Multimodal Composition is an upper-division writing elective for all majors at Illinois State University. As of Fall 2009, I have taught this course four times.
semesters & syllabi
Fall 2007 (as English 289.22: Multimedia Writing Workshop): 18 students
Fall 2008 (hereafter as English 239: Multimodal Composition): 12 students
Spring 2009: 9 students (7 undergraduates & 2 graduate students, as independent studies)
Fall 2009: 14 students (11 undergraduates & 3 graduate students, as independent studies)
description
Started as English 289.33: Multimedia Writing Workshop. I wrote the course proposal to turn it into a permanent class. During Fall 2007, I taught the course similarly to how I taught English 3040: Perspectives in Writing & Rhetoric the previous year as a faculty member at Utah State University; its topic was an open-assignment video course where students progressed from smaller, monomodal exercises to 5-minute multimodal videos of various genres. I didn’t like the organization for the course (as described in my teaching development plan under Teaching), so I changed the syllabus the next fall. For Fall 08, Spring 09, and Fall 09, the course focused on having students compose digital media scholarship for a peer-reviewed publication in English Studies. The publication venue changed for different semesters, as students responded to real calls for papers in the field of digital writing studies.
teaching innovations
Fall 2007, I implemented a teaching innovation of showcasing the student’s work at the local, historic cinema. I was nominated for the department’s innovative teaching award for this effort, although it turned out I was ineligible because I had not been at ISU long enough to meet the award criteria of two years.
Fall 2008 came a different innovation as I changed the syllabus — having students compose texts for peer-reviewed publications provided them with the elusive “authentic audience” while giving them a specific rhetorical situation in which to work. Also innovative this semester was taking as many of these students who could go to a national conference about multimodal composition. From this event, which they filmed, they built several digital media projects and proposed their inclusion into the digital conference proceedings. Their proposals were accepted, and as of Fall 2009, I am working with one student from that class to revise the student projects for publication.
citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2006, October 13). The role of new media in student narratives. Thomas R. Watson Conference on Rhetoric and Composition, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY.
abstract In this presentation, I discuss some student-produced new media texts from a class I taught called Perspective on Writing and Rhetoric: Multimodal Composition, in which the students created a series of progressively more multimodal projects (written text, audio, static image, vog, video documentary). I discussed how students transformed the idea of “narrative” through unexpected visual techniques, especially in their filmic projects.
citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2009, January 7). The both/and of faculty, undergraduate digital scholarship. Conference for the Center of Teaching and Learning with Technology, Normal, IL.
abstract
This presentation tracks two ecologies: (1) an undergraduate multimodal composition class producing digital scholarship for a digital book collection, and (2) the teacher’s work on that digital collection alongside the production of her tenure e-portfolio. Both students and teacher have asked the following questions in and about their research: What can students teach teachers? What can teachers learn from students? What does digital scholarship look like for undergraduates and faculty? These are ubiquitous questions in our field, and I will show examples from both ecologies to discuss possible answers to these questions, from which larger questions arise: How can a multimodal composition class contribute to the sustainability of academic writing? How can the obstacles of low-access computing promote digital scholarship in which undergraduate students talk back to the scholars who are often talking *at*, not with, them? In answering these questions (in light of the class’s scholarly project and the teacher’s current work in digital scholarship), I argue that teaching, learning, and composing digital scholarship across student–teacher barriers provides sustainable ways for digital media scholars to connect their undergraduate curricula with their research lives.
citation
Ball, Cheryl E.; Ellison, Katherine; Thompson, Torri; Justice, Hilary; Neuleib, Janice; & Kalmbach, James. (2009). Assessing faculty & student multimodal teaching and learning practices across campus. Department/School Initiative in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Illinois State University. $10,000. [not funded]
abstract This grant proposal was intended to fund a series of surveys and workshops to assess how teachers across the curriculum at Illinois State University implemented student-based projects using multiple media.
