Writing skills and online teaching

A question posed to me from an earlier blog inquired as to what special characteristics an online teacher needs, as opposed to an on ground teacher. I’ve been thinking about that a great deal, and while it’s obvious that an online teacher needs to be an expert in the subject matter, to be well-versed in technology, to exhibit well thought out teaching methods, and to care about students, what jumps out at me as one of the very most important qualities of an online teacher is extremely high quality writing skills. An on ground teacher doesn’t necessarily have to possess good writing skills. Students may never know. However, an online teacher communicates almost exclusively through writing which makes that skill of huge importance.

According to Min Shi, Curtis J. Bonk, and Richard J. Magjuka in their article about time management skills of online teachers (http://itdl.org/Journal/Feb_06/article01.htm), one of the best ways to cut down on not only confusion in the classroom but also to ultimately save instructional time is to write well. “Because writing is a major, and sometime the only, channel of communication in an online class, the importance of clear and concise writing of the course materials cannot be over-emphasized.”

Going a step further than writing the course materials well and clearly defining course expectations through writing, though, the skill of writing becomes extremely important in the personal correspondence with students, including e-mail, assignment assessments, discussion board responses, and so on. Not only must the writing be clear in a content way, but the writing must also be carefully analyzed for the nuances implied by the writing. In my experience e-mail and short written comments can sound cold, ostentatious, and accusatory, even when that wasn’t the implication. It’s the nature of the communication medium. An instructor needs to be in tune with these nonverbal characteristics of the writing and seek to communicate the appropriate emotions along with the appropriate content.