CCCC06: A26. Fostering Critical Literacy in a Multi-modal, Multi-media World
A26. Fostering Critical Literacy in a Multi-modal, Multi-media World
As always seems to happen in sessions revolving around technology, the technology in the presentation room didn’t work, but the two speakers, Donna Kain and Julia Romberger, were good-spirited and worked around the technology well.
Kain spoke first, defining multimedia as “whenever two different media are put together,” including in her definition of multimedia items as simple as text with a graphic. Multimedia projects are often interactive but not necessarily. Kain emphasized that multimedia projects always involve choices, which students need to be made aware of and responsible for. She also argued for making students aware of the relationship between the visible multimedia text and the invisible technology that makes the visible multimedia text possible.
Kain presented categories she and her students developed for the evaluation of multimedia projects, pointing out that a multimedia project shouldn’t necessarily be evaluated in all these categories:
- users and developers (Kain argued that these two categories were separate at one point, but now that users can personalize many Websites, the categories are now commingling)
- technology (includes issues of access, control, physical interaction with technology)
- genre/action (deals with question, “What is this thing trying to do and how does adding multimedia elements to it affect it and what it is trying to do?”)
- time/space/place (Web, blogosphere, game spaces, multiuser environments, etc.)
- display and structure (this was the most thought-provoking category for me, as it calls up questions such as, “If film clips are part of the project, does the evaluator need to know how to critique film?” Multimedia is multidisciplinary—how do we negotiate that?)
- persuasiveness (how the technology itself persuades you to use it)
Romberger described a multimodal pedagogy that takes into account getting students to consider how contexts shift and change when multiple modalities are used, relationships between/among media in a multimodal/multimedia project, and issues of access, and depends upon situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and what she called "transformed practice," which would include students applying a design in a different context. Romberger then discussed an assignment she gives students that asks them to focus on a particular interface and examine and articulate how that interface shapes how ideas are expressed and understood.
This session made me wonder again about the separation between composition and technical communication. At my institution, the two are seen as very separate, with composition very much directed at potential transfer students and technical communication very much directed at vocational students. I could see some people at my institution arguing that the issues Kain and Romberger discussed are composition issues, and I could see other people at my institution arguing that the issues are technical communication issues.
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