This blog was originally posted on March 16th, 2015. Today’s guest blogger is Jeanne Law Bohannon. When I begin a new semester, I try to make time to reflect on my pedagogy and its implications/opportunities for student-scholars across my courses and across disciplines.  This semester, I have actually done it! You may recall that last fall I blogged on a Multimodal Monday about Video Game Vlogcasting. I wanted to take that assignment and re/mix it for a different audience and purpose. Because I practice at a large state university, the core classes I sometimes teach feature a majority of students who are NOT English majors.  In fact, fall semester of last year is the first time I have ever had an English major in a literature course — ever.  Like other 2000 level literature courses, American Literature 1860s – present at my university is one that attracts students based not on subject, but on scheduling.  Finding a balance between getting students to write authentically about content and going bust on Bloom’s taxonomy is a challenge for all of us.  I have found that digital writing assignments pique student interest and challenge them to employ skills that elicit critical thinking and measurable rhetorical performances.  Hosting a vlog/podcast (we call them vlog/pods) on a subject that they have already successfully written about in traditional academic form (for us, Annotated Bibliographies) gives students a composition opportunity that also engenders creativity and digital literacy. Assignment A DIY vlog/podcasting assignment that encourages students to apply researched texts to digital environments and create their own auditory and visual representations of previously researched materials. Assignment Goals and Measurable Learning Objectives Apply an annotated bibliography to a digital literacy Employ multimodalities as rhetorical delivery devices Analyze meaning through critical production of digital texts on-screen Background Reading for Students and Instructors Acts of reading and viewing visual texts are ongoing processes for attaining learning goals in democratic, digital writing assignments. Below, I have listed a few foundational texts. You will no doubt have your own to enrich this list. The St. Martin’s Handbook: Chapter 2, “Rhetorical Situations”; Section 6a, “Collaborating in College”; Chapter 7, “Reading Critically” The Everyday Writer: Chapters 5-11, “The Writing Process” Writing in Action: Chapter 4, “A Writer’s Choices”; Section 7h, “Collaboration and Communication”; Chapter 9, “Reading Critically” EasyWriter: Sections 1c-1g in Ch.1, “A Writer’s Choices”; Section 1h, “Collaborating”; Section 3a, “Reading Critically” Bohannon’s Multimodalities for Students Before Class: Student and Instructor Preparation The vlog/pod project works well on its own or bridged with other assignments.  In my course, we produced vlog/pods based on Annotated Bibliographies that students had written on a subject covered in our readings.  All of our readings came from marginalized authors and performers, and students chose among those subjects for their two assignments.  However, you may want to use this project as a stand-alone; either way works.  If you want more information on the Annotated Bibliography assignment, click here. I run this project mid-semester.  Prior to starting this project, the class discusses multimodalities of texts that we produce across digital discourses. We read Bohannon’s Multimodalities for Students, MIT’s Podcasting 101,PC Magazine’s “What is a Vlog?”, Class Blog Space, and Bohannon’s YouTube Channel to prepare us to produce. In Class and/or Out Much of the readings for this assignment are already embedded in coursework.  Those of you who have taught core literature courses will have your own content requirements.  Some of us even have this content prescribed by our departments or colleges. Either way, this assignment gives instructors and students some creative freedom to create their own content. If you teach in a computer lab, then you are LUCKY!  For those of us who don’t, we can work around it. In groups of two or three, students read resources and write outlines for their vlog/pod transcripts over three class periods.  I require them to post their final transcripts with their uploaded vlog/pods. Since students are working with individual topics, they group themselves around genre or time period.  They brainstorm, workshop their storyboards/outlines, and edit in class.  Production happens outside of class.  Many universities have vlog/podcasting studios available to students; check with your IT folks to see if your students have access to a studio.  My students have successfully produced vlog/pods using, iMovie,QuickTime, Movie Maker, and Garage Band on their own. After they draft, edit, and produce their vlog/pods, students either upload them to my YouTube channel or submit their work directly into our course LMS. You may want to give your students a choice for either public or private (class only) vlog/pod dissemination.  I have found that most students are excited for others to see their work, but it’s nice to have a choice. Next Steps: Reflections on the Activity At the next class meeting(s), students discuss and show their vlog/pods to the class, arranged by genre and time period.  We bring popcorn (maybe not a good idea if you’re in a computer lab) and sodas and make it a red-carpet event by inviting friends and colleagues.  You can either show vlog/pods in class or arrange for a larger venue on campus.  Next time I run this assignment, I am going to book our library multimedia room, which holds more people and has a place for setting up food and drinks. Truthfully, though, this assignment requires students to balance traditional academic invention and public, digital text productions. In my experience I have found that learning success closely follows authentic student engagement, including democratic and digital textual productions informed by student choice. Students are far more likely to engage in any course, composition, literature, or otherwise, if they feel that they can exert their agency to affect writing and learning outcomes.  