I think multimodal pedagogies are extremely valuable in our technophilic society. But I also think we have to keep in mind that students’ technological prowess or access to technology resources may either exceed or be vastly less than we might guess. Students are fluent in texting platforms and social media platforms, but I (re)learned while teaching remotely earlier in the pandemic that they don’t always know how to enable sharing or editing access in a Google doc, for instance, or that getting students set up on Open Lab can be an ordeal. (I now use Blackboard for my classes simply because students have default accounts on the platform, and I’m reluctant to bring additional platforms into my in-person teaching after semesters teaching remotely using combinations of Zoom, Open Lab, Blackboard, and Google Docs.)

While I myself have some abilities in word processing and data management platforms, I don’t feel well suited to teaching the use of platforms beyond the library’s research databases and word-processing software–much though I try to encourage students to create work in other platforms if they have outside knowledge. I have to admit, though, that I feel stymied by instances like a student last semester who made a video about skateboarding but I think his friend who helped film did most of the editing (the friend owned the camera). But maybe this is fine? This article’s suggestion that teachers hesitant about multimodal writing could let students choose modalities for their written work rather than teaching students how to use those modalities was encouraging to me, though–that I can definitely do.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about developing an assignment (maybe a version of 1121’s Unit 2 or 1101’s Units 2 and 3) where students research the neighborhood where they live or their family history (or maybe the neighborhood where they were born? but that could make site visits harder). I think it would be really cool to incorporate multimodality in such a project–urging students to photograph and film neighborhood fixtures, local denizens, record audio or video of interviews, film what they see as they walk down the block. In their tech surveys this semester, all my students (or at least those who completed the survey…) said they have smartphones, so they could film on their phones to keep the need for material resources down.

I want to start off by saying I am a big fan of Bad Ideas About Writing, and in fact I use some of its essays in my classes. That being said, I had some issues about the presentation of ideas in these two essays for two separate reasons. In the first, about “correct English” I still struggle with the idea that this is the entrenched viewpoint in composition classrooms, at least urban ones. So, I suppose it would be important to know where the author bases her perspective. The article, for me, had the air of an Illuminati expose, without enough attention to context and various Discourse Communities. I also found it intensely ironic that an author could be advocating for a deconstruction of “white middle class” rhetoric, while advocating for her position in “white middle class” rhetoric. Ultimately, I do believe in exposing our students to a variety of discourse structures, recognizing full well that our students come to us with their own firmly entrenched discourse literacies which have value and should be acknowledged, cultivated, and integrated into rhetorical analysis.

In the second article, I felt that the concept of teaching grammar, again, has to do with the purpose of teaching grammar. I tend to focus more on the generation of ideas, as teaching grammar independently of contextual application is problematic. I also find that the more rules introduced tends to stifle expression. Again, I had a head scratching moment as the author obviously learned grammatical construction for rhetorical consistency, and I wonder what that said about her own experience, especially considering her own attention to grammar and syntax.

Both articles beg a return to the driving question related to our composition class practice – what is our purpose in providing instruction in writing? I think the current trend, unless one is living an isolated existence, is to help students communicate, either academically or across genres. I think we do a disservice to our students in academic settings, if we do not expose them to academic writing and its conventions, while recognizing that such is contextual. I think further the trend is to expose students to a variety of multiliteracies while our own students expand our own understanding of expression.

When I teach research I tend to approach it both conceptually and practically, thinking through the latter as a way to anchor the former (since, as we’ve seen, students typically haven’t been introduced to the reasoning–the *philosophy*, if that isn’t too grandiose–behind research as a human endeavor, and instead treat it as yet another series of academic box-ticking exercises). I find that analogies with basic but universally meaningful activities work well. I’ll invoke, for example, conversation: “Imagine that you’ve just arrived at a party. The room is crowded, and you can’t say for sure how long people have been there, or whom you’re likely to meet. Everyone’s already formed their little conversational groups, with their drinks held in front of them and their elbows out, attention directed away from you. Your job is to find a conversation that interests you, gracefully enter it, and make a contribution that will somehow, however slightly, change its direction. When you leave later that evening, the party will continue indefinitely, but that single conversation will have been forever altered–just a bit–by your unique contribution.”

