See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/356432440

FROM FACE-TO-FACE TO CYBERSPACE TO POSTDIGITAL: TAKEAWAYS FROM

EMERGENCY ONLINE TEACHING OF PROFESSIONAL ENGLISH WRITING
SKILLS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Conference Paper · November 2021

DOI: 10.21125/iceri.2021.1583

CITATIONS READS

0 23

2 authors:

Michael Bowles Erik Thornquist

Zayed University Zayed University, United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi
3 PUBLICATIONS 5 CITATIONS 9 PUBLICATIONS 12 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Michael Bowles on 22 November 2022.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 FROM FACE-TO-FACE TO CYBERSPACE TO POSTDIGITAL:
TAKEAWAYS FROM EMERGENCY ONLINE TEACHING OF
PROFESSIONAL ENGLISH WRITING SKILLS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Michael Bowles1, Erik Thornquist1
1
Zayed University (UNITED ARAB EMIRATES)

Abstract
As the spread of Covid-19 has hastened the shift towards a postdigital reality in which technology is no
longer “separate, virtual, or ‘other’ to a ‘natural human and social life” [1], so higher education institutes
(HEIs) around the world are now learning the lessons from the rapid transition to Emergency Remote
Teaching (ERT) [2], and how best to blend and merge the new digital spaces with the old physical
spaces. This has been the case with the provision of professional English writing skills courses to Emirati
students in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The switch to completely online teaching necessitated the
enforced use of different ways of organising and managing teaching, learning, and assessments, and
provided both challenges and opportunities for teachers.
Through an auto-ethnographic framework, this presentation connects the anecdotal and personal
experiences of two university instructors, who are responsible for teaching professional English writing
skills courses, to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings, as they transitioned
from a mainly face-to-face teaching environment to a fully online setting. It will also identify how these
writing courses may evolve as the students return to campus for some kind of face-to-face experience.
In particular, it will focus on synchronous teaching, out-of-class learning tasks, and formative feedback
on writing drafts. Attendees will be encouraged to reflect on their own postdigital teaching contexts and
will leave the session with ideas and strategies for their own blended writing courses.
Keywords: Emergency Remote Teaching, postdigital, professional writing, technical writing, media
writing, technology tools.

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background
The last 18 months have seen rapid, continuous, and sudden shifts in the way that students have been
learning and the ways that teachers have been managing that learning throughout the higher education
sector. This has certainly been the case in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where classes moved from
a predominantly face-to-face mode with some online and digital elements to Emergency Remote
Teaching (ERT) [2], in order to avoid face-to-face contact between students and teachers. This entailed
teachers and students having to rapidly learn how to use various online video conferencing software
such as Zoom, Adobe Connect, and Microsoft Teams, as well as learn about the different theories and
pedagogies of online teaching and learning. While it could be partially seen as an opportunity for
enforced professional development, it also led to “collective uncertainty, exhaustion, fear and
inadequacies” [3], feelings which were often unvoiced and rarely acknowledged by those in positions of
power.
As the vaccination rates in the UAE climbed above 80% [4] and daily case numbers declined, the UAE
Ministry of Education announced that the Fall 2021 semester should see the return of many face-to-face
classes. However, due to social distancing policies that are still in place, the capacity of many classroom
spaces is at least half of what it was prior to the pandemic. For example, a classroom normally with
space for 20 students can now only seat 10. In addition, strict requirements for gaining entry to the
university campus (double-vaccinated and a negative PCR test within the preceding 30 days), have
meant that some students have been denied access to the physical classroom. This has required
imaginative thinking on the part of administrators and has led to a far more complex and messy teaching
and learning landscape. There are now some face-to-face classes, some blended classes (50% online
and 50% face to face), and the continuation of purely online learning for nearly 50% of classes. A lot of
the decision-making has also been constrained by the number of students already enrolled in each
section, and the number of teachers credentialled and available to teach each course.
In this paper, we focus on two courses that we taught purely online for 18 months across three semesters
from February 2020. The Technical Communication course (CTI 285) is a writing course focused on the
IT profession and hosted within the College of Technological Innovation (CTI). It is a required credit
course, is guided by a trained technical writer, and is taught by educators with a strong English Language
Learning (ELL) writing background. The course is predominantly designed to help students produce
technical documents such as reports, memos, manuals, and presentations. In the Fall 2021 semester,
this course continues to be taught online, using Zoom as the main video conferencing software. The
second course is Foundations in Media Writing (COM209), which is offered in the College of
Communication and Media Sciences (CCMS). It is principally designed to help students write more
effectively, clearly, and accurately in a variety of media-related genres, such as news releases, feature
profiles, and social media posts. COM209 was also taught fully online through Zoom but is now being
offered on-campus in the physical classroom again.

