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Writing is the course that sets the stage for maximum student-instructor interaction, especially for first year students in universities and colleges. The current trend however is that almost all parts of the curriculum is rapidly moving online.

As this shift takes place, there is a serious effort by the Conference on College Composition and Communication to develop certain guidelines for ensuring quality. An in-depth research was conducted and results were presented by the association’s leaders in the annual meeting.

There are encouraging signs shown by early research results even though there were certain signs that posed problems and worries. Looking at the situation positively, this will result in better rates of retention. The worrying part is the lack of evidence amongst colleges on whether they are thinking about the implications of this shift at all and whether there are any efforts on to train instructors in handling the shift.

Colleges have always been ignoring class size guidelines and this may continue online too. There is no immediate data on the number and type of classes taught online. There is no data on whether it is creative writing, business writing or basic first year course taught online.

Figures are however based on minority consensus. For instance, there are many liberal arts colleges that are still traditional and do not offer any courses online. Certain other institutions offer only around twenty percent of their introductory courses in writing online. The figure provided however is for institutes that offer 100% online programs.

Results of the survey were presented by a 4C’s online instruction committee member Christa Ehmann Powers. She is also an online tutoring company, Smarthinking.com’s vice president. University of Nebraska’s English associate professor, Deborah Minter is another committee member. She said that there is no theorized of online writing instruction taken into consideration in our online writing instructions discussion.

She presented the results of online instructor focus groups conducted by 4Cs. There was no real concern here regarding the quality of courses. Many expressed concerns over the fact that there was an evident struggle to be a presence to students and give them a sense of security that we are always here.

There were concerns over the stability of the technology used and the fact that they were not really consulted while choosing the technology. There were concerns that certain key decisions did not really meet their approval.

There is no concrete decision or determination over the best practice option for online writing by the 4C. One thing was certain. Guidelines were required by their colleagues. They noted a significant fact that adjuncts were the ones who do the most number writing instructions. They are the ones who require a back up.

North Carolina State University’s first year writing director and another panel member Susan K. Miller-Cochran said that guidelines must not be developed with too many details as every institute operates under unique situations and context. She went on to say that it was very important to take a strong stand against massive class sizes.