English 419

Multimedia Writing

Course Syllabus

Available online

Course Texts

Course Website

Multimedia Writing Website

Course Description

My approach to multimedia writing stresses how design aesthetics are socially produced "bottom-up." I expose students to online discussions of web design and grassroot design projects such as the Zen Garden and ZeFrank's Ugly Myspace. The idea is to make students recognize, regardless of previous experience or expertise, that everyone can offer a legitimate perspective on design, but that not all perspectives are considered equal.

Because I am a firm believer in web accessibility, I approach web design exclusively through W3C standards-compliance. Although this might be initially more complicated than table-based layouts or WISYWIG editors, it ensures that all student projects will meet strict accessibility requirements. Given recent history (i.e., the Target lawsuit), chances are more corporations will be paying closer attention to web standards.

The class involves a number of team projects since I consider it important to learn how to negotiate aesthetic decisions in a group dynamic. Very rarely will students be given complete control of a project--I cite to students my own work with non-profit organizations as examples. Very often, my designs are influenced by: state regulations, technological proficiency of the group and its constituents, and the different tastes and opinions of boards of directors. Learning how to negotiate these group dynamics, while still maintaining the integrity of one's work, is essential.

The course culminates in a competitive service learning project that I playful call "Project Website" (attempting to echo Bravo channel's popular fashion competition Project Runway). Students work in groups of four to produce a "redesign" for a non-profit organization. The organization then selects their favorite design to serve as their new website. Last semester's project, for the Indiana Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, was particularly successful.

Difficulties Teaching Multimedia Writing

One thing that makes teaching English 419 so difficult to teach is the extreme riff in technological background. When I taught the course in the Spring of 2007, half of the class came from IT backgrounds: majors in computer graphics, information technology, web design, and communications. The rest of the class, however, had little or no background with multimedia technologies (for instance, a group of five meteorology majors signed up for the course to fulfill a requirement and thought it would be better than business writing...). While I am used to teaching diverse backgrounds and skill sets, I had never experienced this degree of bifurcation. It took me a semester of working with this class to handle the situation by really allowing students to set their own goals (which meant evaluating individual projects on a student by student basis) and forming groups that maximized each student’s strengths. I found that technological know-how didn’t necessarily relate to rhetorical proficiency. By mixing and matching student talents, I was able to combine those with technological expertise with students who better understood rhetorical principles and who could create clean and interesting copy.