Using Multimedia for Instructor Presence in Purposeful Pedagogy-Driven Online Technical Writing Courses

Abstract

Teaching and composing with multimedia humanizes online technical writing and communication classes. However, students do not always see the connection between multimedia instructional materials, multimedia assignments, and the course learning outcomes. Purposeful pedagogy-driven course design uses multimedia instructional materials to connect assignments, course materials, and assessments with course outcomes. Technical writing instructors can integrate synchronous and asynchronous multimedia elements to address not only the what and why of online technical writing instruction but also the how of multimedia instructional materials. Example multimedia instructional materials and student projects discussed in the article can increase student retention and promote engaged learning.

Keywords

online pedagogy technical writing multimedia distance education pedagogy

When we designed and began to teach the Graduate Certificate in Online Writing Instruction (GCOWI) as a part of the Masters in Professional and Technical Writing program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 2015, we agreed that one of the core courses should be multimedia for online instruction (RHET 7372). The online class has been popular in both the certificate program and in our online MA program (as an elective). Alumni from the GCOWI program and from our MA program let us know how they use the skills from this class in jobs ranging from high school advanced placement teacher to lead editor for a major pharmaceutical company to the director of travel for a local university.

The course (and our program in general) emphasizes what Michelle Pacansky-Brock (2017, Location No. 1992) calls “humanizing” online learning, or building relationships between the instructor and students in the online class. Pacansky-Brock (2016, July 15, para. 4) argues that “learning out loud”—a feature of humanizing online learning that brings people’s voice into the course—not only makes online classrooms more accessible for a variety of learners but also improves the relationship between the instructor and the students and among students. In the GCOWI program, we develop that relationship through synchronous video conferencing and meetings, asynchronous video feedback, asynchronous instructional videos (both premade and instructor-made), and through podcast and voice recordings (Skurat Harris & Greer, 2016).

Many universities offer online classes in technical and professional writing, and several universities offer fully online technical writing and communication programs (Hewett & Bourelle, 2017). As online technical writing course offerings grow, so do calls for improving professional development offerings for graduate students and faculty preparing to teach online (Grover et al., 2017). A part of that training, Skurat Harris et al. (2019) argue, should be practice designing and delivering online technical writing courses using purposeful pedagogy-driven design (PPDD) which “creates environments where each reading, activity, assignment, and assessment correlates with the course learning outcomes.” Because online technical writing courses can be text-heavy, and because of the heavy reading load in online writing classes (Hewett, 2015), we argue that multimedia elements in online technical writing classes can not only humanize the online environment but also work as part of a course designed to align course outcomes with assignments and assessments.

In this article, we identify how multimedia instructional materials, projects, and feedback can work together to connect outcomes and pedagogy in online technical writing classes. In doing so, we draw from Hewett’s (2015) feedback model for effective feedback on online writing assignments, or “What, Why, How, Do” (p. 196). We first identify what purposeful pedagogy-driven course design is and its importance for online writing classes. We then articulate why multimedia plays a key role in purposeful pedagogy-driven course design and delivery. We conclude with examples of how we use multimedia to present instruction and encourage students to connect and create using multimedia themselves in our online technical writing classes. Finally, we give resources and practical examples of how to do multimedia assignments in online technical writing courses.

What Is PPDD and Delivery?

Martinez et al. (2019) conducted a survey of U.S.-based online writing students to ask them how they accessed online courses and what they found useful to developing their writing. Sixty-two percent (n = 256) of respondents were enrolled in technical or professional writing service courses. The survey “revealed a disconnect between the intended pedagogical application (as we speculate based on the scholarly literature) and how the tools and activities were perceived—and used—by students regarding the improvement of their writing)” (para. 31). Particular areas of dissatisfaction occurred in social presence elements of online writing classes (i.e., discussion boards, peer review, instructor feedback, and how instructors explained course design). When asked what coursework students found most or least valuable to their learning, students indicated that multimedia elements and discussion boards were least helpful to their learning and that peer review and instructor feedback were most helpful.

