DWRL Lesson Plans - Course Unit

Facilitating Multimedia Composition

RMazique — Sat, 05 Apr 2014 06:33:14 +0000

Author:

Image Credit:

Rachel Mazique's "Disability in Pop Culture" Class YouTube Channel

Brief Assignment Overview:

This lesson helped students begin composing their final rhetoric assignment: a Multimedia Argument Project (MAP). I encouraged students to work with each other during the planning process and to collaborate with one another as they developed their digital literacy skills.

Type of Assignment:

In-class Exercise

Homework Assignment

Course Unit

Major Course Project

Assignment Length:

Multiple Class Periods

Course Unit

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

In addition to the goals above, students were to:

-become familiar with the range of digital resources available for multimedia composition projects

-practice composing in multiple modes (visual, aural, alphanumeric)

Media Requirements:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

--Please Note: all of the links below were organized onto appropriately titled pages in a folder titled "Final Project Help" on our class wiki--

1. samples of student-authored multimedia projects:

either from The Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (TheJUMP) or past student work from my class YouTube channel,

2. KeepVid website (best run on Safari),

3. a Google Doc for class brainstorming on “Beginning the Final Project,” (stored on a class PBworks wiki page)

4. Internet Archives,

5. Creative Commons for songs,

6. Disability song list,

7. Animoto website, instructions for Animoto video production, More Animoto Help,

(beneficial, though not required):

8. Digital Writing and Research Lab (DWRL) rental equipment,

9. our class PBworks wiki Homework page

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Mid-Semester

Late in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Adapted from Justin Hodgson’s Multimedia Research-Argument Creation

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Multimodal Argument Project Prompt:

Using your prior knowledge, that of your peers’, and the skills you will gain during this unit, you will create a multimodal researched-based argumentative "document." These multimodal arguments should demonstrate a significant research effort as well as showcase your abilities to write, think, and express yourselves via the integration of multiple media. This research will include the time you spend with “how-to” guides/tutorials with the aim of improving your digital literacy skills. But, unlike the common approach to this type of "writing," where students/researchers write a traditional paper and then try to remediate that into multimedia forms, these projects will be "born digital." Composing digitally requires you to think, draft, design, and revise in multimedia, not engage in a text-to-multimedia practice.

The multimodal project is fairly open, but its breadth is necessary as each project will be different and take a different shape depending on the intent, skills, and risk-taking strategies of each student-author. I am open to your creative input and ideas!

Your controversy or the pop culture source that you’ve analyzed should shape your creations and the varying rhetorical strategies that you employ. For example, if you’ve analyzed a cartoon or comic in Paper 2.1, you may want to create your own. If you analyzed a documentary, consider creating your own documentary. We will more fully discuss the flexibility of this project in-class, both on the day this project is assigned and throughout the unit, to ensure that you have a solid grasp of how to navigate these guidelines.

That said, here are some concrete guidelines.

Minimum Requirements:

Must take a stance with relation to your controversy and attempt to persuade readers/viewers;

Must clearly be framed as an argument of conjecture, definition, ethics, value, or policy

Must engage your analyses of representations in pop culture by either supporting certain representations, subverting stereotypical representations and/or transforming an argument made in pop culture.
Must integrate and/or utilize multiple media (both the visual and alphanumeric modes are required) for rhetorical purpose (audio is encouraged, but optional—depending on your medium);

The video is not the only medium open to you; you can also compose a comic, be creative and innovative with PowerPoint, create a website, a video game, etc.
Feel free to run an original project idea by me for approval.

Must rebut/refute at least one counterargument/position with the presentation or production of counter-images, words, and/or voices.
Must include at least 5 quality sources and "Works Cited" details (in MLA format) within the MAP--not in a separate document:

At least 2 must come from scholarly resources (you should use the research you gathered for your Annotated Bibliography; you may also use the scholarly class readings)
If your project is nearing the maximum length, you may go over the limit (if you need more time/space to add in the Works Cited and make it readable). Note, this exception to the length requirement applies only for the Works Cited. If you want to discuss another exception, please see me. See the length requirement below.

Length requirement:

Create a 2-3 minute video if you’re working alone.

If you’re working with a partner or two, the video's length requirement increases based on the number of people involved: 4-6 minutes, or 6-9 minutes, respectively.
Group size max: 3 people
If you’re not composing a video, the length requirement still applies with relation to an in-class final presentation of your project. So, if you’re using PowerPoint, it should run 2-3 minutes long in a presentation.
If you’re making a comic strip, the strip should be about 2 pages long--or however long you need to make your argument and be able to present it to the class in 2-3 minutes.

Accessibility requirement:

Make your project accessible to a deaf audience (captions/a transcript)

I can work with you on captioning your video in the Open Lab (PAR 102) on Wednesdays from 5pm-8pm.
I can also point you to some guidelines I created and work with you during class.
Fyi: if your submission to TheJUMP is accepted for publication, you will also need to make your project accessible to a blind audience (descriptions of visual features). If you did this work in advance of publication in TheJUMP, I would consider this evidence of going above and beyond in the argumentation/digital literacy course strands.

For a variety of digital resources, see the link below:

Dr. Rodrigue's Digital Writing Resource Page

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Plan for at least five weeks of in-class time to work on this multimedia argument project. Students need in-class time to familiarize themselves with the various technologies available to them and to learn how to compose in a digital medium besides the alphanumeric programs they are used to composing in (i.e. Microsoft Word).

If feasible within your department, sign up for at least a "plus" account with Animoto. Here in the Digital Writing and Research Lab (DWRL), instructors are fortunate that the lab will renew or subscribe to digital services like Animoto--as long as they serve a pedagogical function. I communicated with the supervisor in the DWRL, who renewed our plus account so students could create a video up to nine minutes long, which was what I required if a group had three students working together.

Below are the major steps I used for this day's lesson plan on "Facilitating Multimedia Composition":

Review vocabulary important to beginning students' composing process: topic, controversy, position and stakeholder. Ask students: what do these terms mean? What is the difference between a topic and a controversy? Explain how students should organize their arguments.
Have students review what their classmates are doing (on a Google Doc students filled in at the start of today's class: “Beginning the Final Project”) and consider who they may want to collaborate with in a co-authorship of this final project.
Introduce students to KeepVid as a way to export videos from YouTube.
Discuss Copyright laws.
Introduce the Internet Archives and Creative Commons.
Point students to “Disability Songs” list.
Have students use the rest of class time to talk over ideas with classmates they want to work with, review samples of student-authored multimedia projects on TheJUMP/previous work from our class YouTube channel, plan their final project with a rough outline, and look for images, videos and/or songs they may want to use.
Remind students to not only look for images, videos and songs that they agree with or those that could support their argument but also images, videos, and/or songs that they disagree with and will refute/rebut in their final project.
Review the definitions of refutations and rebuttals.
Point students to instructions for Animoto (on the wiki) but also mention that I can help students with this program.

Instructions For Students:

As a starting point to today's class, I had students go to the “in-class activities” folder on our class PBworks wiki.

From there, they went to the Google Doc folder and clicked on the “Beginning the Final Project” page.

Here's what they needed to write out as a starting point to the composing process. (The page also functioned as a class resource that would allow students to determine who they might want to co-author a project with.)

Please write:

1. Your topic;

2. Your controversy;

3. The pop culture source you will remediate

4. At least three positions that stakeholders take with regards to your controversy

5. The position that you saw your pop culture source taking

6. The position that you yourself take. (I explained that for this final unit, students were invited to share their viewpoint and to tell us where they stood with regards to their controversy.)

7. Possible multimedia project ideas you are considering (website, comic, documentary, photoessay, stop motion animation, etc).

Evaluation Suggestions:

For information on how I assessed students' final projects, please see my blog post on the topic: "Multimodal Writing: How do we Assess New Media?" at the Digital Writing and Research Lab's Blogging Pedagogy website

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students had the choice to author a project alone or to work in groups of two or three. The number of students involved in a project affected the length requirement. Longer projects were expected of group-authored multimedia arguments.

Most students felt that their controversy was unique and would not merge well with fellow classmates' controversies or topics. (These final projects were the result of a semester-long process researching a single controversy). Those who did choose to co-author a project chose to work with only one partner rather than two (for logistical reasons apparently). One group started with three members, but one member eventually decided she wanted to work on her own due to creative differences. She had a specific argument she knew she wanted to pursue.

Students who were interested in co-authoring a project needed extra guidance from me on how to coherently weave together an argument on two distinct controversies. With these students, I encouraged the student groups to start from a broader standpoint--to work from our class topic "Disability in Pop Culture"--and to use research from their specific controversies to determine an argument they wanted to make about their particular topics within our class's "umbrella."

Several students were anxious about multimedia composition.

Several others were excited about this change of pace.

In the end, through in-class guidance and collaboration amongst peers, students who were anxious about composing in iMovie for the first time (for example) were eventually proud of their final product and the new digital literacy skills they gained throughout this composition process. Several students creatively went above and beyond the requirements to create a project they would be glad to publish in a public forum such as our class YouTube channel.

One student even composed an entirely original music video; another student drew and created an original stop-motion animated video; several others drew their own comics (either by hand on paper, or online with digital drawing tools/comic software).

Additional Resources:

Recommendations from Justin Hodgson:

Bump Halbritter's recent book Mics, Cameras, and Symbolic Action: Audio-Visual Rhetoric for Writing Teachers talks about audio and video work,

Sean Morey recently had his textbook The New Media Writer come out with Fountainhead Press,

and Kristin Arola, Jennifer Shepard, and Cheryl Ball recently published their Writer/Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects.

According to Professor Hodgson, those three texts provide a nice (but not comprehensive) avenue into conversations about multimedia composition and some particular strategies for writing (with) media.

Beyond that, he recommends that instructors peruse the Computers and Composition (and Computers and Composition Online) journals for works that might resonate with your class's particular focus.

And, as always, the Blogging Pedagogy site and TheJUMP are useful resources!

