| I designed a study of online courses that combined ethnography and teacher research. I observed and described the elements of two completely online second semester first-year composition courses in the Spring 2004 semester, one that I taught and one taught by another instructor. Throughout the project, I gathered all documents relevant to the courses I studied, and produced a thick description of them. Document gathering provided the context for the classes themselves---syllabi, calendars, assigned reading materials. I also conducted interviews with the other teacher participating in my study about her design choices and pedagogy, technology and teaching background, and reading and writing habits. I answered the same questions that she did. During the course of the semester, I administered to students, by email, three questionnaires. These helped contextualize the content analysis portion of my project by providing me with information about the people participating in the discussions---their backgrounds with technology, their reading and writing habits, their levels of participation---all of which affect their writing/participation in online discussions. Finally, I analyzed the content of the students' discussions about their assigned reading. I tracked students' discussion in order to identify characteristics of students' writing about assigned reading. I based the unit of analysis on individual posts and described what I saw by providing representative examples of comments. I used the examples to help illustrate how online discussions might develop in contexts similar to those I studied.;Online courses are a new component of composition. We don't know yet how best to structure our courses and how to assign readings and help guide/structure/generate discussion of texts so that online discussion in our classrooms is productive. My study has the potential to help create effective reading assignments that maximize learning, thinking, and writing skills. I also hope to help those unfamiliar with online teaching and distance education research better understand online classrooms---potential online teachers and administrators who are deciding whether to start online programs in their departments or who are restructuring distance education programs in order to meet new challenges that web-based distance learning creates. |
