“Genre and transfer in a multimodal composition class”

citation
Ball, Cheryl E.; Fenn, Tyrell; & Scoffield, Tia. (under contract). Genre and transfer in a multimodal composition class. In Carl Whithaus & Tracey Bowen (Eds.) Multimodal literacies and emerging genres in student compositions. University of Pittsburgh Press.

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.
• Update 2/2/11: Email notification of contract by U of Pittsburgh Press. Ours is the lead chapter in the book. We had no revisions.

abstract
This chapter is about a teacher’s progression through three iterations of a class (at two universities) in multimodal composition, with a focus on how two students brought previous multiliteracy practices into the classroom, how that knowledge shaped instruction, and how the instructor learned to not assign texts by modes in a multimodal class so as to avoid a-generic production of wowless, “five-paragraph” videos.

Old 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.

accompanying materials

• pre-print (pdf)
• version under review (pdf)