2. Preface
What follows is my introduction for the Digital
Composition Sampler presentation for PWR
faculty on March 21, 2012.
The introduction provides an overview of
approaches to digital composition, which will be
followed by:
Michelle discussing audio essays
Dalyn discussing video projects
Amy discussing digital storytelling projects
Note: I’m including the “Benefits to Students” section in this version of
the slides, even though that section was not part of the live
presentation.
3. COMMON APPROACHES
• Digital literacy activities
• Writing in digital environments
• Multimodal composition
4. DIGITAL LITERACY
ACTIVITIES
Discuss the changing nature of literacy
Engage in rhetorical analyses of digital
compositions
Experiment with current and emerging
technologies for research, reading, and
writing
5. Rhetorical Analysis
Study the rhetorical • Blogs, wikis, or forums
on topics related to the
practices of an class
online discourse • Discussions on
community Wikipedia pages
Study rhetorical • What is the rhetorical
purpose of interface
principles for web design?
and interface design • How do navigational
elements impact
readers?
7. Experiment with Technologies of Writing
Experiment with tools • Social
that enhance reading, bookmarking
writing, collaboration, • Google Docs
and peer review • Tools to annotate
web pages and
PDFs
Experiment with • Blogs
different platforms for • Wikis
web publishing • Social media
• Prezi
• Glogster
9. WRITING IN DIGITAL
ENVIRONMENTS
Build a blog, wiki, or web site individually, in
groups, or as a class
• Build a web site for a service learning partner, for a real or
hypothetical business, or to showcase research
• Practice writing in digital genres across multiple sections
Contribute to existing blog, wiki, forum, or other
digital environment
• Edit or compose a new wikiHow article
• Edit a Wikipedia entry
• Enter a forum conversation and inspire a response
• Make strategic use of social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
14. MULTIMODAL COMPOSITION
Audio and photo essays
• “This I Believe” exploratory essay
• Personal narrative (audio only or with photo
slideshow)
Video projects
• Public service announcement • Animations
• Digital storytelling • Flash talks
• Mini-documentary research video
• Episode commentary or scene analysis
• Strategic remix of digital media content
16. Sample animation to explore an insight inspired by research
(made with Xtranormal
17. MULTIMODAL COMPOSITION
cont’d
Presentations
• PowerPoint or Prezi with text, images, and video
Visual projects
• Comic books or cartoons •
Infographics
• Digital posters (Glogster) • Mind maps
• Mashups
Re-mediation
• Composing the same message in multiple
modalities to study how the message changes
22. Meets established goals of writing
instruction
Composing processes
Rhetorical knowledge
Critical thinking
Discourse conventions
Goals established by WPA, NCTE, CCC, and CCHE
23. Goal: Composing Processes
As readers in digital environments:
• Students can more easily view how ideas emerge
through a process of conversation and refinement
As writers:
• Response from real world audiences leads to desire to
revise
• Digital media composition requires a multi-step process
• Can’t produce a rhetorically powerful digital
composition project the night before!
• Requires planning, research, collaboration, problem-
solving, drafting, feedback, revision
24. Goal: Rhetorical Knowledge
As readers in digital environments:
• Easy availability of digital environments and
genres allows students to study how writers
respond to real rhetorical situations and employ
rhetorical strategies
As writers:
• Gives students opportunities to compose for real
audiences and purposes, using contemporary
genres and publishing platforms
25. Goal: Critical Thinking
As readers in digital environments:
• Allows us to study how arguments work in action:
types of evidence, persuasive strategies, impact on
readers, nature of dialogue and disagreement
As writers:
• Gain deeper insight into the rhetorical strategies and
appeals used in digital formats by composing in them
• As composers, students start to recognize subtle
strategies for establishing credibility and
persuading audiences
26. Goal: Discourse Conventions
As readers in digital environments:
• Reading digital texts helps to raise awareness of the
role of conventions in both print and digital genres
As writers:
• Gives students practice at adapting conventions
based on their target discourse community
• Provides insight into the purpose of conventions that
students often struggle with in print writing
• Structural elements, such as introductions,
transitions, “units” of thought, coherent progression
of ideas
27. Additional Benefits
Reinforces traditional writing skills
Improves digital literacy skills
Validates multimodal literacies
Inspires greater student engagement
Prepares students for the future of writing
28. Reinforces Traditional Writing Skills
In their research into the pedagogical benefits of digital
storytelling for college students, Oppermann and
Coventry (2011) found that:
Being asked to communicate in the ‘new
language’ of multimedia brings students a
greater awareness of the component parts
of traditional writing.
Digital storytelling helps students develop a
stronger voice and helps students more
accurately and firmly place themselves in
relationship to the arguments of others.
