2018-2019 Lenovo Project
This Composition focused project responds to two concerns: 1) the gap between theory and practice associated with the potential for multimodal composing to transform scholarly communication and 2) the ubiquity and steady development of non-technical tools for creating multimedia.
-
Scholars have long argued for the disruptive and revolutionary potential of digital writing. They claim that authority is shifted as communication barriers are lowered in online spaces; they argue that new digital materials make it possible for communication to include sound, motion, and images; they celebrate the way digital tools introduce new modes of composing that include emotions, gestures, and embodied participation. Ironically (to be generous), most of these claims are made in print articles or books. There remains a major gap between the claims made about multimodal possibilities and the practices of composing in academic situations.
-
Simultaneously, software applications like Adobe Photoshop, Premier Pro and Spark Pages have made it “dangerously simple” to mix media elements. Spark Pages, for instance, make it possible to mix videos, images, and text in a composition with the simple click of a mouse. What is missing is guidance for how to go about that mixing. Redundancies among textual and media elements, media that lack context, and uninformed use of templates and widgets are just some of the concerns that arise as composing tools become user friendly.
The project objectives addresses these gaps, with a particular focus on training undergraduate and graduate students to strategically mix media elements for scholarly purposes. Key technologies will be digital composing tools, particularly Adobe Spark Pages and Muse. Both Spark and Muse significantly lower barriers for creating texts that integrate audio, video, and interactivity. This, however, is only the first step. The second step is teaching students how to think rhetorically as they go about this mixing. The third step is critically pushing these compositional affordances to ensure that we fully engage with the transformative possibilities of multimedia. The Digital Muse will go a long way toward helping UNC-Chapel Hill move forward with steps two and three.
The Digital Muse includes five modules to guide students toward employing these new composing tools in ways that are not only rhetorically sophisticated but also transformative of familiar academic modes. Modules will include assignments, resources, sample projects, and screen-based instructional videos. The modules are available for use in ENGL 149 and ENGL 105 courses. The modules can also be incorporated into ENGL 530 and into Digital Scholarship and Digital Pedagogy microcredentials for graduate students.