1.2 Digital Concepts

Although it emerged in the educational field prior to the pandemic, the use of the term ‘postdigital’ has
taken on new and expanded dimensions since the start of the pandemic. Knox discusses two main
interpretations of the term. The first is the view that we have simply entered “a different stage in the
perception and use of technology” [5] in which technology is no longer “separate, virtual, or ‘other’ to a
‘natural human and social life” [1]. The second interpretation seeks “to consider the ‘post’ as signalling
a critical appraisal of the assumptions embedded in the general understanding of the digital” [5]. For the
purposes of this paper, we aim to apply both interpretations to our understanding of how digital
technology has been employed. Although often labelled as online learning, the enforced transfer of face-
to-face classes to an entirely online environment during the COVID-19 pandemic is better termed
Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) [2], in that the courses were never designed to be purely online in
the first place. As a result, many lack some of the key components and features considered essential
for pure online courses. Teachers were forced to simply move their face-to-face classes online and
adapt as best they could.

1.3 Writing Process

While it is useful to position teaching and learning within broader societal and technological changes, it
is also important to maintain a focus on key pedagogical aspects. In terms of our two writing courses,
utilizing the main stages of the writing process was the key to structuring and making effective changes
to our courses as we moved to an online environment. Aristotle [6] called writing the act of getting things
down to elements that cannot be reduced, which he called “first principles”. What, then is the cognitive
process behind arriving at these first principles and then capturing them on a page? Traditional
academic and professional writing share many features, but they differ in terms of audience, approach,
and presentation - that is, layout on the page [7]. 20th-century composition theorists such as Britton [8]
and Flower & Hayes [9] emphasized staging, which claims there are certain ways of thinking (such as
conceptualizing and drafting) at different points in the process. In studying five novice composition
students, Perl [10] was among the first to add a new aspect to staging: that students move back and
forth between stages. Thus, it is now generally agreed that both technical and academic writing have
both stages and a recursive nature, and it is the cognitive processes behind composition that inform as
instructors of professional writing about relevant pedagogy.
The recursive nature of writing involves having a purpose, generating ideas, drafting those ideas,
revising and rearranging those ideas, and then polishing them so they resonate with a specific primary
audience. Students in both COM 209 and CIT 285 have little experience with the genres in mass
communication and information technology. A survey of CIT 285 students in the spring of 2020 found
that 116 of 120 students self-reported having no previous experience with writing for their profession.
Thus, both courses start at the beginning of the cognitive process by researching a given topic and
taking notes. To assist in the planning, guided outlines and note-taking sheets help students arrange
the research according to the genre. Students then produce a draft; that draft is given targeted feedback
by the instructor and experienced teaching assistants (TAs). Style is addressed in terms of genre and
readability. For the latter, researching Williams [11] and others led us to a set of clear guidelines to help
students make their prose easier to read and follow. Once students compose a draft, they are instructed
on the elements of good design and layout to match the words on the page. Finally, in the revision stage,
students focus on making both prose and presentation as suitable as possible to meet the expectations
of both audience and purpose. In the end, as both courses teach key discipline-specific concepts, the
process of writing is in itself an act of learning [12] as knowledge moves from doing to representing to
writing as part of each course [13].
Such a writing process in a professional course can contain up to six steps. To simplify this, we reduced
these six steps to four: research - write - design - edit, following ideas derived from Johnson-Sheehan
[14] (See Figure 1). These steps are recursive, involve extensive planning, and allow for not just one
but multiple levels of audience, each with its own needs, values, and attitudes. The targeted, audience-
based approach in professional writing is markedly different than when writing for not an academic
audience. For example, The IT and mass communication disciplines have a heightened focus on
sequential, objective writing. For our purposes below, we will use research - write - design - edit as a
framework for discussing the teaching ideas, strategies and digital tools we used during the ERT period
and beyond. Our goal is to provide takeaways for any instructor of professional writing in this post-digital
era.

