The committee recognizes the efficacy of chat rooms and bulletin boards as means of communication with distance education students but believes that this student cohort may not be sufficiently motivated or possess the independent study skills necessary for this kind of communication. Therefore, when Basic or Developmental Writing courses are offered in a distance education format, providing structure through in-class writings and specific assignments of composition skills must be the goal. Recommendation Distance education as a means of delivery for Basic and Developmental Writing classes should be explored and developed to meet the needs of individual programs. The committee assumed the task of defining the lab component of a writing course and discovered that defining the ideal lab was not at all difficult. However, that lab doesn't exist consistently in the institutions studied.
Some schools have no physical writing laboratory at all.
The Writing Lab shares space and personnel with the Reading and Math labs at some schools while at others the Writing Lab is separate. Some classes have a lab component while other classes do not. Lab work is required in addition to the lecture class at the recommendation of the instructor in some schools but is built into the curriculum at others. Peer tutors are available for students in some labs while tutoring is not available in others. In short, the writing lab component lacks consistency from one institution to another.