Comp II, Unit 3: Creating Multimodal Texts
Objective: Strategically incorporate visual and/or auditory media into their writing for greater effectiveness.
These readings have been selected and sequenced so as to offer students step-by-step guidance through effective multimedia use. The intention is to cover general suggestions, like how to select appropriate media, as well as specifics, like how to caption photos/videos, so that students can apply relevant aspects to a multimodal project of some kind by the end of the unit.
Instructors may wish to use the overview descriptions below (written by the authors themselves) to help decide which chapters might best fit your students’ needs.
An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing
by Melanie Gagich
Overview — This chapter introduces multimodal composing and offers five strategies for creating a multimodal text. The essay begins with a brief review of key terms associated with multimodal composing and provides definitions and examples of the five modes of communication. The first section of the essay also introduces students to the New London Group and offers three reasons why students should consider multimodal composing an important skill—one that should be learned in a writing class. The second half of the essay offers three pre-drafting and two drafting strategies for multimodal composing. Pre-drafting strategies include urging students to consider their rhetorical situation, analyze other multimodal texts, research textual content, gather visual and aural materials, and evaluate tools needed for creating their text. A brief discussion of open licenses and Creative Commons licenses is also included. Drafting strategies include citing and attributing various types of texts appropriately and suggesting that students begin drafting with an outline, script, or visual (depending on the project). I conclude the chapter with suggestions for further reading.
Beyond Black on White: Document Design and Formatting in the Writing Classroom
by Michael J. Klein & Kristi L. Shackelford
Overview — Formatting can be a challenge to teach and learn. This chapter provides you with an overview of how the Modern Language Association (MLA) format choices in typography, spacing, and image placement adhere to the standards of basic design. By understanding the theory the MLA rules are based upon, you can help students learn to apply good design principles to any document. Students often don’t understand why they should format their papers according to the design specified by style guides such as the one published by the MLA. Rather than being arbitrary, formatting rules specified by MLA are grounded in good design principles that allow the reader to focus on the meaning of the text rather than the design of the document.
Worth a Thousand Words: Constructing Visual Arguments in Technical Communication
by Candice A. Welhausen
Overview — As a working professional, you will likely find yourself in situations where you need to create visual forms of communication. For example, many scientists and engineers construct technical drawings like illustrations and sketches. Professionals working in business and marketing may need to visualize financial data by creating tables and figures. And communications experts might use photographs in brochures, pamphlets, and other materials. In turn, the audiences that you create these graphics for—supervisors and managers, co-workers and peers, customers, and clients—will then use these visuals to make decisions and/or take actions. This chapter discusses these visuals and the ways they might be used persuasively. It also provides strategies that can help you create specific visual forms. The chapter begins by describing the way that visuals convey particular meanings and then discusses several visual forms of communication—photographs, technical drawings, and data visualizations—in more detail. It concludes with an extended example that describes how visuals were used in two documents—a brochure and a calendar—created by students enrolled in a graduate technical and professional communication course for Rural Studio Program, housed in Auburn University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture.
Thinking Across Modes and Media (and Baking Cake): Two Techniques for Writing with Video, Audio and Images
by Crystal VanKooten
Overview — Using the metaphor of baking a cake, this chapter offers students in college writing courses two techniques for writing with video, audio, and images: integration and juxtaposition. Knowing more about these techniques enables students to approach the analysis and composition of their own and others’ multimodal texts with more specificity and control. Drawing on work from writing professors and digital designers, the essay defines and discusses integration and cross-modal reinforcement, as well as sequential and simultaneous juxtaposition, using one student-authored video composition as an example. Overall, students are encouraged to think critically and concretely about integration and juxtaposition in the multimodal texts they consume and create as they work to become more skilled and rhetorically-sensitive digital writers.
Strategies for Analyzing and Composing Data Stories
by Angela M. Laflen
Overview — Data stories are multimodal texts that combine data with words and images to tell a story to or make an argument for a particular audience. They are increasingly common in everyday life as technology has resulted in an information explosion. Data often do not make sense unless someone takes the time to explain them—to tell a story about them. Data stories help to turn raw data into information that readers can understand and use to make decisions. Data storytelling has become an essential strategy for managing data, and students need to cultivate their skills in reading and composing data stories so they can critically analyze the data stories they encounter and in order to use data ethically and effectively in their writing. This chapter offers strategies to help students read data stories critically and use data in composing their own multimodal texts. It demonstrates how to use these strategies by working through the process of analyzing and composing sample data stories.
The Rhetorical Possibilities of Accessibility
by Rachel Donegan
Overview — In this chapter, I provide some basic terminology and context for disability and accessibility and discuss how access features not only have direct benefits for a disabled audience, but are beneficial rhetorical bonuses for all writers (nondisabled and disabled).* By emphasizing access in their writing projects, students have the opportunity to improve their own writing. I also include details on three design choices students can make with first-year writing projects and presentations—alt text, headings and styles, and presentation scripts—and provide some tips and strategies for creating all three.
“Not So Fast”: Centering Your Users to Design the Right Solution
by Candice Lanius & Ryan Weber
Overview — User-centered design can help avoid assumptions about what audiences need and help avoid creating products, such as documents, websites, infographics, etc., that individuals cannot use. By placing the user of a product at the center of the design process, user-centered design makes the processes of design, product development, or writing documents more effective and more successful. The ideas presented in this chapter introduce the core concepts and practices of user-centered design. By applying these ideas, writers can gain a better understanding of audience and create documents, designs, and even technologies they can more successfully use.
