Pedagogical Possibilities

So why bring Flash into the First Year composition classroom?  Are you just asking for a world of hurt by travelling this path?  How many emails should you expect from flustered and confused students and how many problems do you foresee in the “finished” products?  Perhaps most importantly, what is added?  My students already compose in a variety of media, from: photobooks, music videos, websites, Facebook groups, podcasts, etc.  If I’m personally going to introduce a Flash assignment, I would hope to base it in some sound rhetorical reasoning.  I would also like the composing skills involved to become part of my students’ continuing repertoire of production choices well beyond my classroom.

There are obviously a number of reasons instructors choose to include multimedia assignments in the composition class.  Critics often charge that instructors are pandering to students and simply offering them assignments they will like in misguided attempts to appear “cool.”  It would be foolish of me to deny that this probably happens.  But I think it’s more likely that instructors fall somewhere on a scale between two extremes: those who fully embrace multimedia composing whenever possible (with in-depth considerations about rationale) and those who integrate multimedia cautiously (if not capable of articulating their reasoning s, at least sensing that the experience is useful).   For me, the rhetorical underpinnings of every part of the multimedia composing process must be highlighted along the way.  Such a focus certainly keeps the course from coming under criticism of teaching art of trying to grade on merely aesthetics.

At the most fundamental level, I want students to have a rhetorical reasoning for why they are using the software in question.   This involves reasoning deeply connected to the medium in which the assignment is produced.  In a classroom setting, this can be a tricky issue.  For example, when I assign a music video assignment, my students have the freedom to tackle virtually any topic they wish, but they have to make a music video (most often with Windows Movie Maker).  My job, then, is to make sure that questions are asked along the way as to what topics or arguments are best expressed in video form (and why), and how the possibilities and limitations of the medium/program help dictate what kinds of communication become possible.  I also believe that any program my students are using should itself be a topic of rhetorical analysis.  Menus, interfaces, icons, and many additional factors set the boundaries of what can be composed with any specific piece of software, and I consider it to be fundamental importance that my students consider these factors while composing.

Further, multimedia projects also highlight concerns of visual rhetoric.  In order to avoid dealing in pure aesthetics, visual design must be discussed on the rhetorical level; that is, visual design choices must be seen as helping co-create the meaning of a document, not just adding an aesthetically appealing gloss.  I admit, this is a lot to cover when ever dealing with a new medium or when asking students to compose with a new piece of software.  However, it is precisely these concerns that I feel are at the core of a First-Year composition classroom, and absolutely essential components of multimedia composing.

Which brings us back to Flash.  I would never want to judge accessibility of use for any program—some students still clearly struggle with some of the advanced features of a word processing program.  However, if I had to rank popular composition software on a scale of potential user-friendliness, Flash would linger quite low in that hierarchy.  The question for any instructor thinking about bringing Flash into the classroom must be one of balancing the pros and cons.  This is not a program to bring in just for the sake of trying something new or with hopes that students will be wowed and thrilled with the cool things they can do.

 

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