Course Type:

Introductory Writing Course

Course Description:

In this course, students focus on analyzing the relationship between pop culture and rhetoric. Their analyses examine public disagreements about various issues such as: How do popular (mis)representations of "the supercrip" convince us to make political decisions regarding accessibility, advocacy, education, and/or social policy? How can we evaluate arguments that not only depict (dis)abled people as "heroic" but also those that portray the converse: the "grotesque unfortunate" deserving of "pity" and "help"? How do these arguments address questions of basic human rights, needs, drives and "eugenics rhetoric"? Will children (and adults) make political decisions based on recurrent thematic representations of "disability" in pop culture, and, is that a good or bad influence?

Tags:

Podcast/Paper: Having Students Do the Same Assignment in 2 Media

detweiler — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 20:04:27 +0000

Author:

Eric Detweiler

Image Credit:

Compiled from images on Wikimedia Commons

Brief Assignment Overview:

I have my students complete their first major assignment in two forms: (1) An individual 3-page paper and (2) a 5-6 minute group podcast. In both, they describe a text and situate it in historical context.

Type of Assignment:

Major Course Project

Assignment Length:

Course Unit

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

To get students to think about the ways in which presentational form/medium effects their inventional and organizational processes, as well as what counts as rhetorically effective.

Media Requirements:

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Media Console/Projector

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

Recording devices. If at least one student in each podcast group has a personal computer with a built-in microphone, that's fine. If that's not the case, or if you want to go hi-fi, USB microphones can step quality up a little bit. Access to some sort of editing software: Apple's GarageBand or Audacity are common options, and the latter can be downloaded for free online.

Audio Hijack Pro is also another useful software if students want to use clips from the text they're discussing in their podcast. The website snipmp3.com can also be used to grab audio from YouTube videos if Audio Hijack Pro isn't affordable/available.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Early in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

In my RHE 309K course, Rhetoric of Irony, students examine, analyze, and argue about the rhetorical and ethical implications of irony in political and popular discourse. Their first assignment is to choose a historical (before the year 2000) ironic text and describe the text, its context, and its use of irony to their classmates.

My course includes a lot of writing, of course, and I want to get students thinking critically about that writing from the start of the class. In order to do that, I wanted to supplement the paper version of this first assignment with something in another medium and/or mode. Because I have worked with podcasts and audio strikes me as relatively straightforward (in a sense, a podcast can be little more than a recorded speech, writing's other half in the history of rhetoric and rhetoric instruction). The podcast allows students to invent and organize their material in a different way than the paper, and with structured reflective writing and conversation can help them think about the particularities and peculiarities of written and aural/oral discourse. I've found it can open up productive conversations about the difficulties and tropes of academic writing. For instance, students often have an easier time inventing material for the podcast than for the paper (I do require a first draft of the paper that's due one week before the podcast and final paper draft). Even though a 5-6 minute podcast and a 3-page paper can accomodate about the same number of words, students frequently feel like they've have to make copious cuts to fit everything into the podcast and stretching to find enough material for the paper.

In short, this assignment allows students to think about the constraints and affordances of both spoken and written compositions, as well as how they might adapt rhetorically to both forms/media/modes (these aren't synonyms here, of course, but all potential frames for discussing these assignments). It can also be a useful method of invention and helping students think about the patterns and obstacles that crop up in their academic writing processes.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

There are a variety of ways to approach the podcast assignment. I didn't spend much time teaching my students how to actually make podcasts. I basically showed them what GarageBand, Audacity, and Audio Hijack Pro looked like on our classroom computers, showed them how to drag audio files into the first two and how to sync the latter up with other applications. I focused more on showing students how to search Audacity's robust wiki and how to look up GarageBand tutorials on YouTube, etc. Learning to learn these technologies for themselves, in other words, was a big part of the assignment. I also provided them 15-20 minutes of in-class time to work as a group a few times, which gave them a chance to play with the technologies while I was on hand to offer troubleshooting advice and general tips.

As an instructor, you might want to have some knowledge of the technologies, then, though being an amateur along with your students can be a productive learning experience. If you don't have a computer classroom with those programs, I imagine the shorter introduction described above would be best, leaving the onus on students to experiment with them outside of class. If you do, you could certainly conduct a more in-depth, participatory in-class tutorial.

If even having students download Audacity seems too daunting, this assignment could feasibly be completed by having students record a script using Windows' pre-installed and very basic Audio Recorder; all current Apples come equipped with GarageBand.

Instructions For Students:

Since the meta-assignment comprises two parts (the group podcast and the individual paper), both assignment prompts are included below. The podcast comes first.

Unit 1 Podcast

Podcast: An audio program, often brief, that’s similar to a radio show but intended for digital download rather than live play. We have already spent some time addressing the important role situational factors play in creating a kairos for what counts as/is recognized as effective “irony.

We have already spent some time addressing the important role situational factors play in creating a kairos for what counts as/is recognized as effective “irony.” For instance, much of the ironic political critique of 1970s Saturday Night Live skits might seem dull or weird without a deep understanding of how Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were seen and thought of at the time, as well as what political contexts they were a part of. Without knowledge of Jon Stewart’s role on The Daily Show, the kairos of his Crossfire appearance would be much harder to understand.

General

Your first major assignment, then, is to create a group podcast in which your group situates an ironic text in its original context. Exploring, in other words, the situational variables that made up its kairos. For our purposes, the text must have been originally released before January 1, 2000 (in part because that’s a neat dividing line, in part because—as we’ll see later this semester—9/11 brought about some important shifts in many Americans’ attitudes toward irony). Your podcast should include your text itself, as well as relevant events, people, etc. that had some influence on the contexts out of which the text emerged. For instance, what cultures was the author a part of, and how might they have influenced her or his ironic rhetorical choices? How was the text originally distributed (British newspaper, 1960s Japanese television, FM radio, etc.), and how might the context of that material form shape the text? Who, if relevant, was in political power? Were any military or social conflicts going on in the background? Was your text responding to a specific previous text, or to a general cultural and/or political atmosphere? In short, your podcast should help your audience better understand your text and its kairos. Don’t give context for context’s sake, but bring to your listeners’ minds key contextual details relevant to your text’s rhetorical point(s) and the broader historical situation in which those points were being made in order to foster a better understanding of your text in its context.

You will work in either pairs or trios. All members must agree on the chosen text. That choice is yours, not mine, as is how you divide the workload—as long as you do so in an equitable manner and all group members’ voices appear at least once in the final podcast. Keep in mind this collaborative project’s potential relevance to your individual Learning Record.

Specifics

Your podcast is due on the wiki by the beginning of class Mon., Feb. 18. Upload it as an .mp3, .aac, .or .wav file. Podcasts must be 5-6 minutes long. We will listen to all groups’ podcasts in class that day. The time limit is strict, and you should make use of that time in a rhetorically effective—in a kairotic—manner. In addition to the release of your text itself, your podcast must introduce and set up at least three additional contextual variables: events, people, wars, other texts, private or public squabbles, or responses to your text. You should verbally cite at least two sources in your podcast. Source requirements are covered in more detail in the corresponding paper assignment. Your primary rhetorical goals are to inform and to entertain. Make a podcast that will hold your classmates’ and my attention. My feedback on the timeline will be given in written form, with each group member receiving the same write-up.

Paper 1

General

In addition to the group podcast, you are responsible for writing an individual paper in which you describe the context out of which your text arose, the significance and ironic message of the text itself, and how that specific message responded to/interacted with your text’s kairos. Keep in mind your primary purpose is—as with the podcast—to give your readers a better understanding of your text by situating it, not to offer context for context’s sake. Always make sure you explain the relevance of that context in terms of your text.

You should try to avoid taking a position on whether your text’s message is “good” or “bad.” Try to stick primarily to describing and summarizing text and context rather than evaluating. If your text was rhetorically ineffective or responded poorly to its context, let that point be made via exposition (for instance, that it’s faded into history or has a powerful legacy) rather than direct argument. Let me know if I can clarify here.

Though you can draw on your group’s conversations, brainstorming, etc. in writing your paper, the actual process of writing should be undertaken individually. If you have questions about the boundaries of collaboration and plagiarism, check the course strands or with me. Basically, your paper should have different sentences, paragraphs, and overall arrangement than your other group members’, though the basic content could be largely the same.

Specifics

Your paper must have at least four sources. Two of those sources must be scholarly; two must be broader historical or primary sources. We’ll discuss these distinctions in class on Jan. 30. If you aren’t confident in this area and want to get a head start, however, feel free to talk with me in advance. Easy Writer also has advice here. Your paper may share one scholarly and one historical source with your other group members’ papers. The other scholarly and historical source must be unique to your paper.

Paper 1 should be at least 1000 words including the works-cited page, heading, title, etc. That should make the body of the paper around 3 pages. The paper should be properly formatted according to MLA guidelines, which we’ll discuss as this unit unfolds. A full draft of the paper

(1.1) is due in the corresponding wiki folder on Mon., Feb. 11. Paper 1.1 will be peer reviewed in class on that day. A substantially revised version (1.2) is due in the corresponding wiki folder by the beginning of class on Mon., Feb. 18.

Evaluation Suggestions:

I use The Learning Record to assess my classes, so students get qualitative feedback from me on both the podcast and the paper. I offer marginal comments on the first draft of the paper. In response to my comments and a peer review, students set three revision goals--each including what the goal is, why they've set it as a goal based on peer review/my comments/personal reflection, and how they plan to carry it out--for writing/revising their second draft (the ".2" in the prompt above). I approve those goals in advance of the revisions, then focus my comments on them in assessing the second draft.

My commentary on the podcast, which focuses primarily on invention, organization, and audience awareness, is the same for all members of each group and is about a paragraph in length.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

I wasn't sure how this approach would go over this semester, which was the first time I assigned both podcast and paper. Students seemed enthusiastic about the podcast. In addition to being more "fun" than a traditional paper, it seems the unorthodox and novel nature of podcasts for school purposes led them to feel more freedom in inventing and organizing. They were, in other words, much less prone to podcaster's block than writer's block. I require the paper to be more conventional in terms of college writing for a rhetoric course, but the podcast gave them ample material to conventionalize for the paper.