As a result of this survey, Skurat Harris et al. (2019) called for online writing instructors to use PPDD as a “framework that emphasizes the role of the teacher in making connections across pedagogical activities to center course design on student learning.” Courses designed using PPDD better integrate elements such as discussion boards and multimedia materials and assignments, implementing specific discussion of and connection to the course learning outcomes for each assignment and assessment in a course.

To reinforce the need for PPDD, Glazier and Skurat Harris (2020) surveyed more than 2000 students at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) to ask them to identify their best and worst classes. Students who identified an online class as their “best” class (n = 223) indicated that the most significant factor in their satisfaction with the classes was course organization and course assignments. Students who identified a face-to-face course as their “best” class (n = 714) rated the instructor’s enthusiasm in the class and their relationship with the instructor as important in their satisfaction with those classes. Those same characteristics were reflected in students’ description of online courses as their “worst” classes (n = 408) and face-to-face classes as their “worst” classes (n = 662). Students who identified online classes as their “worst” classes stated that their primary dissatisfaction with the courses was that the instructor was unavailable or unresponsive (35%), the instructor was unclear about expectations and the purpose of assignments (14%), and that the instructor graded unfairly or subjectively (10%).

Hung and Chou (2014) demonstrated that students primarily viewed the instructor role in online and blended classes as that of a course designer and organizer and technology facilitator rather than as social supporters, discussion facilitators, or assessment designers. This study reinforces the findings of Glazier and Skurat Harris (2020), showing that in online (and blended) classes, the instructor can remain distant and that the activities and assignments in the course can stand in for or represent the instructor in the class. Two reasons for this lack of instructor presence and support might be that instructors feel that being present in online courses is too time consuming (Aquila, 2017; Worley & Tesdell, 2009) and might not always yield significant gains in student grades or course evaluations (Preisman, 2014).

From this and previous research, we conclude that online students can feel less attached to their online instructors and, thus, less engaged in online courses. In fact, the assignments, readings, and course materials in online classes can take the place of instructors, particularly in classes that are heavily text-based and/or classes with little to no instructor participation or feedback. These research results indicate that students see the course readings and assignments as the “instruction” in the online course when the instructor seems or is absent.

We can view these findings in two ways. First, as online technical writing instructors, we must pay close attention to how we design and organize our online courses so that students can clearly navigate them and understand the instructions to effectively complete the course across platforms. To do so, we can use user-centered design principles and usability testing to understand how our students navigate our courses with accessibility in mind (Blythe, 2001; Borgman, 2020; Borgman & Dockter, 2018; Bourelle et al., 2017; Grady & Davis, 2005). One way that we do this in our classes is to ask students to use screen capture video to demonstrate how they navigate our online courses and identify any accessibility or navigation issues they have in the course. We also ask students to show us how they navigate to our classes on their mobile devices. In doing so, we see firsthand the ways that students navigate our online courses, which rarely follow the pathways we intended (see also Miller-Cochran & Rodrigo, 2006).

Second, we need to more directly humanize our online courses so that the instructor becomes a key component of the online community. Garrison et al. (2000) defined a community of inquiry (CoI) as “composed of teachers and students—the key participants in the educational process” which includes “the interaction of three core elements: cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence” (p. 88). Stewart (2017) posits a CoI model of online course design to improve student satisfaction, and she provides examples of how CoI design can be implemented in online classes (Stewart, 2018). CoI integrates social, teaching, and cognitive practices to engage students as learners (Stewart, 2019). The concept of “social presence” (see Whiteside et al., 2017) has also been proposed as a model for foregrounding human presence and interaction in online courses. Despite the efforts of scholars in promoting CoI and social presence models, many online courses continue to be designed around content delivery rather than presence and interaction. Methods such as the CoI model demonstrate the continuing need for instructor presence in online courses, particularly as instructor engagement and participation have been linked to retention in online courses (see Dickinson, 2017; Glazier, 2016) and to increased learning and motivation for online students (Baker, 2010).

Skurat Harris et al. (2019) defined PPDD as follows (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

A Framework for Purposeful Pedagogy-Driven Course Design.

