A New Media University

As we have shown in the comparison between the WPA Council's statement on letteracy goals and new media literacy goals, as well as in the first course/student description, writing a research paper isn't the only possibility for students to learn to think critically and compose a persuasive text with attention to appropriate processes and conventions. Schroeder used oral and written variants of academic literacies, and Sirc used written and (found-)image-based variants to show critical learning.

Below we offer a full-text draft of the WPA Outcomes updated to consider new media literacies. We hope that readers will be able to see the subtle shifts and to use these outcomes for the many kinds of assignments, including written and new media ones, that students produce.

New Media Literacies Outcomes for General-Education Courses

(adopted from WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition)

Rhetorical Knowledge
By the end of first-year composition, students should

• Focus on a purpose
• Respond to the needs of different audiences
• Respond appropriately to different kinds of rhetorical situations
• Use conventions of format and structure appropriate to the rhetorical situation
• Adopt appropriate immediacy, emotion, and interface
• Understand how genres shape interpretation and composition/production
• Compose in several media

Faculty in all programs and departments can build on this preparation by helping students learn

• The main features of composing in their fields
• The main uses of composing in their fields
• The expectations of readers in their fields

Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
By the end of first year composition, students should

• Use composing and interpretation for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating
• Understand a new media assignment as a series of tasks, including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing appropriate primary and secondary materials
• Integrate their own ideas with those of others
• Understand the relationships among modes of communication (i.e., semiotic resources), knowledge, and power

Faculty in all programs and departments can build on this preparation by helping students learn

• The uses of composing as a critical thinking method
• The interactions among critical thinking, critical reading, and composing
• The relationships among modes of communication, knowledge, and power in their fields

Processes
By the end of first year composition, students should

• Be aware that it usually takes multiple drafts to create and complete a successful text
• Develop flexible strategies for generating, revising, and editing
• Understand composing as an open process that permits author–designers to use later invention and re-thinking to revise their work
• Understand the collaborative and social aspects of composing processes
• Learn to critique their own and others' works
• Learn to balance the advantages of relying on others with the responsibility of doing their part
• Use a variety of technologies to address a range of audiences

Faculty in all programs and departments can build on this preparation by helping students learn

• To build final results in stages
• To review work-in-progress in collaborative peer groups for purposes other than editing
• To save revision for later parts of the composition process (after initial, critical thinking through compositional drafts has been done)
• To apply the technologies commonly used to research and communicate within their fields

Knowledge of Conventions
By the end of first year composition, students should

• Learn common formats for different kinds of texts
• Develop comparative knowledge of linear textual and new media conventions, ranging from the linear commonplaces of structure, paragraphing, and mechanics to new media commonplaces of interactivity, space+time, and link
• Practice media-appropriate means of documenting their work (i.e., citations/references or Ping/TrackBacks, tags, etc.)
• Control such surface features as accessibility, usability, ethical designs, syntax, grammar, punctuation, and spelling

Faculty in all programs and departments can build on this preparation by helping students learn

• The conventions of accessibility, usability, ethical design, usage, specialized vocabulary, format, and documentation in their fields
• Strategies through which better understanding and application of media can be achieved

 

In this webtext, we focus on digital new media texts as a way to change the writing-based commonplaces of general-education classes by introducing new media topoi (the components of a text), thus opening Academic Literacy to notions of composing beyond just writing, which can change the way students engage in their learning processes within the university, a new media university. In the next section, we turn to describing how a graduate class—those who will eventually teach first-year composition classes, if they aren't already—can enact similar literacies.

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