Figure 1. Writing Process (Adapted from Johnson-Sheehan [14])

2 METHODOLOGY

2.1 Research Questions

We posed ourselves two main research questions:
1. What effective ideas, strategies and digital tools did we use when teaching professional English
writing courses online during the ERT period?
2. What effective ideas, strategies and digital tools used during the ERT period when teaching
professional English writing courses purely online could we continue to use in the post-ERT
period?’

2.2 Methodology
For the purposes of this paper, we have used autoethnography as our main research methodology.
According to Marechal [15], it is “research that involves self-observation and reflexive investigation.” In
particular, it acknowledges and foregrounds the subjectivity of the researcher, and it is they themselves
who are the focus of the research. Of the three main conceptions of autoethnography, we have followed
the postmodern autoethnography tradition in which “aesthetic concerns are balanced with the sharing
of experience, the fragmenting effects of dialogues based on identity, and the need to connect local
action to larger social and even global contexts, spaces and locations” [15].

2.3 Methods
We used a range of techniques from autoethnography, including periods of self-reflection on our lived
teaching experience, writing about those experiences, sharing and discussing these experiences with
each other, and trying to theorise what they mean, and what we can learn from them for future actions.
In writing this paper, we followed a collaborative writing process using Google Docs in conjunction with
virtual meetings over Zoom that allowed us to co-create text through simultaneous oral discussion and
written text on the screen. We also tried to place these experiences within the larger national political
and educational context and global context that have shaped how we have been teaching and how our
students have been learning over the last 18 months.

3 RESULTS

3.1 Emergency Remote Teaching

This section summarises and discusses some of the main approaches used both during the ERT period
up until summer 2021 and continued with the CTI 285 courses in the Fall 2021 semester. It will focus
on synchronous teaching and the main stages of the writing process, which include out-of-class learning
tasks and formative feedback on writing drafts.

3.1.1 Synchronous Teaching

While the use of Zoom enabled a continuation of synchronous contact with students in both courses,
we found that this was often only possible through microphones with disembodied voices. Due to the
“gendered taboo surrounding Arab women showing their faces via (online) media” [3], especially with
male teachers, and the fact that the university has made “an uninvited entry into Gulf-Arab women’s
highly private domestic space” [3], it was impossible for students to show their faces during any class
time. This reduced our sense of engagement with the students and the amount of participation normally
seen in face-to-face classes. However, we both found ways to mitigate this to some extent. For example,
Mike asked students to post still pictures of themselves or their pets to their ZOOM profiles rather than
just leaving blank spaces in the ‘class’. This very slightly increased the student’s presence in the online
environment and also enabled them to have some degree of control over the way they presented
themselves to the other students.
In Erik’s case, he used micro-commitments to keep students engaged, which asked them to perform a
simple task that builds to a larger understanding of the concept at hand. In one case he asked students
to look at or remember one of four audience types that are taught on the CTI 285 course (general,
expert, technical, or managerial) based on the scenario in an assignment. First, Erik put the assignment
on the screen. Then, students decided which audience type was relevant and typed their answer in the
Zoom chatbox. This served to focus all students on the assignment quickly so that Erik could then go
into further detail. The micro-commitments kept students more engaged, triggered the recall of key
concepts, and enabled a smoother transition between stages of the class.
Another issue has been digital distractions, which have been even more pronounced in online settings.
Many students were already addicted to checking their social media notifications on their smartphones
in face-to-face classes. This has been identified as a major issue in higher education [16] prior to the
pandemic but owing to the fact that we no longer saw our students, there was no way to influence when
and how they used their smartphones during class time, especially as no one ever turned on their
cameras. Although impossible to overcome completely, we tried to incorporate greater use of the
smartphone in class through playing various online games, such as Kahoot! [17] and Quizlet Live [18],
so at least the students were using their phones for more productive purposes.
Perhaps one of the most significant advantages of teaching online through Zoom was the ability to
record whole synchronous classes. This means that after a particular class finished, we both posted the
direct link to the video recording to the relevant teaching materials folder on the learning management
system used at Zayed University, Blackboard. This allowed absent students to catch up and watch the
entire lesson asynchronously. Interestingly, some students who did attend the online synchronously also
watched some parts of the lesson, particularly those where Erik and Mike were explaining key concepts
or ideas or giving instructions for assignments.