In this framework, the learning outcomes are the center of the course, and the smaller triangles surrounding the outcomes represent elements of the class that students use to meet these outcomes. The arrows around the outside of the large triangle indicate the places where instructors should make connections for the students. For example, instructors can connect course readings and materials to the activities and assignments in the course by directly referencing those readings and materials in the assignment descriptions themselves. Instructors can connect activities and assignments to the writing and feedback they provide by using consistent language in describing the assignments and providing feedback on student writing. Finally, instructors should continually make connections between the readings and materials in the class and the writing and feedback that they provide, which they can do by giving formative and corrective feedback that points directly back to particular readings and/or concepts from the materials in the course and evaluates student work aligned with the criteria in the assignment rubric or the content of the readings and materials (not, say, solely on grammar or organization rather than course outcomes).

The instructor in PPDD is the glue that holds the course together. She facilitates learning by first designing a course where the outcomes, assignments, and assessments all align (unless she is required to use predesigned course shells). She designs the activities and assignments in the course and then leads the students clearly through those assignments and activities. She creates assessments that evaluate only the learning outcomes from the class that were directly taught in an assignment (focusing on one to three outcomes at a time), and she makes connections between activities and assignments in the class as the students move from one assignment sequence to another. In short, PPDD meets students’ needs for instructor presence and engagement in online courses.

Why Does Multimedia Enhance PPDD?

Instructors can (and, we argue, should) purposefully use multimedia to increase presence and engagement in online writing courses and help students make connections between the different elements of an online course. In making this recommendation, we recognize the potentially time-consuming nature of making multimedia instructional resources and in fairly evaluating multimedia projects to connect them with course outcomes. Instructors who are new to creating and using multimedia elements may experience a steep learning curve at first, but with practice, creating videos and other media elements can become as second nature as writing instructional text.

We make a case for incorporating multimedia into online technical writing courses for a number of reasons, primary among them a growing use of mobile devices in online learning. Mobile technologies have changed the way that students create and share content, including content in online courses. Magda and Aslanian (2018) surveyed 1,500 students taking or planning to take online courses. Seventy-nine percent of students indicated that they completed some to all of their online courses on a mobile device, with 38% of those students indicating they completed “most or all” of their online courses with a mobile device (p. 39). Students used mobile devices most frequently to read required materials (51%), communicate with their instructors (51%), access their college’s learning management system (learning management system (LMS); 45%), communicate with other students (44%), and complete research (41%; Magda & Aslanian, 2018, p. 39). In the study of U.S.-based online writing students (Martinez et al., 2019), online writing students most frequently used laptops to complete their online writing assignments, but

use of a mobile phone exceeded use of desktops, tablets, and notebooks, suggesting that the size of the device mattered less than either the convenience factor or the possibility that a mobile device was the only connection the student had with the internet. (n.p.)

A second reason for incorporating multimedia in online technical writing courses is accessibility. The Conference on College Composition and Communication Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction (Committee for Effective Practices in Online Writing Instruction, 2013) identifies inclusivity and accessibility as the umbrella practices under which all other principles fall. Arduser et al. (2011) demonstrated that audio can improve the learning environment and increase social connections in massive open online courses. Multimedia content, including video and auditory materials, helps all students—not just those with visual or auditory issues—to access and process information more clearly (Oswal & Melonçon, 2017).

Third, multimedia materials humanize online classes, allowing students to connect faces and voices to names in their classes. An act as simple as including a photo on an LMS or Google Apps account reminds students that the names in the class are real people. Bourelle et al. (2013) used multimedia learning objects (including video introductions from course facilitators) to engage learners in online first-year composition courses at the University of Arizona, a practice that kept students engaged in larger classes. Cason and Jenkins (2013) identified how online instructors can use multimedia to increase instructional presence in their classes and replicate some of the nonverbal cues that occur in face-to-face classes.