For us as instructors, a vital part of our teaching is our ability to let go of our authority and guide students towards enduring understandings of content, which theyresearch, design, and produce. When we re-focus our efforts around digital, authored performances in these environments, we facilitate rhetorical growth for our students, helping them develop informed voices as they become fluent in multiple discourse communities. Try this assignment and let me know what you think. Please view/use the project guidelines (edit as you need) and view student samples here: Vlog/Pods from AmLit 2132 Also, please leave me feedback at Bohannon’s AmLit 2132. Guest blogger Jeanne Law Bohannon is an Assistant Professor in the Digital Writing and Media Arts (DWMA) Department at Kennesaw State University. She believes in creating democratic learning spaces, where students become stakeholders in their own rhetorical growth though authentic engagement in class communities. Her research interests include evaluating digital literacies, critical pedagogies, and New Media theory; performing feminist rhetorical recoveries; and growing informed and empowered student scholars. Reach Jeanne at: Jeanne_bohannon@kennesaw.edu and www.rhetoricmatters.org Want to collaborate with Andrea on a Multimodal Monday assignment? Send ideas to leah.rang@macmillan.com for possible inclusion in a future post. ... View more

This blog was originally posted on February 15th, 2015. It is hard not to be aware of the kerfluffle over the many Oscar nominations for the movie American Sniper—especially its nod for Best Picture.  The whole thing was quite predictable: take a controversial book about a controversial topic and have it directed by Hollywood’s successor to John Wayne in the hearts of American conservatives, and you have all the makings of a Twitter Tornado (just ask Seth Rogen and Michael Moore).  Thus, American Sniper is a natural choice for semiotic attention in your popular culture classes.  The only question is how to approach it. Here’s what not to do: a semiotic analysis should not begin with the presumption of an ideological “right answer.”  Whether you, or more importantly your students, are ideologically inclined against or in favor of the film must be set aside because a semiotic analysis decodes its topic rather than celebrates or condemns it, and while that decoding involves the analysis of ideological and mythological signifiers, it must be open to all possibilities.  Thus, an analysis of American Sniper would consider the signifiers both within the film and outside it in order to describe why it is controversial and what is at stake.  Such an analysis must take nothing for granted, objectively considering, for example, just why the names “Clint Eastwood,” “Michael Moore,” and “Seth Rogen” signify a lot more than the mere referents of three proper nouns.  It must not simply dismiss one side of the controversy or the other, because the primary purpose of a cultural semiotic analysis is to reveal cultural significance, not present uncritically assumed ideological conclusions. In short, when placed within the systematic context of contemporary American culture and politics, American Sniper is a sign—a sign of just how divided America is these days.  When restaurant owners feel the need to “ban” Michael Moore and Seth Rogen from their premises because of a few tweets about the film, you can see just how emotional people are getting over the matter—and that emotion is a semiotic component of the larger system. What is true for the analysis of American Sniper is true for the analysis of any popular cultural phenomenon.  While it is true that one can always move from a semiotic analysis to a political or ethical argument within an essay, the semiotic analysis itself must not presuppose a right or wrong answer or position. But one thing certainly is true: in the current social environment, hardly anything in America is without political significance.  There is very little entertainment that is “merely entertainment.”  Semiotics uncovers the politics behind the often trivial looking surface of popular culture, and given the investment that so many people have in taking their own positions for granted, that uncovering can be the most controversial—but, I think, useful—politics of all. ... View more

This blog was originally posted on February 5th, 2015. Flying across the country a few weeks ago, I read Diogo Mainardi’s The Fall: A Father’s Memoir in 424 Steps (you can hear an interview with the author here). It’s a slim book—166 pages—so I had time to read it twice through, which I did with pleasure and gratitude. While the story of Mainardi’s son Tito’s botched birth in a Venice hospital, which left him with cerebral palsy, is gripping from first to last, what fascinated me most about the book was its structure: it is divided into 424 brief passages, some as short as a four-word sentence (“Tito has cerebral palsy,” which opens the book), others as long as half a page. Why 424 steps? As Mainardi reveals, “four hundred and twenty-four steps” is “the farthest that Tito has ever walked” without falling. In these 424 brief passages, Mainardi introduces readers to his family and most of all to Tito in a way so full of love that I was quickly drawn in and wanted to linger there with them long after my plane had touched down. I wanted to hear about more and more steps, get to know Tito even better (the photos of Tito that accompany the text are breathtakingly beautiful). But The Fall is more than a father’s memoir and a love song to his first son; it is also a tightly woven meditation on the web of associations that circle Tito, from the Scuola Grande di San Marco’s façade, designed by Pietro Lombardo in 1489 which now stands at the entrance to Venice Hospital—scene of many mistakes, including the one made during Tito’s birth—to Ezra Pound’s praise of Lombardo and the “stupid aestheticism” that Mainardi had shared with Pound