Beardsley

As a teacher, I guide students to develop critical thinking skills and recognize that texts, whether written, aural, multimodal, or some other form completely, are informed by time, place, and social interactions. Moreover, through looking for and learning from ignored vernacular literacies (like cooking and technological literacy), I emphasize that such epistemologies have huge effects on society, even if we ignore them. Thus, in any course I teach (from composition to creative workshops), I aim to develop students’ critical awareness of the multiple literacies they hold alongside an understanding of their audience through multimodal assignments and using open-source materials.

Multimodality: Valuing Embodied Literacies Throughout the Writing Process

One of the primary theories that informs how I teach and create assignments is that “all texts are always multimodal although one modality among these can dominate” (Kress, 2000, p. 187). As an instructor, this emphasis on multimodality means incorporating various media. When thinking about multimodality, as Jody Shipka (2011) says, “it is crucial that we not limit our attention to a consideration of new media texts or to what the newest computer technologies make possible—or even make problematic—but attend to the highly distributed, complexly mediated, multimodal dimensions of all communicative practice” (p. 29). Understanding food as a communicative practice is one way to teach students a critical awareness of how material and technological choices can incorporate and foster their multiliteracies.

To teach students how to write food narratives in a multimodal composing course or unit, I begin by having them choose a recipe that evokes a significant memory. Then, we spend four weeks working with one recipe to understand how food narratives incorporate three elements: location, senses, and history/politics. Students begin to embody their recipe by visiting the space most closely associated with it (location), cooking and eating the food while paying attention to their senses with a particular emphasis on smell, taste, and sound (senses), and researching the origin of the recipe and its ingredients (history/politics). Students document their recipe interactions by writing blog posts, creating Instagram stories, or recording audio pieces throughout the process. Though the form for their final piece is open-ended, each student creates autoethnographic compositions that capture their food narrative through text, image, video, and cooking, but the composition doesn’t rely on digital media alone. Through making and eating the food, I find students make more informed decisions about the modality that best serves their food narrative’s purpose. By incorporating low-stakes assignments that require students to embody their food and cook, eat, and share it with others, students gain a broader understanding of how their senses are interconnected with their literacies and inform their communicative practices.

User-Centered Design: Writing for Edge Users

TThe ultimate focus of my pedagogy is for students to develop multiliteracies, which cultivates an awareness of how the modes we use to communicate “differ according to culture and context, and have specific cognitive, cultural, and social effects” (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000, p. 5). But it’s important, I believe, that students’ awareness extends beyond their literacies to the multiliteracies of their user-audiences. Therefore, I encourage students to take a user-centered approach to writing and designing documents. To do so, I teach students about user personas, which are fictional profiles that represent a multitude of users, from someone who has no experience with a product or service to someone who uses it every day. Through researching users and creating personas, for instance, students in my technical writing classes develop an awareness of “a theoretical person who engenders empathy” (Friess, 2017, p. 118) and learn to tailor their writing for different rhetorical situations.

Part of developing multiliteracies, then, involves creating user personas for “edge users” or novice users often ignored during the design process. For instance, in a technical instruction set project, students begin by researching and creating user personas for two edge users to teach technical concepts (from seasoning a cast iron skillet to designing a train model in Autodesk Inventor) to non-technical audiences. They state their anticipated users, conduct interviews, and find sources demonstrating what novice users know about their topic. Based on their research, students determine how users are most likely to interact with their instructions (will they be included with the purchase of an item, or should they be added to the wikiHow database of how-to guides?) and design their instruction set accordingly. In researching and analyzing users, my technical writing students demonstrate how they’ve crafted a critical awareness of their user-audience’s communication strategies, which leads to a stronger focus on understanding and connecting to their users through the most effective communicative mode.

Open-Source Platforms: Encouraging Self-Learning Through Problem-Solving

Building technological literacy is central to my pedagogical decisions when I design syllabi and courses. When I see the limited access to and understanding my students have of computers and programs, like Microsoft Word, that seem synonymous with composing/writing, I am reminded of Selfe and Hawisher’s (2006) explanation of the global digital divide as “the disparity between people who have access to and use of computer technologies, computer networks, and the specialized technological education needed to maintain a digital infrastructure and those who do not” (p. 253). Almost 20 years later, this disparity still impacts students. To bridge the digital divide, I use open-source materials to have students explore their situated digital literacies—the “established literacy activities connected to computer technologies that are also embedded in individuals’ everyday experiences” (Buck, 2023, p. 22). An essential part of developing this critical digital literacy awareness is creating opportunities for students to problem-solve in a supported environment.

Self-learning and using open-source tools guide students to develop an awareness of their digital literacies and composing practices. When I teach students basic HTML to build websites, we exclusively use open-source platforms and on-campus computer labs or classrooms to ensure everyone has consistent access to technology beyond their smartphone. We use GitHub Codespaces, an instant cloud development environment, and have in-class work time dedicated to learning by doing. Students begin by reading and editing an HMTL file with embedded instructions to gain exposure to web-based language. They learn how to change design elements like font size and color (Student work is available via the course website: am-beardsley.github.io/eng-388/student-work.html.). When they inevitably “break” a line of code and an element no longer works, students help each other problem-solve and try again. By using openly available tools and creating opportunities to learn together, students aren’t limited by access to technology. They work to identify their digital literacies, understand the basics of a new language, and begin to see problem-solving as a skill transferrable to their coursework and beyond.

Overall, my emphasis on multiliteracies, multimodal composing, and incorporating open-source tools seeks to acknowledge and value how multiple literacies and epistemologies contribute to developing students’ critical awareness of writing to and for different audiences.