Additional Resources:

The Scholar Electric on Incorporating Audio Assignments: http://www.ryantrauman.net/scholarelectric/2012/11/13/212/

Audacity's wiki: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Audacity_Wiki_Home_Page

The Learning Record: http://www.learningrecord.org/

Course Type:

Intermediate Writing Course

Course Description:

What is irony? It’s a rhetorical device that has been called “infinite absolute negativity” and “the key to the tightest bonds of friendship.” Jane Austen uses it to poke fun at Victorian social norms, Stephen Colbert to mock American politics, television shows like South Park to critique—well, just about everything. Irony’s complex history is part of the reason its definition is so hard to pin down. Working towards an understanding and definition of the term will thus be one of the aims of this course.

Irony’s presence in individual rhetorical exchanges can be equally hard to identify, however. Consider the times you've been reading something online—say a friend's Facebook status—and found yourself asking, "Can this person possibly be serious?" This course, then, will also examine how irony functions practically in political and popular discourse. The effective use of irony requires both the speaker and listener to share a mutual understanding not only of the position being ironically stated, but the other party’s unstated beliefs and the actual critical message under the surface. Traditional rhetorical variables—speaker, audience, purpose—are all present, but layered in a manner that requires especially acute rhetorical awareness. This course will thus necessitate that students assume and practice a rigorous rhetorical consciousness as they engage with irony as both a concept and a complex rhetorical device, constructing and critiquing ironic arguments as they consider the historical, political, and ethical implications of irony’s deployment from Socrates to Swift to sitcoms.

Tags:

End of Term Writing Assignments

Voss — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 21:30:39 +0000

Image Credit:

The New Yorker magazine

Brief Assignment Overview:

We’re coming up on the midway point of this semester, and as we’re all currently planning the weeks ahead after Spring Break, I thought I’d take a moment here and share what I’m currently doing for my course’s final assignment. I’m teaching The Rhetoric of The New Yorker, and my students’ final assignment is to compose a New Yorker-style essay. Of course, with the rare exception whatever they produce is nowhere near New Yorker-quality. Nevertheless, this assignment grew out of two pedagogical realities and subsequently I think it’s entirely valuable. The first reality is that after a few semesters of teaching I realized that my students were rarely submitting end-of-semester work that met my expectations. I don’t admit this as any fault of my own teaching nor mean it as any disrespect towards my exceptional former students. Rather, I try to spend my time reading good writing and my students are journeymen writers – whatever they produce will inevitably fall short of what I like to read. Secondly, my former students have often considered submitted work to be in some way “finished,” and all us instructors know that writing is a process. No matter how much I told them that nothing is ever finished, they just persisted in thinking that A-level work is a finished product. So, as a result of these two imperatives, I thought I’d design an end of semester writing project in which it’s nearly impossible for any of my students to complete the work “perfectly”. The point of this assignment is the process, not the product.

Type of Assignment:

Homework Assignment

Major Course Project

Semester-long Project

Assignment Length:

Course Unit

Semester-long Project

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

The goals of this assignment are for students to assimilate previous research into a coherent argument. More specifically, over the course of this assignment, it is my hope that students will learn how to: synthecize seperate arguments, articulate their uncertainties, learn to restrain themselves from writing about the obvious, and learn that writing is always an ongoing project.

Media Requirements:

No Classroom Technology Required

Required Materials:

This assignment doesn't not include a research component, so it's important that students have already compiled 7 or so relevant sources into an annotated bibliography. (In my course, the annotated bibliography is created in a mid-semester project, so by the end of the semester my students can focus entirely on compiling that research into good writing.) Ideally, they've compiled a variety of sources, such as several opposing arguments, interviews, historical accounts, etc. Other than that, it's important that students bring to this assignment general excitement and genuine intellectual interest in their subject matter -- without such things they'll be bored and their writing will suffer.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Late in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

In 5-7 pages, students are to assimilate previous research into a New Yorker-style essay. What "New Yorker-style" means is basically an essay that subtly combinds narrative and argument into a well written product intended for educated readers. Students' writing should be free of grammatical error, writen in correct MLA-style (unless Chicago-style is more relevant to their future academic work), and contain correct grammatical usage. Structurally, there is no one set way New Yorker essays are organized, so in this assignment students need to determine what kind of organization is most effective for the argument they are trying to make. Asking students to determine their arguments parameters is often challenging for them, but it's my hope that the hurdle gets them thinking about the writing process in productive ways. (In general, students' papers for this assignment tend to be organized as follows: introduction of topic or individual, argument about said topic or individual, background of said topic or individual, and finally some use of counter argument to confirm their own argument.) I encourage students to think of a New Yorker essay (or two) that they liked over the course of the semester, and to model their argument off of what's done in that essay.

Throughout, students are asked to always keep in mind the ways in which various arguments relate to one another. They shouldn't be thinking of arguments as islands of thought that operate within a void, but rather discrete bits of information that romantically mingle with one another. If students get confused or discouraged, they're encouraged to articulate their uncertanty, which if they learn this skill often puts them ahead of their peers in so far as their ability to write is concerned. Throughout the unit I stress that a solid part of the assignment's assessment is their level of intellectual engagement -- in other words, if they think of this assignment in terms of "what shold I write to get an A," they will probably struggle.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

In general, since I know that my course is leading up to this assignment, I always try to direct my class's discussion of New Yorker articles in the direction of noticing writing mechanics. (Therefore, if this is the type of assignment that you'd perhaps like to encorporate into your own course, be thinking about the ways in which daily class discussion might be relevant to the larger goal.)

More specifically, be prepared for students to have a lot of trouble making subtle arguments (like those found in the New Yorker). They've been told for years that thesis statements are always at the end of the first paragraph of a text, which of course rarely holds true outside stuff written for school. Induldge their attempts and give them the benefit of the doubt as far as effort is concerned. There'll be a range of student achievement, as usual, but with such a difficult assignment I think it's important to keep in mind that students here will learn by doing.

Instructions For Students:

These are the instructions I give my students when presenting this assignment in class (I also include assessment criteria, see below):

"Your mission for Paper 3.1 is to take all of the research that you compiled in your Annotated Bibliography and turn it into a New Yorker-style essay. Your essay should be 5-7 pages in length and be in correct MLA format (doubled-spaced, page numbers, correct MLA citations, proper headings, etc.). Aside from these simple parameters, you’re free to go about this assignment in whichever way you determine to be most rhetorically appropriate given your subject matter. A profile of a popular sports athlete will look much different than a consideration of the social effects of our excessive cell phone use.

You’re encouraged to consider a New Yorker essay that you liked over the course of the semester, and use the structure of that essay as a model for your own writing. If you do this, what’ll probably happen is that you’ll start writing an essay structured similarly to the New Yorker piece, but then you’ll inevitably branch out a bit once your argument comes alive. You will probably even change your introduction to fit your conclusion and your essay will then be devoid of any resemblance to the New Yorker essay. (NOTE: DO NOT structure your essay based upon a New Yorker essay that considers your same topic – this will inevitably lead to a sort of plagiarism.)

Also, think about how often we went off on tangents during class discussion over the course of the semester. If I thought this was harmful to you as a writer, I would have worked to get us back “on topic.” Instead, most good writing often goes off on natural tangents, and these tangents are skillfully used to complete an argument and offer example. So as you think about and eventually write your essay, think freely and expansively about your content, just like we did in class."

Evaluation Suggestions:

I like to assess students on:

their ability to communicate ideas clearly and humanely,
their ability to avoid the boring five-paragraph essay format that they learned in high school,
their ability to master and objectively present the competing interests that circle their topic,
their ability to embed their argument with subtlety and style.

Course Type:

Intermediate Writing Course

Course Description:

The New Yorker is a highbrow magazine that’s been around since the 1920s. Published weekly, the magazine regularly offers various forms of cultural commentary, from fiction submitted by respected authors, to investigative journalism written by first-rate essayists, to cartoons composed with unfailingly witty captions. Each issue contains calendars highlighting upcoming social events across Manhattan. Quite often longer content in the magazine relates to current events outside of New York City, and increasingly outside of the United States. This course will examine all the various rhetorics that surround the magazine. We will consider each week’s cover and the various rhetorical strategies therein at play. We will read several famous articles from the magazine’s past, as well as current articles commenting on the world in which we live. Ultimately, we will consider the various ways that arguments in the magazine are made.

Regular reading of The New Yorker will guide us as we practice research and writing over the course of the semester. Vital to your success will be your ability to “interpret” another’s argument, which basically means coming up with a cogent, interesting account of what an argument means, what it’s trying to do to/for the reader, what technical choices the author’s made in order to try to achieve the effects he wants, and so on. In light of this, you’ll also be asked to compose your own arguments. You will pick a controversy towards the beginning of the semester and, in addition to our reading from the magazine, investigate this particular issue. The goal of this research will be for you to produce a New Yorker-style essay by the end of the semester. This is all designed to enhance your ability to analyze the various positions held in any public debate and to advocate your own position effectively and responsibly.

Tags:

Setting Up a Studio Environment for Multimedia Projects

Scott Nelson — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 02:27:16 +0000

Author:

Scott Nelson

Image Credit:

Matt Jones CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Brief Assignment Overview:

Whenever I teach, I always assign some form of multimedia project, and these practices have helped to set up a studio environment where collaborative multimedia projects can thrive. Rather than post an explicit lesson plan to our site, I thought I’d run through a set of practices that have been successful for me over a few courses.

Type of Assignment:

Major Course Project

Semester-long Project

Assignment Length:

Multiple Class Periods

Course Unit

Semester-long Project

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

The pedagogical goals for this assignment are to have students think about what multimedia production skills they already possess and what skills they'd like to develop. Further, these practices foster a collaborative environment where studetns learn to work together toward common goals.

Media Requirements:

No Classroom Technology Required

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Required Materials:

Since these are a set of practices rather than a specific use of a technology, what follows can be adapted to any classroom. Because most of the classes I teach are in rooms with computers for the students, I'll assume such a setup. Mainly, the students need some way to communicate with each other outside of class. I use PBWorks wikis for this aim, but a class blog or even email can be used to coordinate student skills.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Mid-Semester

Late in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

While each course's specific assignment may vary, I've sucessfully implemented these practices in many student projects. These projects have ranged from creating infographics to video games to ebooks. What I hope to achieve from these practices is a form of student autonomy that places responsibility for their work squarely with students.

