2008 Slatin Prize

Jillian Sayre and Nathan Kreuter received the 2008 Slatin Award for Master of Electronic Media in Education (MEME) for the video projects they developed to use in Rhetoric 309k, Topics in Writing. Below is a description of their project.

Overview

As developers for the visual rhetoric workgroup, we have been working on establishing a relationship between the CWRL and Digital Media Services (part of the Division of Instructional Innovation and Assessment). We believe that the technical instruction and advanced equipment DMS can provide, coupled with the Rhetoric Department’s insight on compositional strategies, pedagogical implications, and classroom application, can further the Lab’s goal of investigating how current and emerging information technologies affect and transform “our oldest information technology,” writing itself. This affiliation not only provides us with extra resources for our regular classes (not computer-assisted), but also allows CWRL instructors to take full advantage of the technology at their disposal in order to explore new, non-traditional, or supplementary modes of composition. In order to test this relationship and in the hopes of establishing models for future instructors, Nate and I both assigned media projects in our RHE 309K classes. The projects and their pedagogical goals varied, so we have included two descriptions, one from each class.

Nathan Kreuter, The Rhetoric of Spying

In The Rhetoric of Spying, I gave students a multimedia assignment intended to demonstrate how people can interpret the same evidence differently. I separated my class into four groups and gave each group an identical information packet containing cryptic clues about a fictional terrorist threat. Each group was given the charge of making sense of the clues and basing a prediction, an argument, on their readings of the clues in a multimedia presentation. When each group gave their presentations, we saw as a group how radically different the interpretations of the evidence had been. Students came up with exceptionally sophisticated presentations which demonstrated how the assignment had forced them to master electronic media, which I consider more of an achievement than anything I myself could have done to serve the class through electronic media.

Here is a sample student project from the course:

Jillian Sayre, Rhetoric of the Body

In Rhetoric of the Body, students in groups of four composed short documentaries (between 2 and 4 minutes) that looked at the role of body modification in community formation. Our text for the unit, Victoria Pitts’ In the Flesh, introduced this idea and the students were to complete their own research (interviews, or ‘ethnographies’ as we called them) in order to investigate Pitts’ claims. I was delighted to find a variety of conclusions among the groups, and the in-class viewings demonstrated to the students how arguments vary based on the evidence collected, that conclusions are often dependent on whom you speak to (the ‘texts’ at your disposal) and what questions you ask (how the author’s interests or approach might influence the results). We also used the opportunity as an impetus to explore new modes of composition; the students were to think critically about the topic at hand (body modification) but also writing itself, the ways in which arguments are communicated. We accomplished this by reviewing the discussion of film as composition from the 1971–1972 issues of College Composition and Communication. Students were encouraged to think about how the articles depict the projects of writing and the university in general, and to question how these definitions may have changed due to the proliferation and interactive qualities of media in the twenty-first century. After they finished their media projects and experienced first hand the method of creating a short film, they were asked to complete a short reflection paper that asked them to insert their experience into the discussion from CCC. I found that several students used the experience of creating films to think critically about their own writing and the role of writing instruction at the university. Many appreciated the creativity encouraged by the project, while others were interested in the ability to perform original research for the project. I was most impressed by those students that were inspired to incorporate filmic strategies into their writing process. One student, who previously dismissed outlining or pre-writing as unnecessary (because he perceived writing as an organic ‘event’), constructed a ‘story-board’ for the reflection paper and noted the facility of thinking critically about argument and structure before putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard.