As a student of User-Centered Design, I have been learning about UX and instructional design, but I honestly had not thought about applying those same concepts directly to my own classroom. Reading Borgman and McArdle’s first chapter changed that. It made me realize just how powerful and necessary that application really is. As the authors state, “as the instructor you must take a user-centered design approach” (p. 19). That reminded me that teaching online is not just about delivering content. It is about intentionally designing a space where students feel seen, valued, and supported. I already try to put students’ needs first, but this reading pushed me to think about doing it more deliberately.

Small design choices, it turns out, carry more weight than I had given them credit for. Things like using stock images throughout a course or creating a dedicated contact information section (pp. 22, 25) might seem minor, but they shape how students experience the course from the moment they log in. These are choices that make the environment feel warmer and more relatable, and I had never thought about them that way before. I usually hold monthly one-on-one check-ins with my students in face-to-face classes, and I was actually planning to skip those once we moved online. This reading made me reconsider. Those check-ins will matter even more in an online context, precisely because students need to feel that someone is present and paying attention. As the authors put it, “students appreciate the extra effort… they realize that they’re not out there alone taking your course in isolation” (p. 26).

The second reading, by Beth Hewett, challenged my thinking in a different but equally important way. OWI Principle 3 argues that we cannot simply move face-to-face teaching methods online without thoughtful adjustments (p. 49). That principle pushed me to stop thinking of online teaching as a translation of what I already do in person and start thinking of it as an opportunity to design instruction that actually fits the medium. Hewett points out that online writing instruction is “by nature text-centric and reading-heavy and requires intensive written communication” (p. 49). That observation stayed with me, because it means the stakes of good design are higher online, not lower. Every written instruction, every prompt, every piece of feedback carries more of the communicative load that in-person teaching distributes across tone, body language, and real-time conversation.

Taken together, these readings reframed how I think about what it means to be present for students in an online course. Presence is not accidental. It has to be designed.

References

Borgman, J., & McArdle, C. (Eds.). (2021). PARS in practice: More resources and strategies for online writing instructors. WAC Clearinghouse.

Hewett, B. L. (2015). The online writing conference: A guide for teachers and tutors. Heinemann.