Students are writing in the online space more now than ever before, even compared to just five years ago when I was a professional writing student — when Facebook was just starting and Twitter had yet to be launched.

The Chronicle of Higher Education just published a great article about the impact of online media on student writing, which includes a look at a study done in a first-year writing course at Michigan State University. For the study, students tracked all forms of writing over a two-week period, including time, genre, audience, location, and purpose of their writing. Much of the writing tracked by students was not class related, yet it was regarded as more meaningful. What does this mean for writing curriculum?

Professor Jeffrey T. Grabill, lead author of the study and co-director of MSU’s Writing in Digital Environments Research Center is one of the academia who shares their insights on the effect of online media on writing curriculum:

Mr. Grabill, from Michigan State, says college writing instruction should have two goals: to help students become better academic writers, and to help them become better writers in the outside world. The second, broader goal is often lost, he says, either because it is seen as not the college’s responsibility, or because it seems unnecessary.

“The unstated assumption there is that if you can write a good essay for your literature professor, you can write anything,” Mr. Grabill says. “That’s utter nonsense.”

The writing done outside of class is, in some ways, the opposite of a traditional academic paper, he says. Much out-of-class writing, he says, is for a broad audience instead of a single professor, tries to solve real-world problems rather than accomplish academic goals, and resembles a conversation more than an argument.

Rather than being seen as an impoverished, secondary form, online writing should be seen as “the new normal,” he says, and treated in the curriculum as such: “The writing that students do in their lives is a tremendous resource.”

The effects of online media on students’ writing are debated by scholars throughout the article. But whether writing in the online space increases attention to tone or encourages bad writing habits, I think it’s important for educators to acknowledge how the writing environment is changing. It’s no longer just about research papers. Professional writers need to be able to produce diverse styles for diverse audiences, from memorandums to press releases to web copy, and addressing that diversity in the curriculum is essential.

Check out the full article from The Chronicle to learn more about the MSU study, as well as the “Stanford Study of Writing,” a five-year study of the writing lives of students at Stanford, and let me know what you think about the new normal.