"Multimodal": Toward a Composition Made Whole

[John]

I'll get the ball rolling here. Not really a question, more of a comment (I love when an audience member opens with this at a conference Q&A):

"Again, my concern is that a narrow definition of technology coupled with the tendency to use terms like multimodal, intertextual, multimedia, or media-rich as synonyms for digitized products and processes will mean that the multimodal...will be (provided they have not already been) severely limited by the texts, tools, and processes associated with digitization" (10).

In my assignments, I'm often guilty of conflating multimodal with all-things-digital. I should know better than to fall into that trap, but, well, it just sort of happens. Perhaps its a byproduct of designing and teaching in online and hybrid classrooms, where even non-digital multimodal projects still have to be represented digitally. Or maybe its just sloppy thinking on my part (more than likely). Regardless, I'm quite fond of the way Shipka's book is shaking me out of some bad habits.

[John]

I might eventually start a new thread for posting quotations that stand out to you while reading, but for now I'll keep it here since it fits so nicely with my previous post:

"While I remain both cognizant of and optimistic about the ways newer technologies promise to impact our research, scholarship, and pedagogical practice, a composition made whole requires us to be more mindful about our use of a term like technology. We need to consider what is at stake--who and what it is that we empower or discount--when we use the term to mean primarily, or worse yet, only the newest computer technologies and not light switches, typewriters, eyeglasses, handwriting, or floor tiles as well" (Shipka 20-21).

[John]

Let me start off by saying that about a year or so ago I was very critical of the digital humanities and the focus on new media, digital technology...etc. in comp. I was (and still am) worried about access, among other things.

Teaching for a year at Michigan State introduced me to the concept of remix as a way of helping students see revision differently. Remix was a part of their standard FYC curriculum. Let's just say I remained skeptical but intrigued. My students were telling me they stayed up all night editing their video projects. In 6 years of teaching at UW-Milwaukee I never had a student breathlessly tell me they stayed up all night writing one of my assignments for portfolio (well, unless it was the night before it was due...but that's different).

I brought the remix assignment with me to Frostburg State. I continue to experiment with it, remaining interested but also worried about what I've seen as a lack of "criticality" (for lack of a better word) in student projects. In these digital projects, students were less likely to challenge dominant discourses. I was worried my approach to the assignment concentrated too much on the form and technology and not enough on how the technology allowed them to engage in different kinds of critique. What I am now appreciating about Shipka's book is how she is bridging the gap (real or imagined by me) between the work of digital technology and the work I want to accomplish teaching writing.

.......But now she's throwing me for a real loop. In Chapter 4 "Making Things Fit," she critiques the idea of having one "alternative" assignment (like the remix) with the rest being traditional essays. Instead she asks students to choose the form of *every* assignment.

Asking students to determine the genre or medium of the final product for an assignment "is not something this approach requires (or allows) them to do once or twice during the semester. Unlike, for instance, Wendy Bishop's (2002) "radical revision" assignment, or Davis and Shadle's (2000, 2007) multi genre research writing projects, this approach to composing is not intended as an alternative to, or a break from 'essay writing as usual' (Bishop 2002, 206). Rather, throughout the whole of the semester, the tasks students are given require that they play a role in determining the most fitting way of conveying, communicating, or re-presenting the work they mean to do in response to those tasks" (89).

So, I'm reading this book as I'm revising my assignments and syllabi in preparation for the spring semester (starts Wednesday!). In my advanced comp (both general and social science writing) courses, I've framed "remix" as a "radical revision" and an "alternative" to "essay writing as usual."

I appreciate the way Shipka is challenging me (well, not me personally, that might be weird, but us) to open up all our assignments in this way...to, um, *cough* "allow" *cough* students to choose how they would present every assignment instead of having one "alternative" multimedia project.

I've flipped the format for this semester. Where previously 1 out of 4 projects asked students to compose an “alternative” text, now I'm walking into class Wednesday with only 1 out of 4 major assignments that asks them to compose a more traditional written academic essay. The rest, well, it's up to them.

One of my new assignments is actually an adaptation of one of Shipka's assignments: History of this Space. (Document A in the Appendix).

[John]

"...overly prescriptive assignments afforded students potentials for bypassing the inquiry phase as they searched for the 'implicit clues that reveal what really counts and what can be ignored in completing a particular assignment. By refusing to hand students a list of nonnegotiable steps that must be accomplished in order to satisfy a specific course objective, the framework described here asks students to to consider how communicative objectives might be accomplished in any number of ways, depending on how they decide to contextualize, frame, or situate their response to those objectives" (101).

I couldn't agree more.

However, I'm scared of student evaluations--which weigh much, much more heavily on my yearly department evaluations as a new faculty member than they did for me in grad school. At a university that values teaching over research, evals play a monumental role in determining tenure and promotion.

As a TA, my students often interpreted my non-prescriptive assignments and my "refusal to list nonnegotiable steps" for writing the assignment as a game I was playing. They thought I was hiding my criteria for assessment, and that I was trying to confuse them. My student evaluations repeatedly listed being frustrated by the nondirective nature of the assignments and the course in general.

Some semesters students bought into the pedagogy after some initial struggle. Other semesters, my student evals were caustic. What I saw (and still see) as a valuable pedagogical strategy, they saw as an instructional weakness. Right now, I can't afford to have a pile of evals saying my assignments weren't clear.

While I don't believe being nondirective means being unclear (and I always worked to improve assignment clarity based on those evals), the students that say: "just tell me what to do" and who are unwilling to accept any assignment that's not prescriptive are going to let me have it on those evals.

Currently I'm working on balance (never a bad thing).

[John]

"Instructors who may not consider themselves experts on visual, auditory, olfactory, or tactile modes can still focus primarily on the role that written text plays. The important difference has to do with refusing to ignore the presence or impact of these modes, and asking students to consider how other semiotic systems alter, complicate, expand, enrich, and/or shape one's reception of the written text" (138).

[Jessica]

John wrote: "Let me start off by saying that about a year or so ago I was very critical of the digital humanities and the focus on new media, digital technology...etc. in comp. I was (and still am) worried abou..."

Hey, how did it go to have students choose their own approaches to their assignments?

[John]

It went well. After writing a more traditional rhetorical analysis, I asked students to create comics, an ethnographic analysis, and a remix project. Each assignment had a reflective component, too, that built upon their initial rhetorical analysis. I received a wide range of projects with different approaches. For example, with the comics some were hand drawn, some used internet templates, some combined templates with student artwork, some combined photos and magazine pics with drawings and templates, and some created large poster boards with large comic panels pasted on them. I didn't get anything like an essay on a shirt or shoes like Shipka, although we looked at her examples on her website.