In order to test my theory, I assessed the writing habits of two advanced placement classes of high school juniors in a rural school district in Northwest Ohio, as they began working on their first academic research papers. Because the classes were so alike in terms of current grade point averages and size at the time of the study, their involvement was appropriate. Students completing the multimodal composition were labeled Class A and students not completing the multimodal composition were labeled Class B. Students in Class A spent one week completing a multimodal project, specifically aimed at helping them begin to find ways to focus their research into an argument that could be communicated successfully in an 8-10 page research paper. Students in Class B who were not receiving the intervention spent the same amount of time working on more general prewriting activities that included brainstorming, clustering, free writing, and journaling in addition to receiving mini-lectures and one-on-one assistance to help them develop their arguments. The multimodal assignment was designed to help teach students how to focus in on the important details and ideas gathered from their research in order to begin articulating a more concise argument. The goal was to get them to take risks – to think more critically and creatively about the material they had encountered in their research. Taking from the work done by Leigh A. Jones in her study, “Podcasting and Performativity: Multimodal Invention in an Advanced Writing Class, who writes “risks are required for academic productivity and creativity, “whatever the goals students and instructors may have for students’ growth as writers” (Leigh, 2010, p. 76), I designed the study and made sure I was sensitive enough in the classroom to allow such risk-taking to occur. The assignment was distinctly designed to encourage students to be creative and learn to think about the content they had gathered for their research in new ways. Specifically, the assignment required that use video-editing software to create a one to two minute Public Service Announcement that incorporated audio-visual elements (and for most, some textual elements as well). Additionally, to complete the assignment successfully, they had to present their argument in a logical way that would appeal to their audience.
To view the Assignment Sheet and Rubric for this project, click here
Completion of this type of a multimodal assignment not only helps students select the right details for inclusion in their composition, it also helps teach them specific strategies for focusing their written essay more tightly and effectively, because they must choose the details most likely to convey meaning in an effective way to a particular audience, for a particular purpose (Selfe, 2007).
In order to gauge whether students were in actuality improving their writing abilities throughout the process, I monitored the grades they received for completion of each component assigned to complete their research paper. I also wanted to see if student attitude was affected by the intervention, so students from both classes were instructed to complete surveys throughout the time they were working on their research papers. Additionally, students who were willing to be interviewed about the process completed quick (5-10 minute) interviews about the process. Unfortunately, interviews could not be longer given that their teacher had only set aside a certain amount of class time for completion of this project.
In addition to completing the 1-2 minute video composition, students also composed a written component reflection describing the processes and tools they used to complete their multimodal projects. Reflections were designed to serve as indicator of what rhetorical choices students were making as they completed their video compositions. However, as noted in the results section, often they wrote about the process and how it made them feel as opposed to what rhetorical choices were made, a sign that better instructions or more time to complete the video project may have been needed to help students better understand the rhetorical affordances of each medium.
Below is a timeline indicating what students were working on throughout the research writing process, to help clarify when students were working on each portion of their research paper:
Week One: Research - Students received assignment, chose topics and began gathering and organizing research
Week Two: Pre-writing - Students received intervention. Class A worked on multimodal projects. Class B worked on traditional modes of written assignments. Surveys completed.
Week Three: Writing - Students worked on composing and writing the bodies of their research papers. Surveys and academic materials collected.
Week Four: Introductions and Conclusions - Students worked on revising and editing their papers, with a specific focus on re-writing introductions and conclusions.