visual/multimodal rhetorics

Outside the Frame: An Image Analysis

Stephen Paur Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment invites students to critically analyze the rhetorical and emotional effects of images. The project is basically an exercise in contextualizing a news photo. It would work well as the culminating assignment for a unit on visual rhetoric, digital literacy, multimodality, mass media, or the public […]

Outside the Frame: An Image Analysis Read More »

Learning to Listen for Immersion and Rhetorical Choices

Tanya K. Rodrigue and Kyle D. Stedman Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Soundwriting assignments—those that ask students in writing and rhetoric classes to compose rhetorical digital audio projects—are becoming more commonplace in the college classroom (e.g. Alexander; Friend; Faris, Danforth, and Stedman). One of the ways students learn how to compose effective soundwriting is

Learning to Listen for Immersion and Rhetorical Choices Read More »

Brand Style Guide Assignment

Madeleine Sorapure Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description The Brand Style Guide (BSG) is a common genre for organizations both large and small. It establishes a verbal and visual style that employees can apply in print and digital communications, yielding consistency across different expressions of the brand. Creating a BSG is therefore a good fit

Brand Style Guide Assignment Read More »

Who Is This Space Designed to Exclude? Instructions and Usability/Accessibility Analysis (IAUA)

Megan Von Bergen Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description Designed as a major assignment in a general education professional writing course, the Instructions & Accessibility/User Analysis (IAUA) assignment asks students to create a multimodal set of instructions for a simple task, while making design choices that improve accessibility. Students also conduct a user analysis of

Who Is This Space Designed to Exclude? Instructions and Usability/Accessibility Analysis (IAUA) Read More »

Impersonation Podcast: Understanding Untruth in Uncertain Times

Joseph S. Vuletich Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description In today’s media ecosystem, politicians dismiss unflattering news stories as “hoaxes” and AI-generated deep-fakes concern us because of their increasingly realistic qualities. Scholars teaching information literacy have responded by developing sophisticated methods for sorting fact from fiction, promoting credibility, and dismissing falsehood. Yet falsehood is not

Impersonation Podcast: Understanding Untruth in Uncertain Times Read More »

The Zine Project: Reorienting Concepts of Composition through Multimodal Reflection

Tania de Sostoa-McCue Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment is intended to be a transition, preparing students for practice in moving from alphabetic to multimodal projects. The goal of this assignment is for students to take a familiar genre (in this case, post-project reflections) and practice how they might transform an alphabetic assignment

The Zine Project: Reorienting Concepts of Composition through Multimodal Reflection Read More »

Reflective Writing About Podcasts for Critical Language Awareness

Madeline Crozier Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity helps students develop writing and listening skills through an exploration of how identity, language, and writing are connected. By including one or more podcast episodes as supplemental course content and then inviting students to reflect on and discuss the episodes, the activity brings multiple languages,

Reflective Writing About Podcasts for Critical Language Awareness Read More »

The Time Capsule: A Narrative Composition for Developing Social Support Systems

Michele N. Zugnoni Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description The development of a social support system is one of the greatest factors in college student success. Without such a system, students experience a sense of isolation and loneliness (Tinto 4). 28.4% of college students report feeling socially isolated (“Loneliness, Resilience” 3). 64.7% of college students

The Time Capsule: A Narrative Composition for Developing Social Support Systems Read More »

Informative or Argumentative Infographic

Erin Breaux Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This multimodal assignment challenges students to think in a different medium and consider the impact of visual rhetoric. While composing an infographic, they learn skills such as concision, design principles, organization of texts and images, and use of statistics, charts, and graphs. The infographic works well for

Informative or Argumentative Infographic Read More »

Designing Multimodal Technical Instructions for Cross-Cultural Resonance Using a Culturally Inclusive Approach

Audrey G. Bennett Volume 6 Chapter Description The culturally inclusive approach introduced in this chapter can be used to design multimodal technical instructions that resonate cross-culturally by 1) representing culture competently from knowledge gleaned by conducting primary and secondary research and 2) enabling cross-cultural interpretation through interactive aesthetics. The approach aligns with a curriculum that

Designing Multimodal Technical Instructions for Cross-Cultural Resonance Using a Culturally Inclusive Approach Read More »