TEACHING WRITING IN A GLOBALLY NETWORKED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT (GNLE): DIVERSE STUDENTS AT A DISTANCE

As institutions of higher education strive for global outreach and in-novative distance technologies make that mandate feasible, globally networked learning environments (GNLE) increasingly enroll linguis-tically and culturally diverse students in university courses in which the ability to write in advanced disciplinary English is necessary for their success. However, this expectation is often difficult for diverse stu-dents to meet, especially when their learning takes place in a distance environment. In this case study, data is presented from three cohorts of linguistically and culturally diverse graduate students who partici-pated in seminars held in a distance environment. The seminars were designed to help students to successfully complete their master’s theses in engineering manufacturing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol-ogy (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A writing-across-the-curric-ulum (WAC) pedagogical approach was deemed “very useful ” although student data revealed students ’ initial lack of familiarity with WAC strategies as well as their persistent difficulties with grammar, syntax, usage, and organization. This chapter suggests that there is an oppor-tunity for writing specialists to expand writing pedagogy in ways that include the rich linguistic and cultural presence of diverse students, ad-dress a full range of L2 writing challenges, and when required, mini-mize the effects of distance technology on student learning. The Singapore-MIT Alliance, established in 1998, is a globally networked learning environment (GNLE) enabled by digital technology, and within tha