Uncovering Student Perceptions of a First-Year Online Writing Course

This article examined student perceptions of the Writing Program Administrators (WPA) learning outcomes for first-year writing through a fully online first-year writing course. A second research question explored how the course content focused on technology, visual rhetoric, and social media impacted students' overall perceptions about their learning. The method used in this study is qualitative in nature, based on a Likert-scale survey and end of semester open-ended surveys with students. The findings indicate that students perceived their abilities to improve not only in the four areas delineated by the WPA outcomes, but also through the ability to see writing as the primary method of communication and have more time to reflect in an online environment. Findings also suggest that instructor feedback and relevant course content both positively impact student perceptions of an online course. This article concludes with encouragement for additional research and studies relating to first-year writing courses in an online environment.