before Tito’s birth. The web gets more dense and full of cross-references as the steps proceed. This 424-step-long meditation on disability and on love got me thinking about Winston Weathers, whose book An Alternate Style (1980) introduced us to the Grammar A of school discourse and the Grammar B of, well, everything else. One of the alternates Weathers showed readers was a simple list; another was a series of what he called “crots”: bits or fragments of text. But it also reminded me of David Shields’s much more recent Reality Hunger, a manifesto made up of brief snippets of text, many of them copied verbatim from other people’s work without acknowledgment. This musing led me to consider whether the time is ripe for this particular kind of fragmented or fragmentary writing (my experience with social media writing makes me say “yes!”), and also made me want to experiment with this form, and to engage students in experimenting with it. So now I am imagining a writing assignment that would begin: “Create a series of very brief passages, all related to one topic and arranged so that they reach a climax or make a very telling point by the end.” I’d start out with low stakes—just a few pages and meant for in-class sharing rather than a formal grade. But now I’m thinking that many others may be way ahead of me and have perfected such an assignment. If you have, please share now! In the meantime, check out Mainardi’s book and get to know the amazing Tito. [Image: The Fall: A Father’s Memoir in 424 Steps by Diogo Mainardi. From Other Press.] ... View more

Though we have diverse approaches to teaching writing, my experience suggests that one of the commonalities we all share is some sort of peer feedback. Whether we call it peer revision or peer editing or something else, there seems to be wide agreement that seeking feedback is an important part of making writing better. The creative writers in my department would perhaps call this part of the “craft” of writing.  We are more likely to call it part of the writing process.  Regardless, in this series of posts I want to riff a bit on that notion of “craft” by sharing some peer revision strategies I use that are “crafty.” These exercises are all class-tested and Barclay-approved.  I have some theories on why they tend to work so well, which I will share in a later post. For now, though… highlighters! In my office I keep a bag of inexpensive highlighters in every color I can find—at least thirty or so.  It was a modest investment at the office supply store but it’s paid wonderful dividends.  At least once a semester I bring that bag in for students to use during peer revision.  Here are some of the things I do: Have peers highlight the argument and each key sentence related to the argument in a paper.  Peers tend to read the paper with more care to locate these moments, giving them practice in doing the same sort of work when reading the essays of the class; authors see whether or not readers are able to follow their arguments, where particular moments of support might be missing, if sections of the paper are just “fluff,” and how what they wrote reflects what they wanted to say. Have peers highlight each quotation used in one color and all analysis of quotation in another; alternatively, have peers highlight all analysis one color and all summary another.  Authors can immediately see if there is a particular imbalance, if they just sprinkle quotations without working with them, and if particular parts of their paper are under-supported. When papers include multiple readings, have peers highlight work with each reading in a different color.  Authors will be able to see immediately if they tend to use one reading too much or another not enough. Have peers highlight each transition.  Authors will be able to see where they are missing or where they are so ineffective that readers can’t see the transition. Have peers highlight any patterns of error so that authors can see how frequently they make it. I’m sure you can imagine more uses for this general technique.  The key is that highlighting highlights particular parts of the paper, allowing students to visualize parts of it instead of just seeing lines of black that blur together. And, well, it’s fun too. ... View more

This blog was originally posted on February 4th, 2015. I’ve been playing around with video since the Flip cameras were big—so about 7 or 8 years now.  As the cameras on cell phones got better and better, I moved to just using my iPhone 5s to capture video.  iMovie has given me good results for the longest time but having just purchased a Retina 5K iMac, I’ve decided to take the plunge and move to Final Cut Pro X.  Prosumer ho! I’ve been thinking about how to harness what, till now, has been a hobby.  I thought perhaps I would make some videos about Emerging and its essays and how we use it here at FAU.  I talked with Bedford folks about it and they think it’s a good idea, so I’m going to work on a couple and see how it goes.  I was thinking I would start with my take on sequencing assignments—why I chose that approach for Emerging and how I come up with my sequences.  I figure it might be a good way to spark conversations about that aspect of the book. Given that I am going to dump some portion of precious free time into this, I am wondering how to maximize usefulness.  What do you think about video discussions of a book?  Useful or too infomercial-ly?  What topics might you like to see me talking about? I’m open to suggestions, so please jump in! ... View more