Finally, online technical writing students will increasingly be called on to compose across platforms or for a range of media, including video, social media posts, and multimodal web pages. Carlinger (2000) hailed the shift in technical writing from a document-design model to information-design, which requires that technical writers understand cognitive, physical, and affective design as well as document design (p. 561). Technical writing not only shifted from document-design to information-design; it also replaced a focus on print text to a focus on content management, which Boiko (2005) defines as “the process of collecting, managing, and publishing information to whatever medium you need” (p. xv). Pullman’s and Gu’s (2008) special edition of Technical Communication Quarterly explored the shifts that take place when we address writing as content. Dush (2015) argues that writing studies writ large should embrace that

content is writing—or composed texts—also conceived of as digital assets, conditional in their shape and value, that are assembled within and pushed out to networks, where human and machine audiences will assess them, assign value to them, consume them, appropriate and repurpose them, extract from them, and push them into other networks. (p. 178)

Challenging students to create content in a variety of modes prepares them for the professional world of technical writing, and our own multimedia content in online classes models the type of information-design and content management work that students will make as technical writers.

Given these reasons for using multimedia instructional materials and assignments as part of the online technical writing class, we demonstrate how multimedia enhances a PPDD course by giving specific examples from our own practice and identifying tools that are useful in multimedia composing.

How (and Where) Can Instructors Use Multimedia Effectively in a PPDD Course?

In addition to defining PPDD, Skurat Harris et al. (2019) identified an instructional cycle for a PPDD course (see Figure 2). This instructional cycle identifies four key stages where instructors should connect elements of the online course:

Figure 2.

Purposeful Pedagogy Instructional Cycle.

At the beginning of the assignment (when the instructor connects course outcomes to the assignment description),

As the students complete activities that practice the skills they will use for the assignment (when the instructor connects readings and materials to class activities),

In feedback after students submit a draft of an assignment (when the instructor provides feedback that ties in the course materials), and

After the final draft of an assignment is submitted (when the instructor connects the outcomes of the assignment to the next assignment and/or previous assignments).

In this section, we will add another stage to this process—how the instructor introduces students to the class before the students begin to work—in addition to giving examples of how instructors can use multimodal instructional content at each stage of the purposeful pedagogy instructional cycle.

Welcome Videos to Introduce the Class: The Introductory Video

Instructors can effectively use multimedia in their online technical writing classes before the class begins with introductory videos. Introductory videos can be most effective when they walk students through the course using screencasting technology that can range from free (such as Zoom or Screencast-o-matic) to paid services that allow advanced editing features (Screenflow or Camtasia). Screencasting applications allow instructors to record their screen and themselves at the same time, so students will see the instructor navigating and explaining the online course.

Ideally, welcome or introductory videos should be no more than 5 minutes in length. Dockter (n.d.) creates three separate videos: one to introduce the instructor (5 minutes), one to introduce the assignments (6 minutes), and one to introduce course navigation (3 minutes). Snart (n.d., para. 3) uses welcome videos throughout the course (to introduce weeks or units) but includes a video introducing himself at the beginning of the class to “be more present for my online students so they can see and hear me.” Both Dockter and Snart include examples of their videos and instructions for creating welcome videos as part of their open resource publications.

Instructional video promotes an “ideology of inclusion” which emphasizes the process of participation as the center of course design rather than series of tasks and checklists (Oswal & Melonçon, 2017, p. 73; see also Oswal & Melonçon, 2014). While viewing and hearing yourself on screen might seem painful, students appreciate the direct instruction to help them navigate the course and effectively complete assignments. When creating videos to introduce the course or subsequent assignments, we recommend creating a script for the video and rehearsing the video before recording it (or recording your first pass and then watching that version to improve on a later recording). All videos should be captioned according to the Web Accessibility Initiative (2019) standards, and videos should be stored on a storage system that is easily accessible for students on a range of devices (i.e., YouTube, Vimeo, or Google Drive). The Web Accessibility Initiative website gives examples of how to script online videos to help with captioning.

Synchronous Video Meetings to Facilitate Writing Processes and Assignments

In addition to introducing the course and the instructor, instructors can introduce individual assignments or units through synchronous video conferencing. Video conferencing can be a part of an LMS (Blackboard Collaborate) or a stand-alone application (Zoom, Skype, or Google Hangouts). In our practicum course for the GCOWI, we use synchronous meetings at the beginning of units to (a) connect later assignments to previous assignments, (b) provide a detailed description of how students should complete assignments, (c) demonstrate the technology students will use during the assignment/unit, and (d) describe why students are completing the assignment and how the assignment fits into the course outcomes.

