1. An Introduction to and Strategies for Multimodal Composing

by Melanie Gagich

Author’s 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.

Discussion Questions

1. What does it mean to compose multimodally?
2. The chapter lists three reasons supporting the inclusion of multimodal composing assignments in writing classes; what are they? Why else might learning how to compose a multimodal text be important?
3. How is citing and attributing work in a multimodal text similar to and different from citing in a traditional MLA essay?

Teaching Resources

2. Beyond Black on White: Document Design and Formatting in the Writing Classroom

by Michael J. Klein & Kristi L. Shackelford

Author’s 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.

Discussion Questions

1. What style guides have you used in the past? How did following a style guide influence your writing? In what different writing situations do you think a style guide would be most effective? Least effective?
2. In what ways does the appearance of a document affect your perception of the message and of the author?
3. How can you integrate the design elements of contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity into class assignments? What documents would benefit most from good design principles?
4. How much value does including an image add to a traditional academic paper? What types of images do you think are appropriate? In what ways can images detract from the impact or intent of an academic paper?

3. Worth a Thousand Words: Constructing Visual Arguments in Technical Communication

by Candice A. Welhausen

Author’s 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.

Discussion Questions

1. You have likely heard the well-known expression that this chapter draws its title from: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Consider the differences between how we interpret pictures (i.e., imagery and other visuals) and how we interpret words. What can images convey that words cannot and vice versa? Are there areas of overlap? What might these be? Consider the assignment you are currently working on for this class and determine what information you need to present in writing and what information would most effectively be presented visually. Why? Be prepared to share your reasoning.
2. Find an advertisement (digital or printed) that has few if any words and read the ad using the information in the semiotics and/ or photography sections of this chapter. What visual signs do you see, and what do they mean? How do you know? If the ad uses pictures, why do you think the photographer chose the particular subject matter selected? How are you interpreting the camera angles used and the composition of the photograph? How do these choices add to the meaning of the ad?
3. Envision you are a manager at an investment firm. Your supervisor has asked you to prepare a report that analyzes the financial portfolios of your firm’s four most profitable clients. Visualize the data provided below that gives percentages for the portfolio for each company. Explain why you chose to visualize the data using a particular format and compare your visualization with those created by your peers.
   • Company A: mutual funds, 18.5; annuities, 32.8; real estate, 3.1; stocks, 1.2; bonds, 44.4.
   • Company B: mutual funds, 20.3; annuities, 26.9; real estate, 3.8; stocks, 4.0; bonds, 45.0.
   • Company C: mutual funds, 23.5; annuities, 23.8; real estate, 7.3; stocks, 4.1; bonds, 41.3.
   • Company D: mutual funds, 20.3; annuities, 25.2; real estate, 9.6; stocks, 6.3; bonds, 38.6.
4. Find a short set of instructions (between 6-8 steps) that uses visuals that are difficult to understand. Assess the rhetorical situation and explain why the visuals are difficult to understand. Then redesign the visuals to address the issues you identified.
5. Envision that you want to buy a new smartphone, laptop, or tablet. Make a list of 3-4 criteria that are important to you in making this decision: cost, features, design, battery life, etc. Research your criteria and then create a visual that allows you to compare what you found. What product do you think you will choose based on the information in your graphic?

Teaching Resources

4. Thinking Across Modes and Media (and Baking Cake): Two Techniques for Writing with Video, Audio and Images

by Crystal VanKooten

Author’s 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.

Discussion Questions

1. Describe a time when you baked something: a cake, a different dessert, or any bread or baked good. What elements and ingredients were included in your baking process, and how were they combined? How does your experience with baking help you to think differently about the digital media texts that you might compose for this class, such as a video or a podcast?
2. After watching and listening to Evan’s video “A College Collage,” pick a 10–20 second sequence from the video, and write up a rhetorical analysis of the sequence. Focus your analysis on the integration and juxtaposition you see and hear in the sequence.
3. Look up the different kinds of integration that Robert Horn writes about on pp. 101–104 of his book Visual Language: substitution, disambiguation, labeling, example, reinforcement, completion, chunking, clustering, and framing. (Horn’s book is open access and can be found online here. Using Horn’s book as a reference, write up your own definition of one of the types of integration. Where and when might you see, hear, or use this kind of integration?
4. Find a digital media text online that uses integration or juxtaposition effectively. The text you find might be an image, a webpage, an advertisement, a post on social media, or a short video. Write up an analysis of how your chosen text uses integration or juxtaposition to achieve its purposes.
5. Pick a topic, and compose a short audio or video clip that combines at least two media elements strategically for a certain effect. You might combine a song and several images, for example, in a way that aims for surprise, joy, discomfort, or sadness. After composing your clip, write a paragraph that reflects over your authorial choices and their effects on a potential audience.

Teaching Resources

5. Strategies for Analyzing and Composing Data Stories

by Angela M. Laflen

Author’s 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.

Discussion Questions

1. Keep track of the data stories you see on social media over the course of a day or a week. What patterns do you notice in the kinds of stories or arguments made in these texts?
2. Use the critical analysis questions in Table 1 to analyze one of the data stories you saw on social media. Discuss why you think the data story does or does not use data effectively.
3. I suggested that the title of Figure 4 should probably be revised for accuracy. Discuss what a more accurate title for this data story might be.
4. Choose a topic you are working on or have recently worked on. Generate a list of questions about that topic you might be able to answer about it using data. Can you identify good sources of data that might help you answer any of those questions?
5. Use the flowchart in Figure 10 to determine the best options you have for showing data in the following scenarios:
   • You want to show how house prices in your community have changed over time.
   • You want to present data for 7 online stores, their monthly e-commerce sales, and online advertising costs for the last year.
   • You want to show which student services on campus bring in the biggest share of total visitors.
6. Try using a different graph type to represent the data in the horizontal bar chart in Figure 13. Which graph is easiest to read and understand? Why?
7. This chapter includes several examples of data stories. Choose one of them and discuss how you could revise its genre (as one example, you might consider how you would turn the infographic in Figure 2 into a social media post). What changes would you make to the story to suit the changed rhetorical situation?

Teaching Resources

6. The Rhetorical Possibilities of Accessibility

by Rachel Donegan

Author’s 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.

Discussion Questions

1. If you use a screen reader, what advice would you give nondisabled writers who are creating accessible documents? Are there other strategies and tools besides alt text, headings and styles, and presentation scripts that you would recommend that writers use?
2. If you don’t use a screen reader (and have ready access to JAWS, Dragon, or other screen reading technology on campus), close your eyes and test a website of your choice using screen reading software. How would you describe the experience of listening versus reading visually? Does using this software make you think of your design choices differently?
3. How does the choice to be accessible when writing connect to the idea of a writer’s ethos?
4. Presentations are far from the only circumstances where having a script or visual access to spoken text is helpful. What other circumstances or media could benefit from scripts or captioning?

Teaching Resources

7. “Not So Fast”: Centering Your Users to Design the Right Solution

by Candice Lanius & Ryan Weber

Author’s 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.

Discussion Questions

1. Using the SeeClickFix website, try and find a version of the application that is close to your hometown. Based on the branding and available categories, do you think the SeeClickFix team has used user-centered design principles while localizing their service for this community?
2. Thinking about this local community, who are the target user groups of the SeeClickFix system? Make sure not to overlook anyone!
3. As a group, think of a product or service that you are all familiar with. If you were tasked with creating a list of potential user issues for this product or service, which user-centered design methods would you use?

Teaching Resources