With this, they argue for a change in the idea of expertise in the composition classroom:
- “Thus the idea of the epigraphic invitation we’ve placed at the opening of this chapter is that the process (or processes) by which a composing approach emerges in not necessarily a path toward expertise as it has been traditionally defined. To parody the functions of presentation software, for example, is not to know PowerPoint but to come to know it, and come to use it” (252).
- “But for us, as experienced academics who are assumed to be on the side of expertise, it is not a matter of becoming expert. It is a matter of kairotic doing and a drive to leave the question of expertise open. We are now theorizing and practicing our teaching with technology with an idea of multivalent compositions, which openly function through multiple desires, values, and appeals” (255).
- “Knowing a genre means more than just conforming to rules – it means knowing ‘how and when to deploy not only its conventions but also, and perhaps more importantly, the variations it enables’…Inventing with a genre means playing with ‘the relationships between that genre and related genres, the paths they follow and the moves they make’…Teaching a genre, then, means letting go of the assurance of others see us in familiar roles” (272).
They also define multimodality as:
- “arriv[ing] at an understanding of their discursive struggles as a form of knowledge making” (256)
- “What our curriculum aims for is that students come to understand multimodal composition as a normal kind of intellectual engagement, where they have to choose more selectively and reflectively – that, for every situation, they would come to see several options, not just one, and that they would choose not based on a memory of ‘what is familiar’ but based on an understanding of what is successful or exigent” (258).
- “Again, to be clear, we do not advocate composing multimodally as a devaluation of traditional academic genres, but rather as a validation and encouragement of the kinds of rhetorical experimentation that result in a first-year composition experience where students are full participants in the work” (260).