Footnote

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Conclusion: Section Overview

Included in this section are some additional localized implications based on the information in the Results Section and the Discussion Section, a brief description of how similar assessment projects can help other universities, and a call for further research. To learn more about the study see the Background Section and the Methodology Section. See the Participant Section for information pertaining to participant recruitment and participant demographics.

Conclusion: Localized Implications

As I claimed in the Discussion Section, the types of multimodal assignments instructors might attempt to incorporate into a first-year composition course are not always digital and do not have to be digital. In fact, as Jody Shipka (2013) has claimed:

If we are committed to providing students with opportunities to become increasingly cognizant of the ways texts and various kinds of technologies (both new and old) provide shape for, and take shape from, the historied environments in which they are produced, circulated, valued, and consumed, I think we need to resist equating multimodality with digitally based or screen-mediated texts. (p. 76)

However, according to Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Roads (2014), in addition to being able to write professionally and compose credible letter to the editor or op-ed pieces, students need to be able to participate actively and with good ethos in vibrant public spheres that are often encountered and structured through multimedia and multimodal forms of communication (p. 62). Many of those public spheres do include digital locations, and understanding how students might use digital technologies to share digitally mediated multimodal compositions is a major reason why I conducted the study presented in this web-text.

Part of the reason the study focused on skills, or tasks, and not on any specific genre is because students will usually complete a digitally mediated multimodal assignment for a first-year composition course by utilizing a number of different technologies that are both familiar and new to them. As Kristin Arola, Jennifer Sheppard, and Cheryl Ball (2014) have claimed:

One way to think about the different modes of communication is as a set of tools. You may not use all of them for a single project, because each mode has its own strengths and weaknesses in specific situations—just as a wrench is more useful in fixing a faucet than a hammer is. (p. 19)

In some cases, when it comes to UAB students, every technology they use will be new to them in some way. Even some of the features available in a basic word processor application will be unfamiliar to some of the students or a feature they are inexperienced with. Here is why looking back is such an important part of a study focused on localized assessment and why I included questions designed to study the participants’ knowledge of what some consider to be rudimentary and often overlooked tasks associated with building multimodal compositions.

As the information in the Results Section indicates, some of the students who have enrolled in a first-year composition course at UAB were well-equipped to complete a basic digitally mediated multimodal composition. However, as the results of the study I conducted also indicate, the level of preparedness among the study participants was mixed. Additionally, as the Discussion Section demonstrates, the level of preparedness among study participants significantly dropped as the tasks required to complete a digitally mediated multimodal composition become more complex. Only 63 (seven percent) of study participants claimed they had recorded a podcast while in high school, only 140 (15%), claimed to have built a website, and only 109 (12%) claimed to have changed the privacy setting when uploading a video to YouTube.

Shows the YouTube error image
Figure 6.1 – When uploading videos to YouTube, students have some control over who can watch the video by adjusting the privacy settings. However, if the student selects “Private” and forgets to add the instructor to the list of people who can access the video this image will be displayed when the instructor tries to watch or grade the student’s work.

Further, when comparing how the study participants self-ranked their own levels of expertise to the time they spent using a computer or the Internet and the types of activities they use those technologies to complete regularly, a few other patterns started to emerge from the data. Use, specifically how much time someone uses a computer or the Internet, does appear to impact how the study participants view their own level of expertise. However, only two percent of the expert or almost expert computer users edit videos regularly and only a little over one percent of those participants design webpages regularly.

Searching for and absorbing content, outside of composing emails and participating in social networks, are activities the participants who claim to be experts or almost expert Internet users complete more regularly when compared to activities that include developing or posting digital/multimodal content to the Internet. In addition, regardless of the participants’ self-perceived level of expertise, over half the participants included in the sample identified watching videos found on the Internet as part of their average use habits.

Therefore, if an instructor determined to include any type of digitally mediated multimodal assignment—from simple assignments requiring the use of images to more complex assignments like building websites—in a first-year composition course at UAB, as I explain in the Discussion Section, the pedagogical approach to those assignments would need to include a lot of how-to workshops and instructions. Even an assignment that included the creation of a PowerPoint or Prezi, because only 488 (54%) of the participants included in the sample claimed they created one for an English class and 47 claimed they had never created one while in high school, would require some instruction. Additionally, a large number of the study participants would need a lot of practice and a lot of help completing a digitally mediated multimodal assignment that included editing a video, uploading a video (especially if the instructor wanted to avoid seeing something like the image displayed in Figure 6.1), developing a blog, or designing a website.

Conclusion: A Model of Localized and Contextualized Assessment

A secondary reason for developing, conducting, and sharing the results of the study presented in this web-text was to offer a model of localized and contextualized assessment other members of the Computers and Composition community could use at their own institutions. As Paul Baepler and Thomas Reynolds (2014) have claimed, As […] everyday technology tools such as video cameras in tablets and phones become more ubiquitous, for example, researchers can fill in the picture of how students are already using these devices to create multimodal texts (p. 134). By focusing on localized and contextualized assessment practices I cannot offer any generalized arguments regarding the digital technology familiarity of all First-Year-Students. But, I can demonstrate why conducting a similar study at a different university would be beneficial.

