Mind Blown Off and Related Lessons
For those of you who missed my revelation during class today, I think I went from being willing to see the train, but being hesitant to get on board, to running to catch it and make sure that I not only have a good seat, but that I don't miss dinner service with those tiny apple juice boxes.
Until today, when people talked about teaching with various new media (websites, movies, etc.) I thought they were considering the creation of the media and the content of the media in the same breath. For example, the reason why I've had some serious concerns about how we assess these various types of media is that I've felt very uncomfortable with the assessment process. I felt that until I really knew about how to assess a website, form, content and the whole shebang, I shouldn't really be teaching it. The situation I imagined developing is that I ask students to use Dreamweaver, tell them what I know, but then have to grade a Dreamweaver assignment and have a solid reason for why the color choice sucked or why they didn't bold certain words on their blog post. For me, the HUGE revelation is that we're using this technology (interfaces, software, coding, etc.) as a way for students to understand the rhetorical situation, how they compose and how they develop a rationale/postmortem of their composition process. With so much of the focus on whether we should teach coding or not, I think the really important part is that we're assessing students understanding and articulation of their compositions.
What's really a revelation for me is that I haven't come across a discussion of how important the rhetorical evaluation is to these assignments and that I already do this! Rick had us teach a visual essay last semester, but I didn't feel comfortable teaching and evaluating just a set of visuals, so I added a writing component to the assignment which asked students to explain their composition process, paying attention to certain decisions and rhetorical choices. So, that's why I'm on board the train. I don't even know if I was certain what the train was about before, where it was going, or what track it was on.
On a related issue, the rhetorical analysis is a form of writing that really needs more attention if we're going to ask it to do so much and ask our students to use it in such an important way. I want to know more about how this is used in the new media classroom and why it often goes unsaid.
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My revelation to go with
My revelation to go with this is it simply never occured to me to mention that any new media assignment I give simply HAS to be accompanied with a rhetorical analysis essay. I'd gotten to the point in my head where that was a given, and assuming things are given is always a dangerous and bad practice. So my question to add is this: is their a gap in our current scholarship on this subject? Does this really need to be addressed more?
And I agree that yep, the rhetorical analysis form of writing does need a lot of attention in the classroom if you're going to do this. I consider it the backbone of my classroom. I may never mention the word thesis (a fact that still freaks some of my colleagues out), and I don't delve into essay form or things of that matter. But we're constantly discussing how things are composed and (I think this is key) stressing the kinds of language one needs to discuss something from a rhetorical level. Some people may chuckle and think I'm just trying to be a cool and "easy" teacher when I tell them that my students just wrote a response paper on a kid's cereal mascot. But if they were to read the level of rhetorical analysis and insight these freshman can put into a seemingly simple illustration, then they'd see I'm going for anything but easy or cool. It's all about analyzing and being able to intelligently articulate the composing choices of others to eventually give as much depth and insight to their own composing choices.
So far I’m on board with
So far I’m on board with pretty much everything Ehren and Pepper have been discussing here. The one point I want to add in addition to everything else that has been said is the setup for a rhetorical analysis and how to produce an assignment that requires more than the typical: “Here is a topic, go write a paper about it, turn it in when you’re done, and then I will grade it.” I think one thing we are missing here is the idea of teaching the basic components of a rhetorical analysis, an assignment a lot of writing teachers give their students, but moving from the paper based argument to the visual. Maybe, and I’m just throwing this out there, as both the instructor and student begin analyzing visual arguments the criteria for assessment will evolve from the class discussion. The eventual assignment could then be to have students create a visual argument or an argument in a digital medium and have them produce an analysis of their own work. Come grading time, the assessment and evaluation of the student work could mainly focus on the criteria developed in the class discussion in addition to how well the student pulled off what they were trying to accomplish based on the analysis they have written. Additionally, and depending on the course being taught, there usually is no right way to grade or assess non-paper based assignments because, like grading paper arguments, the particularity of “points” is almost entirely up to the instructor’s interpretation.
