Rhetoric 105 is the largest first-year composition offering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, serving students across disciplines. There is a set curriculum with student learning outcomes centered around rhetorical analysis, research-based argument, and the writing process. I adapted the template materials, which include a requirement of 25 pages of revised writing building up to a final argumentative research paper, to my approach of exploring identity through research practices. My Rhetoric 105 course includes three main assignments that build on one another: an autoethnography where students research a culture or community they’re a part of, a media analysis where students draw on rhetorical skills to analyze how an aspect of their identity or culture is represented in the media, and a final multigenre project where students work across forms and modes to address an issue impacting their own communities.
Writing Across Media fulfills the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s advanced composition requirement, and is cross-listed in the Informatics department and the Center for Writing Studies. While instructors share course outcomes focused on developing multimodal design skills, understanding writing studies theories, supporting multimodal choices, and revision, the curriculum is flexible and responsive to instructors’ expertise. My WAM course drew on game studies, remediation theory, and social justice approaches. Using a portfolio self-assessment model, I centered exploration, play, and learning through failure across three main projects in which students developed ways to interact with their audiences, reimagine past writing projects through a multimodal approach, and create transmedia texts that operated together to work toward change in their communities.