This post is part of a 2025 series affiliated with the Writing Innovation Symposium (WIS), a regional event with national reach founded in 2018. Shannon Hautman, a 2025 Bdford/Saint-Martin’s WIS Fellow, is a writing instructor at the University of Cincinnati. Learn more below and in posts tagged “writing innovation” and “WIS.”
A few semesters ago, I began re-tooling my FYW course to create a more generous and specific place-based welcome to university-level writing. I wanted to introduce students to rhetoric and multimodality through research and writing that was low-stakes but high impact, collaborative, and relevant to first-years navigating their way through a new environment: their university.
Spanning five weeks with two 80-minute class meetings per week, “Texts on Campus” is an assignment sequence that invites students, firstly, to physically explore our campus and, next, to contribute what they learn to a shared class Google map. Last, students write a one page essay on the campus text they mapped. Throughout this process, students consider their community as a dynamic, rhetorically rich environment while developing the noticing, noting, and critical analysis skills required for a variety of composing practices.
The assignment sequence begins with students reading Melanie Gagich’s “An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing” and working in small groups with a range of texts, learning to notice and analyze the five modes of communication: linguistic, visual, spatial, aural, and gestural. As Gagich’s concepts move from the abstract to concrete, there’s distinct excitement in our conversation: students are noticing the messages in their everyday environment and interrogating meaning.
Next, we physically explore the campus in search of multimodal texts that resonate with the students, perhaps engendering a sense of belonging, driving their curiosity, or challenging worldviews. Once each student has selected a text, we work on noting practices, gathering data for our class map entries through photo, video, and/or audio recording, detailed written description, and GPS coordinates.
Back in the classroom, students self-organize thematic groups that represent the layers or categories on their map, and they make collaborative rhetorical choices to determine the design of their layer. Then, each student is responsible for creating a location-specific pin with the media and written data collected during their fieldwork. In the image below, student Nakinah Ward’s map entry features a photograph and brief description of her multimodal text: a “Vote Cthulhu” flyer found on our campus green. The description details the visual, linguistic, and spatial modes present in the text.
Under the “Student Life + Wellness” map layer, student Darla Kern used multiple video clips to document the multimodal text “Bearcat Friday,” a school spirit event featuring a performance by the University of Cincinnati’s marching band.
As they compose, peers give each other feedback: what types of information would be helpful for others to know if they use the map to locate each text? Is the map entry clear and accessible to readers with varying levels of familiarity with our campus? Knowing that their chosen texts were created for public audiences, they now have an opportunity to engage in their own public and participatory writing process, developing the digital literacy skills Gagich outlines in our anchor reading. When completed, the map is a collective multimodal work that represents the class’s vision of significant texts on campus.
Using concepts and strategies from “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis” by Laura Bolin Carroll, students transition into composing a one page narrative essay analyzing their text. Because we are working with place-based texts, I invite them to consider the roles of location and context in their writing.
Darla wrote about the rhetorical moves associated with location in her analysis of “Bearcats Friday:”
I found the location of Bearcat Fridays to be particularly impactful as the text occurs on one of the most busy areas of campus right in the middle of the day when many classes are scheduled. Which ensures a large audience as there are certainly an abundance of students around. This text poses as a reminder of what fun is to come heading into the next day. Everyone passing by interacts with this text in some way as it is nearly impossible to ignore, with the loud music playing and people dancing right on Mainstreet. I personally have such a positive reaction as the text fills me with excitement and encourages school spirit within our community.
Darla also notes that because this text recurs on multiple Fridays throughout the semester, it becomes a prominent, consistent message, increasing the potential resonance with the audience.
Nakinah addresses context in the “Vote Cthulhu” flyer, noting our campus atmosphere surrounding the 2024 presidential election: “Politics is considered a sensitive subject for many so treading carefully is wise. The cheeky, sarcastic humor and absurdity of the poster soften the edge of how nerve-wracking and truly important picking politicians are. With a sense of nihilism, it criticizes an interesting group of people: apolitical Americans.” Nakinah found that humor acts as an approachable entry point “forc[ing] the audience to think about their power and the complexities and intricacies of their morality.”
“Texts on Campus” is a foundational pedagogy in my FYW classes because it provides multiple low stakes (and fun!) opportunities for students to engage with threshold concepts. Most importantly, it invites connection to physical places, to peers, and to writing. At the end of the unit, some students share that their mapped text has become a meaningful place for them. Others most enjoy the process of exploration and documentation. Many point to their gained awareness for message and meaning in the world around them. As a student enthusiastically shared, “Rhetoric is everywhere. Now I know how to look for it and analyze it.”
Many thanks to University of Cincinnati FYW students Nakinah Ward and Darla Kern for permission to use their work.
Works Cited
Carroll, Laura Bolin. “Backpacks vs. Briefcases: Steps toward Rhetorical Analysis.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing Volume 1, edited by Charley Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky, Parlor Press, 2010, pp. 45-58.
Gagich, Melanie. “An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing Volume 3, edited by Dana Driscoll, Mary Stewart, and Matthew Vetter, Parlor Press, 2020, pp. 65-85.
Further Reading
Santee, J. “Cartographic Composition Across the Curriculum: Promoting Cartographic Literacy Using Maps As Multimodal Texts”. Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments, vol. 6, no. 2, Aug. 2022, doi:10.31719/pjaw.v6i2.95.
Santee, Joy. “‘Maps Are Cool’: Investigating the Potentials for Map-Making in Multimodal Pedagogies.” Digital Rhetoric Collaborative, 21 Feb. 2021, www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org/2022/02/21/maps-are-cool-investigating-the-potentials-for-map-m....
The theme for WIS ‘26, artifact, invites colleagues to connect writing, art, and facts. Special features include a makerspace, an Artifact Exchange, and an opportunity to contribute to a scholarly publication. Proposals as well as applications for Bedford/St. Martin’s WIS Fellows are due 10/24; undergraduate contributions are due 11/21. Registration opens in November, and the event itself takes place onsite and online January 29th and 30th, 2026.