3.1.2 Writing Process

Researching
Finding resources in a postdigital era has changed. Sources are numerous; however, students are
overwhelmed, sometimes struggle to identify relevant information, and need to discern the value of not
just that information but also its source. Thus, Erik turned to reference librarians for assistance who
presented to each class online. Beforehand, Erik spoke with each librarian about the topic and scope of
the assignment so that the presentation was tailored to the needs of his technical writing students.
Useful concepts were simplified to create learn-and-use material. For instance, librarians taught
students the CRAAP test (i.e., whether sources had Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and
Purpose [19]) to help them find and test possible sources.
One online tool that we both used for collaborative brainstorming and sharing references was Padlet
[20]. Padlet enables everyone to view the same shared screen online and post messages, comments,
and images as ‘post-it’ style notes. We put students into small groups and gave each group a link to a
different padlet where they could post ideas for their writing, give feedback to each other, share links
and images, add summaries of texts and also begin to write introductions. This multi-modal and colourful
platform helped enliven what can be a slightly boring stage of the writing process. Students went back
to these original padlets during subsequent stages of the writing process.
Another challenge that students often face when researching a topic is managing the organisation and
use of external sources in their academic writing. With the move to purely online teaching, it was not so
easy to see how students were organising their sources and to demonstrate ways to do it better. On the
COM 209 course, one of the resources Mike showed to students was Mendeley, a referencing software
[21]. It may seem a little advanced for undergraduate students, but he found that some of the time-
saving features motivated many students to learn how to use the tool. In particular, the way that it can
read correctly encoded PDF documents and automatically populate the fields for that entry reduced the
need to laboriously enter the details by hand. Similarly, the way that Mendeley interfaces with the
Microsoft (MS) Word program means that users can easily add an in-text citation which then
automatically adds that source to the list of references at the end. This ultimately saved students a lot
of time and effort, and also meant that their reference lists at the end of their assignments were often
much more accurate than when they did them manually.
Writing
While Padlet is a great platform for posting initial ideas and sharing links, it is not so suitable for extended
writing. Once students started working on their first drafts of an assignment, we both used Google
Documents (Docs) [22] as a way for students to share their initial drafts with peers and with us. We put
students into groups of three and encouraged groups to share the hyperlink of their document with the
other two people in their group so they could read and make comments on each other’s drafts. The
other advantage of Google Docs is that it interfaces with Grammarly [23] so that students could improve
the lexical and grammatical accuracy of their writing as they drafted and re-drafted, rather than leaving
it only to the final stage of the writing process.
Erik also used Google Docs for ten-minute grammar reviews. Professional writing, especially writing of
a technical nature, is largely sequential and uses certain common grammatical structures. Erik showed
CTI 285 students a PowerPoint that broke down each grammatical structure into its form, function, and
context. Students then went to the Google Doc to produce the same structure in context. Often the
context was related to personal experience or aspirations, but sometimes focused on IT-related issues,
such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain, as well.
In a postdigital setting, a number of issues can be addressed via the aforementioned Google Doc
activities. They encourage collaboration and teamwork. They also raise student awareness, either of
elements of grammar or of the ideas on the page. The collaboration also has a social benefit, as it eases
mental health issues caused by a lack of social contact. In a gentle, low-stakes way, these collaborative
activities help students get to know each other in ways similar to a face-to-face classroom.
Designing
In a postdigital and visual era, design has come to the forefront. Having taught in Korea, Japan, Taiwan,
the KSA, and now the UAE, Mike and Erik have international experience to aid them in teaching students
how to layout ideas on a page. In terms of writing, they taught students to use knowledge of their