Warnock and Gasiewski (2018) describe synchronous video conferences for online writing workshops from both the professor and the student perspective. Warnock created 15 slides for an online writing workshop and walked students synchronously through the slides to help them revise their writing. This synchronous workshop was an extension and modification of his on-campus practice of walking through the slides and monitoring students as they work on various activities (i.e., finding a section of their assignment that tells instead of shows). Students who cannot meet at the time of the synchronous workshop can view a recording of the workshop and turn in a revised version of their project to show that they “attended” the workshop (pp. 101–102). Gaseiweski, Warnock’s student, stated that the writing workshop helped her grasp what revising meant beyond editing for grammar and punctuation.

In our own online technical writing classes, we use synchronous conferencing with small groups of students as they work through group projects in online classes. Students work together to select a time to conference with the instructor, and we provide instructions (in writing and in video) on how to use our synchronous video system (Zoom, in our case). We use the small-group time to answer questions and review drafts of student work. This small-group synchronous time helps to direct (or redirect) students’ work before they submit a draft of an assignment in the class. Providing formative feedback through synchronous video might seem intimidating, but this feedback is much less time consuming than typing out formative feedback on student projects. Further, these synchronous conferences model the type of virtual collaboration students will encounter in their future work as technical communicators; their familiarity with these communication environments will ease them into their technical writing careers.

Using Screencast Video to Connect Readings and Materials with Class Activities

In our technical writing classes, we use slide decks (e.g., PowerPoint, Google Slides, Keynote) to record screencast videos that connect the what and why of course readings and materials to the how and do of course assignments and activities. In the survey of U.S.-based online writing students (Skurat Harris et al., 2019), a source of frustration from students was a lack of understanding of how readings and videos in the class connected to the assignments that they completed. Students did not always understand why they completed particular readings or how those readings prepared them for the writing they did in the class. In some cases, students needed more explanation from the instructor or wanted to ask questions of their peers who also struggled with the assignment.

Recorded slide presentations can walk students through the connection between the readings and assignments or further explain how students should be applying the readings to their writing, providing audio/visual demonstrations of key course concepts. In her technical writing classes, Heidi uses PowerPoint slides in a screencast video to explain how students should draft paragraphs according to the Point, Example/Evidence, Explanation structure. She describes the concept first in text on the course website and then records a video demonstrating how to compose a Point, Example/Evidence, Explanation paragraph. Thus, students can first read about the concept and then watch the concept in action.

The key to effective slide deck presentations in online classes (and we would argue in general) is to focus on visuals on screen and details in the narration. Alley (n.d., para. 2) provides excellent templates and examples of presentations that focus on an “assertion-evidence” model for engaging presentations. The assertion-evidence model is designed for live presentations, but the principles apply to recorded slide deck videos as well. In his online writing courses, Michael produces instructional videos that walk students through readings to provide models of effective reading and analysis. These videos actively show students how to make mental connections between readings, assignments, and course learning outcomes. These videos include slides that highlight specific quotations or elements of a reading, suggest focal points, elaborate difficult new terms and concepts, and model the cognitive processes of active reading. Student frustration is often a symptom of the difficulty of course materials in themselves and a lack of explicit training in the analytical and cognitive reading strategies that many instructors unknowingly take for granted. Unpacking the complexity of critical reading in a video is one way to guide students toward more engaged reading and to demonstrate for them how to connect readings to other readings as well as to course themes and goals.

Audio/Visual Feedback for Summative Assessment of Student Drafts

Providing audio/visual feedback on student writing might initially seem more time intensive, and until an instructor becomes familiar with the technology for voice and video recording (and adjusts to hearing the sound of her own voice), the process might feel awkward. Anson (2018) reported that students who received screen capture feedback on their papers saw instructors as more engaged and caring. Vincelette and Bostic (2013) reported that screencast feedback “fosters student–teacher communication about writing” (p. 257), and Vincelette (2013) found that “students feel responsibility for their writing and recognize that grading is part of a process involving both students and instructors” (p. 113). Thompson and Lee (2012) found that “student response to [f]eedback was overwhelmingly positive–-and despite technological issues, students preferred this form of engagement to traditional written comments” (n.p.). In short, audiovisual feedback can mitigate some of the disconnect that instructors and students feel in online classes (Gillam & Wooden, 2013).