citation
Ball, Cheryl E. (2009, October 1). Creating sustainable teaching practices for multimodal scholarship. NEH Teaching Development Fellowship. $21,000. [under review]
abstract I am requesting funding of $21,000 over the five-month period August–December 2010 to complete a teaching development project aimed at creating templates for multimodal scholarship, which I will use as the basis for my English 239: Multimodal Composition course at Illinois State University. These templates will use a selection of open-source software created in partial conjunction with University of Southern California’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy. The release time this stipend provides will allow me to travel to USC to work with these designers and to create three templates and three tutorials (on how to use those templates) so that my students can practice more cutting-edge and more sustainable digital humanities scholarly practices.
citation
Ball, Cheryl E., & et al. [12 undergraduates]. (2008). Teaching The new work of composing: Undergraduate research in digital scholarship. Teaching-Learning Development Grant, Illinois State University. $2,000.
abstract A unique opportunity has arisen for the students in my English 239 (Multimodal Composition) class; they have been invited to the Thomas R. Watson Conference on Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Louisville this October, where they will collect research to complete their major class projects. The students will interview conference presenters, film and audio-record sessions, and, from that data collection, produce a digital, multimedia-based book chapter for submission to the first “born-digital” scholarly book in English studies, The New Work of Composing. This book is set to be published by the first all-digital, academic press in the humanities, Computers and Composition Digital Press.
outcomes The students collected digital assets from the conference and produced 3 digital media texts for a chapter called “Talking Back: Undergraduates and Digital Media Research,” which has been editorially reviewed by the two other editors of The New Work of Composing and accepted for publication.
citation
McCorkle, Ben [Producer]. (2007, June 5). Visiting scholars in digital media: Cheryl Ball [Video]. Ohio State University. http://tinyurl.com/dmac-interview-ball
abstract
Short interview (12:29) with Cheryl Ball (Illinois State University), part of the ongoing series featuring Visiting Scholars in Digital Media and Composition at the OSU Department of English. Outline: I. On a digital tenure portfolio. II. Defining the terms in digital writing studies. III. Explaining this work to students. IV. Why I attend the DMAC institute. V. Advice for new multimedia teacher-scholars.
citation
Bemer, Amanda; Moeller, Ryan M.; & Ball, Cheryl E. (2009, September). Designing collaborative learning spaces: Where material culture meets mobile writing processes. Programmatic Perspectives: Journal of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, 1(2). http://www.cptsc.org/pp/vol1-2/bemer_moeller_ball1-2.pdf
abstract In May 2007, the Department of English at Utah State University (USU) redesigned its computer lab to increase mobility and collaboration during writing projects. Our study shows that despite the Professional and Technical Communication (PTC) field’s efforts to promote writing as a socially active, collaborative practice, many students view computer labs as spaces for conducting isolated, single-authored work. In this article, we discuss how a combination of movable furniture and mobile technology, including wireless access and laptops, can enhance student collaboration in group-based writing assignments. The lab included both desktop and laptop seating areas, so the authors created a modified worksite analysis designed to evaluate team collaboration in this new layout. These material changes in the lab allow students to configure the space according to their needs, offering them some measure of control over three crucial elements of successful collaboration: formality, presence, and confidentiality.
citation
Ball, Cheryl E.; Fenn, Tyrell; & Scoffield, Tia. (in review). (Multimodal, multimedia, multigenre) Composition: Narratives on teaching and learning with new media. In Carl Whithaus & Tracey Bowen (Eds.) Multimodal literacies and emerging genres in student compositions.
status
Update 6/08: Collection received advanced contract from Utah State University Press.
Update 4/09: Utah State Univ Press downsized; asked to send mss elsewhere.
Update 10/09: Collection reviewed by Pittsburgh University Press; co-editors responding to reviews.
