While the answer seems rhetorical, the efficacy, even urgency , of implementing multimodal pedagogies is not apparent to many in the composition field. Daly (2003, p. 40) recalls an incident when she "called a leading faculty member in the Department of English to suggest that we explore ways of incorporating teaching some basic multimedia writing in freshman composition." According to Daly (2003, p. 40) that suggestion "was greeted with profound silence." Moreover, as Selfe (forthcoming, p. 27) notes, even in composition programs and English departments where "non-print forms, genres, and modalities of communication are considered objects of study and critique", generally students are not producing these forms themselves. 

Obviously, then, if university writing instructors are unaware of, uncomfortable with, or harbor biases against such pedagogies, then valuable opportunities to meet students' current complex literacy needs may be missed. Selfe (forthcoming, p. 28) argues this very point when she states that she wants to "convince compositionists how crucial it is to acknowledge, value, and draw on a range of composing modalities--among them, images (moving and still), animations, sound, and color--which are in the process of becoming increasingly important to communicators , especially within digital networks . . . " In effect, Selfe's words, here in print and in the video clips that accompany this article, challenge writing instructors out of their own safe places of composition in order to not only grow, themselves as writers, but also to better prepare their students for writing in a global community.

Dunn's earlier comment, which points to the rigors of multimodal assignments, may assuage those wary of the pedagogical soundness of such instruction. Furthermore, Daly (2003, p. 35) explains that "Rich media, with its multiple simultaneous layers, does much more than provide enhancements, illustrations, and tools for enriching, accessing, and transmitting the established literacy," it can "enable us to develop concepts and abstractions, comparisons and metaphors, while at the same time engaging our emotional and aesthetics sensibilities."  What Daly says here, echoes the contention of other pro-multimodal compositionists: multimodal composition and multimedia literacies need not usurp traditional print literacy. Quite the contrary, instead of replacing print "multiple channel" or multimodal "literacies will help us rethink our purposes, broaden our epistemological assumptions, and refresh the methodologies supporting them. It will force us to have greater expectations for ourselves and for all our students" (Dunn, 2001, p.159).