The shift in composition classrooms from alphabetic text and essays to new media and multimodal projects also shifts the focus from the process of composing to the final product. Multimodal projects almost completely lose what the expressivist movement left behind: free writing, writing as a form of discovery, and the organic process of composing. The use of technological modes cannot be organic because collecting material—whether video, audio, images—is a planned out procedure; that is, students must have an idea of the rhetorical advantages of the mode beforehand. The concept of revision is also altered, as revision includes a time commitment to re-gather materials, combine, and edit. In Multimodal Composition: Resources for Teachers, Kara Poe Alexander says that “for every 1 minute of a finished audio or video essay, an author puts in 200 minutes of authoring and production time” (118). If this is true, revision challenges the limits of class time.
Multimodal projects become an outward composing, verses the inward creation of the mind. The process of composing cannot help students clarify their thinking because they very must have a plan before they begin; it has potential to limit the bounds of students’ thinking.
My presentation will explore the ways process theory can be incorporated into new media classrooms so projects can be imagined and developed rather than planned. It will also look at approaching peer review and revision as an opportunity for a project to evolve in a new direction rather than a “redo.”
Your first sentence is stated in too absolutist terms. All? Some?
ReplyDelete"what the expressivist movement left behind" --better stated as "the legacy of the expressivist movement."
What is "the organic process of composing"? Doesn't 'process' usually involve some sort of staging? Do this, then try that, circle back to this again, then try this over here etc. Sounds like the process movement, which is bigger than expressivism.
"Organic" is an unexamined metaphor in your prop. Why should readers care that MMC process cannot be organic? (even if that were the case, which I challenge to some degree). You seem to oppose organic to rhetorical. Kind of reprises the poetic/rhetoric split that Vielstimmig addresses.
"planned out procedure" --maybe in some cases, not in others. Typically the choice of media and modes evolves after the development of an idea.
Solid point about revision, at least once the MMC piece is a coherent draft. Note that Poe has some ways of overcoming this problem.
Your last paragraph should be expanded.
I suggest moderating and qualifying your point that pits internal/external, organic/? These have long been deconstructed . . . Check out Ball and Moeller's article again, especially the examples, the open-ended aspect of the assignment.
You might also check out some MMC undergrad course sites (that are not technical/professional writing) to see if your point holds up to how instructors frame the assignments and how students approach the projects.