Circulating Multimodal Texts

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Continuing to build on the concept that writing is a social act which encompasses many ways to find, evaluate, create, and distribute messages to audience all over the globe – this unit asks you to either take the information from your Adding to a Conversation research and reconceptualize it for a new audience, purpose, and delivery method or create a multimodal object on a new topic. The goal of Circulating Multimodal Texts is just as it sounds – how can you circulate a message in a conversation that is of interest and/or importance to you? This unit is intended to allow you to dive into composing methods that may be viewed as non-traditional – but are just as vitally important as a standard alphabetic essay.

Unit Goals

  • Engage in the composing process to gain understanding of creating for different modes, media, or genres.
  • Gain experience composing in multiple modes.
  • Explore how composing strategies shift when composing multimodal projects.
  • Tailor multimodal content for a specific purpose and audience of your choice.
  • Explore the ways texts can and do circulate.
  • Cite multiple sources in conventions appropriate for a multimodal genre.

Specific steps in your process for this type of project may vary depending on the parameters set forward for you to achieve. However, you will still follow the steps used in all other projects in the course: generate an idea, draft to develop and try out techniques, get feedback on those drafts, and ultimately make decisions about what the final product should be for your intended audience and purpose.

It can be challenging to select an approach from so many different options. The options shown here give a glimpse at what podcasts, photo essays, social media posts, audio/visual presentations, infographics, and ‘zines may be like when creating in an academic environment – but writing for a more general audience. This unit also provides an opportunity to consider both physical and technological accessibility as you create. You will notice descriptive figure captions and even full descriptive transcripts are provided with different projects to help demonstrate options for keeping all potential reader/viewers of your work in mind. Engaging in writing as a way to participate in your community is exciting – and we hope that you can find something of interest to you for this unit.

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UMass Amherst Writing Program Student Writing Anthology by University of Massachusetts Amherst Writing Program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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