Universities in Texas

I posted here several months ago that I'm considering going for my doctoral degree to try and broaden and challenge myself beyond the online teaching I've been doing for the last 3 years. My MA is in English and I teach English courses, mostly composition and developmental writing.
I posted here about possibly seeking a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction at an online school, but I'm starting to consider other options too. One option I'm looking into is doing a PhD in Rhetoric. My main interest is in developing online writing and literature courses (but mostly online writing courses). In my experience so far of teaching online writing courses, it seems like the million dollar question that I keep coming up against is, "how do you teach writing SUCCESSFULLY online to the kind of population that online schools cater to?" I see so many students not doing well because they can't write at a professional and college level and I know from seeing the constant evolution of writing courses at the online schools I work for that a solution still hasn't been found (maybe there isn't one).
I'm looking so far at possibly doing an on-ground PhD in Rhetoric (since I can't seem to find any that are online, except for one at Texas Tech - my old Alma mater for my MA :-) ). I'm looking at schools in Texas, since I got my MA at TTU, love the state, and it's fairly cheap to live there. Here are the schools/degrees I'm checking out:
1.Texas Woman's University - PhD Rhetoric
2.Texas Tech University (of course!) - PhD Technical Communication and Rhetoric
3.University of Texas, El Paso - PhD Rhetoric and Composition
4.University of Texas, Austin - PhD Rhetoric or PhD Distance Literacy and Literature
The two that really interest me are UT Austin's PhD DLL and TTU's PhD TCR because they both get into not only rhetoric and writing but also the way that technology plays a role. But all of these sound great to me.
So after that very long intro - I'm interested in knowing first, if anyone has one of these degrees at these schools and can tell me a bit about their experience both in school and out of it (in terms of finding work, what they do with their degree, etc). Second, I'm interested in knowing if anyone has a degree in Rhetoric or the like from any university or is currently doing one and can tell me a little about their experiences.
Also, I'm very interested to know whether those who do have a degree in this have found that their online teaching experience has hindered or helped them. I'm concerned because I know that traditional universities are already very wary of online universities and there has been so much bad press in the last few years about online for-profit universities (this is actually one reason why I'm hesitating to do an online degree). I'm wondering if there is a strong stigma that my work experience might get in the way.

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