29. Improves Digital Literacy Skills
Today’s college students don’t have the digital literacy skills
they need to compete against today’s high school students
• But many don’t realize it, as they’ve been told they’re
“digital natives”
Digital composition projects enable students to:
• Identify deficiencies in their digital literacy skills
• Remedy them while working on a project they find
meaningful
30. Validates Multimodal Literacy
Literacy researchers have long emphasized the value of
multiple modalities in human communication (text, sound,
visuals)
• Age of print: printed text is easiest to produce and
distribute (multimedia is for pros only)
• Digital age: relatively easy and inexpensive to produce
and distribute text, audio, images, and video
Assigning multimodal composition projects validates the
rhetorical power of multiple modalities
31. Improves Student Engagement
Composing for real audiences and purposes
inspires greater investment
• Students have a genuine interest in conveying
a meaningful message
Relevance of assignments spurs greater effort
• Helps students see writing as having a
legitimate purpose beyond “term papers”
32. Opperman and Coventry (2011) found that digital
composition projects allow students to:
• work on authentic assignments
• develop their personal and academic voice
• represent knowledge to a community of learners
• receive situated feedback from their peers
Due to their affective involvement with this process and
the novelty effect of the medium, students are more
engaged than in traditional assignments.
33. Prepares Students for the Future of
Writing
Today, elementary school students are producing
multimedia research projects
• What kind of research projects will they expect to do in
college?
• What kind of projects will employers expect all college
graduates to be capable of producing?
What will count as “good communication skills” in the
future?
34. For more info…
For a longer version of this presentation, as well
as information on a variety of aspects of digital
composition, see:
http://digitalwriting101.net
&
http://www.pwrfaculty.net/technology
Editor's Notes
I’m going to review some common approaches to digital composition to give you a taste of the wide variety.Also mention a few PWR colleagues who are using each approachThen Michelle, Dalyn, and I will go into a bit more detail about a few of these approaches.
The examples we’ll share in a bit fall under the category of multimodal composition
Will move quickly through a few examples of the underlined activities
Helps students understand rhetorical principles for document design and layoutFor example: conventions of web writing like hyperlinks, categories, tags, blog post titles, navigation menus(helps students see how different conventions apply to different types of writing)
Google Docs is useful for MANY activitiesDiigo is also a social bookmarking tool
Class blogs: me, Dalyn, Nancy, Molly, Michelle, and othersWikis: me, Michelle, Nancy, Petger, Patty, and othersWeb site: Sigman asks 3040 students to build a site for a hypothetical business (using free web site builders)Forums: NathanSocial media: NancyWikipedia has a whole section on projects for college classes - editing a Wikipedia page takes good rhetorical awareness (hard to get edits to “stick” if the writing doesn’t meet certain standards)
My WRTG 3020 students did primary research into messages about gender and sexuality conveyed in popular culture and presented their research in this wiki
Students loved being able to practice blogging with other students they hadn’t met
Items in orange: more on these coming up!
PSA: mix of clips from movies, documentaries, and news stories along with facts and real stories about violence against transgender peopleAudio essay: explore how you came to understand your gender expression or identity
Infgoraphics becoming very popularMashups: combine digital media from multiple sources to convey a new message (combine multiple data streams)
Student research project on how transsexual people experience embodimentPrezi allows students to incorporate images and video clips
COMIC STRIP(these are just 2 pages from a longer “graphic short story” – short version of Graphic novel)
Small screen shot of project on the Tufts web site
The following slides show benefits in light of common goals for writing instructionBut in the interest of time, I’ll go over some of these benefits later instead of now, when I talk about digital storytelling
MY EXPERIENCE“writing as a process” is hard to teach, esp. the value of drafting, getting feedback, and revisingneed for process becomes much clearer with digital media projects (which also involve lots of traditional writing)
Again, the concept of enabling students to become producers, not just consumers - reflected in the NCTE goals for teaching writing and many other places- studentslearn the “inside scoop” on how media messages persuadethat’s partly why we teach essay writing: give students the inside scoop on how knowledge is composedcan’t really understand what you can’t compose
STORY:Students engaged in digital media composition often “discover” the rhetorical purpose of conventions like transitionsarticle by professor whose students spent 20 minutes debating the rhetorical value of a particular transition in a video project - students often have intuitive understanding of the value of transitions in video projects - when we point out what they’re doing with the video, students then say they finally “get” the point of using transitions in essays
“greater awareness of component parts” – for example, structural elements that help guide readersIn their research into the pedagogical benefits of digital storytelling for college students, Oppermann and Coventry (2011) found that:Being asked to communicate in the ‘new language’ of multimedia brings students a greater awareness of the component parts of traditional writing. Digital storytelling helps students develop a stronger voice and helps students more accurately and firmly place themselves in relationship to the arguments of others.
Support: I work closely with students on digital projects, and they often confess how little they know -every semester, I have at least one student who didn’t know she could copy text from one app and paste it into another one - most have never done anything more than check Facebook, watch videos on YouTube, send email, and look up a few things on GoogleRegardless of the digital skills they may have learned in high school, by the time they get to my class, as juniors and seniors, they’ve been thoroughly conditioned to the demands of old school print literacyMany know the basics of navigating digital environments, but not how to participate in them
Enables students to move from consumers of multimodal content to producers
students who make projects for real audiences tend to work on them long after they’re “due”
We owe it to students to help them develop writing skills of the future, not the writing skills of the pastHow will academic writing change in the future?