Multimodality
A multimodal composition assignment can be a helpful way to get students thinking about the ways in which different forms of rhetoric work together to make an argument. Integrating audio and video with the written word allows a student to present arguments from different angles. In my graduate studies, I devised a sample multimodal assignment that would ask students to write about a struggle they have had with technology and then create a multimodal piece based on their writing. I used a struggle I had been having with Facebook to construct my sample of the assignment, in which I used Windows Movie Maker, GIMP, and my netbook's webcam to build a 2-minute video. I integrated comics, pictures from Flickr Creative Commons, and captioned photos of my cat (also known as LOLcats) to support an argument that users should look before they leap when using Facebook due to its propensity to alter the site without notice. I felt that the humorous aspects of the construction came through better with pictures than it could have in words alone.
Although Windows Movie Maker is proprietary software, there are many ways in which F/OSS can be used to construct this assignment, many of which I provided URLs for on my sample assignment sheet. Three resources in particular are valuable to students who want to construct multimodal texts. Animoto is an online video construction web site that allows users to build movies based on photos they submit and then add sound effects and music. Audacity, available on SourceForge, is an open source recording tool that can be used to make podcasts, radio shows, and other types of recordings. As mentioned above, I used GIMP in lieu of Photoshop to construct the image cards used in the movie.
The emergence of the Web as a tool for communication, the rate at which technology has blurred the lines between modes of rhetoric, and the degree to which future composition students have grown with technology are all compelling reasons to incorporate studies of the visual into the pedagogy of a composition class. Additionally, incorporating studies of the visual is a means of addressing those students who are more visual learners, or engaging those who are not as comfortable with visual learning as a means of giving them basic competency in visual learning. Since many students have grown up with the technology that often baffles their elders, it makes sense to integrate such technology into composition classes. For students who were not able to grow up with technology due to circumstances, it may be helpful to emphasize how simply a project can be constructed, and F/OSS provides many tools to put together a multimedia project cheaply and easily. For my sample assignment, I deliberately gave students several options in putting the project together and made sure that each option had a wide range of ways it could be accomplished. For example, a photo essay does not require students to own a digital camera, since many stores, including Wal-Mart, will create digital files from 35mm camera film for a reasonable fee. In addition, many campuses have open lab hardware and software that contains a wide range of programs which could be used to construct a multimodal piece. The confidence that students can gain by creating a digital multimodal piece is immeasurable. In creating such a piece, students gain not only a portfolio piece for future presentation, but also the reassurance that they have a voice in the digital future.
To many students, the idea of composition is not strictly limited to writing. Therefore, a composition class that does not teach just writing has room to develop a niche. Students in these classes can learn how to construct arguments using more than just the written word. However, teachers should also ensure that they can reasonably integrate students at all levels of digital literacy.
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