I find that this works well even at the outset of a course in explaining low-stakes assignments such as discussion posts, and that it then lends itself to reuse as we build toward longer, research-paper-style projects. Students all naturally understand what makes for a good conversation. They know that someone who simply parroted what another speaker had said or who expressed blanket disagreement without offering justification wouldn’t be considered a “good” conversational partner; they know that nuance and originality (not to mention some attention to rhetoric) are expected. When we move from concepts to specific assignments I like to break capital-R Research into at least four subsidiary “moments,” or cognitive moves. The first involves identifying a gap (we talk in 1101 about “curiosity” in this respect): where are the holes in our existing knowledge? Where’s the edge of the map? This is where intuition and even a sense of play can be important: I ask students to think about what they’re noticing, and why; to be sensitive to wrinkles and points of friction; to attend to hunches. The second step involves framing a specific, neatly bounded research question, to which I always attach at least three qualifications. A good question must be precise, practicable, and provocative. Our third step is the “methodology” discussion: where are you going next, what are you going to do, and how are you going to do it? Lastly, and once a nice big messy pile of information has been gathered, we ask ourselves about the best form (genre) in which to present our “new” knowledge. I explain that the classic undergraduate research paper is a very good genre (a very good form for its purposes), that its popularity is justified, but that it isn’t by any stretch the *only* way to present new knowledge.

At its best, this addresses the two principal shortcomings I’ve spotted in research-oriented courses: 1) students aren’t conceptualizing research in productive ways (or at all; this is the “why are we doing this and what’s the point” question); and, 2) students are hobbled by passivity (it’s been trained into them) and need to be prodded to take small, concrete steps consistently until they discover their own motivations.

For me, the thought of writing a research paper triggers the emotional response of great excitement with an equal part of anxiety. Research allows my brain to probe and roam but this must be very guided process. Without proper guidance, you can easily get lost, lose the focus of your topic, or because of *too* much curiosity and what I find to be even worse in some instances, over-researching. This happens most when you are 30 chrome tabs into your research topic and realize that you have inadvertently began researching enough for a short novel instead of the 10 page research paper initially assigned. I sometimes see my students doing this when they update me on a biweekly basis to let me know that they’ve changed their topic for the final time this time and it can be difficult to try to curb their enthusiasm. However, they eventually understand that this is just part of a greater process that must begin with small steps that are built into the course.

I find that my students think in very binary terms of black and white when it comes to research but I try to share with them the sentiment that research can also be a tool of self-expression. Their topics are representative of their interests and perspectives which of course is how you find “yourself” in what you write. This can be difficult to convey to a classroom online and even in person. I can assure them that I can help them research a topic that they are interested in, I am met with looks of skepticism for quite some time until they get started and finally trust that I want them to write about their perspectives in conjunction with and on equal ground with the scholars in their field of interest. In this way, I hope they begin to view research as a project they should spend some time with. That is to say, this class does not encourage all-nighter, one-shot large assignments. This should in fact take some time since they are discovering intricate details about a specific topic while hopefully learning a little bit about themselves.

Teaching a research paper requires walking a fine line. The assignment must be challenging but if it is too difficult one runs the risk of losing half the class. Every class has a handful of motivated students who will succeed with a mere directing to academic sources. The challenge is to stimulate the rest of the class.
Just starting out on assignment 2 of the Model Class, I love the series of questions to get the students started: What I know a lot about is: What I’m passionate about is :What I start Googling when I have nothing better to do is :I would go crazy if someone told me I had to stop doing: What makes me really angry is: In the past I hadn’t personalized the research paper to this extent and look forward to seeing some success following these prompts. I like the idea of not disparaging google, but using it as a springboard.

So many students have a preconceived notion that the research paper is just quotes and explanations, not really an extension of their own writing. They have difficulty adding their own point of view. Perhaps having their topic be near to their heart, will allow them to add their style to the paper.

My approach to guiding students through producing Research Papers depends entirely on the class. When teaching first-year writing, I know that every stage of the process is going to be new to them, so I do a lot of scaffolding, assigning a lot of low-stakes writing and exercises (especially on quoting, summarizing, and citing ) leading up to the RP assignment. This gets students into the flow of engaging with sources, and learning how to explore a  theme via different genres. The exercises are always based on what we are all reading as a class. For example, I will take one paragraph of an assigned reading and turn that into a citation exercise where students need to respond to that plus an assigned video on the same topic and cite both, in a response, including their own reflections at the end.

I usually include as readings a combination of different genres of writing: fiction, journalism, essay, poetry – all touching on a content theme that the whole class is exploring. It might be the changing digital information landscape, or issues confronting out communities, like policing, education, or public health. Or it might be ideas we are exploring through fiction and poetry. I also like to include some video resources, as well, and sometimes visual art, depending on the class theme. As sources, the students draw from a combination of in-class sources and outside sources, all tied to a topic that they develop themselves, related to the ideas we are discussing in class. I find that by the time we get to the Research Paper,  they have already practiced a lot with the in-class sources in many rhetorical situations – discussion board posts, class discussion, personal reflections, and citation exercises. This helps them to understand the expectations for the paper. They use their own scaffolding work as a model for how to work with the sources they find themselves. This usually works well.

I try to use the Research Paper as an opportunity to for the students to explore different writing and information genres more in depth. It’s a way of developing their own responses to and ideas about what others are saying about the issues that are important to them.