The Role of Space and Place: A Case Study of Students' Experiences in Online First-Year Writing Courses (OFYWCs)

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Allen and Seaman (2016) report that in Fall 2014 more than one in four (28.4%) of United States’ college students—5.8 million—were enrolled in online courses and of those, almost half—2.85 million students—were registered for online coursework exclusively. While enrollments in online writing courses (OWCs), especially online first-year writing courses (OFYWCs) continue to grow at public and private non-profit institutions in the U.S., online writing instruction (OWI) scholars argue this change signals a desperate need for additional research on teaching and writing in online learning environments (OLEs). As the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Committee for Best Practices in Online Writing Instruction points out, as the landscape of college composition hurriedly shifts toward OWCs, instructors’ teaching practices must also evolve. To adapt to OLEs, instructors must consider their students’ experiences and perceptions of online learning, however, OWI research often overlooks student voices making this challenge even more difficult. While online enrollments at public and private non-profit institutions continue to rise and student and teacher preparation for online learning stagnates, it is particularly important for instructors, administrators, and online education scholars to better understand how and why students learn online.