English 239: Multimodal Composition

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.

accompanying materials

• original 239 course proposal
• current 239 syllabi (links to website index of all available semesters)

see also

• “Who Needs YouTube?!” (under Research Designs)
• “Talking Back to Teachers: Undergraduate Research in Multimodal Composition” (under Chapters)
• “A Case Study in Revision Processes in Student-Authored Digital Media Scholarship” (under Honors)