Module 5: Visual Argument
Creating an infographic, PSA, or alternative visual project Presenting an infographic, PSA, or alternative visual project.
You might have noticed that the five modules in this course have many overlaps and intersections. In module 4, we talked about genre conventions, and visual argumentation is one of the genres of communication out of many. Now, in this module, you are encouraged to present your research findings visually. It is also an opportunity to familiarize yourself with some genre conventions of visual arguments. The visual argument, however, can be multimodal. Here, you are not only creating your visual arguments but also presenting them in class:
The purpose of a presentation isn’t just to connect audiences with the sources you found. If that were the case, audiences would only need a bibliography and some time to read those sources for themselves. The reason for presenting research findings is because each researcher has a unique perspective with respect to the concern at hand. The way one author understands an article may not be the same way a previous researcher or the next researcher understands it. This is why reflecting on what you learned from your research is so important: what you learned is a singular and valuable contribution to what audiences know about the concern being addressed. (p. 229)
In this sense, this module is a space where you make a transition from written composition to visual composition actively responding to the rhetorical situations (context, purpose, audience, message, medium, form, structure, delivery, etc.).