Adsanatham et. al detail how to create a digital and multimodal programs. They state, “There are many essential component s for sustaining a program-wide focus on multimodal pedagogy: preparing and supporting instructors, developing curriculum, securing and maintaining material and administrative resources, and conducting program-wide assessment” (302). They also explain that “we needed to connect with stakeholders across campus…This meant, however, that in persuading stakeholders to help us develop digital classrooms and pedagogy, we had to reassure them that we were not diluting the intellectual focus of our writing classes. To do this, we emphasized the ways in which digital technologies would help expand the possibilities for teaching and learning” (285). “The biggest and most important changes, however, came in our instructor preparation programs. We wanted to ensure that we did not merely ‘add on’ digital classrooms but fully integrated and supported a digital pedagogy” (287).“An effective way to integrate multimodality and digital media in our compositions classrooms is to meet students where many of them are already using digital media technology” (291).
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Fordham and Oakes assert, “It is imperative…that we see our responsibilities as educators as creating teaching and learning contexts in which students can communicate effectively, and ethically, within and between these multiple modalities” (314-5). “Students must become more proficient at communicating within and between various modes; this proficiency, though, requires not only skill at employing these modes but, more important, skill at making more sophisticated rhetorical choices. We believe that a focus rhetoric (instead of on the use of any one or two modes per se) brings WAC, CAC, and other such cross-curricular/cross-disciplinary programs to another, more sophisticated level” (316). These programs are meant to help students “cultivate transmodal conceptual abilities” (322). “Rhetoric is the ability to critically analyze a communication situation and to employ strategies and media that are appropriate to that situation…[R]hetoric is the transmodal metalanguage for multiliteracies…[These] learning environments [are] spaces for ‘doing’ rhetoric” (331).
“Multimodal communication environments, by definitions, require broader, more integrated epistemologies: one must be able to entertain multiple perspectives and multiple strategies for communication…[I]t also requires the ability to analyze and critique the rhetorical choices of others – whether choices about writing, speaking, visual imagery, or technological applications…Educators, then, must renovate curricula into those that emphasize rhetorically integrated pedagogies” (315). “Multimodal, rhetorically integrated pedagogies are less concerned with technological wizardry than with thinking strategically about the modes through which meanings are created in the teaching and learning context” (326). “assessment is very much about context and needs to take into account the particular circumstances of the course, the students, and the teacher, as well as the possibilities afforded by the assignment, the modes, and the medium” (325). To effectively teach students critical literacy with technology, Faigley asserts that we need to think about (1) what we want students to learn and (2) the best environment to encourage this kind of learning (137).
He argues that we want students to:
He also asserts that the following are characteristics of “the best possible learning environment with technology”:
Finally, Failey maintains that teachers need to get involved in policy debates about technology use in the classroom, which includes how teachers will be used and what kinds of (corporate) technological programs are valued. Moran argues that we, as a field, acknowledge that “access to emerging technologies…is a function of wealth and social class” (205). However, “we’ve not, as a field, paid sufficient attention to the fact that our students have differential access to computers…[I]f we believe that out teachers and students should play on a close-to-level filed, we need to act – to do something other than what we are doing now” (215). So, he advocated that we research into the following topics:
Selber argues that students need to know more than the mechanics of using digital technology; instead, students need to be multiliterate. These literacies are: functional literacy, critical literacy, and rhetorical literacy. He claims that, “Students who are not adequately exposed to all three literacies categories will find it difficult to participate fully and meaningfully in technological activities” (24).
Function literacy “understanding what computers are generally good at” (46), which also means understanding the computers limitations and where human intervention is needed. Functional literacy also includes knowing what do to when the technology malfunctions or the user is met with unfamiliar technological circumstances and situations. Functionally literate students have the following qualities: “uses computers effectively in achieving educational goals”; “understands the social conventions that help determine computer use”; “ makes use of the specialized discourses associated with computers”; “manages his or her online world”; and “resolves technological impasses confidently and strategically” (45). Critical Literacy “a critical approach to literacy first recognizes and then challenges the values of the status quo,” which “might lead to the production of positive social change” (81). A critically literate students “scrutinizes the dominant perspectives that shape the computer design cultures and their artifacts” [design cultures are “the practices and perspectives of the people who are responsible for designing and maintaining a computing infrastructure. These people include those who design hardware devices, local and wide-area networks, software programs, desktop configurations, physical spaces, policies and procedures, pedagogical activities, and more” (106)]; “sees use contexts as an inseparable aspect of computers that helps to contextualize and constitute them”; “understands the institutional forces that shape computer use”; and “scrutinizes representations of computers in the public imagination” (96). Critical literacy is important because “culture, politics, economics, and social institutions have all become inexorably intertwined with technology, producing an overdetermined milieu win which its directions, uses, and representations can potentially be shaped by a wide range of factors” (99). Rhetorical Literacy Rhetorical literacy “insists upon praxis – the thoughtful integration of functional and critical abilities in the design and evaluation of computer interfaces” (145). The rhetorically literate student “understands that persuasion permeates interface design contexts in both implicit and explicit ways and that is always involves larger structures and forces; understands that design problems are ill-defined problems whose solutions are representational arguments that have been arrived at through various deliberative activities [through choices that honor one or another value above others (152)]; articulates his or her interface design knowledge at a conscious level and subjects their actions and practices to critical assessment; sees interface design as a form of social versus technical action” (147) Selber frequently decries the myth that computers are neutral and that computers can, alone, change (read: improve) education and society; he emphases that computers are not neutral as there are social expectations, practices, and exploitations of technology use. More, computers do not act independently, so their use is affected by the user, by the designer and by those who implement/require their use. Also, computers are only one part of educational change; this idea is a systematic perspective. Selber explains that “a systematic perspective reminds teachers that any change initiative requires an attention to many different aspects of an educational system, not just one (if important) piece of it. Moreover, a systemic perspective stresses that there is no final end point at which change is fully and finally realized. Rather, because change is a function of numerous interrelated forces – some stable, some not – it is fragile and requires ongoing consideration and commitment” (184). He includes the following in his systematic perspective heuristic: technical (material and infrastructural, pedagogical, circular, departmental, and institutional (professional development for faculty and training for graduate students). Key Terms
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