In our experience, providing screencast or audio feedback works best because students can (a) go over the feedback multiple times, (b) see exactly where in a text the instructor asks for revision, (c) better interpret language that might come across as hostile in written text, especially more directive feedback (Hewett, 2015, p. 184), (d) access the feedback if they have visual impairments or process information better through multiple media, and (e) see the instructor point to particular course readings and activities for examples rather than referring generically back to the course readings. Screencast feedback is best when it is relatively brief (less than 5 minutes) and when the instructor (a) has a plan for what she wants to say in advance, (b) addresses a few major first-order issues in student writing rather than many smaller issues, and (c) includes examples from student text that the instructor reads outloud to connect their feedback explicitly to the criteria for assessment.

Providing audio/video feedback can be intimidating for instructors and initially strange for students who might never have received substantive feedback (much less multimedia feedback). Both Warnock (2008) and Whitehurst (n.d.) provide examples of how to prepare for, record, and disseminate effective screencast feedback in online classes. Not every student might prefer this type of feedback, and not every assignment warrants the time and energy required to record, save, and distribute audio/visual feedback. However, providing this feedback can be one way for an instructor to make connections between the course and the materials and between herself and her students.

Using Recorded Videos for Making Connections Between Assignments

One fruitful place to use video in online classes is between assignments or at the end of a course. Instructors can remind students of the good work they have done on projects, show off excellent student work as models (with student permission, of course), provide guidance on skills the class struggled with to remind students to continue to work on those skills in the next project, and provide encouragement as students begin a new unit.

We recommend that these videos be fairly informal; just as an instructor would go in and talk to a face-to-face class when you hand out papers without following a script, she can hit “record” on a video, be less formal, and use the opportunity to be present for students.

Finally, because students and student texts are at the core of the PPDD course, recorded videos can be a great place for students to reflect on assignments (or at the end of the course) to connect assignments and analyze their own learning. Students can create short screencast videos of their assignment in conjunction with submitting them (to explain the assignment’s strengths and weaknesses before the instructor provides feedback) or after they process the feedback to reflect on the feedback and describe the revisions they made to the project.

Student Multimedia Projects and Assessment

The multimedia principle as defined by Clark and Mayer (2016) says that “people learn better from words and pictures [and sound] than from words alone” (p. 67). While the multimedia principle certainly applies to using multimedia for instruction in the online technical writing course, it applies equally to students’ multimodal texts.

The rationale for why students should compose multimodal texts in composition and technical writing is well documented in approaches theoretical (Bezemer & Kress, 2008) and practical (Rice, 2007; Selfe, 2007; Wysocki et al., 2004). Bourelle et al. (2015) provide a framework for a technical writing class developed around classical rhetorical canons to “advance the rhetorical skills that are developed in conjunction with multimodal communication” (p. 307). And although we tend to think of multimodality in composition as a relatively recent concept (post-1993’s first internet browser), Palmeri (2012) demonstrates that, in fact, composition pedagogies have been using multimedia for composition much of the 20th century.

Multimodal composition enhances the process skills traditionally taught in the technical writing classroom. As Weaver (2018) states

the process of creating a video foregrounds the editing process in a way that composing in writing does not … [students are] aware of making decisions about what parts of [their] raw footage to use, where to make cuts, and how to piece them together. (p. 59)

These skills not only translate to writing but also reinforce user-centered design. Unfortunately, few instructors or students have opportunities to publish their own multimodal work, with the exception of journals such as Kairos and Computers and Composition Online and the Journal of Undergraduate Multimedia Projects (TheJUMP+), and few instructors feel as comfortable composing multimodally as they do in print text. Print text is, and remains, the modality of choice for many academics and researchers, and most students at the university level will not encounter instruction in multimodal composing outside of technical writing and communication classes (Skurat Harris, 2012).

