Teaching Creative Writing Online: A User Experience Study

In the spring of 2020, creative writing teaching moved online at a fast and furious pace. At the time, such a move was necessary in order to save businesses and maintain some much needed social contact. Now that restrictions are ending, students will again have a choice about whether they learn in a classroom or online. This study seeks to evaluate what has and hasn’t worked, whether these courses are meeting students’ expectations and how best to improve the weak points. 

As a means of achieving this, I employed user experience research methodologies including a survey to collect quantitative and qualitative data, a series of in depth interviews and a think aloud exercise to evaluate course page copy and design. The results of this work will be useful to those who teach these courses as well as providers that plan and organize them. In addition, a lot of the findings are applicable to teaching both online and off. 

These are the research questions that shaped the study:

• Are online creative writing courses living up to student expectations? Why are they succeeding or failing?

• What are the most successful online formats and teaching techniques?

• What are the primary concerns of a student seeking to book an online creative writing course? How can provider marketing accommodate these concerns?

• What are the long-term impacts learners are hoping to achieve with these courses?

Everyone involved in teaching creative writing online, from those who design the courses to those who design the sales pages, will find much relevant material in this study. However, because there is so much material here, please use the table of contents below to help you navigate to the sections most relevant to you.

Contents

The Survey, The Interviews, Personas - For researchers and course designers

Course Page Testing and Redesign - For those writing course descriptions and designing sales pages

Best Practice Recommendations - For those who teach creative writing (online and off)

Questions and Comments - Please get in touch through the contact form. I would love to hear about how you’re using this study in your research and teaching.

 The Survey

This podcast and the slide deck that follow provide a detailed discussion of the most important findings from the survey. Those who need or prefer a transcription of the podcast can find one here.

 The Interviews

After completing the analysis of the survey data, it was clear that there were some repeating patterns in students’ motivations for booking a course, what students wanted to happen on a course and how they interacted with other students. I therefore conducted four in-depth interviews in order to get more of an understanding of how these patterns might cluster into one or more personas.

These interviews each took one hour to one hour and fifteen minutes. The approach was semi-structured with 8 questions. In addition to the questions there was a cognitive walkthrough of choosing between two courses (selected by me) and a ranking activity for priorities when booking a course. The participants were drawn from the pool that had submitted a response to the survey and each was given a £10 gift card to bookshop.org as a thank you.

Behavioural Scales

The following behavioral scales are based on concepts drawn from the survey data as well as the interviews. The issues listed came up repeatedly in the survey data (see slides 10, 15, 16, 18 and 20) and were discussed by the interview participants. The positioning of the issues on opposite sides of the scales were based on the interviews. Ideally, I would like to include more interview participants but time and resources did not allow for this.

 Personas

Two clear personas emerged from the interview data. The interview participants mainly clustered into similar positions on the scales and this seemed to line up with findings in the survey data. The majority of survey participants were relatively experienced and interested in booking courses to learn specific new skills. Smaller numbers were interested in meeting other the social aspects of these courses and/or finding structure and inspiration to keep writing. Therefore the two personas cover the span of these qualities. There may be a third persona—a first-time student on a creative writing course with different needs to more experienced students—but establishing this was outside the scope of this research. 

 Course Page Testing and Redesign

Those who are writing course pages may not have experience of optimizing design and copy for selling courses online. This section provides detailed advice on how to present courses in a way that meets the needs and expectations of this audience. 

After the discussion of the questions in the interviews, I asked participants to do a cognitive walkthrough of their decision process when choosing between two online creative writing courses. Three complete tests were usable but the fourth was only partially usable because the participant was already deeply familiar with one of the courses. I therefore only included some of her discussion of course page two in the results. 

Overall, it was clear from the tests that course page one was much more navigable than course page two. Three testers were torn between choosing course one and course two. Each was more intrigued by the topic of course one and preferred the live format, but because course page two was so much better laid out they thought they might choose course two. They were more confident they knew what they would be getting in course two. 

