Creative Exploration through Projects

Jody Shipka used her transformed freshman composition from a prescriptive class into an “activity- based multimodal curriculum” (299). In her article, “A Multimodal Task-Based Framework for Composing,” Shipka explains the environment and objectives of the course and then describes a few multimodal projects that her students created in the course. Her focus is on reimaging the different types of “work students might produce for the composition course (278). Her focus is on pushing her students beyond just the writing process to think about “..the importance of assessing rhetorical contexts, setting goals, and making purposeful choices” (288).

Shipka describes the goal of a “activity-based multimodal curriculum in the following ways:

1. To set their own goals for the work they engage in in the course;

2. To draw upon a wider range of communicative resources than course have typically allowed;

3. To speak to the ways the various choices they have made serve, alter, or complicate those goals; and

4. To attend to the various ways in which communicative texts and events shape, and take shape from, the on texts and media which they are produced and received (299).”

I really enjoyed her explanation of the various projects her students developed to explore the students’ chosen topic. All of them – from the gift bag, to the “scary movie,” to the OED video – required students to explore both digital spheres and rely on all of their senses. Specifically, Shipka writes that “...the complex work students produce within this framework need not be digital but might be...purposefully engineered, out of anything” (300). I think that Shipka demonstrates the way that English and composition teachers can make any assignment multimodal, as long as we’re willing to broaden our imagination and mindset.

Considering that her course descriptions are designed for college freshman, there are some things that I would definitely adapt for my own classroom. The self-guided inquiry aspect of these projects is something I presume my students will find very challenging and unnerving. This is a skill that they practice and are learning throughout high school, however, I doubt many of my students will feel comfortable coming up with their own independent idea initially. Shipka even writes, “for students who have grown accustomed to instructors telling them exactly what they need to do, this way of working can be time-consuming and frustrating” (291). I would probably do was Maura described when talking about accommodations last class, and provide some students with inspiration. Another method would be to have group brainstorming sessions, so that students can have an opportunity to bounce ideas off of their peers and teacher.

In my poetry class, Annie presented another method for gathering inspiration that I feel would be very effective. She described this method in terms of a poetry projects her students completed, but it can easily be adapted within the classroom for other units/projects. For homework every night, students were instructed to bring in a sticky note responding to the question: “What do you want to know more after reading this poem.” Responses can be anything from a vocabulary word to a thematic idea. Then, students place their sticky note on an “inspiration wall.” When the time comes to pick a project or write an essay, students can pick peruse the “inspiration wall” and pick their own sticky note or someone else’s as inspiration. I like this way of creatively generating ideas because I feel like it enables students to see their own and their peers’ thoughts progression over the course of a period of time and it also provides a lot of different ideas.

As I have become more exposed to various methodologies for multimodal composing and projects, I have really appreciated the focus on the process. Too often in schools, we are working towards and end goal and not focusing explicitly enough on teaching sustainable skills for students to apply throughout their lives. Shipka describes her curriculum design as a way to turn “revision to re-vision.” (291). In transforming how students think about the composing and revision process, multimodal teachers create in their students the “willingness to reimagine the goals, contexts, and consequence associated with their work” (291). As Shipka described in the various projects, the writing is still demanded, just in a different way. Rather than being solely prescriptive, now the writing requires them to change their style within the context of the project, as well as including a lot of reflective analysis.