Update 11/28/09: Email notification by editors for new revision deadline of Feb. 1, 2010, to be reviewed again by Pittsburgh UP.
abstract
In this chapter, we overview an individual-classroom implementation (i.e., non-programmatic) of multimodal, multimedia, and multigenre composition, in which the distinctions between those terms will be discussed by the instructor–author. The second and third authors (who were students in the class) took on teacher-roles in class based on their histories of composing with multiple modes and media; they reflect on those histories and how prior experiences played a role in the designs of their final projects, which included a video documentary and several supplementary texts designed with different media and different rhetorical situations in mind. Our purpose in this chapter is threefold: (1) to outline and discuss problems with a new media composition syllabus with sequenced assignments that step students through composing in different modes, media, and genres; (2) provide narratives of students’ experiences composing texts in such a course, with a focus on their transferable critical literacies; and (3) offer lessons learned whereby teachers can help students produce more interesting, relevant, and powerful texts than the original syllabus inspires.
citation
Ball, Cheryl E., & Moeller, Ryan M. (2008). Converging the ASS[umptions] between U and ME; or, How new media can bridge a scholarly/creative split in English studies. Computers and Composition Online [Special issue: Media convergence]. http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/convergence/
abstract
Authors of new media texts regularly draw on both scholarly and creative genres to construct their arguments. In so doing, they bridge disciplinary boundaries that have split English departments in the past. These boundaries are discussed in our text using the following binaries: high :: low, literature :: composition, and popular :: academic discourse. In this article, we examine, then complicate, the binary form :: content through a popular and academic YouTube video (Wesch, 2007). We then situate new media texts within the historical split between rhetoric and literature using Berlin’s social epistemic rhetoric as a bridge. Our argument concludes by showing that new media texts can provide a convergence between binaries in English studies, particularly the one found in tenure guidelines suggesting that research is either scholarly or creative. New media is both/and.
abstract
This webtext demonstrates the possibilities of using new media to teach students critical literacy skills applicable to the 21st century. It is a manifesto for what we think writing scholars should be teaching in general-education “writing” classes like first-year composition. In order to answer the question of what we should teach, we have to ask what kinds of academic literacy, if any, we value. We argue here that rhetorical theory is a productive way to theorize how meaning is made among new media texts, their designers, and their readers. We use the Ancient Greek concepts of topoi and commonplace to explain how designers and readers enter into a space of negotiated meaning-making when converging upon new media texts. That negotiated space offers a new-media space for learning critical literacies by means other than research papers. As examples, we discuss two student texts and the literacies they demonstrate.
citation
Ball, Cheryl E., & Moeller, Ryan. (2006–07). The Learning Suite: A collaborative, technology-rich environment to support writing/composition in a digital age. Utah State University Innovation Fund. $86,000 [Internal].
abstract Digital technology has dramatically changed the cultural and social landscape in the last 10 years. Nationwide, writing-studies scholars—those who instruct classes like English 1010 and 2010 [e.g., the first- and second-year composition sequence]—have been attuned to this change, paying attention to how digital technology and sustainable lab environments affect students’ writing processes. This Innovation Fund proposal seeks to create a sustainable learning community, called the Learning Suite, built on how people actually write in the workplace and at home. The goal is to enhance students’ experiences with English 1010/2010 curricula—classes that all USU students take—by increasing students’ access to 21st-century, digital writing practices and environments. The Learning Suite will help students bridge the gap between the writing they do in their classes at USU and the writing they will do in the workplace and beyond. This change, combined with increased contact with other students and instructors in the lab suite setting, will primarily serve to retain students beyond their first two years by helping them see writing as an engaging, social activity rather than a requirement.
citation
Atkins, Anthony; Anderson, Daniel; Ball, Cheryl; Homicz Millar, Krista; Selfe, Cynthia; & Selfe, Richard. (2006). Integrating multimodality in composition curricula: Survey methodology and results from a CCCC Research Initiative grant. Composition Studies, 34(2), 59-84.
abstract
This article describes methodology and outcomes of a national survey conducted in 2005 to discover how instructors use multimodal composition practices in their writing classrooms and research. The authors describe the procedures they used to collect and analyze data from writing teachers about the production, distribution, interpretation, and consumption of multimodal composition. Supported by a research initiative of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, the survey was designed to identify the instruction occurring at institutions with a nascent or established curriculum of multimodal pedagogy in which students and faculty members produce texts that combine words, images, and sound as composing resources. The aim of this project was to produce a snapshot of those programs working to define multimodal composition and to integrate these new semiotic forms into writing classes.
abstract [from site]
Redefining composition to include conscious attention to images and design, Picturing Texts is a writing textbook that teaches how to compose visual texts as well as how to read them. This Web site is a repository of useful materials for working with the book. It includes online readings, with suggested focus and respond sections [coordinating with the structure of the print book]; guidelines for writing for the Web; links to resources on the Web that will help students do the kind of work invited by Picturing Texts; and more.
