an iteration of eng 1020

 

first, i must define terms

 

 

now, i will discuss the content of my work

First Year Composition (FYC) courses function as the site for postsecondary literacy instruction: reading and writing for general academic purposes, writing across the curriculum (WAC), and writing to participate as a citizen. FYC has been a long been a particular interest among writing scholars as most all undergraduate students are required to take some form of a FYC course. In 2014, Writing Program Administration developed the WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition (3.0) based on proven methods so that postsecondary writing programs could “regularize” First Year Writing outcomes in the interests of supporting students’ ability to diversify their writing in various contexts. The purpose of the document is to support instructors with best teaching practices that prepare student writers to build the kind of “knowledge, practices and attitudes” needed for success. The FYC course (ENG 1020), at Wayne State University, is the first of two required courses in the General Education sequence to fulfill the Written Communication component by focusing on the writing process, argumentation, and issues of document accessibility. Per the university, these requirements also support foundational skills used in across a variety of academic disciplines. Students “are introduced to methods of inquiry, modes of thought, bodies of knowledge, and representative ideas drawn from a wide range of academic disciplines” (General Education Programs, WSU site). The First Year Composition (FYC) strives to create student writers who can perform general academic writing in addition to field-specific writing practices. The WSU English Department offers a common syllabus to instructors that WSU believes to support the values stated by the General Education program. The curriculum is intended to equate FYC student experiences across all course sections, especially so that the students can proceed to an intermediate course having had similar instructional content and practice writing. Once students fulfill the Written Communication requirement, the students and their future instructors in other courses may assume that the students have become effective writers; however, writing instructors and experts know this is not a pragmatic view of the situation. Besides several factors, including the student’s prior education and their level of achieving stated learning outcomes for courses within the Written Communication sequence, students have unlikely had the opportunity to adequately read and analyze multimodal texts or more importantly compose the kind of multimodal projects that communicate in modern rhetorical situations (Bearden, 2019; Palmeri, 2012, Lee and Khadka, 2018; Selfe, 2005; Shipka, 2011).

Contemporary society has become increasingly less text-centric and instead turned toward the use of imagery as a primary vehicle for communication. As such, students, professionals and citizens alike routinely consume multimodal messages making it essential to draw from various semiotic resources. Marketing materials, television, podcasts, and social media create everyday rhetorical situations where students need to be an informed consumer and possibly a responsible producer. Examining the common syllabus document (ENG 1020 Common Syllabus AY23-24 REWRITTEN FINAL), it is clear that the English Department’s emphasis is on text-based writing rather than multiliteracies.  The major project (with the exclusion of the Remixed Argument) rubrics include a section for assessing the student’s “writing style.” Looking more closely, “writing style” camouflages the instructor’s assessment of the student’s conventions and grammar, which doubles down on a Current-Traditional rhetorical approach to writing pedagogy- a far cry from the interests of the multimodal turn in composition studies and documented for writing programs in 2014’s WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition (3.0). It is important to point out that the English Department has used the WSU Written and Oral Communication Learning Outcomes to underscore the ENG 1020 Learning Outcomes on the Common Syllabus, yet neither have included multimodal terms except in two instances: reading strategies for both “…text elements and other media” and “…to compose persuasive arguments using a flexible writing process…” to develop “…writing projects that incorporate varied writing media.” Although these appear on the outcomes, they are not sufficient to do the work necessary to fully implement a multimodal approach to writing that helps students to become multiliterate which is critical in contemporary society, outside the university setting. Moreover, in both instances, the term “media” has been added to the end of the outcome; the placement of the term situates “media” as secondary to the emphasis on written texts. For the rhetorical analysis assignment, students are given the option to use a media artifact to analyze; however, using a multimodal artifact merely asks that students compose an alphanumeric essay based on a visual text. The student’s agency has been constrained and their writing reduced to a predictable pattern that repeats identifying an element then analyzing its rhetorical quality. The writing is intended to fulfill an institutional agenda that has students practice standardized White English instead of a democratic process that allows the student to make decisions about how to shape their communicative practice as a reflection of themselves in a broader non-discursive landscape. In Westbrook’s 2006 College English article, “ Visual Rhetoric in a Culture of Fear: Impediments to Multimedia Production,” he attests:

 