This blog was originally posted on February 5th, 2014. During the last weeks of the fall semester, I heard students talking about trips to the bookstore and the cost of texts. It was the wrong time for the term for those conversations, so I wondered the topics were coming up. When I asked, the majority of students confessed that they hadn’t bought the book until they began work on the final course project and determined they needed it. I assigned readings from the textbook all term. I pointed to examples and model texts from the book. When I marked grammar, punctuation, and style errors in their work, I included the page number in the book where students could find more information. None of that practice benefited students however. They just relied on what I shared in class. I realized that I probably enabled their behavior. I used the PowerPoint slides that were available on the Bedford site, and I posted those slideshows on the closed class site (a custom version of Sakai) for students who missed the class or had trouble taking notes in class. My guess is that students decided to use the slideshows in lieu of buying the book. Their decision came to light during the last weeks of class because I provided less explicit support (and no slideshows) for their last project, a group oral presentation and written recommendation report. I wanted to give them the majority of class time to collaborate on their project, and I wanted to see if they could find and follow the information they needed on their own. In the workplace, your boss rarely gives a slideshow presentation on what she wants you to write. Without my overviews, students were left with no option but to get a copy of the book, even though it was quite late in the semester. I was annoyed when I realized that so many students had gone without the textbook. It’s not a book that I wrote. It’s not a question of royalties. It was that I thought they had access to information that they didn’t. I began to understand why students asked me to review information so often and why they were confused on basic concepts. More importantly, I resolved to change my strategies so that students would buy the textbook for the spring semester. This term I’m not using the slideshows that come with the book. Instead, I’m showing the e-book with the projection system, and pointing out significant passages that I want students to remember. I’m using the highlight tool in the e-book to mark those passages. Here’s an example of what students see, marked with a red arrow: Using this method, I am also able to demonstrate reading strategies and how to use the features of the text. For instance, I’ve pointed out how to use the Writer’s Checklist at the end of each chapter and I’ve demonstrated how to take advantage of the marginal links to online resources for the book. Students have to consult their book to get the information, and I hope they’ll also read the additional details that I point out to them as I review the highlights. I’ve also changed my in-class writing activities slightly. I hate pop quizzes, and I’ve never been in a workplace where the boss began with a quiz on the reading. I want students to write every class period, but I want the writing to be meaningful. So far, they have been writing about various webpages that I ask them to evaluate for audience, purpose, effective writing strategies, and so forth. The writing prompts are similar to those that I used last term, but I made one small change. I make explicit references to the textbook in the questions—and as a result, I’ve seen students consulting the book while they were writing their answers. They not only bought the book, but they’re also using it. That feels like a success. ... View more

This blog was originally posted on February 3rd, 2015. Last week, I wrote about my experience using quizzes in a writing class to help students identify and (I hoped) recall key details from course readings. The low-stakes quizzes were relatively simple to manage because the textbook I was using included quizzes that I could import into our CMS. This term, however, I will have to generate my own quizzes for one course. I began investigating the use of quizzes late last year by looking for resources on how to write effective quiz questions. Most of what I found focused on technical instructions for specific scenarios, like how to write questions in Blackboard. I was searching for something more like “A Rhetoric of Quiz Questions,” and I never did find what I was looking for. Perhaps I will have to write it myself. In the meantime, however, I have come up with these general guidelines as I read and edited the questions I was using from my textbook’s ancillary materials. Focus on information significant to comprehension of the material. Avoid questions that focus on random details, tricks, or gotchas. Write short questions rather than lengthy paragraphs. Avoid adding irrelevant details to the questions. There’s no need for the obfuscation of a Car Talk Puzzler in a reading quiz. Use the same grammatical structure for answer options (e.g., all gerunds, all nouns, all adjectives). Make sure that fill-in-the-blank answer options fit the grammar of the question. In other words, if the sentence structure requires verb to complete the sentence grammatically, the answer options need to be verbs. Distribute articles within the answer choices rather than including something like “a/an” in the question. Avoid lopsided options where one answer choice is several words longer than the others. Answer options should be approximately the same length to avoid confusing students. Choose answer options that are all plausible solutions. None of the answers should be obviously incorrect. If you use it, include “None of the above” as the LAST answer option. Logically, it has to be last. List “True” and “False” in that order. Students expect the True-False order. There’s no reason to switch the options. In addition to those ten tips that apply to nearly all quiz scenarios, if you are working in a CMS to build your quiz, you need to keep a few more guidelines in mind: Randomize the answer options when possible if you are worried about student honesty, but never randomize the answers if the options include “None of the above” and/or “All of the above.” Likewise, don’t randomize the answers if the options are “True” and “False.” See #10 above. Avoid any fill-in-the-blank questions where students have to type the correct answer if you want your CMS to grade quizzes automatically. Computers don’t understand spelling errors or typing inconsistencies in answers. That’s all I have compiled so far—at least until I write that “Rhetoric of Quiz Questions” article I mentioned. Do you have tips for writing successful quizzes? Have suggestions for using test tools in a CMS? I’d love to hear from you. Just leave me a comment below, or drop by my page on Facebook or Google+. ... View more