audience - specifically, their needs, values, and attitudes - to shape the content on the page. In addition,
they taught their students how to arrange that content in a visually appealing way, which is particularly
important on a technical course, such as CTI 285.
Erik taught his students the five principles of design. This introduces them to visual layout, a topic that
later manifests as UNIX design and application development in future IT courses. Students learn
balance (to use the entire page from top to bottom & left to right), alignment (to make sure items are
lined up horizontally and vertically), grouping (using colour, font, and alignment to indicate a hierarchy
of items and to show which items go together), consistency (to use the aforementioned items in the
same way throughout a document), and contrast (to use changes in font size, colour, shading, and
highlighting to draw attention to key items). To go with this, Erik discussed the cultural connotations of
colour and how to arrange key information on the page. For example, he reminded students how text
direction can influence design, especially as English is written left to right while Arabic is written right to
left.
In order to give feedback and better guide students to improve the design of their assignments, both of
us held 1-to-1 tutorials in our personal Zoom meeting rooms. We had students book appointments during
our specified office hours. The advantage of using Zoom for these tutorials is that we could easily share
the students’ drafts and highlight issues or problems directly on the document and talk about them so
that the students can see immediately what they need to do to improve their drafts. This is something
that is not so visible on paper or even on one computer screen in face-to-face settings.
Editing
There are two ways of dealing with accuracy in student writing - proactive and reactive. During the ERT
period, we used both approaches. For the COM 209 course, Mike used Quizlet to focus on lexical
phrases or collocations relevant to different writing tasks. He created sets of 10-15 phrases and students
then completed various online activities to engage with these phrases, such as choosing the best word
for gap-fill sentences or matching two halves of a phrase. These sets were readily available for online
independent use anytime, anywhere outside of the class. However, they could also be used in the whole
class activity ‘Quizlet Live’, which provided a welcome change from heavy input or writing practice during
synchronous online classes. This lexical focus encourages students to chunk their written language,
which is far more efficient and is less likely to lead to errors than trying to build up clauses and sentences
word by word [24].
For the CTI 285 course, Erik also focused heavily on proactive strategies. Previous research led to
establishing Six Guidelines For Writing as a way for students to make sure their content flowed well from
idea to idea. There are two guidelines apiece for writing at the sentence, discourse, and paragraph
levels. These guidelines - the first of which is to have a human subject whenever possible - add to the
readability of any text. In addition, the Google Doc grammar activities mentioned above had an additional
stage. Along with producing content in response to each prompt, students also edited each other’s
sentences. This was a low-stakes, teacher-guided activity, and Erik was careful to focus on modelling
positive samples of writing as well as the correction of other samples. This was done within the first five
weeks of the course, so that students had an underpinning of sequential structures that they could use
for the remainder of the course. Later, he used online editing sessions just before assignments were
due to both reinforce these structures and help students finalise each assignment for submission.
In terms of the reactive approach, Mike used the Showbie [25] platform for students to submit draft
writing tasks at least one week prior to the final submission deadline. Showbie allows classes to be set
up in which students can easily upload their draft assignments. The teacher can then simply log in to
the site, go to each posted text, and provide annotated feedback using a range of multi-modal tools.
These include writing using different coloured pens and highlighters which Mike used in conjunction with
a correction code to highlight errors and show students what kind of error was made, but without actually
providing the correction for the student. Research shows that this is an effective way of encouraging the
learner to focus more on accuracy in their writing [26]. In addition, Mike added text comments and
recorded voice notes, which provided students with varied feedback.

