OWI Symposium
In the summer of 2020, we decided that we wanted to expand our open access resources by having our first every online writing instruction symposium.
The COVID-19 pandemic had dramatically impacted higher education and forced many instructors to teach online for the first time with little or no training and few resources. We wanted to help and offer a symposium that would encourage and inspire instructors across the globe to implement small practices into their online writing courses.
Not knowing what to expect, we reached out to our friends and colleagues whose research focused on OWI and we were overwhelmed by their response and willingness to help.
We had enough people willing to donate their time to our symposium that we decided to hold two symposiums, one in August and one in September.
We decided to have speakers do ignite talks and feature a Keynote Speaker for each symposium. Ignite talks are quick presentations that inspire audiences on a variety of topics. Each presentation is exactly 5 minutes and contains exactly 20 slides, with each slide set to automatically advance after 15 seconds while the speaker talks.
The August 2020 symposium was inspired by Flower Darby and James Lang’s Book Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes. We wanted to showcase online writing instructors and scholars discussing small but replicable topics that attendees could implement into their own online writing courses or programs. The symposium was titled, Small Online Writing Instruction.
The September 2020 symposium focused on PARS letter A, accessible and on design, which is one of the PARS approach layers (the three layers of the PARS approach are design, instruction and administration). We kept the theme of small and replicable topics and continued with the ignite talks and Keynote Speaker format. The symposium was titled, Removing Barriers to Learning: Access, Design and Application.
The COVID-19 pandemic had dramatically impacted higher education and forced many instructors to teach online for the first time with little or no training and few resources. We wanted to help and offer a symposium that would encourage and inspire instructors across the globe to implement small practices into their online writing courses.
Not knowing what to expect, we reached out to our friends and colleagues whose research focused on OWI and we were overwhelmed by their response and willingness to help.
We had enough people willing to donate their time to our symposium that we decided to hold two symposiums, one in August and one in September.
We decided to have speakers do ignite talks and feature a Keynote Speaker for each symposium. Ignite talks are quick presentations that inspire audiences on a variety of topics. Each presentation is exactly 5 minutes and contains exactly 20 slides, with each slide set to automatically advance after 15 seconds while the speaker talks.
The August 2020 symposium was inspired by Flower Darby and James Lang’s Book Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes. We wanted to showcase online writing instructors and scholars discussing small but replicable topics that attendees could implement into their own online writing courses or programs. The symposium was titled, Small Online Writing Instruction.
The September 2020 symposium focused on PARS letter A, accessible and on design, which is one of the PARS approach layers (the three layers of the PARS approach are design, instruction and administration). We kept the theme of small and replicable topics and continued with the ignite talks and Keynote Speaker format. The symposium was titled, Removing Barriers to Learning: Access, Design and Application.