This blog was originally posted on February 2nd, 2015. In the United States comics generally appeal to those who already know how to read and write, but in other contexts sequences of images with relatable characters and stories convey important information to the illiterate about how to avoid danger or pursue opportunities. For example, Mudita Tiwari and Deepti KC of India’s Institute for Financial Management and Research are distributing comic books about financial literacy in the slum of Dharavi in Mumbai to discourage women from relying on vulnerable hiding places in their homes to squirrel away cash. As a co-author of Understanding Rhetoric, a comic textbook, I was particularly interested to see their financial literacy tools for women, which emphasized graphic media for storytelling and sequential art as a means of communication. As they explained to the annual conference of the Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion, before adopting this approach they found that the lack of information about banking alternatives was compounded by apathy toward generic information that “didn’t click.”   To provide meaningful context, they developed an interactive story-telling approach using comic books that starred two major characters: Radha, who is always struggling with financial adversities, and Saraswati, her sensible money-managing friend.  Researchers actually used real-life stories to compose the narrative. Financial Literacy for Women Entrepeneurs The literacy problem in India is serious, because the country has 287 million illiterate adults, or 37 percent of all illiterate adults globally (UNESCO Education for All Global Monitoring Report).  However, many countries have large populations of illiterate adults, and in the United States, public health efforts have enlisted comic books for decades (Schneider, “Quantifying and Visualizing the History of Public Health Comics”).  Even in the supposedly conservative 1950s, Planned Parenthood used comics to get out the word about family planning. Selene Biffi was asked to write a public health comic book for Afghanistan by the United Nations.  The experience inspired her to found a nonprofit organization that makes graphically appealing storytelling-oriented print materials for the developing world, Plain Ink.  According to their website, rather than donate books manufactured in the West, their organization supports “the use of local skills in the countries where we work” and strives to “find the best authors, illustrators, printers and distributors to collaborate with” to “create employment and contribute to local economic and social development.”  A story on the organization in Fast Company includes some sample pages, which show children making a lid for a well and a sign warning of contaminated water.  These panels need to communicate information efficiently, simply, and without ambiguity. Composition instructors can create interesting audience-oriented assignments for students that ask them to create comics for audiences lacking fundamental literacy skills, perhaps as part of a larger research project exploring a topic, such as ways to ameliorate disease or the effects of natural disasters.  As an example, faculty could show recent pamphlets with visual instructions about containing the Ebola epidemic. Explaining complex phenomena with simple illustrations can also provide the provocation of a grand challenge to classes exploring different communication modalities.  For example, how could global warming be explained to non-literate people or discoveries about the benefits of breast feeding using only pictures?  The peer-reviewed research may use relatively advanced scientific models, but the issues you assign should be ones that affect rich and poor alike. ... View more

This blog was originally posted on February 2nd, 2015. Last year, shortly after I returned from 4Cs in Indianapolis, I wrote Whole Lotta Multimodalin’ Goin’ On about the Bedford/St, Martin’s Multimodal Student Writing Showcase event, which featured presenters from programs of all kinds, from all over the United States. I ended by saying, “From where I stand, I think it’s safe to say that multimodal writing is alive and well and prospering in writing programs across the country.  No wonder that during the Bedford/St. Martin’s celebration, participants and attendees called for a follow-up celebration of student multimodal writing next year in Tampa – to loud applause.” One of the many conversations about multimodal student writing at #4C14 in Indianapolis What a treat to be able to report that there will be a follow-up celebration in Tampa! It will include presenters from Ohio State’s composition program and their MOOC, Nova Southeastern, Metro State in Denver, San Francisco State, and Danielle DeVoss’s students at Michigan State, in addition to work you may have glimpsed in this Multimodal Mondays space from Jeanne Bohannon and Kim Haimes-Korn’s students at Southern Polytechnic State. The event will take place on Friday, March 20, from 3:30-6:30 p.m. in Ballroom B at the Convention Center. I’ll be there, and I hope to see you there, too! Many attendees I talked to at last year’s event were hoping to participate in the next showcase. If you’re interested in showing off your students’ hard work in addition to seeing what your colleagues are doing in their programs, contact Karita dos Santos (Karita.dosSantos@macmillan.com) at Bedford/St. Martin’s, who tells me that she still has room for a few more projects. Want to collaborate with Andrea on a Multimodal Monday assignment? Send ideas to leah.rang@macmillan.com for possible inclusion in a future post. ... View more