3.2 Post Emergency Remote Teaching

While the COM 209 course is now taught predominantly on-campus, the CTI 285 course remains online.
This means there has been some divergence in the way that the courses are now taught and managed.

3.2.1 Synchronous Teaching

On the COM 209 course, students are now required to attend face-to-face classes on campus twice a
week. However, the enrolment has been restricted to 15 students per class to allow the maintenance of
social distancing rules. At the same time, some students have not been fully vaccinated and since this
means they are not allowed to access the campus, these students have to continue their classes online
simultaneously with the on-campus students. To address this issue, Mike has tried two approaches
depending on the balance of students who were physically present in the classroom and those online.
The first approach was to use Zoom in the classroom and ask all the students, regardless of their
physical location, to log into Zoom. Those students in the classroom obviously have to mute their
microphones to ensure there is no echoing. This approach has meant that students online continue to
learn in the same online environment as during the ERT period and can see everything on the screen
through the ‘Sharescreen’ function and hear Mike’s voice through the laptop microphone. This is not
ideal, but at the moment we do not have proper roving microphones. The students in the classroom see
exactly the same as the online students both through Zoom on their laptop screens and on the
smartboard at the front of the classroom. When it comes to pair and group work, since all the students
are logged into Zoom, Mike has organised groups, so that there is at least one online student with each
physical group. As students work in groups, they can talk both face-to-face in the classroom and with
the student online through Zoom. Mike calls this blending of the online and face-to-face “hybrid”, but it
is not flexible, as in the HyFlex model [27], because the default position is that students must be
physically in the classroom unless they have a medical exemption not to attend on-campus or another
reason for not being vaccinated yet. They cannot choose whether to or not to attend face-to-face
sessions.
The second approach that Mike has used is to teach primarily face-to-face and only have the online
students log into Zoom. This means that the online students continue to follow the lesson through the
Zoom ‘Sharescreen’ function and Mike’s voice and can be heard by the in-class students through the
classroom speakers. The in-class students experience the class as purely face-to-face. When it comes
to pair and group work, the students are segregated, in that the face-to-face students only work with
each other, and the online students work together in Zoom breakout rooms. Mike has conducted whole
class feedback simultaneously with both groups, alternating between face-to-face and online students
in terms of who is asked to speak. This approach means that there is less integration between the
physical and online spaces during the asynchronous class and perhaps privileges the in-class students.

The CTI 285 courses have remained online; thus, Zoom is how the synchronous class is conducted.
Students log in and follow class via the Zoom ‘Sharescreen’ function and via Erik’s voice. However, he
has used a series of teaching strategies to increase both student engagement and interactivity.
Frequently Erik will ask students simple questions designed as both a prompt for interaction and a simple
concept check. Zayed University students have varying degrees of language and content
understanding; thus, the simple questions serve to keep students involved while sometimes acting as a
rung toward higher-level questions.

CIT 285 classes also have a number of interactive features. Erik utilizes the Zoom ‘Breakout Rooms’
for focused group activities, then goes from room to room to check on progress and answer questions.
Often students will speak in-depth in a breakout room whereas they may not in a full-class situation.
Kahoot! and WordWall [28] quizzes are also given in class to gamify the class, stimulate learning, and
reinforce key concepts. Knowing the vast majority of students have no background in the discipline, Erik
has also set up review activities for key concepts. This review, however, is asynchronous. These pop-
up activities appear online on the first, third, and sixth day after an important concept has been
completed in class. The activities seek to tap into the idea of spaced interval learning, and the games
require students to retrieve essential information on the discipline. Students receive notifications of these
activities via Blackboard. Each one takes, on average, five minutes, and they can be repeated until the
student feels he or she has mastered the basics of the concept.
3.2.2 Writing Process
For both COM 209 and CTI 285, Erik and Mike have continued to use many of the same ideas,
strategies, and digital tools in the post-ERT period as used when teaching purely online.