However, the most pressing reason to assign and assess multimodal student projects is not the ways that multimodal projects reinforce rhetorical practices or the increasing need for technical writers to design content rather than write print copy (see Boiko, 2005; Pullman & Gu, 2008). Rather, technical communicators are increasingly called to write for mobile devices. At the very least, students need an understanding of how web content is or is not responsive and accessible and how their deliverables will be accessed on a variety of devices (mobile phone, tablet, laptop, etc.). At best, students will have direct instruction in writing and designing technical content for readers using multiple devices and screen sizes.

Students who increasingly access mobile content in online classrooms will more than likely be familiar with the pain points in consuming information not designed to be mobile-first. Students compose on mobile devices but rarely receive direct instruction on composing for mobile devices. Moore et al. (2016) found that “students used cell phones to compose a variety of genres that they identified as most often composed or most valued (85.8% across all genres)” and “their usage of cell phones jumped when we consider only the genres they compose most often (97.6% for the most often used genre, which is not surprising given that ‘texts (SMS/cell)’ was the most frequently composed genre)” (p. 5). For contrast, “students using notebook or paper, pencil, a word-processing program, email, or wiki technologies are most likely to be using the technology to complete a school assignment” (p. 7). Lea and Jones (2011) study of students’ consumption and production of texts reflects

a need to redefine what is meant by literacy in the university, paying much more attention to the mutability of digital texts, and more specifically, the ways in which students are accessing, reading and integrating these into their study and assessed work. (p. 28)

Many technical writing classes recognize the importance of composing for mobile devices but have not yet fully integrated composing for multidevice users into their technical writing curricula.

For technical writing instructors to effectively teach multimedia composition for a range of devices, they should not only have professional development focusing on how to teach multimedia but also experience composing in multimedia across platforms. Teaching multimedia composition as a subject while composing only print text sends mixed messages to students. Skurat Harris (2009) found that when giving students a choice of media in audience-focused assignments, students might experiment with multimedia composition but revert to traditional print texts when faced with lower grades on those multimedia projects. Students in the study were cognizant that while the class challenged them to compose multimodally, they were expected to demonstrate competence in the mode most privileged by and used by the instructor (particularly in lieu of direct instruction of how to compose multimodally). Instructors thus need to both model and explicitly teach processes for multimodal composition. A text-heavy course website will implicitly privilege text-based composing styles. Commercial sites such as the Digital Marketing Institute (n.d.) provide good guidelines for considering how writing for mobile already relies on good practices for tech writing design.

Teaching students how to compose multimodally need not be an onerous task. As Palmeri (2012) demonstrated, composition practitioners have been teaching multimodal assignments for more than a century. Multimodal composing is now easier than ever with the ubiquity of mobile devices, which allow students to create multimedia projects and upload them to an LMS or other shared learning space. Online resources, such as the webpage of the Teaching and Learning Team at the College of Charleston, provide materials to get started with teaching multimedia projects at all levels, including assignment ideas and class materials.

Basic Student Multimedia Projects in Online Writing Classes

Incorporating low-stakes multimedia assignments at the beginning of online writing classes provides practice with multimedia tools in a relatively safe and easy manner.

The following are the examples of icebreakers and other basic introductory multimedia projects:

Draw a diagram/visual of your writing process. Ask students to represent how they typically write using only visuals (no words). They can draw this on a piece of paper, take a photo of it, and submit it. Or they can use online tools (such as Google Drawings) to create their visuals.

Create a short slide deck that describes your previous writing experience. Ask students to use PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Keynote to create a presentation of no more than 10 slides that describes their experiences with writing. This assignment can be an opportunity to practice Alley’s assertion-evidence model by focusing the slides on visuals and using the notes section to create their text. Students can convert their presentations into PDF files to further practice the tools they will use later in the course.

Post a video introduction of themselves/a concept (under 1 minute). Challenge students to create videos that either introduce themselves or introduce a writing concept or technology with which they are familiar. Students can post these videos as mp4 files in their LMS discussion board or another virtual space.

