Professional Development in Online Teaching and Learning in Technical Communication: A Ten-year Retrospective

Technical communication instructors need professional development opportunities that will aid them in creating their online courses; in developing curricula; and in teaching in what may be a new environment. Although instructors can turn to instructional design teams for assistance in using Learning Management System and its functions, they specifically need their own first-hand, immersive learning within their pedagogical training. In other words, teachers need to learn in an online context like the environment that their students will use; such direct training helps instructors to facilitate student learning in a technologically distributed classroom. Beyond learning technological skills to facilitate a course, these teachers need to learn to use the technology effectively to keep students on track and to teach them skills and material.

This collection―which includes three contributions from 2007 and 10 from 2017―focuses on the types of professional development instructors need to be successful in the online technical communication classroom. Formed as a 10-year retrospective of the field and its advances in online education professional development, the book offers instructors theoretical and practical suggestions for creating and teaching successful online courses and managing entire online technical communication programs. This book was originally published as a special issue of Technical Communication Quarterly (TCQ).

Beth L. Hewett is an expert in online literacy instruction; the immediate past President of the Global Society for Online Literacy Educators; and the owner of Defend & Publish, Forest Hill, USA, an adult writing-coaching business. She is the author of numerous books, articles, and book chapters regarding writing in a digital era.

Tiffany Bourelle is an Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, USA, where she teaches first-year writing and technical communication. Her work has been published in Computers and Composition and TCQ, and she is the Co-Editor of Women's Professional Lives in Rhetoric and Composition: Choice, Chance, and Serendipity (with Elizabeth A. Flynn, 2018).