English 1900-28

Date Assigned: Apr. 6

Date Due: May 4

Multimodal Project
In your previous work, you’ve researched a topic and related question in depth. You thought through
those arguments and sources in your Dissoi Logoi, and you’ve fashioned an argument into your
Statement of Purpose. At this point you have largely carried out your project.

But there’s one more step. If you return to your Statement of Purpose and reexamine what you wrote
about “Text,” you should find your original thoughts about the particular kinds of texts you wanted to
produce for your audience. In addition to the Statement of Purpose, you may have proposed
communicating your message in some other way—a video, a podcast, a brochure, a website, a Zoom
workshop, an Instagram account, an app, etc. Some of you may want to stick with your original idea,
while others of you may want to change your minds. Whatever you choose, this assignment asks you
to create this multimodal project. You will do this in two parts:

1. First, you’ll create an actual multimedia “document.”

2. Second, you’ll write a “process paper” of roughly 900-1,000 words that analyzes the rhetorical
choices that you made in the multimedia document.

For this assignment, your rhetorical challenge is this:

● Purpose: To make your audience aware of your issue and to persuade them to intervene or take
steps to make intervention possible.
● Audience: Depends, at this point, on your project. Some of you will be addressing your original
audience, while some of you might address a new, but related audience.
● Context: Introduction of your project to your audience. They’re hearing it for the first time in
many cases. The context is also the context that you have determined in the previous work on the
Dissoi Logoi.
● Medium: The medium might be any number of things. However, it must be multimodal. It
cannot exist only as a print document. It’s got to have video, audio, images, interactivity, or
something that makes it more than just a paper. You can also design a game, an app, a recorded
presentation, or a worksheet. I don’t care. But it’s got to be more than a paper.

Now, this is where it gets tricky. How can we evaluate so many different projects fairly? We’ll do that
through the process paper. (See the next page.)

1
Process Paper
As usual, I will evaluate your multimodal document on its rhetorical properties: how well it responds to
purpose, audience, context, and, in this case especially, text. Using the same criteria like this allows me
to fairly grade different projects. Still, you’ll also need to write a Process Paper, an essay of roughly
900-1,000 words in which you will explain the rhetorical decisions you made during the composition of
your multimodal project. You should answer questions like these:

What was my purpose? Who was my audience? Why did I choose the media I did? Why did I think
it would reach my audience? How did I use images? Sound? Color? Spatial arrangements?
Hierarchy? Balance? Contrast? Repetition? And, of course, words? (Consult the videos, articles,
and chapters we’ve read.)

Most importantly: what arguments can I make that demonstrate why my choices were the right
choices for my rhetorical situation?

You are not limited to discussing these, but they should give you a start. The purpose of this process
paper is to explain to me (your instructor) your rhetorical choices. Since the audience is your instructor,
it is a more traditional paper. But it’s not a formal essay, so you can write in a more informal tone. You
can and should use “we,” for example, as in “We decided to start the music here because we wanted to
create the effect of having…” or “We thought it would make sense not to have text in the beginning of
the film so that the images might do the talking for me….” You can even mention individual
contributions and considerations, citing group members by name. Just make it clear that you’ve
assimilated the rhetorical concepts and thinking we’ve been using all semester long and that you can
actually apply that terminology to your own work.

Here is a suggested outline for the process paper. (You don’t need to follow it exactly, but it will give
you an idea.)

1. 1-2 paragraphs simply describing what you produced. Just describe it. (How did I use
language to achieve my purpose? What about design? Images? Audio? Video?)
2. 1-2 paragraphs describing what you were hoping to achieve (purpose). What would be the
ideal outcome of someone interacting with your message?
3. 1-2 paragraphs describing your audience and why you thought your choices would appeal
to that audience specifically.
4. 1-2 paragraphs describing why your particular text was important for your audience. Why
did you choose to address them this way?
5. 1-2 paragraphs describing what you would revise if you had time. What would/could you
have done differently? Why?
6. 1-2 paragraphs describing why you think your message might succeed and why it might
fail.

The grade for this assignment will be split in the following way: 60% for the process paper and 40% for
the actual document. As this split suggests, I’m a little more concerned with your thinking and reflection
than I am with the perfection of the document itself. That doesn’t mean, of course, that the document
can be any old thing. But it does mean that, particularly for adventurous or risky projects, I am willing to
overlook the odd glitch if the rhetorical thinking behind it makes sense. Indeed, I want to encourage you
to be creative, take chances, and try something that is unfamiliar. In that spirit, I will reward projects that
show real ingenuity and risk, even if it doesn’t come off perfectly well. Again, that doesn’t mean that I
2
will penalize more conventional projects when they are appropriate for the rhetorical situation. But it
does mean that I will look more kindly on projects that show a great deal of creativity and a great deal of
effort.