Designing efficiencies: The parallel narratives of distance education and composition studies

Distance education (DE) programs at many universities have been initiated to generate new efficiencies for the academic process, particularly cost efficiency and pedagogical efficiency. In writing studies, this move toward digitally mediated instruction has, in some classrooms, recreated practices that resonate with the pedagogy that resulted from Current-Traditional Rhetoric (CTR). Thus, a trace of distance education's and composition studies’ parallel narratives demonstrates that writing studies has already addressed some of the questions (and concerns) that online writing instruction raises. By specifically focusing on the tensions created by negotiating cost efficiencies and pedagogical efficiencies with communication efficiencies and medium efficiencies, we interrogate current administrative decisions as well their pedagogical outcomes. We conclude by proposing strategies for rearticulating future narratives about online writing instruction in potentially productive ways.