This blog was originally posted on April 18th, 2014. Think 1957.  Think the inimitable Jerry Lee Lewis. Or Elvis Presley.  Both sang about a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on. I said come on over baby, a-whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on Yeah I said come on over baby, a-whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on Well we ain’t fakin’, a-whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on I was a high school kid in 1957, and little did I imagine that fifty-plus years later this song would keep popping into my head in relation to digital literacy and the ways it has  helped us reimagine writing as, always, multimodal.  And we ain’t fakin’! Since I teach courses on digital literacies and the digital essay, I decided that this year at 4Cs, I would try to go to every session on multimodal writing.  Until I saw the program, that is:  there were so many panels devoted to a range of perspectives on multimodality that I would have had to clone myself several times over in order to attend them all.  That fact reaffirmed what I’ve been seeing as I visit schools across the country:  writing programs are increasingly inviting their students to produce multimodal projects, with some pretty stunning results.  Last month in Arkansas, for example, I heard a teacher describe an assignment that asked students to create and “pitch” proposals for new apps, and another teacher describe the animated smartphone mini-lessons she and her students were producing to help each other learn and retain material.  On my own campus, intructors are guiding students in doing everything from digital research projects to beautifully illustrated and published storybooks.  Most important, students I encounter continue to tell me that they are highly engaged and motivated by such projects. So I was delighted to hear that Bedford/St. Martin’s was sponsoring a Multimodal Celebration during the 4Cs meeting, where participants could showcase their students’ projects. When I arrived at the celebration, the large room was already jammed with people eager to see what students across the country had come up with.  Lining three sides of the room were posters describing instructor assignments—along with examples of student work in response to those assignments.  Liz Losh was there talking about her students’ mini-Comic Con; Erik Ellis’s students’ fabulous storybooks were on display; posters such as the ones seen below proved yet again that today’s writers are thinking about how to use visuals and infographics to get and hold an audience’s attention. These projects testified to the imaginative, creative, and serious work being produced by students across the United States.  I was particularly thrilled, since I believe we are coming close to the point of not having to label such projects as “multimodal.”  In sum, it seems to me that the word “writing” will soon carry with it the assumption (entirely justified) of multimodality. As we move toward that day, I see two areas that need our careful attention.  The first has to do with colleagues who are still puzzled by or resistant (or indifferent) to multimodal writing, who don’t understand how all writing could be said to be multimodal.  I sympathize with these colleagues:  after all, writing has a way of changing on us—constantly, and we  have had a steep learning curve ever since I entered the profession, as new and emerging technologies have shaped and affected what we think of as “writing.”  So we need to find ways to link what may seem new and foreboding to the tried and true principles of rhetoric and to provide support and encouragement to those who are uncomfortable with multimodality.  Second, we need more research on how to assess such projects, and in this regard we can turn to our students, creating rubrics together and testing them for accuracy.  Luckily, both these areas of concern are already being attended to by leading scholars like this year’s 4Cs Co-Exemplars, Cindy Selfe and Gail Hawisher. From where I stand, I think it’s safe to say that multimodal writing is alive and well and prospering in writing programs across the country.  No wonder that during the Bedford/St. Martin’s celebration, participants and attendees called for a follow-up celebration of student multimodal writing next year in Tampa – to loud applause. Oh yeah, there’s a whole lot of multimodalin’ goin’ on! ... View more

This blog was originally posted on January 30th, 2015. The last few weeks have seen two threats to freedom of speech that have generated international attention. The first was North Korea’s threats against Sony if the movie The Interview was released because the comedy was about the assassination of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un. Although the threats were enough to delay the release, within days the movie opened peacefully nationwide and was soon available on demand. It may have been only a movie—and a mediocre one at best—but it was a matter of principle. Threats to freedom of speech became much more serious with the massacre of twelve journalists at the French weekly Charlie Hebdofollowing the publication of cartoons mocking the prophet Mohammed. They may have been only cartoons, but twelve people died for the right to publish them, and hundreds of thousands marched in support of that right. How can these episodes become teaching points rather than simply the triggers for either heated renunciation of those parties seen to be in the wrong or unexamined championing of those seen to be in the right? That’s where the terminology of argumentation can be used to force students to examine and talk about arguments instead of simply arguing. In the Sony movie controversy, North Korea’s claim was simply that the movie should not be released. (The North Koreans had earlier argued that the movie should not be made.) The other side of that argument was that it should. North Korea backed up its argument not with rhetoric, but with threats. Once those threats were made, even to the point of hints of 9/11-style retaliation, Americans were divided about whether or not the movie should open in spite of the possible danger. Most argued that it should. In class discussion or in a writing assignment, ask students to consider the following: What type of support was offered in support of the claim that The Interview should open? In support of the claim that it should not? What needs and values were being appealed to in each case? What warrants were behind each? We hope that no right-minded individuals would argue that people should be killed for publishing cartoons, although clearly an extreme minority hold that view. Ask students, What is the argument to analyze in the Charlie Hebdo tragedy? Consider how the elements of argument apply in that case. [Photo by H.Kopp, Flikr] ... View more