For this aim, it's important that the assignment's product have some form of value outside of the classroom. Digital media needs a real audience, one beyond just the teacher in a particular course. With this in mind, I require that any multimedia project that students create have some venue in which it is showcased. This can be something as simple as posting it to Facebook, or something more complex such as publishing an ebook in Apple's iBookstore. Hopefully, by having an audience beyond the classroom, students will attribute more value to the rhetorical work they do. These projects aren't just for a grade in a self-contained course, but instead rhetorical practices that work upon the networks they inhabit.

Secondly, I set up a type of Craigslist for student skills. Early in the semester, I have students post a brief biography detailing their current skills in multimedia production and skills they'd like to develop. I normally create a new wiki page for students to populate, but this can be done via a course blog or a mass email. This particular stage in setting up the studio environment requires that students think about their relationships to multimedia and the ways they can create in these modes. Undoubtedly, I have students who begin this stage thinking they have no skills in multimedia whatsoever, but a brief class discussion usually gets students thinking about the digital discourse communities they already belong to. Some may be avid social media prosumers, while others may keep Twitter or Instagram accounts.

A further advantage to these Craiglist-style bios is that students can self-select collaborative groups. If, for example, one student has a great idea for a video game, but no skills with Photoshop, the bios are a first step to making those need-based connections. Plus, because students are shopping for skills among their classmates, they tend to create more organic groups with a common goal. This practice seems to reduce the occurances of group members who refuse to contribute to a project and let others "take up their slack." Common interests drive group formation, so individual students are less likely to be bored with the project.

As a final bonus from this practice, because groups are formed based upon skills, sudents tend to create affinity groups that share knowledge. Students teach each other their skills, and thus all participate in the production of the project. While there is the risk that students will only practice what they are already good at, experience has shown me that this isn't the case. Students are genuinely interested in the common goal they've set, and hence, they all work to create a quality product.

The final practice I do in the classroom is to give students time to play. Multimedia takes some time to create, and scheduling in-class time to experiment is extremely important. Digital technologies ask that we manipulate them, to try out hypotheses regarding their rhetorics and grammars. Groups need time to teach each other skills, and studio work days are important for this task.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

As I've indicated above, this is more a set of classroom principles rather than a specific lesson plan. However, they've worked well for my students, especially when they are working with multimedia. A familiarity with programs like Photoshop, GIMP, Illustrator, Inkscape, inDesign, iMovie, Audacity, or GarageBand can help, but I've found the single most important skill to have is flexibility. No instructor can possibly know all there is to know about these multimedia creation applications, so a willingness to learn from students is paramount.

Instructions For Students:

Since this is a set of practices rather than a specific lesson, there aren't any explicit instructions to students beyond what I've outlined above. However, the following may be helpful when attempting to set up a Craigslist-style skill listing:

In a brief paragraph, outline your interests in the upcoming project, listing any type of multimedia you would be willing to work in or learn. The aim here is not necessarily to give only those programs you're already confident in, but instead your interests in creating multimedia using some applcations.

Evaluation Suggestions:

Because I use the Learning Record Online for all of my courses, the practices outlined above aren't assessed in the traditional sense. I circle the room on studio days, talking with students about what problems they may have run into and to get a general sense of the project's progression. The Learning Record allows for these documented processes to be used as evidence for learning, so the multimedia product is much less important than the processes students go through to create their project.

A successful project is one where students learn new ways of communicating in multimedia, and learn to collaborate with likeminded individuals toward a common goal.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

As I've indicated above, these pracitces have been sucessful in a variety of group projects. I've used this with an infographic assignment, a video game prototype assignment, an actual working video game assignment, an interactive image assignment, and an ebook assignment.

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Intermediate Writing Course

Introductory Writing Course

Literary Studies Course

Course Description:

I have successfully used this studio environment in RHE 306, RHE 309K, RHE 312, and ENGL 314J. I'll give each course description below.

RHE 306:

This course is designed to prepare you for the academic writing you do at the University of Texas and writing you will do in your careers and personal lives beyond UT. It is a course designed to teach you not what to think, but how to think on your own. Ultimately, you should learn to be a better thinker, who is able to think critically about topics, other people, and yourself; a better rhetor, who is able to analyze a specific situation and adjust your writing to fit accordingly; and a better communicator, who is able to express ideas effectively.

It will include three units with each unit culminating in a composition and including writing instruction that supports the drafting of that composition. Composition is a broad term including symbolic efforts in a variety of media (including video, audio, and web-design, to name just a few). Many lower-division RHE courses (such as RHE 315 and 312) encourage or even require composition outside of the traditionally imagined prose essay. Nevertheless, the written component of every lower-division RHE class must meet the writing flag requirements as stipulated by the college. These written assignments may include a variety of genres, including narrative, argument, analysis, or critical reflection. (“Creative” writing assignments—plays, fiction, poetry—are not suitable genres for formal writing assignments.) As required by the college, each major writing assignment includes a peer review process. You will also complete informal writing exercises that prepare you to do the writing necessary in your formal assignments.

RHE 309K: The Rhetoric of Video Games

This course seeks to explore video games as a modern discursive medium. Far from being mere “mindless entertainment,” many video games make explicit or implicit arguments about gender and sexuality, economic systems, corporate practices, geopolitics, and both real and imagined societies. What arguments do these simulations and simulacra mount about how the world is? What arguments do they mount about how the world should be?

Much of the past and current study of digital rhetoric seems to look at the content of computers through applying older means of rhetorical analysis, looking at the text and images contained on computers rather than the processes through which this content is represented. What we seek to explore is a relatively new field—procedural rhetoric—and the ways this new field can inform video game criticism. How do the procedures inherent in video games make arguments about the world?

The course will include three major units with each unit culminating in a composition and including writing instruction that supports the drafting of that composition. Composition is a broad term including symbolic efforts in a variety of media (including video, audio, and web-design, to name just a few). Many lower-division RHE courses encourage or even require composition outside of the traditionally imagined prose essay. Nevertheless, the written component of every lower-division RHE class must meet the writing flag requirements as stipulated by the college. These written assignments may include a variety of genres, including narrative, argument, analysis, or critical reflection. (“Creative” writing assignments—plays, fiction, poetry—are not suitable genres for formal writing assignments.) As required by the college, each major writing assignment includes a peer review process. You will also complete informal writing exercises that prepare you to do the writing necessary in your formal assignments.

RHE 312: Writing in Digital Environments

This course explores rhetoric across a variety of modes: verbal, visual, aural, procedural, haptic, and kinesthetic. “Writing,” in this sense, refers to a variety of inscription technologies. For example, it can be communicating through text on a screen, through the rules of a game, or through the layout and colors in an image. In this course, we will create a variety of digital communications, most with a purpose of persuasion. In doing so, you will learn about digital discourse communities and will eventually present an argument to a chosen digital community.

Each form of media brings with it a set of affordances and constraints. Much of digital media relies upon the logics and metaphors of earlier forms of media, but does present new avenues of distribution and production to a wider range of people. In this course, you will analyze various forms and communities of digital communication and reflect upon these affordances and constraints. Hopefully, you will leave the course with a greater awareness of not only the communicative power of digital media, but also some of the limitations it imposes upon its users and producers.

The course will three major units, with each culminating in digital composition and textual reflection. Throughout the process, you will participate in peer review of your compositions and maintain evidence for use in your Learning Record.

ENGL 314J: Literature & Video Games

In the popular press, literature and video games are frequently positioned as enemies fighting over time. In a recent Slate article, for example, journalist Michael Thompson states that in the time it takes to play one modern video game, “You could read War and Peace, for instance, then follow it up with Thus Spoke Zarathustra and a few starter courses in a new language” (par. 1). Further, the often-cited 2004 National Endowment for the Arts’ Reading at Risk report places video games among other forms of electronic media as “competing” with literature. But both of these sources (and countless others) fail to examine the more complex connections video games have had with literature over the past sixty years. What at first began as a parasitic relationship of video games borrowing, adapting, or extending literary themes, characters, and plots has now become more symbiotic, with both media now remixing each other.

Rather than view video games and print literature as contenders for precious time, this course seeks to explore the ways literature and video games impact one another. That is, this course looks at literature as a practice and not merely a collection of artifacts. Using video games as a frame through which to study literature, we will work our way through a variety of genres, including fables, fantasy, epic poetry, historical fiction, science fiction, mystery, and gothic fiction. This course helps students prepare for upper-division English classes (as well as a wide range of upper-division courses in other UT programs and departments) by focusing on close reading and critical writing, and by introducing formal, historical, and cultural approaches to literary texts. Students will learn how to use the online Oxford English Dictionary as well as other resources essential to literary study.

Tags:

Using Storify to Analyze Poetry

Ptacek — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 21:14:34 +0000

Author:

Jake Ptacek

Image Credit:

Screenshot of Storify page by Jake Ptacek

Brief Assignment Overview:

Students often conceptualize poems as monolithic objects from the past. This lesson plan helps encourage them to visualize and conceptualize the content and influence of a poem in different registers.

Type of Assignment:

Major Course Project

Assignment Length:

Course Unit

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Visual Rhetoric

Pedagogical Goals - Literature:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

The goal of this exercise is to encourage students to transform their relationship with the words on the page, to see a poem as a living cultural argument rather than a set-in-stone text. It is also designed to encourage students to think about poetry as different kinds of media.

Media Requirements:

Media Console/Projector

Required Materials:

Students will require access to a computer, whether in class or outside of the classroom.

A computer and projector.

A Storify account.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Early in the Semester

Mid-Semester

Late in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Poems are not simply one-time literary events. Instead, they make arguments about the culture a poet lives and practices her art in as well as arguments about the culture within which the reader lives. In this assignment, students will create a multimedia presentation using Storify to help elucidate a poem's meaning, but also to examine how that poem appears in our contemporary media culture. Storify helps them track appearances of the poem as a whole (or of selected lines) in social media.

