I felt inspired after reading this weeks’ series of articles and chapters. There were great opportunities for critical and creative thinking provided by the sample assignments and the student feedback confirmed the value of multimodal assignments. One of the things that Selfe was able to clarify for me were the affordances of each type of communication. Obviously there are times when alphabetic, video, or audio texts would be more conducive to the writing task at hand, but I found the chart on page 33 helpful to clarify which tasks would benefit from which modality. A strategy Selfe suggests in chapter two to sequence assignments in multiple modalities (p25) appeals to me because I can see how that could create a successful transition to multimodality for my students and result in critical thinking through reflection on how each modality gave insight to the topic at hand.
Selfe also gives three elements of multimodal composition assignments on page 30: theory, structure and choice, and circulation. I smiled as I read the description of theory that “Faculty need to think not only about why they want to integrate multimodal assignments into their classes, but also about which assignments are amenable to the affordances of different modalities” (30). How many times has a teacher decided to try to use a different mode of composition without a real reason for the modal choice? Instead of beginning with the task and skills they are trying to accomplish, they will begin with a mode that they are interested in but which may or may not be best suited to the assignment itself. Again, Selfe clearly defines whether video or audio texts would be most useful for several types of assignments.
I am attracted to the way Shipka’s assignments for the course forced students to spend more time in the thinking/analyzing/creating stages of writing than in the actual typing/writing of the assignment itself. There was no question that critical thinking was happening and that students were challenged and stretched in ways not often seen in a composition course. The preparation for the composing was more important than the actual composition. The end result was good, but the point of the assignment was the process.
In chapter three, Selfe says that “Teachers who compose the best assignments, then, don’t outline a step-by-step procedure for students to follow; instead, they create assignments that prompt writers to think in new ways” (29). This idea that the student has a role in defining the assignment is exactly what Shipka was accomplishing in her assignments. The absence of the student as a stakeholder in the composition process is the problem that Trupe sees with the traditional types of essays taught in composition courses. Students do not see value in what they are creating and know that it serves no purpose other than to be a trial run in academic writing that no one, not even the teacher, wants to read.
In contrast, in the pdf copies of Shipka’s assignments, I saw a great example of the balance Selfe refers to in the making of a great assignment in chapter three. I appreciated Selfe’s suggestions for “an effective balance of structure and open-endedness,” which is what I immediately was concerned about for myself as a teacher (32). Allowing students to choose the modality/ies for themselves forces students to determine which modalities have affordances that suit their purposes for composition. This choice, coupled with the suggested reflection, would encourage even more critical thinking than the composition itself inspires. Shipka’s students demonstrate that this choice and reflection can be achieved and that students enjoy the challenge, once they recover from the initial shock of the open nature of the assignments.
Trupe’s article, while eight years old, notes that the skills used to create electronic texts are often the opposite of those required for alphabetic texts. According to her, electronic composition allows students to produce more text, understand audience, develop voice, become confident as writers, and require synthesis to collaborate on texts. Since these are several of the goals of the freshman composition course, I can see the validity of an argument that the five paragraph essay (and its attendant variations) have expired in terms of their usefulness in teaching college students the essentials of rhetoric and critical thinking to join the academic world. Trupe might wish to expand her list to include blogs and wikis to encourage collaboration and take advantage of the audio/visual production tools widely available for free to produce multimodal texts.
Hello Laura, I completely agree: "Students do not see value in what they are creating and know that it serves no purpose other than to be a trial run in academic writing that no one, not even the teacher, wants to read."
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to justify the standard essay to first year writing student who plans on becoming an engineer or a computer scientist. While they seem to know writing is important, they do not seem to see it as a place to learn and create meaning, nor a place where one can learn how to understand real-life events. Some students dread English comp, and view the writing classroom as a place of 16 weeks of torture.
But the issue is, how to make students see the relevancy of writing beyond the basic idea that it is something "you should just know." I mean, how to get students to see writing as thing that effects their personal, social and political lives. How to see writing and composing as routes to power.
And I think that this is where multimedia forms of composition can help. While we can say to students all day that writing changes the world, and that people with writing and rhetorical skills influence and shape the world, they still don't seem to get it. However, in order for them to get an understanding of the the power/knowledge relationship, all they need to do is look at some political ads where multimodal forms of composing dominate the political scene, or to look at how companies are advertising products.
For me, looked at in this send, multimodal forms of communication are every where. And people today need to learn not only how to compose these form, but how to analyse them as well. Plus they can eventually see that writing is the the catalyst for these different forms.
I strongly agree that assignments created by students need to be self-directed. Since I don't have teaching experience, my support for self-directed learning comes both from research and from my own personal experience. Learning is so much easier when you actually have motivation within yourself that drives you to complete the assignments.
ReplyDeleteLaura,
ReplyDeleteTwo things that you've written stood out to me. First, you mentioned Selfe's accommodation of structuring the assignments on top of each other. I also discussed this concept in my blog, and I find it one of her better ideas. Students will grasp the knowledge as they go along, and they don't need to be expected to know or be able to learn everything right away. That's even something I found with teaching so-called "regular" composition. Second, you briefly mentioned the fact that teachers sometimes implement assignments without having a real "reason" to do so. I think this is quite accurate. Often, going to teachers' conferences and talking with other instructors gets a person "fired up" to teach some exciting or fun lesson without actually thinking what the goals of that lesson or assignment are. That's why I am such a strong proponent of reflective teaching, and I try to tell my students the purpose of every assignment we do in class. Yes, assigning multimodal assignments might be fun or "cool" on some level for teachers, but they must also serve a purpose with the students, teaching them how to read, write, and think as college students.