Writing, Research, & Inquiry with Digital/Multimedia Expression
What does it mean to ethically and effectively communicate in the twenty-first century? Contemporary life is shaped by an enormous volume of information and new media, which can either enhance or distort our understanding of the world around us. In order to meet this challenge, WR 152 builds on WR 120 by introducing frameworks of classical rhetoric, information literacy, multimodality, and visual design. Like WR 120, this is a writing course, designed to foster skills and habits of mind essential to your academic success and your future personal, professional, and civic life. Like WR 150, this course provides you with a solid grounding in college-level research. However, WR 152 is distinct both in in exploring multiple modes and media and in providing you with the skills to critically read and strategically compose texts such as podcasts, websites, and videos. Most broadly, this is a course about the options available to the twenty-first century writer. No special technological knowledge is required.
Course Objectives
You will receive three Hub units for this class: Writing, Research, and Inquiry; Research and Information Literacy; and Digital/Multimedia Expression.
You will develop your abilities to
- Strategically search for and select both scholarly and non-scholarly sources in different modes and media and read them with understanding, appreciation, and critical judgment
- Express yourself orally and converse thoughtfully about complex ideas
- Engage a range of sources in order to address research questions and to communicate findings in the form of responsible, considered, and well-structured arguments using different media and modes of expression as appropriate
- Produce clear, coherent work in a range of genres, modes, and styles; to demonstrate an understanding of the capabilities of various communication technologies
- Plan, draft, and revise efficiently and effectively, and help your peers do the same by responding productively to their work
- Reflect on how research, reading, writing, and editing practices differ for varied audiences, genres, modes, media, and purposes
Instructional Format, Course Pedagogy, and Approach to Learning
Although they differ with regard to their subject content, all WR seminars share common goals and lead you through a sequence of assignments that emphasize a process of planning, drafting, and revising informed by feedback from your classmates and instructor. You will reflect on your approach to this process so that you can adapt it to future occasions. Seminar activities also give you opportunities to engage in focused scholarly inquiry and conversation.
In WR 152, you will conduct individual and/or group research, exploring ways of finding, evaluating, and engaging with information from different sources in a variety of formats. You will learn to select and use information sources strategically to develop and address research questions and participate in scholarly and non-scholarly conversations around your topic. Throughout the semester, you will present your research in projects that strategically employ various modes and media, with the goals of creating knowledge, influencing debates, and attaining a better understanding of ways that information is produced, disseminated, and used today.