Bridging the Multimodal Gap + Guide to Composition Pedagogies
The combined readings for this week of “New Media” from Guide to Pedagogy as well as chapters 2 and 3 from Bridging the Multimodal Gap center on multimodality, technology, and accessibility in writing instruction. Interestingly, a lot of these topics overlap and offer potential solutions and ideas to consider to the questions and problems each raises.
In “New Media”, Collin Gifford Brooke discusses the rapid growth of technology in the past two decades and how students interact with these technologies. Students already engage in new media, and for the classroom to stay relevant, teachers should be able to implement new media pedagogy. Like most resources, however, it is important to understand different students will have different backgrounds with technology and different levels of access: “It is our responsibility as writing teachers… to understand the scenes where our students write, the tools they will be using to write, and the often uneven attitudes (and access) that our students may have with respect to these technologies” (Brooke 177). Technology should be a space of bridging gaps rather than worsening existing ones, so something this reading made me consider is as a teacher I’d want to ensure students not only had equal access to technology, but also had adequate skill and comfort with it.
Furthermore, I think it is important to acknowledge that while blogs, videos, and other online platforms have the benefit of speed, they are limited by less accountability than typical academic spaces. In our current age of misinformation, I don’t think one could implement new media pedagogy without also teaching students how to identify good and bad sources, and how to navigate online spaces in general when it comes to the process of learning and writing. Despite the challenges of including new media in coursework, overall it’s worth it because it prepares students to compose works in different types of spaces besides the traditional paper, improving coursework by keeping it relevant to the modern student.
I particularly enjoyed “Reimagining Multimodality through UDL: Inclusivity and Accessibility” by Elizabeth Kleinfeld this week. In her article, Kleinfeld makes the great observation that “accommodation… means changing an assignment or classroom activity for one individual with a disability,” which creates a stigma for those with different needs, while “a UDL approach builds options into the course design that give everyone… different ways to complete assignments or participate in activities,” improving everyone’s experience with the course (Kleinfeld 32). It made me realize it’s always better to have multiple options built in than to require that students confide their needs, which risks othering the student and making their peers potentially believe that my expectations for them are different. I particularly like the idea of allowing students to submit assignments in a myriad of ways, including as videos, audio, static images, presentations, or written out, so that they can play to their strengths and have a diverse range of responses. There are also some great simple additions, such as captioning videos or including transcripts, that are helpful options for many to have. I’ll definitely be thinking about different ways to make my classroom more universally accessible moving forward!
Lastly, in “Dissipating Hesitation: Why Online Instructors Fear Multimodal Assignments and How to Overcome the Fear”, Jessie Borgman lists out both the fears that instructors have in including multimodal assignments and the benefits of assigning them. The fears Borgman lists are ones I relate to, it can be difficult to create standards for assessment for multimodal works, and there’s a concern students won’t understand how to incorporate multimodality into their work or connect the value of multimodality in their own life. However, like with new media, “multimodal composing better prepares students to communicate in contexts outside academics,” and teaches students important skills that are often missing from more traditional approaches to writing studies (Borgman 48). So I’d have to agree with Borgman that it’s worth learning to incorporate in the classrooms, even if just in small, low-stake doses.
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