Evolutions and Convolutions of Multimodal Pedagogy in Three

Multiliteracy Centers

Will the Center Hold? Evolutions and Convolutions of Multimodality in the Disciplines

Naomi SilverUniversity of Michigan

Computers & Writing 2014Session D8

The Context• Sweetland Center for Writing at University of

Michigan

The Multimodal Courses

• Added 3-credit and 1-credit topics-based “new media writing” courses in 2007-2008 (~12 sections offered each academic year)

• Added eportfolio to Writing 100: Transition to College Writing curriculum in 2009 (~16 sections offered each academic year)

• Added Minor in Writing in 2011; gateway and capstone eportfolios, multimodal assignments (~70 new minors each academic year)

The Problem – Student Version

• 4620 total appts. for fall 2013-winter 2014 semesters in Sweetland Writing Workshop

• 107 check “yes” on the box asking “Is this a multimodal or digital writing project?”

The Problem – Instructor Version

• 2011 survey of faculty teaching ULWR courses• Q: “Do you assign students to write in any of

the following New Media in your course?”• 50% responded “I don’t use any New Media

writing” (n=64)• 30% responded “Slide presentation (e.g.,

PowerPoint/Prezi)”• 13% responded “Online discussion board,” e.g.,

on a course management system

What are your reasons for not including new media writing assignments in your ULWR course? # Answer [n=32] %

1 I'm not sure how to teach new media writing. 92 I'm not sure how to assess new media writing. 93 I don't think new media writing is important in my discipline. 224 I think my students' time is better spent improving their print-

based writing abilities.47

5 There isn't room in my course syllabus to add new media writing assignments.

9

6 I didn't know new media assignments counted as "writing" in ULWR courses.

16

7 I've never considered adding new media writing assignments to my course.

31

8 Other (please specify) 22

Faculty Focus Group Responses• “The only thing, I use a lot of new media in my other

classes, but the only new media thing I use sometimes in my upper-level writing classes is exactly, I give them, I have in-class assignments and I ask them to summarize something in Twitterese. 140 characters. I don’t ask them to tweet it…” (Male Soc Sci Faculty)

• “I do a fair amount of it in my lesser classes. We have a Twitter backstream in [my intro course] and some other things, but [the ULWR course], it just doesn’t lend itself.” (Female Soc Sci Faculty)

• Interviewer: How about the rest of you? Do you use things like e-portfolios or websites in your classes?

• Humanities Faculty Member, STEM faculty # 1 & Female Soc Sci Faculty Member: No. [simultaneously]

• Male STEM Faculty #2: I specifically asked for a classroom that’s not technology. First of all, I have no idea how to do it myself. [laughter] I have actually no interest in learning.

• “This is, maybe not germane to a particular purpose here, but one of the aspects of scientific communication and for quite a bit of communication is to be able to create a graphical presentation, that’s another avenue. I don’t make an enormously big issue, but I try to help them, show them what are better graphical techniques, and a lot of that amounts to the relatively trivial.

• I think it parallels a little bit some of the other things you’re talking about, but we don’t really pay much attention to it in any formal way within the usual context of university teaching.” (Male STEM Faculty #1 )

• Female Soc Sci Faculty: In my class, they do do it. They do a research project in groups and they are evaluated on producing a coherent PowerPoint presentation about it. Including what’s on the screen, choice of text, and then also tables and graphs. But it’s the same thing, where they don’t have the skills to do the tables and the graphs. It’s not necessarily—I guess I haven’t yet decided that it’s worth my time to teach them.

• Interviewer: How do they make tables and graphs, then? • They are allowed to—yeah, I mean, they’re allowed to hand

draw it, scan it, put it in. Just to communicate their result is the point.

SI 410: Ethics and Information Technology

AmCult 388: Field Study

UC 256:22 Ways to Think about New Media

Am I Part of the Problem?

• What I do when I teach a multimodal project: – scaffolding– conferences – technical resources

• I suspect other instructors do the same

Are My Students Part of the Problem?

• They consult online resources rather than people

• Suggests they’re thinking of the challenges of this kind of writing as primarily technical, rather than rhetorical

Thank you!