“A Friendly Voice and a Smiling Face”: The Emotional Work of Teaching Writing Online

Presented by Amanda Goldrick-JonesSimon Fraser UniversityACCUTE, 1 June 2008

“Teaching a first-year writing course online...”

• ...demands that the instructor enter into an individual tutorial relationship with each student … If you've never taught online, you have no concept of how time-consuming these tasks can be.” (Freeman, 2005a)

• ...demands that the instructor enter into an individual tutorial relationship with each student … If you've never taught online, you have no concept of how time-consuming these tasks can be.” (Freeman, 2005a)

What is “emotion work”?

• ...the labour required to suppress or induce feelings “to sustain the outward countenance that produces the proper state of mind in others.” (Hochschild, 1983, 2003, p. 7).

Perception or reality...?

Online courses tend to lack personal presence and opportunities for social reciprocity.

These conditions affect the quality of the relationship that you, as a teacher of writing, create with your students as part of their learning.

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Our central question...

How do online writing instructors transform their beliefs and the physical actions they would make based on those beliefs (e.g., movement, gestures, eye contact, listening, etc.) in a teaching environment in which they cannot be present physically? (Lo, 2002)•

“A friendly voice”: textual empathy

• Is it your topic that's making you feel bad? Often, unless you have done a lot of healing, concentrating on something that hurt you badly can be difficult. Unless you have enough distance from the hurt, writing about related material can be very difficult … It seems to me that you write quite well-- you express yourself well in all these messages to me! So the writing isn't the problem. Is the assignment confusing you? (Freeman, 2005b)

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“A friendly voice”: textual empathy

...Before I sent [my] message, I actually read it aloud. I wanted to make sure that it sounded clear, yet not threatening. I remember that when I read the message, I did so with a friendly voice and a smiling face … I checked the previous e-mail messages between the two of us ... reviewed her self-introduction to recall who she was, where she was, what she did … Psychologically, I struggled tremendously as I wrote and posted [my response] … (Lo, 2002)

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“A smiling face”?

“A smiling face”: in praise of emoticons...

… Gunawardena and Zittle (1997) found that social presence was a strong predictor of learner satisfaction in a text-based, web-based computer conference and that participants felt a higher sense of social presence by using emoticons … (Andreatta, 2003, p. 92).

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“A smiling face”: two teachers’ views

It helps to use emoticons to convey your tone. Having a conflict or misunderstanding doesn’t mean you don’t like the person any more, but people often forget that reality, or don’t like to say it. It may be most needed during a tense interaction. (Lynch, 2004, p. 126).•

It helps to use emoticons to convey your tone. Having a conflict or misunderstanding doesn’t mean you don’t like the person any more, but people often forget that reality, or don’t like to say it. It may be most needed during a tense interaction. (Lynch, 2004, p. 126).•

I use [emoticons] all the time in

corresponding with students with the

idea that they should make a difference.

(KairosNews Blog)

•...[Students felt that] in an online community, •participants should follow the lead of those •around them in determining how formal or •informal their style should be. There seemed to be a strong consensus among students that •emoticons are informal. Along those lines, several postings placed emoticons (along with netspeak) firmly under “casual communication only.” In one or two instances, emoticons were equated with the way a younger generation communicates. (Goldrick-Jones, 2007, The Learn Project)

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•...[Students felt that] in an online community, •participants should follow the lead of those •around them in determining how formal or •informal their style should be. There seemed to be a strong consensus among students that •emoticons are informal. Along those lines, several postings placed emoticons (along with netspeak) firmly under “casual communication only.” In one or two instances, emoticons were equated with the way a younger generation communicates. (Goldrick-Jones, 2007, The Learn Project)

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“A smiling face”: students’ perceptions

The rewards of emotional work...

High-quality student interaction ... a growing body of literature portrays the online teaching and learning environment as a personally rewarding and satisfying one for many faculty members” (Thompson, 2004, p. 84).

The formation of new social clusters around common interests, “a community of support and information... like having the corner bar, complete with old buddies and delightful newcomers” (Rheingold, 1998 [also 1993, p. 24]).

...resulting in more student engagement, mutual support, and motivation.

High-quality student interaction ... a growing body of literature portrays the online teaching and learning environment as a personally rewarding and satisfying one for many faculty members” (Thompson, 2004, p. 84).

The formation of new social clusters around common interests, “a community of support and information... like having the corner bar, complete with old buddies and delightful newcomers” (Rheingold, 1998 [also 1993, p. 24]).

...resulting in more student engagement, mutual support, and motivation.

A labour of love...

How can writing instructors model and mentor productive emotion work in teaching writing online, without adding to their already considerable outlay of time and energy? How can departments / institutions support this

goal?Questions or comments?

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References• •Andreatta, P. (2003). The effect of affective corrective feedback variation in web-based instruction on community

college student satisfaction and retention. Unpublished dissertation (123 pp excerpt). University of San Francisco. Available from http://www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/andreattap/dissertation.pdf.

• •Freeman, J. (2005a). E-mail copied to author. (Nov. 24).

• •Freeman, J. (2005b). E-mail to author. (Nov. 24).

• •Hochschild, A. R. (1983, 2003). The managed heart: commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley: U of California Press.

• •Lo, Y. G. (2002). Teaching behind the computer screen: an international graduate student’s experiences in online education. Reading online. International Reading Association, Inc. Retrieved 23 Nov. 2005 from http://www.readingonline.org/international/lo/

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References, cont’d• •Lynch, M. M. (2004). Learning online: A guide to success in the virtual classroom. New York:

Routledge Falmer.

• •Reeves, T. C. (2003). Storm clouds on the digital education horizon. Journal of Computing in Higher Education 15 (1): 3-26. [Electronic version.] Retrieved 15 Nov. 2005 from http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=https://secure.ascilite.org.au/conferences/auckland02/proceedings/papers/key_reeves.pdf

• •Rheingold, H. (1998). The virtual community: homesteading on the electronic frontier. [Electronic version]. Retrieved 24 Nov. 2005 from http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/8.html

• •Thompson, M. M. (2004). Engagement or encagement? Faculty workload in the online environment. Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning. University of Wisconsin: 1-6. [Electronic version.] Retrieved 15 Nov. 2005 from http://scholar.google.com/url?sa=U&q=http://www.wisc.edu/depd/series/thompson.pdf

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