11094

11094

General Session - Conference Presentation Only (no formal paper)

CUNY Online Composition Pilot: A New Model of Collaborative Course Development
Jane Weiss, Kingsborough Community College of CUNY, New York, USA, jweiss@kbcc.cuny.edu William Bernhardt, College of Staten Island and CUNY School of Professional Studies, New York, USA, william.bernhardt@csi.cuny.edu Deirdre O'Boy, Lehman College of CUNY, New York, USA, deirdre.oboy@lehman.cuny.edu David Humphries, Queensborough Community College of CUNY, New York, USA, DHumphries@qcc.cuny.edu

In the summer and fall of 2010, the City University of New York embarked on a project aimed at creating and piloting asynchronous online college writing courses at several CUNY campuses. Beginning with an “ur-course” originally conceived by William Bernhardt for the CUNY School of Professional Studies, faculty at five CUNY campuses developed courses tailored to the needs of their own colleges, then taught their courses and supervised instructors teaching additional sections of the courses. The group discussed and evaluated their experiences through the CUNY Academic Commons, an online community, to test the viability of the models and identify problems and possibilities. The goal was a template flexible enough to accommodate the “local cultures” of different campuses, and yet structured enough to assure consistency and lend support to instructors new to online composition. While not free of problems, the online courses proved rewarding and worthy of replication. One of the largest and most diverse urban universities in the United States, CUNY was a rigorous testing ground. Therefore, this experience of collaborative development of composition courses for asynchronous online delivery across campuses with differing student needs and academic cultures has produced results applicable to a variety of universities. Panel members will discuss and share the project’s challenges and achievements in this interactive session.

All Audiences Composition and college writing; asynchronous online instruction; collaborative course development