This helps students see the present-day influence of a text. It also allows them to provide line-by-line annotation and to think about the poem as a visual or audio media event, rather than simply words on a page. Students may also provide interpretaive material: music from the time period, photographs or videos that reference images, characters, or places in the poem.

Storify provides an excellent platform for this analysis because it allows users to search social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as more conventional sites like Google and Youtube, for materials related to their project. This allows students to create a visually appealing presentation of the poem to their classmates with relative ease.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Familiarize yourself with Storify beforehand; be prepared to set aside some class time to create and navigate accounts for your students.

Instructions For Students:

This project will form the basis of your in-class presentation, so please plan ahead accordingly.

In this project, you will create a visual presentation of the poem you have chosen using Storify. You will type out the entire poem. For each line of the poem, you will find at least two images, quotations, websites, videos, or songs that will help us elucidate or make sense of the poem you have chosen. They may comment directly on the line in question, or offer a representation of a figure, place, image, or theme within that line, or they may have a more oblique relationship to the line in question. However, you must be able to demonstrate the relevance of each component to our understanding of the poem itself. However, you are free to--and encouraged to--be creative and exploratory in your creation of a Storify page.

You will present your post to the rest of the class in our penultimate week in a 6-8 minute presentation.

Evaluation Suggestions:

This assignment is still in the experimental phase, so I have not yet evaluated any student posts. It will be part of their presentation grade, which is determined by both content and professionalism of delivery.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Again, this is still in the experimental phase. Undoubtedly I will need to make the "Student Assignment" directions clearer and more specific.

Additional Resources:

My thanks to Cate Blouke, who first demonstrated the power of Storify to me.

Course Type:

Intermediate Writing Course

Literary Studies Course

Course Description:

I am currently testing this assignment in my E314L: Reading Poetry course.

What’s so special about poetry? What makes it so popular throughout history? Why do figures as different as Percy Bysshe Shelley and Geoffrey Hill, Aristotle and Heidegger, John Stuart Mill and T. S. Eliot—even Bob Dylan and Morrissey—care so much about it? Why has it always been central to the practice of literary criticism? What does it mean to write a poem, to read one, or even, as Mary Poovey suggested, to live inside one? And what is a poem, even? Is it a matter of form, or function, or technique?

In order to begin answering these questions, we will investigate very different lyric poets and poetry—including, for example, Sappho, nursery rhymes, Shakespeare, John Donne, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Christina Rossetti, William Butler Yeats, and the Smiths—with an eye to both the similarities and differences in their poetical practices. Each of these poets returns again and again to the lyric form—to express their fears about war, their anxieties about sex, their relationship to nature and to cities, trying to make sense of the world around them.

No prior knowledge of poetry or critical theory is required. As we progress, we’ll develop as a class a set of critical and formal vocabularies to help us make sense of the poetry. We will focus on developing literary analysis and research skills, and to that end we will read both classic and modern pieces of criticism in order to give us conceptual models for our own academic work. We’ll also work on honing our research and writing skills, and use the Oxford English Dictionary to help us make sense of how historical changes in the English language affect poetry and our understanding of it. These skills will prove useful not only to English majors, but to students of many disciplines

Tags:

Close Reading

Visual Analysis

Multimedia Presentation

Storify

Poetry

Literature

Prototyping Procedural Rhetoric

Scott Nelson — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 20:37:04 +0000

Author:

Scott Nelson

Image Credit:

Scott Nelson

Brief Assignment Overview:

Using procedural, verbal, visual and aural rhetoric, students work in teams on a multimedia presentation that outlines a video game prototype and the ways it makes arguments. While this lesson plan was designed for a course centered on video games and the arguments they make, it can be adapted to any 309K topic if the instructor is willing to discuss procedural rhetoric with students. Additionally, the lesson plan outlined here is the "Cadillac" version, in that it uses multimedia to present the procedural arguments students devise. A simpler version with pen and paper can be used instead, where students storyboard a video game and its procedures.

Type of Assignment:

Major Course Project

Assignment Length:

Course Unit

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Organization

Technical Writing

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

The goals for this lesson is to have students think about multiple modes of communication and the affordances and constraints of each mode when arguing. By the end of the lesson, students should leverage verbal, visual, aural, and procedural rhetoric to argue their case for making their video game.

Media Requirements:

Media Console/Projector

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

computers, various multimedia authoring software (e.g., Photoshop, Audactiy, Camtasia, Illustrator, Flash, Game Salad, etc.)

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Late in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Unit 3 will work toward a concept of a single video game produced by you in groups. You will work in groups to design a game that puts forth an argument about the world. Topics will vary with your interests, but research will be necessary to discover the background of the issue and to be able to mount your own procedural arguments. In addition to why your argument is important and the right course of action to take, you'll need to outline the basic plot of the game (if there is one), the characters (if there are any), and most importantly, how the procedures enacted in the game make the argument you say they do.

This project will proceed through two stages:

Stage 1:

Your group will research and write a classical argument on a topic of your group's choosing (within reason). In writing this paper, you should go beyond public web research and pay attention to classical appeals. This paper should have a real target audience and the argument should be tailored to them. You are encouraged to use supplementary digital media, but it is not required at this stage. Use all available means to you: books in UT's libraries, articles in the private databases, government documents, UT's video game archive, interviews, etc. Your group should keep a working annotated bibliography of the sources you research, and this bibliography can be used as a Learning Record work sample.

Stage 2:

Your group will craft a proposal and presentation for a socially conscious video game development company. Working from your Stage 1 deliverable, you will proceduralize the reasons from your argument into actions taken within a video game. Your group will then present a digital media "pitch" to a development company about why this argument is important and what the game would be like.

Deliverables:

Stage 1:

Your initial argument should be between 1500 to 2200 words. Include any necessary digital media you believe adds to the focus of your paper. Be sure to indicate at the top of your paper who your audience is. All of your citations within the paper should be done in MLA format, and you should include a Works Cited. If you feel some other format beyond a Word document would be better to present this deliverable, run it by me first, and we can work something out.

Stage 2 (group):

1. A digital media presentation given by your group to a philanthropically-minded video game development company. That is, you don't have to sell them on the idea that games can persuade, but you do have to convince them that your argument is important and it can be argued procedurally. The presentation should last approximately 20 minutes (Also, be prepared for about 10 minutes of questions afterward.), and should incorporate some form of digital media. For example, you could create a short film, a machinima using an existing game platform, an animation or animatic using Flash, static image promotional materials using Photoshop, remixed sounds & music, or even a working prototype using Game Salad. Remember that the digital media must be rhetorically constructed. If your group is having trouble coming up with your presentation format, schedule a meeting time with me and I can give you some ideas. I'm not looking for prowess with a particular program. You're encouraged to step outside your comfort zone with regard to digital media production programs, and as such, I'm looking for professionalism, not a professional-quality product.

2. A proposal that explains your game and its argument (with digital media supplements as necessary). We will cover the parts of a proposal in class, and you should use your Stage 1 deliverable as your Background section (with some tweaking). Think of this proposal as a document for board members who couldn't attend your presentation; it ties together all of your digital media artifacts in your presentation for those who couldn't be there. This document is also important for submitting your project to the Journal for Undergraduate Media Projects (see below), as it will contextualize your digital media artifacts.

3. A brief (one paragraph per group member) email to me evaluating your group members' performance throughout the project.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Since this lesson plan is fairly involved and takes up one paper unit, some preparation is necessary. Students will need to be familiar with procedural rhetoric beforehand, and for maximum effect, it would help to go over basic principles of visual and aural rhetoric as well. Matt King has outlined an excellent lesson plan for analyzing the procedural rhetorics of Serious Games, and I implemented a similar lesson plan in a prior unit to accustom students to the procedural rhetoric used by others. It is important that students understand the concept of procedural enthymemes, outlined in Ian Bogost's Persuasive Game: The Expressive Value of Video Games. The first chapter of the book can be found on the MIT press website.

For basic training in multimedia authoring, the Web has a variety of free tutorials to instruct you and your students. I hold three multimedia authoring workshops, each designed as a elementary overview to Photoshop, Audacity, and Camtasia. For Photoshop, I show students You Suck at Photoshop, a tongue-in-cheek tutorial series covering basic layers, masks, cropping, cutting and photomontaging. Audacity's website has a list of tutorials for getting started with the program, and TechSmith provides excellent tutorials for Camtasia, most of which can be accessed through the program's interface on demand.

My aim in having students create multimedia is to get them used to some of these programs' graphical user interfaces, the metaphors of which get repeated across different programs. If you feel this step is too involved, the lesson plan can be implemented using pen and paper is less time (about 1-2 class periods). Creating multimedia artifacts seems to get the students more invested in the project, but the major aims of the lesson plan can be achieved through just having students think about procedural rhetoric and how to create procedural arguments.

Prior to this lesson plan, students wrote a standard classical argument to an audience of their choice. Since I'm having students create multimedia (which is a time-intensive endeavor), each group turned in one paper that was researched and written collaboratively. If you choose to not have them create multimedia, then a possible alternative would be to have students read each others' final arguments in small groups, and then each group chooses one argument to proceduralize.

Instructions For Students:

Unit 3 will work toward a concept of a single video game produced by you in groups.

A philanthropic organization has agreed to meet with you about funding your Serious Game. You are tasked with creating a multimedia presentation for this organization that argues why your game is important for the audience you chose, and how you plan to proceduralize this argument into a video game.

The presentation should last approximately 15-20 minutes, and should incorporate some form of digital media. For example, you could create a short film, a machinima using an existing game platform, static image promotional materials using Photoshop, remixed sounds & music, or even a working prototype. If your group is having trouble coming up with your presentation format, schedule a meeting time with me and I can give you some ideas. Outstanding presentations will be submitted to the Journal for Undergraduate Multimedia Projects, a peer-reviewed online journal.

Pay close attention to the rhetorical choices you make in creating your multimedia artifacts. How does the use of jump cuts in your video juxtapose two ideas? How does the addition of music to a scene argue for a particular interpretation? How do the visual elements of your game cover work together to argue your point?