This website accompanies the writing/composition textbook Picturing Texts (Selfe, Cynthia; Faigley, Lester, George, Diana; & Palchik, Anna; W.W. Norton, 2004). I wrote the content for 7 interactive chapters and 3 sections of ancillary materials for the website.
The purpose of this course at Utah State University was to introduce professional/technical writing majors to pre-press and printing processes for large-scale print documents. We covered printing terminology, color types, production management techniques, image manipulation for print documents, and pre-press guidelines. Editing and working with clients as well as establishing baseline differences between print and web publications was also part of the course goals.
SPRING 2005 summary
The majority of this class was spent designing the campus literary magazine, Scribendi, a project that provided many collaborative opportunities for students, which I describe in detail below.
sections taught in department this term: 1
number of students enrolled: 19
teaching innovations
This class was a new prep for me at Utah State. I implemented an idea I used for a similar class at a previous school—having students re/design the campus literary magazine. The purpose of this assignment is to give students a real-world example of preparing a large-scale document for a printing press (including real-world deadlines, budgets, and clients). The past editors of Scribendi, the literary magazine at USU, were thrilled to have students work on updating the design. (Past editors were volunteer English department staff and faculty members assigned to oversee the creative writing contest, winners of which were published in the magazine.)
In class, the students worked in small groups to complete the redesign:
four groups worked on the main content and design (after a collaborative effort on making a template). Each group consisted of a book designer, a graphic designer, and an editor, and the three members worked collectively on one signature (16-page spread) of the magazine;
a fifth group was responsible for the design template that every group used, the cover, table of contents, and other front- and backmatter;
a sixth group was the marketing and budget team. They were responsible for raising money (which they elected to do rather than stick with the current budget, even though I informed them that it was not a part of the class) and for writing promotional materials.
The students worked with several clients including the new creative writing contest director, Anne Shifrer, to collect the winning entries; choose how many would fit in the pages we had the budget for; edit the entries and insert them into the template in an appropriate sequence based on thematic issues; collected graphics from artists on campus and matched the graphics to specific texts; and prepared the entire publication for printing. In addition, they raised a significant amount of money (nearly $1,500 in a month) so that they could publish 1,000 copies on a professional press instead of photocopying 100 for departmental use, as had been done in past years.
Because students had a limited budget for printing, which meant a limited number of pages they could print, they decided (with my guidance) to excerpt several large stories and place all winners in their entirety on an accompanying website. Thus, students also had the chance to design the publication for a second medium. The website is linked at the bottom of this post.
Finally, students presented fresh-off-the-press copies of Scribendi to the campus at the annual Student Showcase for undergraduate research. They created a poster to outline their hands-on research activities and distributed nearly 700 copies that week to stakeholders and students around the campus and the community. (The rest of the copies were kept to include in the students’ portfolios and for departmental recruiting efforts.)
narrative evaluations
“Cheryl has an incredible knack for helping students take charge of their learning. She has such a personable nature that students feel elevated to her level. Cheryl is a great professor, and a mentor that keeps me striving to impress! 10 out of 10.”
“I thought that the objectives were very clear and we always knew what was expected of us. I also thought the expectations of us were high, which helped us to learn more. I am glad that I had the opportunity to take this class from Cheryl Ball. I thought she was a very good teacher.”
“Cheryl Rocks! She really pushes for quality and her attitude is positive. She doesn’t take b.s. from anyone and she’s extremely knowledgable about technology that we’re suposed to learn. I appreciate that…. She goes the extra mile.”
“I felt that the literary magazine redesign was a very good teaching process for publication production. I enjoyed learning the process of publishing an actual magazine. Cheryl, I appreciate the knowledge that you shared with us. I am glad to have a professor that has such a great knowledge of what we are doing, particularly about making a publication as a student [refering to my experiences making litmags when I was a student]. Thank you, Cheryl. You rock! And we learned a lot about responsibility.”
“I never knew publication production could be so exciting.”