What I can claim is that among the First-Year-Students who participated in the study there is no such thing as ubiquity regarding the types of multimodal composition capable technologies they use or locations of rhetorical activity (not even Facebook was used by all of the study participants). As I stated in the Background Section, if a similar study were conducted on a different campus the results will and should be different. But, it would be worth discovering, for example, if students on that campus have access to the types of technologies necessary to complete a digitally mediated multimodal assignment before requiring them to complete such assignments. As the data from my study revealed, not all First-Year-Students at UAB owned a smartphone while in high school. This discovery could be significant because some of those students may also not own a smartphone during their first year of college.[1]

Some of the participants may also still be learning how use the first smartphone they have ever owned and might not yet know how to transfer an image on that device to another device.[2] In addition to issues related to access, the types of projects the students at a different institution are familiar with before entering college might also be very different. Knowing what the students are familiar with or not familiar with when it comes to building a digitally mediated multimodal composition would also be beneficial. However, knowing, rather than assuming, could help an instructor develop a pedagogical baseline to ensure no students are excluded or struggle unnecessarily with an assignment because of technological concerns or task specific preparedness.[3] In addition, like I discovered from running my study, students at other universities may also not be familiar with some features of very familiar digital composition technologies.

Although I have not described in detail any issues related to technological support, the results of the study do highlight one very important claim made by Pamela Takayoshi and Cynthia Selfe (2007) as it pertains to technological familiarity and localized assessment practices. According to Takayoshi and Selfe, Those teachers who do want to work in digital communication environments need to make an early survey of the local instructional resources to which they have access (p. 10). Because the study I conducted included questions related to access and familiarity, I can comfortably claim that any instructor at UAB needs to ask themselves the following questions before incorporating any digitally mediated multimodal assignments into their first-year composition course:

  • Will the class be taught in a computer classroom?
  • Will laptops need to be brought into the class if they are available?
  • Is there a way to schedule time in an on-campus computer lab to conduct workshops?
  • Do students have access to any of the digital technologies required to complete the assignment if they do not currently own them and how will that be determined?
  • Do the on-campus options available to the students, like computers in a computer classroom, have the same programs on them that you are showing the students how to use during in-class workshops?

In addition, first-year composition instructors at UAB will also need to figure out the types of workshops they will need to offer as in-class activities in order help the students understand how to effectively manage the assignments they are required to complete. One simple example would be demonstrating to students how long it can take to save a digital video project, how to upload a video to a site like YouTube, how to adjust the privacy settings so the project can eventually be graded, and how long the upload process can take. It might sound overly simplistic, but students and instructors who have never completed such a process, like a large number of the sample participants from my study, may be shocked to find out they cannot wait until the last minute to complete, save, and then upload their work.

Conclusion: The Need for Further Research

Included in this web-text is only a small sample of the data I collected from the study, but the discoveries I have included reveal a lot about the levels of familiarity with some digital technologies among the First-Year-Students where I teach. Overall, results from my study suggest that students in my institution might be less experienced with digital composition than we may expect. They may walk around with computers in their pockets, but few of them have experience with using multiple tools to create a digitally mediated multimodal composition for a class. For me, this knowledge has already informed how I will develop, introduce, and teach multimodal assignments in my first-year composition courses.

As I discuss above, the type of study I conducted could be a very beneficial assessment activity at other universities. I strongly agree with Michael-John DePalma and Kara Alexander’s (2015) claim that, As new technologies steadily and incrementally reshape students’ notions of rhetorical practice and composing processes, the need to understand writers’ experience in multimodal composition projects is increasingly apparent (p. 197). However, I also fear the history associated with the term “Digital Divide.” We, as a community, do need to understand how our students are using the technologies at their disposal and need to continue examining how “newer” technologies continually reshape the rhetorical choices and multimodal composition habits of our students. But, we need to be careful when making claims about generalizable habits that may not be true for all students and need to be careful when making claims regarding ubiquity.

More work needs to be done in the area of localized and contextualized assessment and those types of studies should not only look forward, but they also need to look backward. As such, I still refer back to Lisa Gitelman’s (2008) following statement when considering issues of technological familiarity and assessment:

In contrast to the word page, I am using the term electronic document without reference to format […] it can only be identified according to its cultural standing, its meaning, within the social network of its potential circulation. (p. 128)

By looking back and considering how students construct “electronic documents” rudimentary and mundane activities become pedagogically significant, especially if students have no previous experiences composing those types of documents. In addition, as Dànielle Nicole DeVoss, Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, and Troy Hicks (2010) have previously claimed, Teachers need to plan for the diversities of students, their skills and interests in writing, and their familiarity with and access to digital tools both in school and at home (p. 115). As the results of the study indicate, on a localized level, first-year composition instructors at UAB need to be prepared to handle both students with a lot of familiarity using digital tools and students with limited experience composing with digital technologies (even mundane technologies like word processors).

As the results of the study also demonstrate, when it comes to the students where I teach there really is no such thing as a ubiquitous technology. Even technologies we assume students use every day are very unfamiliar to some of the study’s participants. Without conducting the type of study I developed, which eliminated assumption from the equation, and the data I collected from that study, I would not be able to make such a claim. Simply put, any pedagogy seeking inclusion should not be based on assumption alone. The results I share in this web-text might help readers question some of their own assumptions regarding students’ level of familiarity with some of the tasks and skills necessary to complete a digitally mediated composition. To go even further, readers may use the study described in the web-text as a model for performing an assessment in their own institutions to discover for themselves how familiar their own students are with “newer” and mundane digital technologies.

Notes

  1. Using smartphones to complete parts of a digitally mediated multimodal assignment is a popular option among many first-year composition instructors. But, students without one would need access to other technologies to complete the assignment.
  2. If the same discovery was made on a different campus, the instructor would need to see if the students can access other technologies from an on-campus service or might need to consider assigning complex multimodal assignments as group projects.
  3. The opposite is also true. If it was discovered that every student was familiar with certain activities then less instruction time could be spent teaching the students how to successfully complete those activities.