The most important part of this assignment, however, is the procedures you use to enact your argument. To proceduralize your argument, you'll need to think of both the reasons you have for your thesis being the way to think or what to do, and the assumptions your audience already holds about the topic. Think of the "gap" in a procedural enthymeme, the logical step you have players enact. What will your video game ask the player to do? How can these actions argue either implicitly or explicitly for your thesis?

Note: if you choose the non-multimedia route, I would suggest revising the multimedia paragraphs to outline a deliverable of storyboard sketches and text.

Evaluation Suggestions:

Since I use the Learning Record Online for evaluation, this assignment was not graded. However, the processes students used in participating in this project can be used in their Learning Record assessment. In addition to the various documentation of their process, I require each student to submit an evaluation of their group's work. Both the documentation and their group's assessment can be used in the Learning Record.

Were I to use this in a "traditional" assessment course, I would most likely assign a completion grade. If students focus too much on the product, I believe it could stunt some of their personal growth. For example, if the assignment had an evaluation at the end, some students may be more inclined to stick with what they know and not branch out into using other programs for multimedia authorship. The quality of the final product is not what's important here (as this isn't a course in how to use Photoshop professionally), but instead the processes they used to collaborate and proceduralize arguments.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

So far, there has been an overwhelmingly positive response to this project. Students have pushed the boundaries of the assignment, opting for multimedia authoring tools not covered in the class and investing themselves in creating fascinating games. One group decided to use the game Little Big Planet, not as a platform for their game, but instead as a presentation platform (something I might look into in further lesson plans), while another is using the program Game Salad to prototype their game. The goals of getting students immersed in a project and thinking creatively about multimedia authoring seem to have been met.

I approached the multimedia component as studio work, where students learn basic principles from the workshops, but are free to develop other skills and teach them to the rest of the class (myself included). I believe this freedom led to much of the innovative work on the students' part.

Were I to change anything in the lesson plan, it would probably be the amount of time needed to complete it. I, personally, am interested in multimodal scholarship, but would also like to see how the "pared down" version of this lesson plan would pan out. Is it the multimedia that is engrossing students, or the prototyping of the game?

Course Type:

Intermediate Writing Course

Introductory Writing Course

Course Description:

This course seeks to explore video games as a moderndiscursive medium. Far from being mere “mindless entertainment,” many videogames make explicit or implicit arguments about gender and sexuality, economicsystems, corporate practices, geopolitics, and both real and imaginedsocieties. What arguments do these simulations and simulacra mount about howthe world is? What arguments do they mount about how the world should be?

Much of the past and current study of digital rhetoric seemsto look at the content of computers through applying older means ofrhetorical analysis, looking at the text and images contained on computersrather than the processes through which this content is represented. What weseek to explore is a relatively new field—procedural rhetoric—and the ways thisnew field can inform video game criticism. How do the procedures inherent invideo games make arguments about the world?

Tags:

Multimedia Presentation

Group Project

Creating Individual "Infospheres" on the Web

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 16:11:03 +0000

Author:

Jasmine Mulliken

Image Credit:

An example of an infosphere from Jasmine Mulliken

Brief Assignment Overview:

The infosphere assignment calls on students to identify online sources of information they regularly take in and to create a representative structure for this information. Students must build their own unique infospheres and organize them as they see fit.

Type of Assignment:

Course Unit

Major Course Project

Assignment Length:

Course Unit

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Annotated Bibliography

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Rhetorical analysis, citation, research, invention, digital literacy.

Media Requirements:

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

Mind mapping software (Novamind, Freemind, etc.)

Aggregator website (Netvibes, iGoogle, etc.)

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Mid-Semester

Full Assignment Description:

Michael Vlahos defined "infosphere" in 1996 as "the fusion of all the world's communications networks, databases and sources of information into a vast, intertwined and heterogeneous tapestry of electronic interchange" (498). The thirteen years since his article was published has seen, among ather things, a shift in use of internet from the impersonal to the personal. Individuals now have their own infospheres, personal tapestries of information that they choose to absorb on a day-to-day basis. The infosphere assignment calls on students to identify online sources of information they regularly take in and to create a representative structure for this information. One way to do this is through an aggregator site such as Netvibes. Students must build their own unique infospheres and organize them. The bases for this organization becomes apparent not only in the way the student displays his or her infosphere on the webiste, but also in the secondary and explanatory requirement--the mind map.

This 6-7 week assignment requires students to construct both a visual and a verbal representation of their infospheres. During the process, it is important to discuss theoretical ideas about the web, sociology, and argument so that students understand what makes up their infospheres, but also why and how these sources play a role in their formations of identity.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

Begin the unit with a discussion of infospheres. This discussion can be up to a class in length and may include whole class discussion, group discussion, and/or lecture.

The next class period should focus on the idea of aggrogator sites and should include a demonstration of how one works. I used Netvibes. After explanation and demonstrations, let the students work on their own for 15-20 minutes, addressing any questions that come up during that time.

The next class period might deal with structuring information. (This could be done before the aggregator discussion, but I found it useful to have the material already so there was something to fill up the structure with.) Talk with students about how we structure our lives based on role or time or any other framework. This discussion could be half a class, and the next half could be an explanation/demonstration of NovaMind or another mind mapping software. Again, allow some time for students to play with the software in class.

The next few class periods, allow time at the beginning or end of class to work on project. In the meantime you might have them do readings over information structures or identity and its modern influences and discuss these readings and the ideas they evoke. Tie these ideas in to the infosphere so that the theory behind the assignment is always relevant.

It might be a good idea to have one full class dedicated to working on the project toward the end of the unit. You may not need this, though, if you've been allowing a block of time throughout the unit for work.

Instructions For Students:

This assignment has two parts: a mindmap reflecting the structure and reasoning for your website; and a website reflecting your infosphere as discussed in class.

Create, in an online environment, a space that represents your infosphere. You should use an aggregator site such as netvibes.com or igoogle.com to bring together the various information you take in on a daily basis. This may include any news sites you visit, radio stations you listen to, shows you watch, social sites you visit, email accounts you check, lectures or podcasts you listen to (like church sermons or class feeds), and the like. You may want to create different tabs that effectively categorize the information by role. Perhaps you read different magazines or journals for your job or classes than you do for entertainment. Maybe you want to separate your personal email account from your school email account. Keep in mind how you organize the information you take in and try to represent that through the interface.

As a precursor to building your website, map out the various components of your infosphere in a mind map. This map can serve as a brainstorming space and help you think through the different uses of the various information you take in on a daily basis.

Be as thorough as you can. Include everything you receive information from or take into consideration when constructing your reality. Remember, though, that you are trying to represent mainly the information you take in and not the information you put out. Sometimes these lines intersect, but try to contain this assignment as best you can to information you receive and process.

Requirements

Upload as a jpeg your infosphere mindmap by the due date. The map should have at the center your name. The first level of nodes should represent the tabs that will be at the top of your netvibes site (or the first level of organization on any other site you're using). The next level of nodes should be the titles of the blocks you will be putting under each tab. The nodes under the block titles should explain how and how often you use the information in the block, when and why you started using it, and a brief description of the site represented in the block.

Post a link to the finished site to the submission area for the assignment by the due date.(Check the calendar on the course website.) Additionally you may post a link in the class forum if you're willing to share your infosphere with the class. Be as thorough as possible. If you find along the way any sites that aren't part of your current infosphere but that you want to make part of it, definitely add those in! This assignment is meant to be both reflective and generative.

Evaluation Suggestions:

The grade on this assignment is based on the thoroughness of the site and the mindmap. In cases where students may have fewer objects in their infospheres, the amount of information and description in the mind map should show a thorough understanding of the role of those objects. The page should be well organized according to a specific structure defined by the student. The mindmap and website should show structures consistent with each other. Many objects on the website does not guarantee a good grade. Grade is based on evidence of the student's understanding of the purposes of those objects.

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Intermediate Writing Course

Course Description:

This project was implemented in an intermediate rhetoric course, RHE 309K The Rhetoric of Web Identity.

Tags:

Infosphere

Citation

Visual Representation

Invention

Website Design

Novamind

Twitter in the Classroom: Observations and Analysis

King — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:10:45 +0000

Author:

Matt King

Image Credit:

Twitter icon

Brief Assignment Overview:

My class used Twitter for a few general purposes and then for two specific assignments. For our general goals, we used Twitter to share resources among one another and to familiarize ourselves with various conversations that are important to people in the digital humanities. By following one another, we were able to tweet helpful links, questions about class, reminders and advice about assignments, etc. By following people participating in the sorts of conversations we were interested in (conversations about digital technologies, rhetoric, and writing), we found out how these conversations develop on Twitter and the internet generally.

For the two assignments, we practiced rhetorical analysis by analyzing various Twitter feeds and then used our own Twitter streams as a space for sharing Learning Record observations.

Type of Assignment:

Homework Assignment

Assignment Length:

Single Class Period

Course Unit

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Audience

Invention

Rhetorical Analysis

Pedagogical Goals - Writing:

Pre-Writing

Research

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Collaboration

Open Access Software

Social Media

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

Research, rhetorical analysis, invention, delivery, reflection, Learning Record observations

Media Requirements:

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Media Console/Projector

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

Internet access on any connected device, inside or outside the classroom. Various Twitter clients could be helpful and are available for free (see, for example, Tweetdeck and Yorufukurou).

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Useful Anytime

Full Assignment Description:

My general overview for using Twitter can be found on my wiki. The rhetorical analysis assignment is available below (in the instructions for students section). You are welcome to use and modify these assignments as you see fit, although I would recommend creating your own handouts or webpages and adapting the descriptions to your own needs.

