Kairotic Design: Building Flexible Networks for Online Composition
Principles of Online Course Design
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Employ a participatory, iterative, kairotic design process.
In planning an online course, we do need to make some design choices in advance—crafting reusable video lectures, developing scaffolded assignment prompts, choosing interfaces for collaborative interaction, and so on. Yet, we contend that this pre-planning is only a small part of a successful online course. Because students play such a key role in shaping the learning that occurs in an inquiry-based writing class, students must also be invited to play a role in re-shaping the online learning spaces. In this sense, our vision of kairotic design shares many affinities with the methodology of participatory design (Spinuzzi 2005)—though our approach is more emergent and informal than ethnographic.
In addition to gathering student perspectives on our learning spaces through formal assessments such as surveys and focus groups, we also need to talk informally with students throughout the course about how our online learning spaces could be redesigned to better meet their needs (as Lance did when he reformulated his use of Google Apps as a result of a text chat with a student). To further enable students to play a role in re-designing online learning spaces, we can also engage students in analyzing and participating in a variety of online communities, including but not limited to the community of the online writing class. By allowing students to bring their experiences with other online communities to the course (or "party" as Ryan so aptly names it), we can open a constructive dialogue about what kinds of online writing spaces best support collaborative knowledge generation. Rather than trying to replicate the nineteenth-century classroom for students online, we can instead collaborate with students to research existing online composing spaces that might serve as better spatial models for the online writing class. Because every group of students will bring different literate experiences to the class, every iteration of our online writing courses will necessarily be different. Our goal as teachers is not to develop a "course in a box" that can be reused without alteration, but rather to develop a flexible set of heuristics that teachers and students can use to collectively re-invent spaces for online learning.
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Design the course as a flexible, distributed network for writing and collaborative inquiry.
In our traditional classes, we have always included a large amount of small-group discussion, collaborative writing, and peer response; however, we have tended to focus on the physical classroom as the primary interface and venue for facilitating these interactions. We have come to realize that the physical classroom is not always the most effective interface for facilitating collaborative interaction: Chairs can be difficult to move; it can be hard for the teacher to monitor and engage multiple small groups at the same time; students can get bored listening to each group report back orally on their work; and students all complete tasks at different rates that can make timing small group activities difficult.
When we focused on designing small-group collaboration with online tools (e.g., Google Docs, Google Hangouts, and WordPress), we found that we were able to overcome many of the limitations of the physical classroom interface. By scheduling small group Google Hangouts at different times, the instructor could give full attention to each small group discussion rather than having to circulate among groups. Furthermore, by organizing peer response in Google Docs, the instructor could easily monitor and intervene in student commenting (asking questions in the comment threads to provoke deeper response). Rather than seeing small-group work as an activity that must be completed in a set period of time, we came to think of groupwork as an activity that produces a collaborative digital text (e.g., response comments, a collaborative research blog) that the teacher can then review and comment upon. By having students collaborate in writing with digital tools, we can also ensure that students are more easily able to draw upon their group collaboration when writing their essays since all their "discussions" are recorded in textual form.
Recognizing the limitations of the physical classroom as an interface for collaborative inquiry, we reject the "mirror model" of online learning in favor of re-imagining the online class as a distributed network. Rather than seeking to replicate a bounded classroom space for whole-class interaction, we instead contend that online writing teachers should offer students a wide range of digital tools to facilitate collaborative interaction among small groups. For us, Google Docs and Google Hangouts proved to be particularly conducive for collaborative inquiry among students and teachers, but other tools (discussion boards, blogs) played a role as well. When we imagine our classroom as a distributed network, we gain the kairotic flexibility to adapt our learning spaces in the moment to student needs and interests.
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Recognize that instructor presence and engagement are key for success.
Although we are arguing for the value of distributed networks and student-centered learning in online spaces, we also think it important to note the crucial role that instructor presence and interaction played in the success of our online writing classes. When we abandoned the metaphor of the brick-and-mortar classroom and reimagined the online class as a distributed network, we risked provoking anxiety and confusion among students; however, we found that students were able to tolerate some ambiguity and uncertainty about our diffuse technological interfaces because they had a close relationship with their instructors whom they felt were always present via email and video chat if they ever needed guidance in navigating the network of the class. In this sense, students' individualized interaction with their instructors functioned as a key "home base" in the distributed network that helped them become comfortable with online writing and learning. Needless to say, this kind of close student–teacher interaction was enabled by a low course enrollment cap, and we would suggest that online classes necessitate even smaller course caps than traditional sections because of the crucial role of the instructor in student success in online learning.
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Build and plan for assessment throughout the process.
At many institutions, online learning is both new and viewed with heightened scrutiny, especially given many of the weak online degree programs being offered by for-profits. Thus, planning for assessment throughout the design and implementation process benefits instructors, learners, and the program. For example, the surveys we conducted during the class helped instructors redesign their delivery and even the curriculum to best meet student needs. The direct assessment we conducted comparing online learning to brick-and-mortar learning has also been beneficial, showing that students in online classes are achieving to the same or higher level.
The twenty-four online portfolios selected from the seventy submitted by students in five online sections of English 111 showed that the average score for all seven course outcomes was 2.64 on a four-point scale with 1 being "does not meet expectations" (see English 111 Rubric). In fall 2010, the same rubric was used in traditional, brick-and-mortar classes; the average for forty portfolios read of the 667 submitted was 2.62. Triangulating the assessment data with both survey data and, if possible, interviews with students provides powerful data on the impact of online course design on student learning.