This document outlines plans for a proposed multimodal composition course at a mid-sized Midwestern university. The course would integrate traditional print literacies with new technology-based literacies and address issues of rhetoric, social implications of technology, and making literacy practices more visible. It would be organized in three units around blogs, wikis, and visual rhetoric. The goal is for the course to bridge academic and new media discourses, develop multiple literacies, and critique the social aspects of digital technologies.

1. A Multimodal Composition Course Meshing Pedagogies and Making the Invisible Visible Nathan Serfling English 820

2. Introduction Multimodal composition courses can combine. . . The recent shifts in literacy practices The resurgence in rhetorical awareness The social turn in composition They can also make technology and literacy practices more visible to students and instructors

3. The Local Exigency The university and the English department Mid-sized Midwestern Division I land grant institution English department emphasizes literary studies TAs, part-time instructors, non-tenure track full-time instructors, and tenure-track faculty The concern: no course in English dept. addressing writing with technology Limited faculty time, interest to fully develop such a course Some courses this could complement well—both outside and inside the department

4. Why a Concern for English Studies? Local reasons Few to no courses in the university specifically addressing issues related to English studies “Futuristic Communications”:English course focusing on futurism and related texts but mostly literary Other courses (e.g., technical and professional writing courses) do touch on related issues, but not in a focused, specific manner Broader reasons English studies work already multiple genres, modes, rhetorical situations (Yancey 307-08) Literacy, rhetoric, and the social turn (in the next slides)

5. (Re)defining Literacy NCTE position statement on twenty-first century literacy emphasizes Increased technological proficiency Collaborative and intercultural work The potential for global circulation of work Effective navigation of multiple types of information Critical consumption and production of texts Ethical responsibility (NCTE)

6. (Re)defining Literacy (cont.) Literacy as a process of combination of past and contemporary literacy practices (Brandt 651) Print literacy with the addition of “the notions of practice and activity and circulation and media and screen and networking” (Yancey 320)

7. Multiliteracies The New London Group Multiple layers of discourse (17) Emphasis on “Design”: open, not pejorative term (20); as both structure and agency (Cope and Kalantzis 203) Process of multiliteracy: available design, designing, the redesigned (New London Group 20-23) Multiliteracy pedagogy: Situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, transformed practice (33-36)

8. Multiliteracies (cont.) Stuart Selber Functional literacy: the technical, practical skill--use Critical literacy: critique of technology, its texts Rhetorical literacy: production of texts, relying on functional and critical literacies to inform (24-25)

9. Rhetorical Awareness, the Social Turn New texts viewed through traditional rhetorical principles (Diogenes and Lunsford 151) Mutlimodal text production requires purpose, context, audience, and rhetoric of the medium (Sheppard 122) Rhetorical canons more interconnected (Yancey 316-17) Rhetorical considerations also lead to discussion of wider social, political, and economic concerns The digital divide—access and use (Goode 499) Ability of technology to maintain the status quo without a sense of agency (Moberly 38)

10. A Possible Course Multimodal composition course (for juniors and seniors) Three units: Blogs, wikis, and visual rhetoric Blog unit as an example Critique and production As a bridge to academic discourse (Gallagher) Some key topics Social construction of knowledge Fluidity of genre Wider social implications of such new media texts (potential for equality)

11. A Possible Course (cont.) This course can thus. . . Integrate “print” literacies with newer, technology-based ones (as suggested by Brandt and Yancey) Rely on New London Group’s mulitilieracies pedagogy Emphasize the three literacies (functional, critical, rhetorical) Selber advocates Include significant attention to rhetorical considerations Attend to social, economic, and political issues related to the production and consumption of multimodal texts

12. Making the Invisible Visible? We become habituated to technology; it becomes invisible (Selfe 1181, 1164) Critical approaches, new methods can make technology and our own practices visible Renews questions about literacy (Selfe 1170) View our classroom practices in a new way when they are put into new contexts (Neff and Whithaus 41); true of literacy education practices as well More visible for us, more visible (and relevant) for students

13. Works Cited Brandt, Deborah. “Accumulating Literacy: Writing and Learning to Write in the Twentieth Century.” CE 57.6 (1995): 649-48. Print. Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. “Designs for Social Futures.” Cope and Kalantzis 203-34. Print. Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis, eds. Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London: Routledge, 2001. Print. Diogenes, Marvin and Andrea Lunsford. “Toward Delivering New Definitions of Writing.” Delivering College Composition: The Fifth Canon. Ed. Kathleen Blake Yancey. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 2006. 141-54. Print. Gallagher, Jamey. “‘As Y’all Know’: Blogs as Bridge.” Teaching English in the Two-Year College 37.3 (2010): 286-94. Print.

14. Works Cited (cont.) Goode, Joanna. “The Digital Identity Divide: How Technology Impacts College Students.” New Media and Society 12.3 (2010): 497-513. Print. Moberly, Kevin. “More than Definitions, Descriptions, and Differences: The Labor of Reading and Writing New Media.” RAW: Reading and Writing New Media. Ed. Cheryl E. Ball and James Kalmbach. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2010. 35-52. Print. New Dimensions in Computers and Composition Ser. NCTE. “The NCTE Definition of 21st Century Literacies.” NCTE. National Council of Teachers of English 15 Feb. 2008. Web. 21 April 2011. Neff, Joyce Magnottoand Carl Whithaus. Writing Across Distances and Disciplines: Research and Pedagogy in Distributed Learning. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2008. Print.

15. Works Cited New London Group. “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures.” Cope and Kalantzis 9-37. Print. Sheppard, Jennifer. “The Rhetorical Work of Multimedia Production Practices: It’s More than Just Technical Skill.” Computers and Composition 26 (2009): 122-31. Print. Selber, Stuart. Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. Carbondale, IL: Souther Illinois UP, 2004. Print. Selfe, Cynthia L. “Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying Attention.” The Norton Book of Composition Studies. Ed. Susan Miller. New York: Norton, 2009. 1163-85. Print. Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key.” CCC 56.2 (2004): 297-328. Print.