This blog was originally posted on January 29th, 2015. A posting on the Free Library Blog recently caught my eye, particularly the following paragraph: Most students also don’t know that many books are indexed. Thus they are unaware that the nature of the assignment might not require that they read the whole work, but rather that they use the index to find the relevant sections which address their own topic. As long as they understand that context matters and learn to read efficiently within a work, they need not be defeated by hundreds of pages of text. Without these skills, it’s a safe bet they haven’t been introduced to bibliographies, chasing notes, or any myriad of other useful appendixes at the back of the book. (See What students (and often their teachers and their principals) don’t know about research and an enriching liberal education.) Students don’t know books are indexed? I was mildly surprised to read this . . . until I had a chance to interview seven college students from as many different universities in the last few weeks. I was asking these students about their writing in general, as well as about their writing assignments and about how they went about fulfilling them. Since all the students were using a writing textbook, I asked about that too. The students were all bright and full of good insights—a lot of fun to talk with. And I learned a lot about how they thought about their weaknesses and strengths as writers and also about how they went about finding answers to questions they had about writing. “Where in your textbook do you go if you want to find some information?” I asked. And that’s when I got surprised. A couple of the students said they looked in the front of the book (that would be the table of contents, though they didn’t call it that). Others said they flipped through the book or looked at the key words on the tabs that divide the book to see if they could narrow down their search. One student, who was using an electronic version of a textbook, used the search function. None of the students mentioned the index. Eventually, I asked one of them “would you ever look up something you wanted to find information about in the index?” The reply: “where is the index?” If your textbook’s index has a listing for ‘indexes’, will your students know where to find it? I’ve thought quite a bit about this response and should probably not have been surprised.  After all, students are so used to searching online for information, using search boxes and keyword searches, etc. Still, a great many students are using books, including reference books, and for these texts the index can be absolutely key: as the library blog notes, without an index a reader is left to sift through the volume searching for information. So here’s one of my resolutions for 2015: I intend to make sure every student I talk with in a class or in the writing center knows where to find the index in books—and how to use it.  A little time spent practicing with an index will take up very little time, and it could end up saving a LOT of time. Do your students know where to find a book’s index and what to do with it once they find it? [Photo: The index of The St. Martin’s Handbook, Eighth Edition] ... View more

This blog was originally posted on January 28th, 2015. I’m happy to say that we’re pretty much done with the bulk of the work on the readings and apparatus for the third edition of Emerging.  Whenever I go through a revision cycle I am reminded of just how much work it can be to put together a textbook.  Fortunately, I am also reminded of just how much fun it can be, too. I’ve had many great and engaging conversations with my editor Sarah just talking about interesting essays: “What did you think about … ?” “I loved it but I am concerned about ….” “Yeah me too but it would work so great with ….”  That kind of work always takes me back to what I love most about teaching: the intellectual energy of shaping a course. And we ended up with some great pieces.  I might talk about them a bit more in coming posts, but for now I will say that one of my favorites is by Yo-Yo Ma.  Why?  Because Ma.  But also because I think the essay represents the kind of work I love to see students do: it is engaged, it is reflective, it is smart, and it draws from multiple disciplines.  Awesome. I still have to work on the assignment sequences and I pray we get all the essays we want (permissions is a byzantine process, to say the least).  But it’s nice to see the next edition coming together. ... View more