…students are rarely offered this experience    firsthand, for as visual rhetoric emerges as a distinct subject of study within composition it is being defined rather ironically, through a pedagogy of viewer- or reader-reception. In other words, to “do” visual rhetoric in composition too often means not to work with students authoring multimedia visual texts that combine words and images but, rather, to work on critically reading visual artifacts and demonstrating this critical reading through the evidence of a print essay. (460)

 In these situations, the students have neither reframed their thinking nor have they employed a multimodal approach to composing. Instead, students merely view and respond to media, which is prescriptive writing. It would be more beneficial to apply their findings from the rhetorical analysis to the students’ proposed writing projects, which is inventive. How might the students make rhetorical decisions that impact their audience, especially in comparison to what they have viewed? Why is each decision valuable to their own project? If the student provides a justification for their proposed rhetorical choices, then they position themselves to write more effectively. Students can think critically about the rhetorical situation and how to develop a suitable and effective means to participate in the conversation through genre and writerly strategies.

Due to the sparse multimodal writing pedagogy evident in the Common Syllabus used for ENG 1020, I began the work for my dissertation project with redesigning the curriculum using a multimodal framework. I was confident that transforming the curriculum by (1) rewriting the learning outcomes (2) using a multimodal approach to the writing process and (3) giving agency to student writers would better support them to learn valuable writing practices in FYC.  In a 2019 WPA: Writing Program Administration  article, Logan Bearden attests “…multimodal outcomes achieve what our research suggests they should when those outcomes invite students both to understand the potentialities and drawbacks of different modes and to enact multimodal rhetorical performances using that knowledge. Through this process, they develop the theoretical and practical knowledge necessary to compose in and across multiple contexts. Rhetoric is what is necessary here.” Thus, the DFA to FYC course that I created emphasizes the importance of multiliteracy and the demand for multiple modalities to communicate effectively in various contexts. Exposed to a flood of new ideas and concepts, this course is uniquely positioned to have students think about how to participate in such discourse. They can enter a variety of social, political and professional conversations to make viable contributions. Participating in a broader discursive landscape, instead of merely composing for a singular audience (the instructor), will help make student’s work meaningful.

To achieve the kind of ends I sought, which recentered the FYC in multimodal writing practice, the current iteration of the common syllabus for ENG 1020 (ENG 1020 Common Syllabus AY23-24 REWRITTEN FINAL) would have to be completely rewritten. Although coincidental, I had been asked to contribute to a special WSU Composition Committee that would meet over the 2022 summer to redesign the ENG 1020 Common Syllabus (ENG 1020 Common Syllabus ORIGINAL). The current iteration needed a revision to reframe the aims of the Basic Composition (ENG 1020) course and the Intermediate composition (ENG 3010) course, so that in ENG 1020 students were focused on process and rhetorical situation, whereas their work in ENG 3010 would instruct on primary and secondary research skills. As a committee, we rewrote the course’s learning outcomes and the new set ultimately aligned with the aims of my own DFA composition course. The learning outcomes helped to propel my course design forward. Next, I cross-referenced my set of research questions with the revised set of outcomes to ensure that any unit plans would be thoughtfully constructed. Although the outcomes were organized into four equally important categories (rhetorical agency, rhetorical responsibility, rhetorical flexibility, and rhetorical revision), flexibility in the student’s composing process became a tenet for drafting all subsequent aspects of this DFA to FYC syllabus. Despite the many “places” demanding attention, such as the course objective and assignments, I chose first to visualize the spirit of the course.  I grounded my pedagogical aims using multimodal frameworks as set forth by George (2002) and Shipka (2011) and design-thinking as theorized by Marback (2009) and Purdy (2014). I wanted to remove the rigid guidelines, templates, and product-oriented expectations traditionally associated with college composition (if not all writing instruction from kindergarten through post-secondary). Such structured pedagogical approaches only perpetuated linear composing praxis which effectually complicates the student’s ability to compose in authentic and meaningful ways. However, attempting to design instruction for non-linear composing was not an easy task. Removing many routine in-class activities and project modelling created empty places in many proposed lessons. I felt as though I needed to reconsider some of my assertions.  Would the students feel as though they had gained agency or simply feel lost?  Would the students recognize the meaning in their work if I did not define it for them? These questions compelled me to create a process that would be cyclical with each project and create routine moves in for their composing but retained their sense of control over producing.