Digital Literacy & Multi-Modality

ln recent years, scholars and teachers in both the broad field of Composition Studies and the more specialized arena of Computers and Composition Studies (Yancey. 2004; Selfe and Hawisher, 2004; Wysocki and Johnson-Eilola. 1999; Ball and Hawk, 2006) have begun to recognize that the bandwidth of literacy practices and values on which our profession has focused during the last century may be overly narrow. In response, a number of educators have begun experimenting with multimodal compositions, compositions that take advantage of a range of rhetorical resources^words, still and moving images, sounds, music, animation—to create meaning.

Using technology in a developmental classroom, particularly a classroom platform such as WebCT, can help provide a sense of community in a developmental writing course. The rationale for designing a hybrid developmental writing course is discussed as well as the ways in which students perceived themselves as “real writers” as a result of the way that their writing was submitted and critiqued on WebCT. A blended learning environment has become an integrated component of writing instruction at the two-year branch campus that is the location of this study.

This essay illustrates why compositionists should conceive of multimodal writing assignments as having wide-ranging and forward-thinking parameters, in order to invite the greatest possible range of student responses; it also suggests the directions we should take when evaluating such work.