For the Learning Record observations, no specific assignment description was offered students. The Learning Record is a portfolio-based assessment model, and this system asks students to make observations about their development over the course of the semester. We used Twitter as a platform for sharing and keeping track of these observations so that students could learn from and be inspired by one another. You can find out more about the Learning Record on the LR website.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

I spent 30-45 minutes in one class period introducing students to Twitter, helping them create accounts and follow one another, and having them begin tweeting, searching, and exploring. I offered this overview of Twitter for them to consult during and after this introduction (you are welcome to borrow this material, but it might need to be updated as time goes on). It would help to have your own Twitter account set up before class and to be familiar with how it works generally. If you would like students to follow particular people and conversations on Twitter, it could take a few weeks or months of your own personal Twitter use to find the people you find most relevant for your class interests and goals. This assignment assumes that rhetorical analysis has already been introduced to the students. If this is the first rhetorical analysis assignment, it would help to spend at least half a class period explaining the expectations and terms for analysis.

Instructions For Students:

Rhetorical analysis is a practice that helps us think through how a particular text is persuasive and who it would persuade. A successful rhetorical analysis takes into consideration at least three things: the main argument/goal of the text, the rhetorical strategies that the author employs to make the text persuasive, and the audience for the text. In addition to identifying the main argument/goal and the rhetorical strategies, we also want to analyze whether or not they would be effective for particular audiences.

This weekend, your assignment is to write a rhetorical analysis of tweets from a particular tweeter. You should write and submit this assignment as a new page on our course wiki. You should name this page "Twitter Rhetorical Analysis - [last name]", and you should file this page in our "Rhetorical Analyses" folder. Your final product should be 350-500 words long, and it should be completed before class on Tuesday, February 9.

To start, pick one of the people you follow on Twitter (for the sake of objectivity and everyone's comfort, do not choose someone from our class). This person can be someone you were asked to follow for this class or someone else (a friend, a celebrity, etc.). We want to look at several tweets from this person, so it should be someone who tweets fairly regularly. As you look at this person's tweets and write your rhetorical analysis, you should go through the following steps.

1. Invention - Remember, for rhetoricians, invention is about finding what is out there rather than making something up. After you have picked someone from Twitter to analyze, you will need to read through their tweets to find out what they talk about on Twitter. You should look through at least 50 tweets, and you can do so by going to their Twitter page. For example, if you were focusing on Steven Johnson (whose article about Twitter we read), you would go to http://twitter.com/stevenbjohnson. You can get to a tweeter's page by going to your list of people you are following and then clicking on their name.

As you look through this person's tweets (again, at least 50 of them), take notes on what they tweet. Does this person use their tweets to share personal information such as where they are or what they are doing? To make jokes? To participate in conversations? To share links? Anything else? Once you have a general sense for what the person tweets, identify these uses more specifically. If the person shares personal information, what sort of information do they share about themselves? If they have conversations with other people on Twitter, who are those conversations with and what are they about? If they post links, what are these articles/websites/blogposts/etc. about?

Once you have a clear sense for what this person does on Twitter, think about how they are presenting this information. In other words, we want to identify what rhetorical strategies the person uses to help accomplish their goals. Rhetorical strategies can refer to any number of things, including the way an author structures their argument, the way they establish themselves as authorities, the values and emotions to which an author appeals, and the specific language they use to present their argument. Of course, most people on Twitter are not making arguments; instead, their main goal is likely to share information about themselves with friends, to share interesting links with other people, to make jokes, to have a short conversation with someone about something, etc. Nonetheless, we can still talk about a tweeter's rhetorical strategies. That is, we can still talk about the ways that they use language, the way that they appeal to particular values or emotions in their audience, the ways that they establish themselves as trustworthy or authoritative, etc. Try to answer the following questions regarding the tweets that you read: What is the author's tone in these tweets? Does the author use different tones in different situations? How so? Does the author appeal to any particular values or emotions in their tweets? For example, does the author use their tweets in political ways? If so, how? Does the author use their tweets to try to make their readers laugh/cry/get excited about something/think about something/take action in a particular situation/etc.? If so, how? Does the author do anything else that appeals to specific values or encourages specific emotions in the audience? There are many other questions we could ask, but this should give us a decent start. Feel free to take note of anything else that helps us identify how this tweeter is trying to achieve their goals on Twitter.

2. Analysis - At this point, you should have a good sense for what this particular tweeter says and does on Twitter, what their goals are for using it, and how they go about achieving those goals. Now we want to analyze this information to get a sense for who would likely find these particular tweets interesting, useful, funny, or meaningful in any other way. Don't worry about identifying specific audience members. Instead, focus on the type of person who might be interested in these tweets. It might be helpful to think of the community to which various audience members might belong. Try to be as specific as possible as you identify possible audiences and communities. It is not incredibly helpful to say that a particular tweeter appeals to a "general" audience. It would be much more specific to say that a particular tweeter appeals to educators and friends. It would be even more specific to say that a particular tweeter appeals to people who teach college writing. Part of the challenge here is to figure out the range of audiences that would likely be interested in these tweets. Some people will appeal to a broad range of audiences; some people will appeal to a smaller audience. The goal of your analysis is to demonstrate the range of audiences that would likely follow this person based on what they tweet and how they do it.

Let's consider a few hypothetical situations. Imagine Celebrity X, an actor who mainly uses twitter to post personal stories about other celebrities. These tweets would likely appeal to people interested in Hollywood gossip, but they might not appeal to a fan of Celebrity X who wanted to know more about her daily activities. Imagine Celebrity Y, a comedian who uses twitter to post obscene jokes and random thoughts but also to help promote their favorite charity. Some people might follow this person because they enjoyed the jokes; some people might follow this person not because they enjoy the random thoughts but because these random thoughts are eccentric and allow you to make fun of Celebrity Y; some people might follow this person because they are interested in the charity; some people might not follow this person even though they want to support the charity because they find the jokes offensive. Finally, imagine important Academic W, a significant figure in new media studies who only uses Twitter to post links to her blog posts. Some people might follow this person to keep up with new blog posts; some academics interested in new media studies might not follow this person because she only blogs about video games and they are interested in something else. In other words, just because someone is famous does not mean that all of their fans would follow them on Twitter. Just because someone is an academic in a particular field does not mean that everyone in that field would follow them on Twitter. The audience for a particular tweeter depends on how that tweeter uses Twitter.

So, the goal of this analysis is to think about the ways that certain uses of Twitter will appeal to different people. Again, we want to be as specific as possible, and we want to be able to demonstrate what sorts of audiences would be interested in what a particular tweeter posts and why these audiences would be interested.

3. Arrangement - At this point, you should have a clear sense for what you want to include in your rhetorical analysis. All of this information might be in your head, or you might have notes that you have written as you gathered information and analyzed it. The next step is to think about how you want to organize this information into a coherent and well-structured analysis paper. There are multiple ways to do this, so you will have to decide which organizing principle you will use. Do you want to organize your paragraph around different audiences? Around different ways that your person uses Twitter? Some other way? Regardless, you should organize your analysis so that it is easy for your reader to get a sense for the main conclusions of your analysis and how the different parts of your analysis fit together.

4. Style - You will also need to consider how you translate all of these ideas into a particular style in your paper. Like in our research summaries, we want our analyses to be objective. We are not taking sides here; we are not making claims about whether or not someone is interesting or whether we like them. Instead, we are analyzing - as objectively as possible - what they tweet in order to describe who would likely follow them. Another important consideration here is quotes. As you perform your analysis, it will be important to provide specific examples from the tweets you are examining. When you quote a tweet, include the date and time it was posted in parentheses. On Twitter, if you click on the date and time underneath a particular tweet, you will be directed to a page that is specific to this tweet. It would help to offer a link to this Tweet in your parenthetical citation. Here's an example: earlier this week, I posted a tweet that asked everyone, regarding the Rhetorical Peaks handout, to "please bring a hard copy with you to class" (Feb. 3, 2010; 3:02 pm).

Once you have finished your rhetorical analysis, save your page. Let me know if you have any questions about the assignment. We will discuss this assignment in class next Tuesday, and I will also offer you feedback that you can use to help you revise your paper.

Evaluation Suggestions:

Since I was using the Learning Record in this course, no specific grades were given on any aspect of our Twitter use. For the rhetorical analysis assignment, it would be easy to grade it as you would any short analysis assignment.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

Students responded well to the rhetorical analysis assignment. It was helpful to consider how a rhetorical orientation could be embodied in 140 character chunks, in links, and in a network of followers. The assignment gave students a different perspective on cultural figures and academics.

As for the Learning Record observations, students were somewhat hesitant to engage and share their observations (but not more so than other classes that have used the Learning Record but didn't share their observations on Twitter). The main challenge here is helping students be more comfortable with the observation process generally and then making them comfortable with sharing these with one another. To work toward these ends, I would want to spend more time in class discussing observations and allowing students to post on Twitter at that time.

Additional Resources:

ProfHacker has a number of posts on using Twitter in the classroom.

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Intermediate Writing Course

Introductory Writing Course

Literary Studies Course

Course Description:

While digital technologies make available a range of tools that shape our physical interactions with the world in new ways, they also offer us new metaphors, new ways of talking about these interactions, and new ways of organizing ideas. To use a favorite term of twentieth-century rhetorician Kenneth Burke, these technologies make available new possibilities for identification. In the 2.0 world, we not only find new ways to identify and form communities with others; we also experience a shift in the process of self-identification and in the ways we define ourselves.

This class will explore a range of digital technologies and writing environments as well as the discourses surrounding them to give students a more thorough understanding of the ways that they have already begun to establish virtual identities and of new possibilities for digital identity formation. By exploring and participating in these technologies and discourses, we will hope to achieve the following course goals:

- Continue to develop rhetoric skills related to summary, analysis, and argumentation;

- Gain fluency in digital technologies and examine the ways that these tools shift our understandings of rhetoric and writing;

- Identify and participate in conversations surrounding writing in digital environments.

Tags:

Designing an Online Commenting System

Wall — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 03:41:21 +0000

Author:

Amanda Wall

Image Credit:

Screen shot of student project

Brief Assignment Overview:

In this group project, students design a commenting system or other forum/method for conversation within a website, matching the system to the particular rhetorical goals of the site. Groups present their systems in a presentation and are required to turn in two documents: a visual representation of the conversational interface and a 3-5 page design rationale.

