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Providing online writing support—be it entirely virtually in an online course or sometimes virtually when leaving feedback—can feel daunting, regardless of how much experience you have with it. To summarize: the same best practices for teaching writing in person apply when teaching writing online. They just look different. Here are some important questions to keep in mind as you interact with writers online:

• What are your goals for your writing assignment or writing context?
• How can you articulate these goals to students?
• How can you utilize technology and tools to best facilitate your interactions with learners?

In this resource, we provide some recommendations for supporting writers in online contexts, which includes reaffirming other principles of writing covered in our other resources.

Recommendations for Providing Online Writing Support

1. Introduce writing assignments clearly. Teaching writing online might mean that you have less face time with students, and that it’s not as easy to walk through an assignment together in class. For this reason, you might want to consider providing more explanation than you actually think necessary in a written assignment description. 
2. Provide ample examples of the writing expected. Again, online students benefit from having lots of guidance and instruction, including examples. If you ask students to write a particular kind of paper, be sure to provide several examples of what that final product might look like. Even better, annotate that example with some “tips” or “hints” where you describe what makes the example effective and why.
3. Give plenty of feedback. Especially if you never interact with your students face-to-face, their written feedback from you is their main opportunity to assess their own progress in the course. Feedback can be written online or also voice comments left directly on Canvas, which is another way to help make the learning experience feel more personalized to students.
4. Personalize the online experience for students. Students can feel isolated from their educational community in online classes. Taking the time to encourage students to choose profile pictures and share about themselves in discussion boards can be a small way to help make it more personal to them. Additionally, addressing them by name in chats and responses can help build rapport, as well as the above-mentioned leaving audio feedback to students so that they can hear your voice and get a sense of what it’s like to work with you in-person.
5. Engage students in dialogue amongst each other and yourself. Even if you’re teaching writing online in an asynchronous context, build in a regular practice of peer response. Have students comment on each other’s discussion posts or drafts; ask students to build a powerpoint together using class material. Have “drop in” hours where students can join you in discussing topics. Building in interactive elements like this can help students more actively learn.
6. Ensure instructions, feedback, and other course elements are accessible. Remember that “available” does not necessarily equate “accessible.” Can students who rely on screen readers use those tools with a PDF that was quickly scanned as an image with the lines not broken down into readable chunks? Be sure to triple check that all students can access important course materials.
7. Be direct yet considerate in your communication with writers. Especially if you are mostly communicating with students via written text, take extra care to demonstrate compassion and approachability in your tone. We know form our personal experiences that sometimes information conveyed in a text message hits different than in a phone call or face-to-face conversation. Be mindful of this in your communication, and work to try and avoid any misunderstandings in tone. 
8. Respond promptly to writers. Students rely on your feedback to assess their feedback and progress through your course. While writing feedback can possibly be pushed later in a face-to-face class where students have the opportunity to approach you during or after class, those opportunities are more spare in online contexts and prompt responses from you can help mitigate student anxiety. That said, also enforce reasonable expectations.
9. Set and maintain important boundaries. Teaching online can sometimes become quite consuming where we feel that we have to respond to all the things at all times of the day. Set and maintain boundaries with students, such as stating that you will not respond to emails on the weekends but check first thing Monday morning. Set clear times and availability for office hours and ask students to stick to that. It’s important to take care of yourself when teaching online, and blocking off enough time for yourself to finish your tasks here and in your other professional contexts. 

References and Further Reading

• Borgman, Jessie, & McArdle, Casey. (2019). . Practices & Possibilities. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado.
• Bourelle, Tiffany, Rankins-Robertson, Sherry, Bourelle, Andrew, Roen, Duane. (2013). Assessing learning in redesigned online first-year composition courses. In McKee, Heidi A. & DeVoss, Danielle N. (Eds.), . Computers and Composition Digital Press/Utah State University Press.
• Hewett, Beth L., and DePew, Kevin Eric (Eds.). (2015). . Perspectives on Writing. The WAC Clearinghouse; Parlor Press.
• Litterio, L. M. (2018). Uncovering student perceptions of a first-year online writing course. Computers and Composition, 47, 1–13.
• Rendahl, M., & Breuch, L.-A. K. (2013). Toward a complexity of online learning: Learners in online first-year writing. Computers and Composition, 30(4), 297–314.
• Warnock, Scott. (2009). Teaching writing online: How and why. National Council of Teachers of English.
• . The OWI Community explains and promotes the PARS (Personal, Accessible, Responsive, and Strategic) approach to online writing instruction.
• The Just In Time Hub is a gateway to to GSOLE's various resources, including those below as well as excellent written materials to help you think through course conversion/migration.