Researching

In the post-ERT period, students still have many of the same issues with finding relevant sources,
recording the details of each reference, and managing the citation and referencing process. However,
both Erik and Mike have continued to use Mendeley and Padlet to help students manage their sources
and represent them in a visual way.

Writing

In a hybrid course, the use of online collaborative writing spaces, such as Google Docs, really come into
their own, especially when used in conjunction with Zoom. To help students arrange ideas, Erik has
used collaborative concept mapping so that students include the correct information and learn basic
features of a given genre. Mike has used both tools in the classroom space to get one in-class student
to work with one online student on initial ideas for their three writing tasks. They then continued their co-
construction of the text outside of class both on their laptops at home or even on smartphones while
traveling between campus and home. This is a very good example of where the physical and digital
spaces have merged and become more seamless [29].

Designing

We have both continued to use acronyms in memorable ways to help students remember key
components of the design process. For example, Mike has gotten students to do the “COCOLALA” in
order to remember to include the context (CO), content (CO), Layout (LA), and Language (LA) of their
different texts. Erik teaches the four types of audience via the mnemonic GETM (general, expert,
technical, and managerial). He also uses the mnemonic BAGCC (balance, alignment, grouping,
consistency, and contrast) to remind students of the five principles of document design.

Editing

Mike has continued to use Showbie as a platform where students can post draft assignments. Rather
than returning to a lengthy and complicated process that involved receiving drafts by email, opening,
saving and filing numerous word documents, completing feedback in word, and then emailing back to
students, the use of an online platform to do all of this continues to save time and provide multi-modal
feedback to students. The editing protocols from Erik’s face-to-face classes have continued online, as
one student provides a model section for others to edit to a professional standard.

Overall

In terms of managing the writing process within the whole course, one key learning point from the ERT
period that we have continued to use is the importance of being systematic and consistent with
organizing and storing learning materials on our LMS (Blackboard) and leaving a trail of support that
students can access throughout the writing process. This has meant using weekly folders to organise
all the materials used during the synchronous classes, such as Word documents, and PowerPoint
presentations, as well as web links to online games and challenges (e.g., Kahoot! [17] and WordWall
[28]). It has also meant posting the direct link to the recordings of the synchronous classes recorded in
Zoom to enable absent students to watch if they were absent from a class or to watch particular parts
of a lesson again. This one-stop-shop for links makes it easier for students to find the relevant resources
they need and to gives them more time to focus on their actual writing.

4 CONCLUSIONS
Overall, as two university instructors who are responsible for teaching professional English writing in a
higher education setting, our lived experiences have shown online teaching during the ERT period to be
challenging, but it has also encouraged us to learn a range of new teaching skills, strategies and how
to use new digital tools. In a postdigital world, it is clear to us that the merging and blending of digital
and physical spaces will continue to be complex and messy and will be shaped and constrained by
wider cultural, political, and social factors. In the future, we would not be at all surprised if our institution
soon starts applying the HyFlex (Hybrid and Flexible) [27] model of course design and delivery to all
classes in all colleges. Perhaps more by accident than design, the COM 209 course has already been
using some aspects of hybridity. However, with continued Covid-19 cases and a greater focus on learner
choice and, dare we say, consumer choice in the higher education market, greater flexibility may also
be inevitable.
As a final word, we worry that the pandemic has exacerbated the digital divide. Privileged groups of
learners and teachers in rich, developed countries such as ours have easy and convenient access to
their university’s digital infrastructure. In contrast, many other learners in poor countries have struggled
to continue their education from home. While many hail the democratization and opportunities of online
learning, students require both access to personal devices and a robust infrastructure, such as a durable
internet connection, to really benefit.
REFERENCES
[1] P. Jandric, J. Knox, T. Besley, T.Ryberg, J. Suoranta, and S. Hayes, “Postdigital Science and
Education,” in Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 50, no. 10, pp. 893, 2018.
[2] F. Seabra, A. Teixeira, M. Abelha, and L. Aires, “Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning in
Portugal: Preschool to Secondary School Teachers’ Perceptions,” in Education Sciences, vol. 11,
349, 2021.
[3] Z. Hurley, “Postdigital feminism and cultural visual regimes: Covid-19 at women’s only university in
the gulf,” in Postdigital Science and Education, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00134-3
[4] Covid Vaccinations, Our World in Data, Accessed 14th September 2021. Retrieved from
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=OWID_WRL.
[5] J. Knox, “What does the ‘Postdigital’ mean for education? Three critical perspectives on the digital
with implications for educational research and practice,” Postdigital Science and Education, vol 1,
p357-370, 2019.

