Moving into the Spotlight
Sometimes, it’s not only knowing the right answers that counts, but knowing the right questions to ask.
U.S News & World Report runs a Web site located at www.forums.
prospero.com/usn_elearning in which educators and prospective students can learn about the possibilities of educating and being educated online. The Web site serves as a bulletin board for interested parties to ask questions about the differences between online learning and traditional learning, specific e-learning programs and the software and hardware required for e-learners, said Kelli Cargile Cook, a Utah State University professor of professional and technical writing.
U.S. News & World Report recently hired Cargile Cook as e-learning adviser to manage the forum and direct people to the information sources that will suit their needs.
“I assist in gathering information,” Cargile Cook said. “Sometimes that means providing people with the right questions.”
Cargile Cook said one of her former high school honors’ students-turned-friend became a public relations officer at a university and forwarded her information about the job. Cargile Cook said she applied for the job and after being interviewed by no other method but online, was accepted.
Cargile Cook said she is excited about the new job for a number of reasons.
She said she has the opportunity to talk to people from China, Pakistan and Canada, who ask questions about high school, undergraduate and graduate studies.
“It gives me a view of the whole spectrum of online learning,” Cargile Cook said.
To Cargile Cook, online learning is a great tool, especially for people who can’t attend a university on site, but whether e-learning will take the place of a university is doubtful, she said.
“I hope it never replaces the university,” Cargile Cook said. “It would be very difficult to teach nurses or doctors how to use a hypodermic needle online. Simulations are great, but they’re not there yet.”
Cargile Cook graduated from the University of North Texas in 1982, where she earned degrees in writing and literature. She has been teaching at USU since fall 2000, after finishing her doctorate at Texas Tech. She said one of the most attractive features about USU is its master’s program for technical communications. She said it is the first completely online master’s program for technical communications in the United States. She said she is currently developing research about online instruction in technical communications, and being able to continue her research also made USU attractive to her.
Cargile Cook said she will be using the same skills while managing the forum she uses in technical communications and rhetoric.
“I’ve always been a writer first, and then a teacher,” she said. “I’ve always been the kind of writer who preferred doing research to creative writing.”
She is currently working on a book with colleague and USU English professor Keith Grant-Davie.