On Multimodality: Tradition v New Media in Teaching Composition
Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes in their book, On Multimodality: New Media in Composition Studies touches on the topic of debate: Can new media be taught in a usual traditionally led classroom of English? The question so much isn’t as directly asked as it is thrown up in the air as something to hold on to as Alexander and Rhodes walk through the ways in which traditional and new methods of teaching may clash and if there needs to be a path opened for a new method of teaching to break through and lead in an age of technological sophistication.
“...when we focus on print alone as the communicative venue for our assignments and for students’ responses to those assignments, we ensure that instruction is less accessible to a wide range of learners, and we constrain students’ ability to succeed by offering them an unnecessarily narrow choice semiotic and rhetorical resources.”
Alexander and Rhodes (1)
This book is in response to the method of teaching traditionally and the ways it is or may clash with new methods of teaching with new media being used as a medium and untapped source of material in the classroom. The authors are evidently leaning toward the side arguing for the use of new media and the introduction and first chapter act as a step into a much larger discussion about new media in teaching composition, though the second half of the book (based on my cursory overview of it) doesn’t appear to provide any real response to how new media can actually replace the traditional rather than transferring the old into the new. Despite it being an entire book, the content it discusses is really only a scraping of the surface of a much larger discussion that remain ongoing as technology continues to advance and the classroom is beginning to see its incorporation being mixed (or tangled) with the traditional.
Alexander and Rhodes incorporate other scholarly texts including, Anne Fraces Wysocki and Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s, “Blinded by the Letter” in which the two scholars put on the table the argument of there being a different between extension and exploration of new methods. It is easy to simply agree with new media being necessary in composition teaching and then view it as a branch to add on to the traditional methods, though it then becomes this narrow pathway that is being swallowed in with the old way. On Multimodality touches on this question for the majority of the book and to further the questioning into a potential answer (or set of opinions set by the authors).
Scholar Jason Palmeri is also mentioned in the introduction of the book as an advocate to the transition between traditional and new media in composition teachings.
“Palmeri advocates for a ‘pluralist vision’ of composition studies that acknowledges how our field, at least since the 1960s, has always been engaged with multimodality, so the leap to multimedia should not be a large one, conceptually.”
Alexander and Rhodes (5)
Although agreeing with Palmeri’s advocacy for new media in composition studies, Alexander and Rhodes do not appear to stand by the conception of that leap to the use of new media as something not large. Rather, is seems they believe it is much larger than believed considering the path to opening to a new method of teaching outside the traditional as being anything other than a small step. To step away from alphabetic writing is an extremely difficult thing to consider especially looking at first year composition students who, at this point in the argument, may be quite far from even being able to see a classroom setting encouraging new media. It becomes necessary at that point, to emphasize knowledge of the traditional before being able to incorporate(or explore) new media into their studies.
Question: How can we best prepare our students (and ourselves) for rich participation in this complex public sphere they identify?
It is a heavy question, that personally, I don’t believe has an answer powerful enough to step up and make the structure of teaching traditionally reconsider the ways new media is brought into the classroom. I agree with Alexander and Rhodes’ thoughts on keeping first year composition students on a traditional path of alphabetic writing as to beginning a shift to a new media rich platform means they need to at least have firsthand knowledge of the traditional. Beyond a first year composition course I think it becomes this gradual introduction to new mediums that students can eventually find comfort in using. Speaking from personal experience, it is overwhelming having this sudden access to untapped platforms and resources that go beyond the traditional - from there it also becomes this uncertainty as I would try to turn this five page paper into a five page paper that is converted onto say, a podcast through speech rather than beginning with a podcast platform and creating content. Identity then is another sense of uncertainty as students may have in their entire secondary school education been taught to minimize their personal input on their school topics when it should be the exact opposite. To answer the question as much to my knowledge, I believe that giving students the freedom to learn about their identity and how these media platforms can help them express themselves is important as once they are given a topic to discuss or interact with, it becomes less guess work and more successful interaction between students and content.
I did some skimming of the rest of the book and personally found it frustrating that the question of how to bring new media as its own platform rather than an extension of the alphabetic writing wasn’t answered. To be fair, it is a heavy topic and probably has yet to have an answer that I’d consider satisfying, but I would have liked to have seen the authors present their own methods of how it could be done. I did, however, enjoy the authors’ presentation of their visual presentation at the 2007 CCCC in which a room had screens with images of eyes along with text of the CCCC statements. There was the mixed reactions of enjoying the visual aspect of the conference topic and those that did a u-turn and booked it out of the room as soon as they caught a glimpse of the eyes on the screen. Both reactions I think supported the purpose of it in which those that stayed seemed open to the concept of the visual being mixed with the traditional but those that left in confusion (or fear) weren’t as open to the new media mixed with the tradition which is also an appropriate thought as we shouldn’t consider new media as being only a branching point from the traditional but rather a new method of learning and teaching altogether.