[6] Aristotle (trans L. Cooper), The Rhetoric, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1932.
[7] D. Smith-Worthington and S. Jefferson, Technical Writing for Success (3rd ed), Mason, OH,
South-western Cengage Learning, 2011.
[8] J. Britton, T. Burgess, N. Martin, A. McLeod, and H. Rosen. The Development of Writing Abilities.
London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1975.
[9] L. Flower and J. R. Hayes, “A cognitive process of thinking and writing,” in College Composition
and Communication, vol 32(4), Dec 1981, pp 365-387. https://www.jstor.org/stable/356600
[10] S. Perl, “The composing process of unskilled college writers,” in Research in the Teaching of
English, vol. 13, no. 4, Dec 1979. https://www.jstor.org/stab le/4017077
[11] J. Williams, Style: Ten lessons in clarity and grace (7th ed), New York: NY, 2002.
[12] J. Emig, “Writing as a mode of learning,” in College Composition and Communication, vol. 28, no.
2, pp. 122-128, May 1977. https://doi.org/10.2307/356095
[13] J.S. Bruner, The Relevance of Education. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1971.

[14] R. Johnson-Sheehan, Technical Communication: Strategies for Today (5th ed), New York:
Pearson, 2015.

[15] G. Marechal, “Autoethnography,” in Encyclopaedia of Case Study Research (A.J. Mills, G.

Durepos and E. Wiebe eds.), pp. 43-45., London: Sage, 2010.
[16] L. Pedro, C. Barbosa, and C. Santos, “A critical review of mobile learning integration in formal
educational contexts,“ in International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, vol
15, no. 1, 2018.
[17] Kahoot, Accessed 17 September 2021. Retrieved from https://kahoot.com/
[18] Quizlet, Accessed 17 September 2021. Retrieved from https://quizlet.com/en-gb
[19] S. Blakeslee, “The CRAAP test,” in LOEX Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 6-7, Fall 2004,
https://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=loexquarterly
[20] Padlet, Accessed 17 September, 2021. Retrieved from https://padlet.com/
[21] Mendeley, Accessed 17 September, 2021. Retrieved from
https://www.mendeley.com/?interaction_required=true
[22] Google Docs, Accessed 17 September, 2021. Retrieved from
https://support.google.com/docs/answer/7068618?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop
[23] Grammarly, Accessed 17 September, 2021. Retrieved from https://app.grammarly.com/
[24] K. Conklin, & N. Schmitt, (2008). “Formulaic Sequences: Are They Processed More Quickly than
Non-Formulaic Language by Native and Non-native Speakers?” in Applied Linguistics, vol. 29, no.
1, pp. 72–89, 2008.
 [25] Showbie, Accessed 17 September, 2021. Retrieved from https://www.showbie.com/
[26] E. MacDonald, “The Effectiveness of Correction Codes on L2 Writing Accuracy,” in The Journal of
Kanda University of International Studies, vol. 32. pp. 323-335, 2020.
[27] B. Beatty, “Hybrid courses with flexible participation,” in Practical Applications and Experiences in
K-20 Blended Learning Environments (L. Kyei-Blankson and E. Ntuli eds.), pp.154-170, IGI
Global, 2014.
[28] WordWall, Accessed 17 September, 2021. Retrieved from https://wordwall.com/
[29] L. H. Wong & C. K. Looi, “What seams do we remove in mobile-assisted seamless learning? A
critical review of the literature,” in Computers and Education, vol. 57, no. 4, pp.2364–2381, 2011.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.06.007

View publication stats