m.

multimodal pedagogy:

A Colorado State University teacher candidate works with a Centennial

High School in Fort Collins to edit a podcast in GarageBand.

"...multimodal does not have to be digital..."

~Carrie Lamanna, Assistant Professor English @ CSU~

Assistant Professor of English Carrie Lamanna has been working on multimodal course redesign for 300-hundred level composition courses at Colorado State University. In a personal interview, Lamanna addresses concerns regarding how technology has been implemented in the Rhetoric and Composition program at CSU. Lamanna also spoke briefly about material constraints related to the implementation of technology, such as the shortage of staffing of computer labs, lack of funding, and physical plant issues. According to Lamanna, instructors teaching in the twenty-first century must demonstrate a relevancy for digital technology to retain funding for the technology. Lamanna shows legitimized concern over how not embracing multimodal pedagogy and digital technologies in the composition classroom will limit the kinds of compositions students create, hinder students’ ability to perform, and not provide students with the compositional skills they should take with them after graduation. Many students, says Lamanna, will need multimodal composition and technological, digital skills in the workplace for a variety of careers, from public relations to business marketing to graphic design. Aiming to accurately distinguish the term “multimodal” from “digital,” Lamanna says:

I do want to make a distinction that multimodal does not have to be digital: Someone doing performance art, is doing something multimodal without any of it really being digital, but in the twenty-first century we often see those two things overlap. When students are working with audio, they’re most often working with a computer. They’re doing podcasting. When we’re working with images, we’re asking students to work with a program, such as Photoshop or to put their images into slideshows. The importance is that this is not just the future, it’s here...We’ve, actually, limited our usefulness of what we can teach by limiting ourselves strictly to teaching students how to write argumentative essays (Lamanna 09 Mar. 2010).

Lamanna references a Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) online discussion between Cynthia L. Selfe and Doug Hesse to ground her claim that instructors of composition limit a student’s composition skills by ignoring multimodal and digital forms of composition and this can become “a discrimination issue in some senses” (09 Mar. 2010). The argument Selfe raises addresses the limitation of strictly teaching students only to compose print-based text. Selfe’s argument advocates privileging non-written forms of composition alongside traditional print-based forms of composition.

Selfe argues: “...our contemporary adherence to alphabetic-only composition constrains the semiotic efforts of individuals and groups who value multiple modalities of expression” (616). I find myself valuing more “multiple modes of expression” the more I teach. As I continue to teach and gain professional skills, I come to understand myself more distinctly as a teacher willing to take the chance to incorporate multimodal pedagogy in the classroom. Selfe establishes that the history of composition, composition of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, has formed a false binary between writing and aurality. The false binary Selfe mentions might be argued as an ideological fuel that fuels the fire of “alphabetic-only” forms of composition that in many circles remain privileged. Privileging “alphabetic-only” forms of composition ignores the extraordinary number of new modalities and ever-evolving possibilities for composition in the twenty-first century.

Hesse, however, responds to Selfe’s argument and states that Selfe may be begging the question of what defines the “curricular space” that the field of composition instruction inhabits. Hesse questions whether composition instruction ought to inhabit the curricular space of “rhetoric/composing” or “writing/composing” and wonders whose interests a composition class should serve (603). Hesse’s notion of how an instructor (or a Graduate Teaching Assistant) “inhabits” the space of the composition classroom as well as the notion of the “third spaces” or the overlap between the “formal” and “informal” composition classroom applies directly to the experience and activities at CSU (Kirkland 12).

GTA James Roller says he may move away from using digital technology and argues that, “Students engage better through more traditional conversation.” However, Roller admits that, “I have to adapt my behavior to cultural expectations...They [students] are culturally conditioned to approach technology with passivity” (13 April 2010). Roller raises a point I have often considered in deciding whether I should use PowerPoint presentations in my teaching. Some of my students have said that they would like to see more PowerPoints used throughout the composition course. However, I agree with Selfe and the New London Group for new literacies who aver that composition classes are “places where students begin the complex process of learning” (606, emphasis added). The complex process of learning might begin with a slideshow that effectively displays the rhetorical triangle and calls for the instructor effectively to explain all the elements of purpose, audience, and text.

It has been my experience as a student, and now as a teacher, that knowledge makes much more sense when I embody the knowledge by doing and then am asked to articulate what I’m doing. James Paul Gee, a literacy theorist at Arizona State University, visited CSU in the spring of 2010 and talked at length about how video games, such as Portal, teach players embodied knowledge. He explains that a player gains embodied knowledge of physical principles by playing the game, but if they want the physics articulated then they must visit various online communities for these explanations.

In teaching twenty-first composition and taking classes to become a high school English teacher, I find composition a process of both embodying and articulating knowledge. In other words, knowledge performed followed by knowledge articulated has proven to maximize effectiveness. Students might be asked to compose a slideshow that effectively communicates a specific purpose, to a specific audience, for a specific occasion and then asked to present their design. Such a strategy is arguably more effective than stopping short and simply verbalizing a model of a triangle within a circle for students to only incorporate into an alphabetic argument.