John Whicker

Multimodal Assignment
ENG 792E
Winter 2011

As I’ve struggled to find my bearings when it comes to new media and multimodal
literacy, I’ve begun to find some space both in the use of technology like blogs and
wikis for reflective and process work and in the area Wysocki opens up with her
attention to interfaces. Wysocki shows us that even printed texts can indeed be
“new media” when we pay attention to their materiality, looking at as well as
looking through. Printed texts that include images, or even just typographical design
and rhetorical layout are multimodal, using both alphabetic and visual modes. I can
see myself teaching visual design principles and helping students learn to design in
Word’s publishing view mode long before I would seriously consider teaching
students to make effective videos. In this way, I am looking at what I already do and
thinking about how I can begin slowly and simply to integrate concepts useful for
multimodal composing into extant assignments. In that vein, I thought of an
assignment that I have included in past classes that is, very clearly, multimodal; it
uses visual, audio, and alphabetic modes, utilizes visual design principles, and
requires rhetorical attention to how the various modes work together to accomplish
a specific purpose: presentations.

I think presentations (requiring visual aides, Power-point or an alternative), which

incorporate text, image, and video that are designed to integrate effectively with
oral speech provide a fairly easy, familiar, yet challenging way to teach multimodal
composing. Presentations also have a lot of similarity to much academically rigorous
audio/video composition. Most videos that integrate text and speaking are in effect
video presentations. In fact, I would allow students to opt for a video presentation as
an alternative to the traditional live oral presentation as long as the video still
included speech, visuals, as well as video. The advantage of oral presentations with
visual aides is the ubiquity of PowerPoint as well as its fairly user-friendly interface.

The presentation I imagine here would be for either a J course or a section of 284,
“Writing about culture and society” like I am teaching now either of which could
center around “Vampires: romance, sex, gender, and sexuality in a pop-culture
obsession.” This would be a development from the multifaceted class I am currently
teaching. I am currently torn about whether this would be a stand-alone assignment
or an adaptation of an alphabetic paper. I could go either way, but for this
assignment I will view it as a stand-alone project, probably the culminating project
for the course.

This would be accompanied by discussions about visual design and rhetoric during
the weeks we’re working on the project.
Oral Presentation Project
English 284, “Writing About Culture and Society: Vampires and
Romance, Sex, Sexuality, and Gender”
John H. Whicker, Spring 2011

What
I want you to design a ten-minute presentation of your argument regarding the role of
Vampires in pop-culture. I’ll require that your presentation be research based, making use
of the theoretical and cultural texts we’ve discussed in class or others (outside texts should
meet standards of quality for research) to make an interesting argument about the cultural
role of popular representations of vampires. Include a PowerPoint or alternative (Open
Office Impress. Apple Keynote) presentation software file for a visual aide to your oral text.
The PowerPoint must include visuals and at least one video clip in addition to slides of
alphabetic text. The presentation should work to integrate oral, visual, alphabetic, and video
into a smooth presentation that makes use of the affordances of these various modes (by
that I mean that you use video for what video does best—show a short clip from a movie,
photos for what photos do best, graphs for what graphs do best, etc.). You will need to tie
everything together with your oral text. To help with this, I will have you write out a script
of your speech that includes cues for slide changes, videos, etc. as well as writing out your
argument on paper. While this text will be written, remember that it is a speech and that
your audience (the other students and I) won’t be reading along with you. Caution: don’t
read your PowerPoint slides; they should be short bulleted points derived from your
argument. You may refer to them for rhetorical effect or emphasis just as you would visual
elements you include, but you should know what they say without having to read them. You
should practice your presentation so that you can give it smoothly with attention to the
inflection and tone of your voice as well as your body position and gestures.

Why
I’m requiring you to produce a presentation for our final project both because it is a
common genre and because it challenges you to think rhetorically about how visual, oral,
and alphabetic texts work together in complex ways. This interaction of multiple modes of
communication is common to our digital society. You may have to prepare presentations
both in college and in your profession, but even if you do not, working with the interaction
of these modes should also help you compose other multimodal texts: web-pages, videos,
flyers, posters, magazine spreads, or just job interviews (job interviews involve oral
presentation, visuals—resumes, dress, portfolio of work, and alphabetic texts). In addition
to the critical, analytic, and rhetorical thinking this project involves, a presentation should
also allow for creative and entertaining work. Our study of vampires and the cultural
assumptions and values they represent allows for the possibility of interesting visual
creativity, so a presentation provides a medium for both our academic/intellectual work
and so interesting and fun visual work.

How
To help you manage this project, I will ask you to complete several components:
 Proposal and annotated bibliography (Week 7)
 Draft of script and story-board of PowerPoint file (Week 9, workshop)
 Final Script and story-board (Week 10)
 Presentations (Week 10 or at Final)

We will spend part of a couple days in the computer lab to give you some class time to work
on your presentations. We will also discuss the various affordances and design principle of
visual and oral texts. Remember to include a Works Cited page with your final script, and be
sure to comply with all copyright laws.

Grading
Your grade will involve an average of the scores your peers will give on an evaluation form
they will fill out at your presentation and my own assessment. Both of these factors will
score your presentation on the following elements:

 An interesting main point, supporting reasons, and textual evidence

 Rhetorically effective use of oral speech, gestures, and body position
 Rhetorically effective use of PowerPoint slides
 Effective visual design of slides
 Effective integration of images for rhetorical purposes beyond just illustration
 Effective use of video
 Rhetorically effective integration of oral, visual, and alphabetic texts
 Effective use of theoretical texts
 Effective use of cultural texts
 Overall impression of presentation

Each of these will be scored on a five-point scale, and I will compare the average of the
class’s evaluation to my own and derive the final score from the two—you will not get grade
lower than my evaluation, which will serve as a base grade that may be adjusted up
according to the average of peer evaluations. As per the syllabus, this will count for 20% of
your course grade.

Helpful Information:
Here is a good article on visual design of PowerPoint slides:
http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/09/whats_good_powe.html

This site tells you how to embed YouTube videos into PowerPoint slides:
http://www.labnol.org/software/insert-youtube-video-in-powerpoint-
presentations/5393/

This site provides decent instructions for importing images:

http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/pub0009/lpmarticle.asp?id=286

More great guidance for good PowerPoint presentations:

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/10-tips-for-more-effective-powerpoint-
presentations.html

Copyright and Fair Use information:

http://www.benedict.com/