This blog was originally posted on January 27th, 2015. Working on some medical texts last week, I was continually impressed with the ease of looking up unfamiliar words. Pretty much without fail, if I right-clicked on a medical term, Adobe Acrobat would drop a box with the last choice being Look up “xxx”: From that choice, I could click through to a screen like this one: Pretty handy! Two clicks from term to definition and pronunciation. The entry continues with alternate forms, etymology, a British dictionary entry (Collins), and a medical dictionary entry (American Heritage Stedman’s Medical Dictionary). Maybe a Latinate compound like immunogenic is too simple, since a reader can practically figure it out from the two root words. However, as I kept using the Look Up feature, it was rarely stumped. Here are the main entries, for dacarbazine and lysine: Wow, an Unabridged Random House Dictionary entry on decarbazine, complete with a clear pronunciation and the chemical formula. And a Random House Dictionary entry on lysine. Dictionary.com, according to information on their Web site, is part of a Nasdaq-listed company (IACI), located in Oakland, CA. Their site is literate, sprinkled with interesting quotes about words, and it portrays the work environment of a lively Bay Area culture, with their mission being to “to delight and inspire anyone using the English language by being the most innovative and comprehensive digital source for everything related to words. We provide resources that help people accurately define, pronounce, and apply words in the moment.” They manage to do so supported by fairly non-intrusive on-screen ads. That Dictionary.com provides these resources for free with such easy access “in the moment” makes Dictionary.com a superb resource for writers who wish to help themselves. The threshold is now so low for looking up words in the dictionary that individual inertia is no longer a concern. Similar look-up functions exist with a right-click in Microsoft Word, though not quite as slick as those in Acrobat: The MS Word allows a Bing search on the term, along with access to several Microsoft proprietary tools, like Encarta. But what you don’t get is immediate access to two of the English language’s best dictionaries,Random House and American Heritage. Too bad, because this is where “in the moment” help is really helpful. As we work with students to help them become independent learners, the tools under right-click are worth exploring. ... View more

​This blog was originally posted on Decemer 2nd, 2014. One of my college professors started our last day on A Farewell to Arms with a one-question quiz: “What is the last word of the novel?” I had finished the novel a week in advance, but did I remember that the last word of the novel was “rain”? Of course not. I’m still angry about that failed quiz decades later; so when the idea of reading quizzes comes up, I remember the “rain” and vow to never, ever impose such nonsense on students. Nevertheless, the issue is bothering me again: Should I give reading quizzes? In a writing course? Specifically, a technical writing course? Even more specifically, in an online technical writing course? I am no longer so sure of the answer. Instead of quizzes, I have been asking students to do short writing activities that apply ideas from the readings, like responding to real-world scenarios or analyzing an existing document. In face-to-face classes, I knew that students were referring to the textbook because I saw them doing so. In the online classes I teach, I do not know whether students are doing the readings. I point them to specific pages that should help them with their projects, but their writing sometimes suggests that they haven’t looked at the details carefully. I worry, too, that I don’t give students enough feedback on these weekly writing exercises. I know that I’m always behind in tracking who has answered which questions and whether those responses were on time. Could quizzes be the answer? I know several others in the department use reading quizzes in tech writing classes to ensure that students do the reading. Our CMS can respond immediately to multiple-choice quizzes so they will grade themselves. Students would get immediate feedback. Bedford/St. Martin’s even has quiz questions I can import directly into our CMS. I do wish that there were fewer True/False and fewer “all of the above” questions, because they make randomizing the answers impossible. I would like more questions overall as well. The first chapter has only eight questions, for instance, and doesn’t seem to cover everything in the chapter. It’s not my ideal, but it could work. As I compared my options recently, I decided to ask my colleagues on Facebook what they do. In particular, I wondered if avoiding quizzes disadvantaged students who actually do well on that form of assessment. My friends came back quickly with encouragement. They use quizzes at times and offered useful tips to help make them effective. Joanna Howard “call[s] them quick assessments and explain[s] that they help a reader understand what she has just read.” Judi O’Reilly Kirkpatrick confirmed my belief that the CMS would take care of the feedback once it is set up. Dawn Fels urged me to follow my instincts. Shelley Reid explained that she uses quizzes “not as assessment but to encourage students to try to *recall* key concepts because recent research shows that simply the *effort to recall* even if the answer is wrong helps move knowledge to long-term memory.” She also emphasized the importance of connecting the quizzes to the course goals and using the information in class to help students understand the relationship between the quizzes and the other work we were doing. Susan Naomi Bernstein suggested that “Quizzes seem to support closer reading” and agreed that reading quizzes might well help some students more than my writing exercises. She reminded me of a recent New York Times article, “Studying for the Test by Taking It,” which discusses the ways that self-testing and quizzes can improve learning. She echoed my concerns about including more differentiation in learning strategies for the course. I think I’m sold. I am teaching an online technical writing course during the Winter term. In those three overloaded weeks, I would rather have students focus on their projects than on short, informal writing exercises. Quizzes may help all of us: students will read more closely and get immediate feedback, and I can focus more on explicitly tying the readings to the writing they do. I’ll report on how the quizzes worked in late January, once the Winter term is over. I would love more suggestions as I set things up for the Winter term. What is your advice? Do you use quizzes in writing classes? Just leave me a comment below, or drop by my page on Facebook or Google+. ... View more