Critical technology usage is a skill of the 21st century. As most individuals have access to numerous forms of expression, they can now make critical choices about what technologies they will take advantage of. On the web at least, the most effective students will be those who are able to accomplish their goals using the most effective tools possible. In any given situation… why is a video more useful than a text? Why is an audio more useful than a picture? Maybe the content that the student is exploring is more visually-oriented in one case. Maybe in the other case, the speaker’s voice is important. What better way to express the speaker’s voice than through speaking?
I thought Borton and Huot’s ideas revolving around reciprocity between students and teachers were compelling. I wonder what effect reciprocity would have on students when all of their instructors show their humanity by demonstrating that they do not know everything but that they do happen to be specialized in certain areas, such as looking for rhetoric in written and spoken word. Collectivistic learning environments seem exciting, with each student bringing any skills he or she has to the table with the effort of improving the class’s cumulative learning. This reciprocal learning might also help improve evaluation. What’s the point of evaluation outside of school other than to help us understand if we accomplished our specific goals.
I think peer review sessions might be more helpful in multimodal courses. Students often consume the types of texts that are created in a multimodal course on their own and they have some expertise, as an audience, about what they like or don’t like. Since students rarely read academic essays, I can’t imagine classmates being about to provide feedback from the perspective of a consumer of essays in the same way that they can provide feedback from the perspective of a consumer of movies. However, we brought up in the class and Alexander mentioned in our readings how haven’t always acquired the skills yet to articulate why they like a particular multimodal work. For example, students might have a difficult time explaining exactly why they like the beat of the song placed over the video essay and why the beat fits well with the rhetorical goals of the essay.
I’m crazy about the “Technology and Literacy in Your Future” section. I think a lot of students would be more motivated if they understood that instructors were not simply wasting their time but were instead actually trying to teach them skills that they would need in the future. However, what might also be helpful is if the classes became more targeted after the students studied members of their intended fields so that students could learn more about the types of rhetorical and writing skills that they will actually be using for a good portion of their lives. I’m not saying that students should only be limited to the types of writing that they will be doing in their cubicle; there’s nothing wrong with branching out a little bit.
Beach et al’s advice that students should not be given too many details in feedback is sound. Not only are too many details overwhelming but students are also less likely to remember important points of revision if they are overwhelmed with the less important points of revision. Revision should work one step at a time. Students need time to practice new writing techniques and break old habits. I remember when working as a writing center tutor, we focused on higher order concerns before moving on to lower order concerns. If a student was supposed to write an analysis of a work of literature and instead provided a summary, I could care less if the student walked out of the tutoring session with a comma splice. I cared a lot more that the student understood what analysis was in the context of an academic essay and that the student was capable of asking the kinds of questions necessary to write an analysis. Of course, instructors have the power to actually write on the student’s paper, so the student can read the papers later on. Remembering comments can be more difficult when you have a discussion face-to-face in a conference if the student has been given a lot of information. Memory can also be a problem in the brainstorming sessions that Beach et al described, with the student and instructor coming up with all sorts of brilliant ideas, 90% of which are forgotten when the student parts with the instructor and maybe another 9% are forgotten if the student doesn’t write these ideas down quickly enough.
Hi Charles,
ReplyDeleteI, like you, think peer review could be an important asset to multimodal compositions. Perhaps, like you suggest, it could work better because students are more used to reading and responding to work in multimodal forms than they are to academic essays. However, I often struggle with peer review--getting students to do it seriously and grading them for it when it's over. Just today, I had a conversation with a colleague about peer review. He asked me what the point of peer review was, and I stated that it was to get students to begin thinking about their work as they would in a work environment, when they would have to collaborate on a project to make it better. In addition, it exposes them to different kinds of writing. Perhaps doing this with a multimodal composition, when the differences are greater, would allow them to see these differences in greater detail.
You bring up a great point about students' ability to decipher and evaluate multimodal texts. When students have created a multimodal product, the other students in the class have a lot more to say about it than they do when peer reviewing essays. They are more involved because they are more interested. They understand what a good video is instantly, even if they don't have the exact vocabulary to describe it in technical terms.
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