assignments, teaching style, or strategies,
being on camera at least a little for your students can dramatically enhance their
engagement with you and the course. Even just a 5-minute pre-recorded video each week
can make a big difference. It can be just a quick agenda & tips for the week video, but do
something to be visible to them every week.

Adapt Offline Course Instruction to Online Learning

1. Adapting course activities is better than just transferring them. Effective online
communication and learning is different than effective communication and learning offline.
Try to be flexible in your teaching style, assignment design, and assumptions. Focus on
the remaining objectives for the course, how to help students learn, and what they need
to be able to demonstrate competency. Project-based, inquiry-based, and independent
learning are well-suited to online contexts.
2. Lectures should be pre-recorded video. Whether you lecture for long periods or have
mini-lectures as part of an offline class, the best solution will be to record video lectures
for asynchronous viewing. These can be you on screen, voice over slides, or even you at a
whiteboard. You can record theses inside a video conferencing platform like Zoom, Loom

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 or GoogleHangouts or directly in PowerPoint. Keep lectures short. Long lectures in any
format produce poor learning outcomes, but online they are even worse. Break lectures
into videos of no more than 10 minutes, even if that means 4 videos for one class period.
Anything past that and student engagement drops to zero.
3. Discussions and group work can be done via text forums or live video. Consider
breaking classes into smaller discussion groups to increase peer-to-peer engagement. You
can make smaller group discussion forums in your LMS or use breakout groups in your
video platform. If you are using text forums, be aware that students are unlikely to log in
more than once a day, and even then only if you tell them you expect it and remind them.
I will be using Slack in my ENGL 4010. Slack allows you to create multiple, assigned
threads. Text forums will also need more concrete questions, direction, and prompting
from the instructor to be successful. In video platforms, consider using the “raise hand”
functions to manage participant contributions with large groups. Here is a helpful handout
on hosting productive discussion threads.
4. Student presentations can be asynchronous or synchronous video. If you don’t need a
live presentation, then encourage students to record themselves with their computers or
their phones. The YouTube mobile app will record right into their YouTube accounts for
them. They can send you the link and/or post it to the LMS forums. Encourage your
students to set their YouTube videos to “Unlisted” so they can control who views them. (If
they set their videos to “Private,” neither their instructors nor their classmates will be able
to view them.) If student presentations need to be live, use a video conference tool like
Zoom, GoogleHangouts. If you want students to watch each other present, require them
to post recordings in the LMS forums and give them specific questions for peer feedback.
Smaller groups in the LMS forums help with this.

University Writing Services Update

“For University Writing Services, specifically, we have the asynchronistic feedback process
which has been in use for a number of years. In addition to the asynchronistic feedback
process, we will be developing and training the ways in which our consultants will also
conduct web based consultations via zoom. Our top focus is making sure we can successfully
offer consultations and tutoring for the rest of the semester.”

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Remote Library Resources & Services
Library Hours & Operations
Pius Library is currently open to only the SLU Community (anyone with a SLU ID). We will
remain open, with greatly reduced hours through April 30. Reduced hours and access may be
extended or changed based on decisions made by the SLU administration. Current hours are:

Monday - Friday: 7:30am - 6pm

Saturday - Sunday: Closed

We are also in the process of developing a guide for remote library resources and
services and a list of FAQs that will help answer additional questions from both students and
faculty.

Research Services for Students

Please continue to refer students to me for research assistance. I'll be on email as usual to
answer questions, and for now, I will continue to be at the Library most days. I am happy to
meet with remote students and/or students who don't feel comfortable coming to the library
via phone, Zoom, or Skype

Our chat service is also still available. It will continue to be staffed by SLU Librarians during
the day, and by contract librarians from around the country overnight and on the weekends.
Any questions that can't be answered completely by whoever is on chat, will be referred to
the appropriate SLU Librarian.

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