Abstract
Understanding the different skills students will need to be successful with discipline-specific writing is crucial for online faculty to provide appropriate feedback that continues to teach. This chapter will help readers understand different skills and subskills of writing and consider which skills are needed in specific disciplines. Additionally, this chapter will explore the pedagogy of caring and why it is applicable to feedback and creating personal learning environments. This information, in conjunction with the previous chapters, sets the stage for the subject matter expert's use of PAUSE.
Since our workshop, I feel I can provide students with better information! I am excited to begin teaching next week to see how students will react to this new information and to report back to you. -Faculty Participant
Consider the types of writing you do as a subject-matter expert. Whether you are in education, business, the humanities, or the sciences, there are specific nuances that are needed to be successful in discipline-specific writing. For example, pre-service teachers may need to understand how to
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write objectives using action or measurable verbs,
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write lesson plans,
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write reports that are related to students who have specific classroom needs,
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write reports that contribute to interdisciplinary knowledge for student evaluations,
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write proposals for support based on behavior record keeping,
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contribute to their own performance evaluations, and
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construct or contribute to school or classroom newsletters.
Whereas someone who is in general business may need to know how to write the following:
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contracts
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briefs
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memos
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white papers
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proposals
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performance reviews
Someone in science may need to understand how to
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write through the research process,
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clearly present methodologies, and
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convey statistics in both numerical and narrative formats.
These are not exhaustive lists by any stretch of the imagination, but an attempt to spur your thinking about the types of writing your students will need to perform. Will your students write to persuade, inform, or entertain? Will your students need to combine two or more of these? How will they do that? What skills and subskills will they need to do this? Are you able to break down the skills and subskills of writing that your students will need to produce in your online classroom?
TopWriting Skills And Subskills
Let us take a moment to consider some of the overall skills and subskills of writing that students need to be successful at the university level (Table 9). As you read through this list, mark which ones your students will need to succeed in discipline-specific writing for the courses you teach. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, and you may categorize some items differently, but the importance of this exercise is to start considering all of the skills and subskills your students will need when taking a virtual seat in your online course.
Table 1.
Skills and subskills of writing
| Skill Type | Subskills |
| Mechanics | ▪ Grammar
▪ Punctuation
▪ Capitalization
▪ Abbreviations
▪ Spelling |
| Vocabulary | ▪ Comparison and contrast
▪ Persuasion
▪ Description
▪ Cause and effect
▪ Narrative
▪ Process
▪ Argument
▪ Critical |
| Developing an argument or purpose | ▪ Descriptive
▪ Expository
▪ Informative
▪ Understanding the audience
▪ Create a thesis
▪ Develop a ‘hook’
▪ Academic voice
▪ Critical thinking |
| Organization | ▪ Understand the type of writing being created (memo, dissertation, essay, scientific report, etc)
▪ Introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion
▪ Literature review, methods, results, discussion sections for research-based papers
▪ Paragraph formation
o Topic sentence
o Supporting sentences
o Concluding sentences that transition to the next paragraph
o Integrating research |
| Research | ▪ Understanding scholarly versus popular versus gray sources
▪ Seeking primary, secondary, tertiary sources
▪ Evaluating appropriate sources from those that are not as appropriate for the topic
▪ Determine the purpose of the research
▪ Develop topics and subtopics
▪ Use academic format (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) |
| Writing Cycle | ▪ Note-taking
▪ Drafting
▪ Proofreading
▪ Editing |
Key Terms in this Chapter
PAUSE: A framework for giving feedback that reminds faculty to provide praise, and then applicable, understandable, specific, and encouraging feedback.
Feedback: Summary information provided to students to help them understand their areas of strengths and opportunity with the skills and subskills needed to complete assignments or to be successful in the online university.
Continuum for Capacity Building Framework: The framework used to position the broader study in the context of online higher education. This framework shows that through the combination of andragogy and pedagogy, while keeping in mind the building heutagogy of online students, faculty can narrow the transactional distance of online higher education.
Transactional Distance: This is the psychological and communicative distance that is between students and instructors in online education.