Composition

Pamela Takayoshi and Cynthia Selfe (2007) begin their introductory chapter to Multimodal composition:  Resources for teachers by asking the question: “Why multimodal composition?”  In response, they point out that “the texts that students have produced in response to composition assignments have remained essentially the same for the past 150 years. They consist primarily of words on a page, arranged into paragraphs” (p. 1).  While most academic writing is bound to this age-old standard of print text on a white, A4 sized page, composition in the “real world” outside of the academy has changed markedly during that timeframe.  Takayoshi, Selfe, and many others argue that this asymmetrical relationship undermines the stated goals of most composition and rhetoric pedagogy: to equip students with the skills and literacies necessary to contribute meaningfully to an ongoing (usually academic) discourse.

Some of today’s most compelling and effective arguments are composed not on the static white page, but in text boxes on web pages, in instant messenger chat windows, and via SMS text messaging.  Instead of writing a letter to the editor of a publication, students are more likely to contribute to a public debate by using their cellular telephones to record video and post it to the Internet or to “blog” about their point of view on an issue.  Many students are more experienced with posting comments to online social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook than they are with writing their thoughts in offline diaries or journals.  These are the forms of an emerging Web 2.0 media landscape that will continually challenge those trying to ensure that their voices will be heard above the cacophony. 

“To be responsible teachers,” Anne Wysocki (2003) states, “we need to help our students (as well as ourselves) learn how different choices in visual arrangement in all texts (on screen and off) encourage different kinds of meaning making and encourage us to take up (overtly or not) various values” (p.186). James Paul Gee (2007) echoes this in the introduction to What Videogames Have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy:

In the modern world, print literacy is not enough.  People need to be literate in a great variety of different semiotic domains.  If these domains involve print, people often need the print bits, of course.  However, the vast majority of domains involve semiotic (symbolic, representational) resources besides print and some don’t involve print as a resource at all.  Furthermore, and more important, people need to be able to learn to be literate in new semiotic domains throughout their lives.  If our modern, global, high-tech, and science-driven world does anything, it certainly gives rise to new semiotic domains and transforms old ones at an ever faster rate.  (p. 20)

Videogames are the “semiotic domain,” or “set of practices that recruits one or more modalities…to communicate distinctive types of meanings” that form the core of Gee’s study (p. 19).  ARG players and creators are careful to distinguish the form from videogames that are framed by the television screen or computer monitor and require the player to take on a specific role and/or avatar; however, if video gaming, as Gee contends, “is a multimodal literacy par excellence,” then ARGs’ “frameless” presentation and ubiquitous interface makes them even more so (p. 18).  Multimodal presentation and active audience engagement with the game make for important connections between the two.  Simulations such as videogames and ARGs use images, sound, navigation, and text to construct rich and vibrant “alternate realities,” to tell stories, and to convey meaningful messages.

Like stories told in books, films, and videogames, most ARGs provide players with the core texts that construct the narrative (World Without Oil, a game I introduce elsewhere, presents an interesting departure from this approach).  ARG designers (or, “Puppetmasters”), as Stewart notes, use nearly all available means to tell their story.  Players don’t encounter characters through mere descriptions; they get to know them through the same technologies they use to learn about their friends and colleagues: players read the characters’ blogs and email messages, listen to their voicemail messages, see the items they link to, mine characters’ pages on social networking sites for associations, and talk to them in real-time via instant messaging. Date book entries, comments on tourism websites, messages to “friends,” and found maps tell us where they’ve been and, in many cases, where they plan to go. These media allow us to “know” the characters in the same way we know real people.  In many ways, we don’t get to know about the characters, we get to know them.

Stewart highlights these points in his introduction to The Beast when he describes the experience of authoring content for such a project as a “pop culture inferno” which includes nearly every available genre of writing in its development.

So there was the project: create an entire self-contained world on the web, say a thousand pages deep, and then tell a story through it, advancing the plot with weekly updates, concealing each new piece of narrative in such a way that it would take clever teamwork to dig it out. Create a vast array of assets--custom photos, movies, audio recordings, scripts, corporate blurbage, logos, graphic treatments, web sites, flash movies--and deploy them through a net of (untraceable) web sites, phone calls, fax systems, leaks, press releases, phony newspaper ads, and so on ad infinitum.

Composing in such a wide variety of genres and forms invites students to not only explore the craft of writing but also to examine multiple approaches to problem solving and argumentation. ARG production and play allow students an opportunity to experiment with both form and content, exploring new media and methods for communication.

Furthermore, the multimodal presentations that characterize ARGs require players to tap a range of skills and knowledge—to deploy what Gee calls “multiple literacies”—in the interest of uncovering and navigating the story.  Some specific examples of these literacies are as follows:

  • Print literacy in a number of genres—Players come to understand many of the conventions that exist in the genres they read during the course of game play.  Through discussions of what it means to adhere to, or break from, these conventions their role in the definition of genre can be examined.  More importantly, students are asked to interrogate identity formation and presentation through specific genres, often turning these observations on themselves and the means they use to present their identities online.  By looking at character profiles and bios, for example, students can begin to critique what constitutes a believable or reputable online persona and discuss the impacts of decisions on the presentation of ethos.
  • Information literacy—As instructors, one of the most important academic skills we help students develop is research.  There are few, if any, other forms of gaming that require attention to as broad a range of source materials as ARGs do.  Within games, clues and leads often come from close examination of texts.  References to a specific book or author, for example, may lead players to research that figure, their publications, their notes and juvenilia, in an attempt to draw connections between other parts of the game.  Because of their accessibility to the public, libraries often become locations for “drops” where real-life artifacts are hidden for players.  The skills necessary to find these clues range from the ability to identify an ISBN number and track it down to an understanding of Library of Congress subject headings or library call numbers.  It is also interesting to note that some university libraries have begun to experiment with ARGs (usually with a focus on the “scavenger hunt” aspects of ARG play) as training tools for library skills.  Additionally, sources must be evaluated for validity and credibility to avoid, quite literally, being lead astray by inaccurate or irrelevant information.
  • Code literacy—Because one of the conventional ways of “hiding” information in an ARG is through the manipulation of HTML source code and other programming “languages,” players are encouraged to examine online texts beyond their presentation in a browser window.  In order to identify elements that are “incorrect” or “out of place,” players must equip themselves (or work with those who are already so equipped) with a fundamental knowledge of the basic “grammar” of formatting and programming.  A “commented-off” section of HTML or a misplaced tag, for example, may act as signposts pointing to some important clue.

What these three literacies have in common is their reliance on pattern recognition, close reading, and synthesis to be effective—all skills we hope to equip our student with to become both responsible scholars and citizens.

Collaboration >