More Advanced Student Multimedia Projects

Once students become familiar with basic principles of creating multimedia documents, they can complete higher stakes, more complex projects, including collaborative projects and synchronous presentations. Both Micheal and Heidi have undertaken these projects with first-year students through graduate students. These multimedia projects build on the basic skills that students practice through low-stakes assignments earlier in the class.

The following are the examples of more advanced student multimedia projects:

Collaborative composition using cloud-based tools and/or web editors. Ask students to form small teams and create a website or other multimedia teaching aid directed at training colleagues at an organization on how to incorporate effective technical writing practices on the job. Students in previous classes have created short tutorial videos, more complex technical websites, and multimedia training brochures and slide decks for use in face-to-face training.

Synchronous workshops. Students can use any number of synchronous conferencing tools to perform writing workshops on assignments in the class. Students can either schedule time with faculty to participate in the workshops, or they can use screen recording capabilities on most synchronous tools to record the session and upload it for instructor review. Most synchronous video conferencing platforms have mobile apps, so these types of projects also reinforce accessibility requirements.

Social media promotion campaigns. Challenge students to use multiple platforms to promote a particular activity, service, or concept. Students can use infographics, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and websites together to demonstrate how static content (i.e., websites or infographics) is best promoted through social media. Students will need to demonstrate that their materials can be easily accessed and responsive through both laptops and mobile devices.

In the PPDD classroom, the key element is to make connections between these multimedia assignments, the course outcomes, the learning materials, and course assessments. Perhaps most important is providing space and opportunity for students to learn about and practice the tools they will be learning before they are formally assessed on using them. For example, instructors might have informal small group meetings through video conferencing software early in the term (perhaps as an icebreaker) to help students practice using conferencing software before they use that software in workshops or presentations on which they are evaluated.

Conclusions and Further Considerations

Multimedia can be a way to build instructor presence and to facilitate connections in a PPDD course. It is important to view multimedia as a support scaffolding for students and not a way to replicate traditional instructor-centered lecture modes. Simply recording class lectures and posting them in online classes is not an effective way to use multimedia for instruction. Instead, we hope that instructors will be encouraged to use multimedia as the connective tissue that links discrete elements of an online course and helps students see connections.

Multimedia technologies are new and uncomfortable for many instructors who tend to rely on-campus resources for video creation, limiting their creativity and control. We argue that the investment of time and energy required pays off many times over in improved student retention and success. But we also recognize the challenge of doing this well. Many instructors would benefit from extended professional development workshops around the use and delivery of multimedia content and institutional support for developing and incorporating multimedia effectively. Our advice is to start small. Instructors could create a welcome document that incorporates screen capture examples of the online course rather than jumping directly into video production. Resources such as Darby and Lang’s (2019) Small Teaching Online and the Online Literacies Open Resource (2019) provide small, effective starting points for using multimedia to promote student learning.

Multimodal projects provide students practice in composing mobile-friendly deliverables in the media they will use in the workplace. Technical communicators will be composing almost entirely in multimodal and mobile formats in their careers. The era of technical communication as static document design has ended, as Carlinger (2000) predicted, and the new world of mobile-first content management and digital communication is coming into view. Instructors who experiment and embrace a sense of play and a willingness to fail across platforms model the kind of fluid, purpose-driven design that can help students prepare for this rapidly developing technological world.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Heidi Skurat Harris

Author Biographies

Heidi Skurat Harris is an associate professor of Rhetoric and Writing and the coordinator of the Graduate Program in Professional and Technical Writing and the Graduate Certificate in Online Writing Instruction at the University of Arkansas--Little Rock. Dr. Harris currently teaches online writing instruction, technical writing, creative nonfiction, and rhetorical theory at UALR. Her publications focus primarily on research and theory related to online writing instruction, including online writing program development, online faculty professional development, and online student retention.

Michael Greer is a lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and he has been teaching online for eleven years. He teaches courses in technical communication, writing for publication, multimedia for online instruction, and the history of the book in the Professional and Technical Writing program. Michael is co-author of the bestselling Little, Brown Handbook series, published by Pearson.

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