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A foray into their own multimodal expression may also serve to disabuse writing instructors of any latent assumptions regarding multimodal pedagogies. Cindy Selfe and Scott DeWitt's Digital Media and Composition (DMAC) summer institute at The Ohio State University is an excellent way to start as the course offers practical as well as theoretical instruction in multimodal composition. Likewise, composing articles for online journals such as Kairos , C & C Online , and newcomer Harlot may also help convince writing instructors of the complexities, vagaries, and rigors of combining print and non-print texts to create a cohesive communicative act. Even a simple step "outside the comfort zone" into a local multimodal workshop may prove both liberating and enlightening to those interested in piloting multimodal instruction into their own classrooms. In other words, it is truly in "practicing what we preach" that university writing instructors may come to appreciate the possibilities inherent in multimodal composition pedagogies.
Granted, not all universities have equal access to the technological tools most often associated with multimodal instruction, and that will continue to be a problem. Furthermore, problems of equal access will likely plague pre-service teachers (the future's secondary English teachers) universities are currently preparing. Still, an increased awareness of and exposure to the purposefulness of multimodal composition instruction on the part of university instructors and then eventually their students seems the most prudent approach at this time. Thus, despite inequalities in access, it is the responsibility of those in the academy to use whatever means possible to address what Dunn (2001, p. 8) might call "pedagogical injustices" in an effort to meet the charge of providing "students effective, rhetorically based strategies for taking advantage of all available means of communicating effectively and productively, to multiple audiences, for different purposes, and using a range of genres" (Takayoshi, Hawisher, & Selfe, 2007, p. 9).
Quoting Dr. Mark Kann, chair of the USC Political Science Department, Daly (as cited, 2003, p. 40) writes: "'It seems to me that at some point, multimedia expression is going to be like writing: it's something you don't leave college without . . . And I wouldn't be too surprised if at some point a multimedia program that is the equivalent of freshmen writing will . . . become a requirement for graduation." The point that Kann, and perhaps others have yet to consider is that multimedia expression is writing; is a form of composition . It is the responsibility of university writing instructors to inform and challenge ourselves, Kann, our students, and others of this notion as well.