“Images and words have long coexisted on the printed page and in manuscripts, but relatively few people possessed the resources to exploit the rhetorical potential of images combined with words. My argument is that literacy has always been a material, multimedia construct but we only now are becoming aware of this multidimensionality and materiality because computer technologies have made it possible for many people to produce and publish multimedia presentations.” — Faigley, “Material literacy and visual design.” (175)
“As an alternative, I propose a goal-directed multimodal task-based frame- work for composing that I have been developing in classes since 1997. Based in part on Walter Doyle’s definition of academic tasks, the framework is geared toward increasing students’ rhetorical, material, and methodological flexibility by requiring them to determine the purposes and contexts of the work they produce.” Shipka, “A Multimodal Task-Based Framework for Composing.”
“Take, for instance, an objective often associated with first-year composition programs, asking students to use course readings or outside sources as the basis for an argument. Rather than requiring students to produce a thesis-driven, linear print essay that is, more often than not, intended for the instructor alone, students approach this objective by contextualizing it in ways that are of interest or importance to them. They decide how, why, where, and even when that argument based on specific readings will be experienced by its recipient(s). Following these decisions, they begin generating the complex action sequences leading to the realization of their final product(s).” — Shipka
Instructors working within this framework are still responsible for designing tasks in accordance with course goals and objectives. Yet, again, rather than predetermining the specific materials and methodologies that students employ in service of those goals, tasks are structured in ways that ask students to assume responsibility for attending to the following:
- the product(s) they will formulate in response to a given task-this might take the form of a printed text, a performance, a handmade or repurposed object, or, should students choose to engineer a multipart rhetorical event, any combination thereof
- the operations, processes, or methodologies that will be (or could be) employed in generating that product–depending on what students aim to achieve, this might involve collecting data from texts, conducting surveys, interviews or experiments, sewing, searching online, woodworking, filming, recording, shopping, staging rehearsals, etc.
- the resources, materials, and technologies that will be (or could be) employed in the generation of that product-again, depending on what they aim to achieve this could involve, paper, wood, libraries, computers, needle and thread, stores, food, music, glue, tape, etc.
- the specific conditions in, under, or with which the final product will be experienced–this involves determining or otherwise structuring the delivery, reception, and/or circulation of their final product. (Adapted from Doyle 161)
Importantly, upon completing each task provided to them over the course of a semester, students are required to compose a highly detailed written account of their work, something that my students typically refer to as the “headsup” statement. While the specific issues they are asked to attend to in these statements change depending on the task assigned, students must always account for the specific goals they aimed to achieve with their work and then specifically address how the rhetorical, material, methodological, and technological choices they made contributed to the realization of their goals.