WRIT 1122
Position Statement: Multi-Media Literacies in Composition
Jennifer Campbell

Throughout Unit Two, we have been investigating the role that multiple media and digital literacies can or should play in writing instruction. How should Media and/or IT be used by professors to deliver content? What types of multi-modal activities can support various parts of the writing process? What kinds of multi-media/digital literacies are necessary for success in todays academic and professional worlds? Should students be expected to create multi-media or digital texts? If so, what kind, and what are our expectations? How much student IT knowledge can we assume? And how much class time should be spent on IT instruction? Does all of this just get in the way of the real writing skills students hope to tackle in first-year writing? Should there be a separate class that deals with digital rhetorics? Weve been asking a lot of questions.

There is a specific audience that wants to hear your answers. Five members of the Writing Program Faculty have been awarded a grant from the Center for Teaching and Learning to study possibilities for integrating multi-modal composing in writing instruction, develop multi-modal curricula and best practices for DUs first-year writing sequence, and design professional development opportunities to help all Writing Program faculty make better use of multi-modal technologies in their classes. Our course goals are already ambitious, and we have limited resources, so the research committee will need to determine our top priorities for integrating innovative delivery and composing options. We would benefit from student input to help us focus our research and implementation.

You will write a formal statement, addressed to the Multi-modal Writing Committee, in which you take a position on some aspect of multi-modal presentation or composing in the first-year writing sequence. You can answer one of the questions mentioned above. You might define key literacies for success in your major. You might argue for the inclusion of a particular media or technology and how it could be used to support course goals. You might tell us how to avoid Creepy Treehouses as we engage new technology in pedagogy. Its up to you to decide what you think the committee needs to know.

Of course, were all educated, research-oriented types, so well expect you to support your definitions and positions with solid evidence. You should draw material from the multiple print and web-based texts we have read throughout the unit. (The work youve already done on summary, synthesis, source integration, and citation will help with this). You can also include relevant personal experiences and observations as evidence for your claims. We plan to integrate our multi-modal curricular revisions next winter, so your future classmates will benefit from you making a rhetorically-effective argument about what types of literacy instruction are in their best interests.

Were also busy, so please restrict your arguments to about 4 pages. English studies folk prefer MLA style, with in-text citations and a Works Cited page.
 

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