Remixing Composition Workshop, 1 October 2015
In his lively workshop, “Moving Beyond the Page: Designing and Assessing Multimodal Assignments,” Prof. Jason Palmeri of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, defined what multimodal assignments are, what they’re good for, and why we want them as part of our writing composition curricula. He offered a theory of re-mixed composition, based on comp-rhet praxis in which meaning is derived from the arrangement of different materials in innovative ways. Stretching back to the ancient Greeks, image and text have worked interdependently to generate meaning, and given that this pairing of media can be done so effectively with today’s readily available technologies, there’s no reason to limit ourselves to the page. What’s more, there is empirical evidence that suggests a transfer of skills occurs with multimodal exercises. When students work through concepts and arguments in a digital media project, they tend to transfer those intellectual developments to their writing. Plus, they gain a much keener sense of audience and rhetorical choices when they produce content of which they themselves are frequent consumers.
Palmeri discussed how to design multimodal assignments, suggesting that they can enhance everything from informal pre-writing to peer reviews to final projects. For students who don’t learn best through text only, the option to bring graphics, video, or audio into their composition projects can help them approach it in a refreshed and less alienated manner. For more cumulative assignments, Palmeri does what he calls a “multimodal remediation assignment,” in which his students transform what would have been a print essay into a new medium and/or genre (accompanied by reflective writing).
As for goals of these assignments, students not only think critically about the benefits and limitations of technology, but they also start transferring their rhetoric skills back into writing, and become conversant in a number of technological platforms. As a final consideration, Palmeri conceded that grading these alternative assignments can be difficult. He mitigates this by creating a collaborative rubric, designed with student in-put, and with substantial written reflections by the students.
The presentation lead to some lively conversations and questions relating to audience (are the intended audiences of these multimodal projects more or less inclusive?) and the finer points of executing such projects in a classroom.