So you are going to be an online writing instructor: Issues in designing, developing, and delivering an online course
A bibliographic record and short editorial reading note for a paper included in the historical EDUCATE collection.
Original publication authors
Wilhelmina C. Savenye; Zane Olina; Mary Niemczyk
What this paper examines
Savenye, Olina and Niemczyk discuss the design, development and delivery of an online writing course through an instructional-design perspective. Their guidelines consider learner needs, suitability for online delivery, pedagogical choices, resources and support for both students and faculty. The paper provides a historical planning framework in which selecting a platform is only one part of preparing a course.
A question to take into course design
What learner need, learning activity and support provision justify each major design choice in an online module?
The full paper remains a third-party publication. This page preserves its identity and provides a new editorial reading note; it does not attribute the note to the original researchers or change the paper’s publication date.
Why it belongs in the water programme archive
EDUCATE combined water resources and environmental management with distance delivery. The original reading collection included research about online teaching, course design and learner support.
Savenye, Olina and Niemczyk discuss designing and delivering an online writing course. Their planning questions can inform a technical-course brief without treating writing instruction as a trial of water-engineering education.
New explanation and worked examples by the editorial team.
Original explanatory diagram · Water MSC editorial. Task and product → Criteria and route → A learner-facing preflight.
The diagram in words: Task and product → Criteria and route → A learner-facing preflight.
Write a complete brief
Include the task, expected product, resources, criteria, submission route and feedback arrangement. State which parts learners may choose and which constraints are fixed. Avoid placing essential criteria only in a separate message that a learner may never see.
An invented brief for a water exercise
Task: explain how 100 mm over 2 km² becomes rainfall volume. Product: three conversion lines and one sentence stating what is not predicted. Criteria: consistent units, correct product and no unsupported discharge claim. Submission: the declared course route. Feedback: identify the first reasoning step needing revision.
Check before release
Ask someone unfamiliar with the draft to locate the task and criteria. Review the route with JavaScript unavailable or with a low-bandwidth alternative when that is part of the course’s access needs. Editing the brief is only the intervention; the task-location check is the evidence.
Worked record
Field
Example or check
Product
Three conversions and a limit sentence
Criterion
Unit consistency
Check
Task and criteria can be located
Document evidence
So you are going to be an online writing instructor: Issues in designing, developing, and delivering an online course · 15 pages.