Following is a list of issues and needs as expressed by the testers. As a researcher, I am always looking for repeated issues in tests such as these. In this case, the testers were so closely in agreement with each other that I would consider the findings very reliable.  

Findings

Concerns noted by three of the four testers

Course description should get straight to the point. Testers did not like searching for information in the large section of text in course page one nor did they find the emotive language about novel writing in course page two relevant.

What you get should be clear straight away. Lectures, tutorials, feedback, discussion sessions, live sessions - potential students wanted to know straight away what was included. 

The dates and times needed to be immediately clear. Part of this was practical: the tester needed to know if they could attend. Part of this was simply knowing what and how much would be happening over how long.

The schedule should be as detailed as possible. Testers were appreciative of the detailed outline of every session in course page two but they wanted more information about what would happen in course one (eg, topics of discussion, would there be in class writing).

Who the tutors are needs to be immediately clear. Testers searched for this information on both course pages. They expected to do additional research off the page, but thought brief information about the tutors should be easily locatable.

Cost should be in local currency. One of the course pages gave the fee in dollars only.

Concerns noted by two of the four testers

Testimonials are not highly regarded. Two of the testers stated that they did not fully trust testimonials and one did not acknowledge them at all.

Links to tutor websites or publications should be provided. Two of the testers wished there were links directly to the tutors’ websites. They intended to do their own research off the page so it would be helpful to facilitate this. 

Loud Absences

The lack of mention of the following issues was surprising and warrants consideration.

Contacting the course provider for more information. Even though the testers struggled to understand exactly what would happen in course one, none considered contacting the provider to ask questions. This suggests that they expect all information about a course will be on the page. 

Reputation. Reputation of the course provider was very important in the survey findings but there was little discussion about it by testers. Four were already very familiar with the provider for course one and three knew who the tutor of course two was. For lesser known providers or tutors, establishing reputation will likely be a more important factor.

Annotated Course Page One 

The image below shows when and where issues came up during the testing.

Course Page One Redesigned

The following shows how the course page could be redesigned to address some of the issues highlighted above.

 Best Practice Recommendations  

1. Know Who Your Students Are

Are your students on a creative writing course for the first time? Or do they have a list of publications? What are they hoping to get out of your course? A chance to try writing a new genre? Or some new ideas to refresh and renew their writing in a genre they know well? 

These are things you need to know in order to pitch your teaching to the right level. One of the frustrations that especially came out during the interviews was that some courses were too beginner-ish. Some students were just plain bored because the teaching content did not go beyond the obvious. Some discussions were frustrating to experienced writers because the questions asked were so basic. 

There were few beginners in the cohort, but it is easy to imagine the other side of this problem. Beginners might be overwhelmed and lost if a lot of knowledge is assumed. In courses where a lot of feedback is given by tutors as well as students, lack of experience in taking this type of criticism might result in discouragement and damage to confidence. 

So how does an instructor know how to pitch her teaching when she walks into a classroom full of people she’s never met before? I think there are two clear solutions to this problem. First, consider the personas above. These are specifically meant to help you understand the needs and goals of your students. Can you meet the expectations of both personas in a single class? Or is it better to aim at one or the other in order to ensure a better experience?

Secondly, be absolutely clear about the content and structure of your course in your marketing materials and during the sign up process. That way everyone comes into the classroom with realistic expectations of what will happen there.

2. Be Clear About What Will Happen in Your Course

In the current environment of selling online, the single most important way of ensuring your students are satisfied with their course is to make sure they know what will happen in your classroom. This is to say the course descriptions and course sales pages need careful, thoughtful design and copywriting. The findings of the course page tests, including the annotated page plus its redesign, provide a detailed map of how this can be done. In short, if the following rules are applied, it will go a long way toward making sure your students know what they are signing up for. 

Give a short, concise opening description of the course. This is an audience that likes to read, but no one reads in detail on the web. Keep it short and sweet.