Type of Assignment:

Homework Assignment

Course Unit

Major Course Project

Assignment Length:

Multiple Class Periods

Course Unit

Semester-long Project

Pedagogical Goals - Rhetoric:

Pedagogical Goals - Digital Literacy:

Additional Pedagogical Goals:

In the Rhetoric of Flame Wars*, I teach that online comment posts, discussion boards, blogs, and other discourses constitute important sites of public discourse. These discourses are influenced not only by the traditional rhetorical components--audience, ethos, logos, and even then, in interesting and problematic ways--but by the technological and social systems that make possible and shape discourse online: interfaces, proferred levels of pseudonymity, moderation, and other processes.

The point of this assignment is to force students to step into the position of web designers, or, as we might also call them, dialogue designers. The design and governance procedures of websites help to shape the conversations and discourses that happen there in substantial ways, and what I hope to see reflected in students' work is an awareness of rhetoricity of interfaces and governing procedures.

*"Flame war" is a slang term for a vicious internet fight, usually between anonymous or pseudonymous writers; some critics of online communication argue that it is the inevitable result of every online discussion. I disagree.

Media Requirements:

Adaptable For Use Without Classroom Technology

Media Console/Projector

Technology-Based Classroom (computers for each student)

Required Materials:

Ideally, students would have access to the internet and to image-editing software within the classroom so that they can begin work there. However, I believe this assignment is adaptable for classrooms without technology: students are quite capable of brainstorming internet concepts on paper, and I have specified that the images they produce can be produced through physical means (hand-drawn, in other words) if the digital means are not available to them. The point of this assignment is to force students to step into the position of web designers, or, as I would argue they could be called, dialogue designers. The design and governance procedures of websites help to shape the conversations and discourses that happen there in substantial ways, and what I hope to see reflected in students' work is an awareness of rhetoricity of interfaces and governing procedures.

Timeline for Optimal Use:

Useful Anytime

Mid-Semester

Late in the Semester

Full Assignment Description:

These are the instructions for the students; I think they give a good description of the assignment.

For this project, you will form groups of 3-4 people. Choose either a specific website or a particular type of website to design for. (So you could choose the New York Times, or Cracked, or BagNewsNotes, or UT's website, Obama's campaign website, or a more general type like a political blog, a gossip website, or a gaming forum. If you choose a "type," it's a good idea to find examples of that type of site.)

You will brainstorm the needs and problems of people who converse with each other on your website or type of website (need-finding). Based on those needs and problems, you will brainstorm many possible solutions in the form of different commenting systems. A "commenting system" includes all of the technologies, interfaces, policies, rules, guidelines, and moderation procedures that govern, support, shape, and otherwise make discussion possible. So you might need to talk about technologies separately from procedures/rules in the beginning of your brainstorming process. After you've come up with many options, you'll decide together which option (or combination of options) you want to pursue.

Something to keep in mind: by calling it a "commenting system," I'm already narrowing down the field. Commenting, after all, traditionally means comments by public audience members responding directly to single pieces of media that are posted on the site. But it doesn't have to look like that. Feel free to break the boundaries of the genre, to cross over into discussion forum or mailing list or wiki territory. There are many different ways of having a conversation. The only requirements are that a public audience must be able to converse with each other. That's it. Depending on the goals of your website and the kind of conversation you want to inspire, there are many different ways to accomplish this.

Creativity is greatly encouraged. Don't feel like you have to stick to "tried and true" methods. Experimentation is where all the great ideas come from.

This project has two required components:

1. One visual representation of the website with the commenting system clearly shown. If there would be more than one interface involved in the commenting system (for instance, if users had their own profiles), you are encouraged to mock-up that webpage as well for extra credit. Digital representations are preferred (because it's a digital environment), but physical art is also accepted. Examples of programs you could use include Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, MS Paint, MS Word, Frontpage, Publisher, GoogleSites, iLife (Mac), Gomockingbird.com, Ning, etc.

(If you are familiar with programs for creating illustrations, mock-ups, or actual websites and would like to give a short overview of the basics of that program for creating a visual representation of a website, you are welcome to do so! This is one way you could work on going beyond the course requirements.)

(If you want to put in some extra work and build a live website, that is also acceptable.)

2. A 3-5 page write-up describing the system.

- What is the purpose of the website, and what kind of conversation are you trying to generate on the website? You might go so far as to explain what the purpose of conversation on this website as you see it.

- How does does your system work? How do you imagine people will use it?

- How does it address specific problems people have or might have with the current system or with other systems?

- How might your system go wrong or be misused? Is there any way to ameliorate these problems? Do keep in mind that some negative side effects are expected and inevitable in any design.

- You are encouraged to use the rhetorical tools we have discussed in order to explain your system. Things like audience and ethos will probably be particularly important. You may also cite or discuss writers that we have read in class in order to back up your decisions.

Suggestions for Instructor Preparation:

This project comprises the entire third unit of my course. We spend about three weeks on it, giving the students time to brainstorm their projects in class and reading articles about debates in online spaces, moderation procedures, deliberative democracy, and social software design. We had already covered debates about anonymity and pseudonymity in the first unit, but some of those readings might be useful to other instructors. (For instance: the move of some websites to require commenters to sign in to Facebook in order to comment.) Some of the readings I've used are:

Dibbell, Julian. "A Rape in Cyberspace."

This article from the early 90s is great for a lot of reasons, but I've used it in this unit for its sustained description of a debate within an online community. It deals with such questions as: Who should resolve an online debate? The community at large via democratic vote or consensus? A moderator or other official? Or is an online community an inappropriate place for deliberation? These are questions that the students will have to decide about the websites that they design.

Shirky, Clay. “Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software.” The Best Software

Writing I. Ed. Joel Spolsky. Berkeley, CA: Apress, 2005. Print.

Aside from a useful metaphor for the social web (the computer is a door to the social world, not a device-box for the individual, Shirky tells us), this article argues that designing for a social group is different from designing for individuals. I relate this to rhetorical ideas of audience. How might an audience evaluate a system differently if it perceives itself as a group instead of as individuals? This article also attributes designers' reluctance to design for groups to a "horror of censorship," which relates to the political issues raised in the Dibbell article.

Instructions For Students:

Creativity is greatly encouraged. Don't feel like you have to stick to "tried and true" methods. Experimentation is where all the great ideas come from.

This project has two required components:

(If you want to put in some extra work and build a live website, that is also acceptable.)

2. A 3-5 page write-up describing the system.

- How does does your system work? How do you imagine people will use it?

- How does it address specific problems people have or might have with the current system or with other systems?

- How might your system go wrong or be misused? Is there any way to ameliorate these problems? Do keep in mind that some negative side effects are expected and inevitable in any design.

Evaluation Suggestions:

In my course, I use the evidence-based portfolio system called the Learning Record. Using this system, it's easy for students to present their own contribution to the project and to get credit for going above and beyond expectations. Because mine is a rhetoric course, I focus on the extent to which students connect their design decisions to rhetorical rationales: does their design fit the purposes of the space as they conceived it? This rhetorical focus makes it possible to equally reward those students who are using MS Paint to create rudimentary images as well as those students who show off their pre-existing coding skills by building actual working websites. The Learning Record requires students to go "significantly beyond" the course requirements in order to earn an A, so students who spend time building such a website, or those who put in the time to learn Photoshop for the first time, or those who do extra research on the rhetorical reasoning of actual web designers to augment their design rationale, can all have their efforts pay off.

For those using more traditional assessment systems, I might recommend having students do a quick write-up at the end of the project describing their own contribution and creating a pie-chart estimating the distribution of work among the group. This gives the instructor a chance to compensate for an especially hard-working or recalcitrant group member.

Notes on Reception, Execution, etc.:

I was astounded by my students' projects this past semester. I only required three pages of collaborative writing and a single image, but every one of my students' groups, without exception, produced multiple images and incredibly thorough design rationales. Although I give students the option to redesign the commenting system of an existing website, every group chose to design an original website with specific rhetorical goals.

Let me give you a sense of the projects my students produced. One group produced a wide-ranging, utopian website that strove to stimulate public discourse by organizing discussions into "galaxies" of common topics (individual stories were "planets" and "stars"). It featured both synchronous and asynchronous communication and had robust moderation procedures. Another group went in the opposite direction: their website, "Belligerency," rewarded flaming, trolling, and other bad behavior with a complicated point system. I had to admire the rhetorical savviness of this profit-driven project, for the students clearly understood how particular kinds of conversation can feed back into website profits via ad sales. A third group had users communicating mainly through images, drawing on trends seen in websites like tumblr, Pinterest, and Canvas. A fourth group organized debates into columns of "for" and "against"; this strategy stimulated an interesting discussion amongst their peers about the relative merits of an unlimited but messy debate versus a constrained but organized one.

My last group contained a student with some coding expertise, and they produced an actual working website, with full log-in and comment functionality. They also created a static image in Photoshop to represent the front page of their website (see the attached image): on this gossip website, called The Grapevine, stories with many "likes" are featured in green grapes and those with many "dislikes" are featured in red grapes.

For some ridiculous reason, I only allotted one 90 minutes class for these five groups to present their projects, which left almost no time for discussion. Next time, we'll spread them out over two days.

Course Type:

Advanced Writing Course

Intermediate Writing Course

Introductory Writing Course

Course Description:

Rhetoric 309k: The Rhetoric of Flame Wars

Rhetoric classes are fundamentally about argument—how to make an argument—and this one is no different. The pervasiveness of electronic communication, particularly on the internet, means that we encounter new (and old) challenges in making arguments and having dialogues. Some have suggested that all arguments on the internet are fated to end up flame wars: vicious bouts of namecalling and mudslinging. I don’t think that’s the case, and I’m not even sure that flame wars don’t serve some purpose in our culture. But it is the case that lots of people are worried about how we talk to each other and how we argue with each other online. Issues like privacy settings and moderation and screen names and anonymity and character limits all affect how we debate. This class examines those issues and more. Ultimately, we ask, how might it be possible to have or design or produce a deliberative, democratic debate in a public internet space?

Tags:

Multimedia Presentation

Images

Audience