Making distance presence: The compositional voice in online learning

This article enacts a dialogue between my experience as a full-time, online course designer and my background in composition and English studies. It proposes and theorizes a more conscious and extensive use of a compositional or third voice in online classes as an alternative to the combination of instructional and conversational voices typically available to students and teachers. This article argues that teaching and learning in online classes need to be recognized and articulated as aesthetic, linguistic, and performative processes, for which the literary methodologies and compositional pedagogies of English provide critical tools.