Mission Statement:
The Global Society of Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE) connects those who teach reading, alphabetic writing, and digital literacy in online educational settings. Dedicated to diversity, inclusivity, and access in literacy-based online education, GSOLE disseminates peer-reviewed research and information through its annual meeting, online conference, research support, educational and community-building Webinars, Website, online literacy certification programs, and two open-access online journals--Research in Online Literacy Education (ROLE) and the Online Literacy Open Resource (OLOR).
The Global Society of Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE) connects those who teach reading, alphabetic writing, and digital literacy in online educational settings. Dedicated to diversity, inclusivity, and access in literacy-based online education, GSOLE disseminates peer-reviewed research and information through its annual meeting, online conference, research support, educational and community-building Webinars, Website, online literacy certification programs, and two open-access online journals--Research in Online Literacy Education (ROLE) and the Online Literacy Open Resource (OLOR).
A letter from our President
Welcome to the Global Society of Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE)!
We are an international organization of teachers, tutors, and researchers dedicated to diversity, inclusivity, and access in literacy-based online education. We share an understanding that the key component linking all of online education is literacy. Although online education tends to remove the immediacy and intimacy of face-to-face instruction, we suggest that successful teaching and learning in online settings are more deeply connected to literacy-based concerns than to physical presence or lack thereof. Three of the core literacies of the 21st century are reading, writing, and digital composition. However, these literacies largely have been studied and taught separately, and the resulting discussions about them have occurred in discrete sub-disciplines where their connections have not been fully explored or acknowledged.
GSOLE strives to connect educators of reading, writing, and digital composition so that they might focus their energies in teaching various disciplinary content, composition strategies, and communication skills using multiple literacies thoughtfully and well. Although traditionally these literacies were the domain of rhetoric, technorhetoric, and composition instructors, we believe that all educators in every discipline are responsible for them. History, mathematics, chemistry, psychology, medical sciences—all disciplines, in fact—are rooted in these three core literacies, which the online setting highlights and underscores.
Contemporary students in many countries worldwide do much of their reading and writing in online settings, and they must learn strategies for digital settings because these differ from print-based ones. Furthermore, students must learn to compose strategically with digital tools to include such media as images, voice, and video to develop the intended message. Their future efforts in the global workplace demand that they have such communication skills, and these three core literacies are crucial and interdependent. Indeed, computing and the Internet have made contemporary workplaces far more literacy intensive than ever before, and all of us communicate and work more globally than we once were able.
The “Global” or “G” of GSOLE represents this organization’s dual appreciation for distance education’s geographical distribution of students and educators as well as our acknowledgement that educators worldwide can offer each other both intellectual knowledge and professional support.
We invite you to join us as we develop this new, international association among educators who recognize and want to engage the core reading, writing, and digital composition skills that are so very necessary to online education.
Membership in the GSOLE includes opportunities for participating in web-based and onsite conferences, a GSOLE-dedicated listserv, the Online Literacy Open Resource (OLOR) of teaching strategies, and the peer-reviewed digital journal Research in Online Literacy Education (ROLE). Please support us as we work to assist online literacy educators everywhere with research, teaching and learning strategies, and global community.
Respectfully,
Beth L. Hewett, PhD, CT
GSOLE President
We are an international organization of teachers, tutors, and researchers dedicated to diversity, inclusivity, and access in literacy-based online education. We share an understanding that the key component linking all of online education is literacy. Although online education tends to remove the immediacy and intimacy of face-to-face instruction, we suggest that successful teaching and learning in online settings are more deeply connected to literacy-based concerns than to physical presence or lack thereof. Three of the core literacies of the 21st century are reading, writing, and digital composition. However, these literacies largely have been studied and taught separately, and the resulting discussions about them have occurred in discrete sub-disciplines where their connections have not been fully explored or acknowledged.
GSOLE strives to connect educators of reading, writing, and digital composition so that they might focus their energies in teaching various disciplinary content, composition strategies, and communication skills using multiple literacies thoughtfully and well. Although traditionally these literacies were the domain of rhetoric, technorhetoric, and composition instructors, we believe that all educators in every discipline are responsible for them. History, mathematics, chemistry, psychology, medical sciences—all disciplines, in fact—are rooted in these three core literacies, which the online setting highlights and underscores.
Contemporary students in many countries worldwide do much of their reading and writing in online settings, and they must learn strategies for digital settings because these differ from print-based ones. Furthermore, students must learn to compose strategically with digital tools to include such media as images, voice, and video to develop the intended message. Their future efforts in the global workplace demand that they have such communication skills, and these three core literacies are crucial and interdependent. Indeed, computing and the Internet have made contemporary workplaces far more literacy intensive than ever before, and all of us communicate and work more globally than we once were able.
The “Global” or “G” of GSOLE represents this organization’s dual appreciation for distance education’s geographical distribution of students and educators as well as our acknowledgement that educators worldwide can offer each other both intellectual knowledge and professional support.
- First, any time a student enrolls in an online course, he or she has the opportunity to be a global participant. It is not unusual for students living in Europe or Asia to be in the same course as those in America; similarly, students in America may be studying with students geographically distributed in different states across the United States. As such, students must learn to communicate well with people unlike them in background. This global quality of contemporary education is one of online education’s most exciting features.
- Second, as online educators, we frequently experience ourselves as without the community, or association, commonly found in the hallways and buildings of a brick-and-mortar campus. Whether we work for two-year, four-year, traditionally not-for-profit, or for-profit institutions, we share the need to talk to each other. We need to share our intellectual work and professional experiences just as much as our onsite colleagues do, and we especially need to do so when our work takes place fully online, which is the global campus. Worldwide, educators have much to teach each other about online education and about these three core literacies particularly.
We invite you to join us as we develop this new, international association among educators who recognize and want to engage the core reading, writing, and digital composition skills that are so very necessary to online education.
Membership in the GSOLE includes opportunities for participating in web-based and onsite conferences, a GSOLE-dedicated listserv, the Online Literacy Open Resource (OLOR) of teaching strategies, and the peer-reviewed digital journal Research in Online Literacy Education (ROLE). Please support us as we work to assist online literacy educators everywhere with research, teaching and learning strategies, and global community.
Respectfully,
Beth L. Hewett, PhD, CT
GSOLE President