Reflection
Mark, in response to your question about whether there is a gap in the scholarship about rhetorical analysis of visual arguments, you might want to look at Kathleen Blake Yancey's work on using reflection as a pedagogical tool. Her book, I think is titled "Reflection" or something similar. Anyway, as a first-year MA student at NIU, we studied Yancey's work on reflection and had our students apply it in their composing of online portfolios, which essentially were websites they created and displayed their work on. For example, a student would post his/her essays and visual assignments to the website (both drafts and revisions), and they would write rhetorical evaluations or reflections about the work they did, not only in their writing assignments but also in their creation of their online portfolios. What I and my colleagues found when looking at the reflections at the end of the semester was that the students did a nice job of parroting or repeating back to us what we had discussed/taught them throughout the semester. In essence, they learned to play the school game and told us what we wanted to hear. Now, I'm not suggesting that is what is happening with your students, but what I am interested in is the type of responses your students are giving. Are they moving beyond what is discussed in class or are they doing what our students did at NIU? While I do not want to discredit my students' parroting of what was taught to them b/c in a way they still were learning about rhetoric, but I never was able to see if they were able to transfer and apply what they reflected on to other writing situations? Which brings me to ask this question: Is there the added responsibility (for us as teachers) to have students speculate on how the rhetorical knowledge they're developing can be put to use in other rhetorical situations (and I'm limiting this to their jobs/careers when they leave school)?
Interesting. I wonder if
Interesting. I wonder if I'm reading this right. Look at Jeff's reply, which I think suggests that evaluation must come out of the classroom discussions. You seem to suggest that their rhetorical analyses must go beyond the classroom discussion, because there's the risk of parroting. I don't think these are counteropposite views, but they are interesting next to each other.
I guess I'm not too worried about the parroting. Let me give an example. In class we may talk and stress how contrast is a tool that is used to draw particular audience attention to one piece of a composition. And we'll look at examples, etc. etc. When they write their own rhet analysis, I'm not accepting: "I used contrast here to draw attention to this part of the photo." They need to explain why they wanted attention on that part of the photo, why their specific audience needs to focus on that part, and how their purpose is in someway served by creating that attention. So a lot of the analysis does need to develop from their own insights. I'm not sure if this is an example of what you call going beyond or if this is parroting. You tell me.
I'm still torn on your last question. Call me considerably old skool that I still like the idea of education for the sake of education. At the same time, I'm a realist enough to know most students now are here for their jobs and I would never judge them for that feeling. But is it my job to discuss their future careers and make sure they see the potential crossovers? Most of me (that little Marxist that I like to nourish with milk and cookies) says no. But I hope they make that connection on their own someday. Is it a a serious contradiction to expect them to make that connection but never directly address it in my instruction. Perhaps. Like I said, I'm still torn.
Correction
First, I realized that I miswrote something in the final question I posed. Specifically, I said that I wanted to limit it to their job/careers after graduation, but what I meant to say was not limit it to their job/careers. Like you, I too believe in education for education's sake, and I want student to see what they're doing as being applicable or important to their non-career related life activities. So, I apologize for any mix up there.
I too like what Jeff said about letting the evaluation criteria arise out of class discussions, but again, I still see the potential for parroting so long as the teacher is involved in the discussions as students will defer to the teacher's judgment. That's what they've been trained to do throughout their early school careers. Now, is it reasonable to ask a teacher to totally remove his or herself from the classroom discussion? I take the example of Sam in our class and the role she often plays as devil's advocate to steer our discussion in different ways. As graduate students, we recognize the pedagogical value in what she is doing, but will 106 students be able to make the same distinction? Some will perhaps. So, should our role in contributing to the establishment of evaluation criteria be limited to devil's advocate only?
Regarding the example you posed about a student explaining how s/he used contrast to direct the viewer's attention to a photo, the type of response that you said you wouldn't accept would be an example of parroting in my mind, and I like how you push them to explain in detail the reasoning behind their decision making process. What I am interested in is seeing how they can translate that knowledge to a non-school situation (and here I'm referring to both job and non-job rhetorical situations). I realize this is difficult to do b/c we only have them for a 16 week period, but their ability to transfer their knowledge in such situations would show that they can do more than parrot to a teacher. I guess the difficulty is trying to develop class projects that remove the teacher, and the best example I can think of is the service learning project we do in English 420. The students aren't accountable to me but rather their client and its needs. But, is the 106 class a good place for service learning?