Multimodal Literacies And Emerging Genres

A student’s avatar navigates a virtual world and communicates the desires, emotions, and fears of its creator. Yet, how can her writing instructor interpret this form of meaningmaking? Today, multiple modes of communication and information technology are challenging pedagogies in composition and across the disciplines. Writing instructors grapple with incorporating new forms into their curriculums and relating them to established literary practices. Administrators confront the application of new technologies to the restructuring of courses and the classroom itself. Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres examines the possibilities, challenges, and realities of mutimodal composition as an effective means of communication. The chapters view the ways that writing instructors and their students are exploring the spaces where communication occurs, while also asking “what else is possible.” The genres of film, audio, photography, graphics, speeches, storyboards, PowerPoint presentations, virtual environments, written works, and others are investigated to discern both their capabilities and limitations. The contributors highlight the responsibility of instructors to guide students in the consideration of their audience and ethical responsibility, while also maintaining the ability to “speak well.” Additionally, they focus on the need for programmatic changes and a shift in institutional philosophy to close a possible “digital divide” and remain relevant in digital and global economies. Embracing and advancing multimodal communication is essential to both higher education and students. The contributors therefore call for the examination of how writing programs, faculty, and administrators are responding to change, and how the many purposes writing serves can effectively converge within composition curricula.

A student’s avatar navigates a virtual world and communicates the desires, emotions, and fears of its creator. Yet, how can her writing instructor interpret this form of meaningmaking? Today, multiple modes of communication and information technology are challenging pedagogies in composition and across the disciplines. Writing instructors grapple with incorporating new forms into their curriculums and relating them to established literary practices. Administrators confront the application of new technologies to the restructuring of courses and the classroom itself. Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres examines the possibilities, challenges, and realities of mutimodal composition as an effective means of communication. The chapters view the ways that writing instructors and their students are exploring the spaces where communication occurs, while also asking “what else is possible.” The genres of film, audio, photography, graphics, speeches, storyboards, PowerPoint presentations, virtual environments, written works, and others are investigated to discern both their capabilities and limitations. The contributors highlight the responsibility of instructors to guide students in the consideration of their audience and ethical responsibility, while also maintaining the ability to “speak well.” Additionally, they focus on the need for programmatic changes and a shift in institutional philosophy to close a possible “digital divide” and remain relevant in digital and global economies. Embracing and advancing multimodal communication is essential to both higher education and students. The contributors therefore call for the examination of how writing programs, faculty, and administrators are responding to change, and how the many purposes writing serves can effectively converge within composition curricula.

Reprogrammable Rhetoric offers new inroads for rhetoric and composition scholars’ past and present engagements with critical making. Moving beyond arguments of inclusion and justifications for scholarly legitimacy and past historicizations of the “material turn” in the field, this volume explores what these practices look like with both a theoretical and hands-on “how-to” approach. Chapters function not only as critical illustrations or arguments for the use of reprogrammable circuits but also as pedagogical instructions that enable readers to easily use or modify these compositions for their own ends. This collection offers nuanced theoretical perspectives on material and cultural rhetorics alongside practical tutorials for students, researchers, and teachers to explore critical making across traditional areas such as wearable sensors, Arduinos, Twitter bots, multimodal pedagogy, Raspberry Pis, and paper circuitry, as well as underexplored areas like play, gaming, text mining, bots, and electronic monuments. Designed to be taught in upper division undergraduate and graduate classrooms, these tutorials will benefit non-expert and expert critical makers alike. All contributed codes and scripts are also available on Utah State University Press’s companion website to encourage downloading, cloning, and repurposing. Contributors: Aaron Beveridge, Kendall Gerdes, Kellie Gray, Matthew Halm, Steven Hammer, Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq, John Jones, M.Bawar Khan, Bree McGregor, Sean Morey, Ryan Omizo, Andrew Pilsch, David Rieder, David Sheridan, Wendi Sierra, Nicholas Van Horn

A student’s learning experience can be enhanced through a multitude of pedagogical strategies. This can be accomplished by visually engaging students in classroom activities. Visual Imagery, Metadata, and Multimodal Literacies Across the Curriculum is a pivotal reference source that examines the role of visual-based stimuli to create meaningful learning in contemporary classroom settings. Highlighting a range of relevant topics such as writing composition, data visualization, and literature studies, this book is ideally designed for educators, researchers, professionals, and academics interested in the application of visual imagery in learning environments.

This collection explores the role of individual faculty initiatives and institutional faculty development programs in supporting programmatic adoption of multimodal composition across diverse institutional contexts. The volume speaks to the growing interest in multimodal composition in university classrooms as the digital media and technology landscape has evolved to showcase the power and value of employing multiple modes in educational contexts. Drawing on case studies from a range of institutions, the book is divided into four parts, each addressing the needs of different stakeholders, including scholars, instructors, department chairs, curriculum designers, administrators, and program directors: faculty initiatives; curricular design and pedagogies; faculty development programs; and writing across disciplines. Taken together, the 16 chapters make the case for an integrated approach bringing together insights from unique faculty initiatives with institutional faculty development programs in order to effectively execute, support, and expand programmatic adoption of multimodal composition. This book will be of interest to scholars in multimodal composition, rhetoric, communication studies, education technology, media studies, and instructional design, as well as administrators supporting program design and faculty development.

This volume presents a comprehensive overview of multimodal approaches to curriculum and programmatic implementation across a diverse range of teaching environments and across geographic and cultural boundaries. Featuring contributions from scholars within and across both disciplines, the book examines the ways in which new technologies link to expanding definitions of literacy and, building on this, how multimodal approaches might most effectively address the unique opportunities and challenges instructors face in contemporary classrooms and professional development programs. Chapters draw on case studies from both existing scholarship and findings from the authors’ own experiences in practice, including examples from writing, rhetoric, and composition courses, open online learning courses, and interdisciplinary faculty training programs. The final section of the book showcases how the conversation might be further extended to address increasingly multilingual classrooms by exploring how multimodality has been implemented in transnational settings. Engaging with key questions at the intersection of programmatic and curricular development and multimodal studies, this book is a fundamental resource for graduate students and scholars in multimodality, rhetoric studies, language education, applied linguistics, and communication studies.

In this volume, contributors advance the theories and praxis of Critical Digital Literacies. Aimed at literacy, teacher education, and English Education practitioners, this volume explores critical practices with digital tools, with a pronounced focus on social justice.

This book examines a range of strategies for studio approaches and models from multiple educational contexts that enable process-oriented multimodal projects and promote student learning. This collection features chapters by leaders and innovators in studio-based approaches and offers vivid examples of ways in which they are realized.