In the Beginning…

When I signed up for Digital Rhetoric, I didn’t really know what to expect. I’d taken rhetoric classes before but always finished out the semester with a shaky understanding of what rhetoric actually is. I predicted the class would be filled with boring academic articles that are impossible for the average person to read and long research papers/essays. While I wasn’t necessarily wrong about the academic articles, I was completely wrong about the research papers and essays; there weren’t any. All the big grades in the class would be projects—unconventional ones that give the student large amounts of freedom. With a pleasantly surprising syllabus day behind me, it was time to move onto the class itself.

On the second day of class we started building websites. Yes, our own fully functional live websites. Yes, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to build one too. Building a website is actually way easier than I expected, and it’s likely way easier than you expect. There’s no coding or technical knowledge required. If you can make a PowerPoint, you can build a website. Your website in this class will effectively be your D2L—most of the assignments you submit will be posts on your website. 

Once our websites were built, it was time to move on to the subject matter itself, digital rhetoric. This is the point where the academic articles were introduced and became a focus of the class. 

Onward to Academia

This is the part of the class I was dreading. Long articles that I can’t comprehend. Great. Don’t worry though, these articles aren’t quite as intimidating as most academic articles. The language can be complicated, but the ideas discussed are actually relatively easy to grasp for people well versed in the digital space. The concepts discussed are also incredibly relevant to our modern lives which makes them easier to understand.

The first article we discussed was Douglass Eyman’s Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice. In it, Eyman evaluates digital rhetoric, what it is, and what it means in our lives. I discuss the meaning of many of the terms he uses in this blog post. Basically, digital rhetoric is applying traditional rhetorical analysis to digital texts. Digital texts can be anything. Blogs, YouTube videos, Tweets, memes, etc. In this blog post I discussed videos I found that helped me gain a broader understanding of what digital rhetoric is. The TedTalk about memes was one of the more helpful videos I found, as the subject matter made it less academic and easier to relate to. Eyman also touches on the idea of digital literacy, a concept that is discussed more in depth in later articles. Digital literacy is the idea that traditional literacy, reading and writing, isn’t enough to be literate in a modern world that relies on technology as much as we do. This leads to the concept of multiliteracies.

The next articles we looked at were Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis’ Multiliteracies: The Beginning of an Idea and A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures by The New London Group.. As the titles imply, these articles focus on the concept of multiliteracy. I discusses this term and others more in depth here. The concept of multiliteracy is relatively easy to understand. Digital literacy as discussed previously establishes the need for a broader understanding of what literacy itself is—moving beyond just pen and paper. Multiliteracy takes that a step further and proposes that we need a variety of literacies, not just traditional literacy or digital literacy. Think of it as all the things you need to know to function, especially as a writer, in the modern world; you need to be able to make a PowerPoint, research the internet, edit videos, make videos, design a website, post on social media, design digital ads, etc. These are all types of skills (literacies) that aren’t covered under the umbrella of traditional literacy. If you’re still struggling with the concept, I discussed videos I found that helped me understand it better this post. Understanding multiliteracy is very important to the class, especially considering all of the articles after this deal directly with the concept.

At this point, I’d been exposed digital literacy and multiliteracy. I wasn’t really expecting for the next article to be about another form of literacy, but it was. This time, visual literacy. The third article, From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing by Diana George, I discussed in this post. The article is focused on the importance of visual communication in teaching. I think the importance and usefulness of visual communication is best understood through an anecdote in the beginning of the article, where a teacher is able to explain a concept via overlayed maps that would have been near impossible to explain with words. This emphasis on visual teaching makes sense for most of us, which makes it easier to understand. Have you ever been in a class where the concept just didn’t make sense in the book, but then you see a diagram that brings it all together? That’s the power of visual communication. Something else George discusses that’s important is the idea of design. I go in depth on the term here, but the idea is relatively simple. Design is the way thinks look and how they’re arranged. Think about how a webpage is set up, or how a YouTube video looks on the screen. George proposes that design should be taught in connection with writing, which makes sense since in the digital age, all of our written works have to be designed for their visual format.

Halfway There

At this point, we’re halfway through the readings (so far). By this point in the class I was a little overwhelmed by the reading. The concepts are relatively easy to grasp, but they’re hard to fully understand. Thankfully, fully understanding these concepts isn’t the point of the class. There aren’t any tests on whether or not you truly grasp what multiliteracy is or where it comes from. The important is that you’re able to relate to these concepts and put them into context in the real world. A functional use of these concepts, just like I’m doing while typing this blog, is the goal of the class. With that in mind, let’s move onto the next text.

Our next article was Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key by Kathleen Blake Yancey. This article deals further with the concept of multiliteracy, but it puts a different twist on it. One of the ideas that made the most sense to me was that different styles of writing are just different genres, like music. Email writing and technical report writing are as different from each other as jazz and metal music. Yancey then points out that because of the speed of our technological advances, new genres of writing are being created constantly. I talk more in depth about this here in this blog post. Essentially, Yancey is making the argument that all of these genres of writing are actually different literacies and that we as a society need a more complete understanding of literacy. Does that sound familiar? It should, because that’s multiliteracy. If you’re still confused on some of the terms being used, check out this post.

Our last reading at the moment I’m typing was The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing by Cynthia Selfe. Again, this reading ties back into multiliteracy, the concept that seems to be dominant throughout the whole class. Selfe’s main idea is that we as a society cannot afford to keep valuing only written composition and that we need to expand our idea of literacy and composition, specifically to include more aural/auditory elements. This is something I discuss in more depth here and here. She argues that in restricting aural composition we exclude groups who predominantly use oral traditions, as well as those who prefer aural composition or learning. This concept is no different than the previous discussions of multiliteracy; our world is increasingly complex and diverse, and as a result, we need to update our concept of literacy and broaden it to be more inclusive.

In Conclusion… I Hope I Helped

Now that this guide is coming to a close, I’d like to thank you for visiting my site and reading this guide. I hope I was able to help in some way, even if that was just by taking away some stress and anxiety about the class. There’s nothing to fear in Digital Rhetoric. It’s actually a much more enjoyable class than I expected. Even though the academic readings can be dense, the topics are interesting and engaging. The technological focus of the course and freedom heavy projects make the class practical, the kind of class you’ll be glad you took.