Make sure the dates and times of sessions are immediately clear. Try to do this visually rather than making the user search through text.

Be absolutely clear about what is included in the course. This is to say you need to spell out what actually happens: lectures, tutorials, feedback sessions?

Wherever possible describe in detail what will happen in each session. What will be discussed? Will there be class writing? Student to student feedback?

Expect users to leave the page to research tutors. Potential students will appreciate it if this process were facilitated with links to tutor websites or publications. All you need on your page is the name and very brief info for each tutor.

Don’t assume potential students will contact you for more information. Provide everything on the page—without overdoing it.

3. Account for Different Needs In the Classroom

I believe strongly that courses ought to be pitched for a specific level of experience, but I’m also well aware that an instructor doesn’t always have the option to influence the marketing materials for a course. However, there are some strategies that can help mitigate the impact of mixed abilities in a classroom.

Make sure the material is mixed. Every teaching session starts with an introduction and most start with a discussion from the tutor of the concepts to be explored. This can and should be pitched to introduce the material to a student with no prior knowledge and then built up to the more complex or esoteric aspects of the subject. In short, make sure there is something new for everyone in the talk.

Manage the classroom. Some students like to talk. A lot. Some students get nervous and keep talking. Others like to listen and only contribute occasionally. A lot of students would like to contribute but have trouble breaking in, especially on video calls where all the awkwardness of doing so is magnified. It is crucial to let these learning styles play out naturally, but it is equally crucial to make sure that students who want to take part are able to. Every one of the interviewees discussed the frustration of the instructor failing to stop one student from dominating the conversation.

Managing the classroom requires that the instructor pays close attention to the cues that someone might be talking too much and others might not be able to break in. This is especially hard to detect on video calls but you can use the chat or hand raising or messaging functions to get students to let you know they have something to say. Then the instructor needs to keep the dominant students under control and create opportunities for the others to speak up. It’s really hard but this is the real work of teaching. 

In class writing. This was the most popular teaching format in the survey, but it is controversial. Some love it, others hate it. Some get a lot out of it, others think it is a waste of time. Ideally, if this will be part of a course, it needs to be made absolutely clear in the course description or other marketing materials. If you don’t have a choice about in class writing and simply must include it, consider how the exercises could be made to work for people who don’t like producing on the spot. Could reading and planning or even writing be assigned beforehand? Can more advanced versions be offered? Could they be made to work for existing drafts of writing?

Teach the art of giving and receiving feedback (if your course includes this). This can be done through a set up of general rules everyone agrees to. For a shared commitment, it might be possible to come up with rules during a session. Or, structured formats can be used to make sure that feedback is useful to the writer receiving it. Others have written extensively on this topic and I recommend Craft in the Real World by Micheal Salesses for detailed explanations and practical activities in this area.

Record the session. This is one of the wonders of the present moment where so much teaching has gone online. Everyone can get something out of a recorded session. Beginners can relisten to parts of a discussion they may have missed. The more experienced writers can get a word for word record of any useful feedback they may have received. Of course it is not always possible, but I would strongly recommend that a recording of each session be offered. 

4. Create Effective Opportunities to Socialize

The survey and the interviews revealed that respondents did not see meeting other writers or finding a writing community as one of the main goals in taking a course. However, a lot of respondents found it disappointing that the social aspects of a course were diminished when it was online. There were a number of mentions that chat groups were not working. On the other hand, those that found a writing community as the result of taking a course were really pleased to have done so. There are a number of things that can facilitate this. 

On video calls, structured activities work well. Create opportunities for students to each contribute in turn and make sure that dominant students do not take more than their fair share of time. Also, break out rooms can be used to do small group activities, even if these are informal, friendly discussions. The smaller the number of participants in a room, the more likely students will be able to speak up and feel like they are equally taking part. Finally, if a chat group is used, this needs to be managed carefully. If no guidance comes from the tutor it is unlikely that anyone will successfully carry on conversations. Also, if there are too many students in the group, the number of responses and threads will become unmanageable.