Teaching and composing with multimedia humanizes online technical writing and communication classes. However, students do not always see the connection between multimedia instructional materials, multimedia assignments, and the course learning outcomes. Purposeful pedagogy-driven course design uses multimedia instructional materials to connect assignments, course materials, and assessments with course outcomes. Technical writing instructors can integrate synchronous and asynchronous multimedia elements to address not only the what and why of online technical writing instruction but also the how of multimedia instructional materials. Example multimedia instructional materials and student projects discussed in the article can increase student retention and promote engaged learning.

This article describes an interdisciplinary, partially online honors course entitled Video Game Theory and Design. The article reviews the literature surrounding video games and technical communication and then outlines the learning objectives for the course. The authors describe individual and team-produced assignments and suggest game design techniques for motivating students. We explain how we assess different projects, including oral game pitches and the complex technical Game Design Documents that are students’ final deliverables. Finally, we discuss how game design techniques provide new perspectives on writing and generate new possibilities for technical communication assignments. We close by proposing three tactics that are useful for teaching technical communication students in hybrid and fully online courses: (a) nonlinear association for creative thinking; (b) team-based assignments for writing and editing using game-based tools; and (c) iterative prototyping and playtesting for multimodal production. Each tactic is contextualized using examples drawn from the field.

In increasingly online higher education environments, instructors must develop positive and community-oriented learning environments, equivalent to, if different from, face-to-face learning experiences. Connectivism and communities of inquiry are complementary theories that facilitate the design and development of online learning and enable online learners to connect with peers. This article discusses two pedagogical interventions that encourage connectivism and foster communities of inquiry in online technical communication programs: (a) a face-to-face orientation workshop at the beginning of an online program and (b) a peer-review activity in a research methods graduate course. The article explains the development, deployment, and evaluation of the activities.

Teaching and composing with multimedia humanizes online technical writing and communication classes. However, students do not always see the connection between multimedia instructional materials, multimedia assignments, and the course learning outcomes. Purposeful pedagogy-driven course design uses multimedia instructional materials to connect assignments, course materials, and assessments with course outcomes. Technical writing instructors can integrate synchronous and asynchronous multimedia elements to address not only the what and why of online technical writing instruction but also the how of multimedia instructional materials. Example multimedia instructional materials and student projects discussed in the article can increase student retention and promote engaged learning.

To investigate how college students understand and use cloud technology for collaborative writing, the authors studied two asynchronous online courses, on science communication and on technical communication. Students worked on a group assignment (3–4 per group) using Google Docs and individually reflected on their experience writing collaboratively. This article explores leadership and how it interacts with team knowledge making and the collaborative writing process. Guidelines are outlined for instructors interested in adopting collaborative, cloud-based assignments, and the tension between providing clear instructional guidance for student teams and allowing teams to embrace the ambiguity and messiness of virtual collaboration are discussed.

Drawing from the author’s experience teaching online technical communication courses with an embedded service-learning component, this essay opens the discussion to the potential problems involved in designing online service-learning courses and provides practical approaches to integrating service learning into online coursework. The essay addresses specifically those classrooms where students may be required to develop or find their own service opportunities, whether those opportunities are within their community, on the college or university campus, or in another community. The essay argues by implementing service learning into online classrooms and requiring students to locate their own agencies, students not only build a greater sense of civic engagement because they are working with agencies whose missions they support, but also they develop a greater sense of responsibility for their own education and the coursework they undertake.

This mixed-methods experimental study examined the effect of service learning in a distance education technical writing course. Quantitative analysis of data found evidence for a positive relationship between participation in service learning and technical writing learning outcomes. Additionally, qualitative analysis suggests that service learning in online technical writing courses helps students to make connections to the “real world,” encourages students to connect with their audience(s) and develop a sense of purpose for writing tasks, connects students to future employment, and develops deep learning with course materials. It is hypothesized that these factors support the development of learning outcomes in distance education students.

Recent scholarship on global online courses points to the need to examine the issue of social context in an online global learning environment. To explore global learners' cultural perspectives on the social climate of an online class, we first review the social presence theory—which can be used to examine the social climate in an online classroom, and explain factors that contribute to learners' social presence. Then we report findings of a survey conducted among a group of Chinese business students and discuss specific aspects of an online business communication class which might contribute to enhancing global learners' sense of social presence in an online environment. We conclude the study by explaining the present study's implications for delivering effective online business and technical communication courses with global learners and recommending strategies for increasing global audiences' social presence in an online class created by the instructor and the online community.

The author has taught a distance education version of the undergraduate technical communication service course at Boise State University since 1997 and shares the strategies he has found to decrease the time instructors spend teaching online, thereby enabling them to use the time they do have to enhance their students' online experience. These strategies are distributed among four areas: management of collaboration, presentation of course material, grading, and interaction with students. For each one, the author presents the problems that may occur and approaches to resolving them. The article addresses a number of concerns expressed in the scholarly literature on distance education and is informed by surveys given to five sections of the author's course taught between 2001 and 2003. Interspersed through the article is an overview of some of the current research and commentary on distance education of particular interest to those teaching the technical communication service course via the Internet.