In my pedagogy, I design assignments that encourage students to use technology to engage with and demonstrate their mastery of course material. Below are descriptions of three assignments I use in my courses to evaluate my students. The final assignment description is one I am currently developing for a future course.

INFOGRAPHIC

In a first-year composition course, a final project I like to assign is creating an infographic. It’s important for my students to understand how to use digital technologies to create messages and persuade audiences. The infographic encourages students to take research content that they have already produced during the semester and remediate it into a new format and for a new, digital audience. The assignment also allows students to practice elements of visual design—paying attention to how elements like color, font, and images impact their rhetorical message. I also require students to create a data visualization (graph, chart, map, photograph, etc.) to enhance their infographic’s content. Students learn to use design programs like Adobe Sparks, Canva, or Pictochart to create their infographics and data visualizations. (Click on the images below for links to these programs).

I also ask students to write a short reflection essay in which they describe and justify their creative choices and reflect on their rhetorical effects. The production of the infographic and the reflection help students see how their design choices impact their chosen audience.

VR TECHNOLOGY EXPLORATION

For a literature course focused on Virtual Worlds, I collaborated with Penn State’s IMEX lab to create an assignment that would allow students to use Virtual Reality (VR) technology and reflect on their experience. First, early on in the semester, we visited the IMEX lab as a class where we were introduced to VR technology and its many uses for storytelling. Then, each student could wear the oculus headset to experience a Penn State football halftime show from the middle of the field. After our initial exposure, students were assigned to schedule an appointment to return to the IMEX lab. Once there, students could choose from a range of different experiences (Henry, Oculus First Contact, The Night Café, Google Earth, Multibrush). Finally, I asked students to submit a write up (about 750 words) that described their experience and reflected on a series of questions: their physical and emotional responses, the role of choice and agency, and the role of technology. Then, I asked students to reflect on our course definitions of “virtual world” and how their VR experience replicated, contradicted, or expanded these definitions.

In my students’ reflections, almost all of them expressed their wonder at their experiences and their surprise that technology could create an experience that felt both “real” and “fantastic” at the same time. Many of them shared their excitement for how such technology could be used for different applications in gaming and storytelling that they were eager to see develop. Some of my students even said that after visiting the IMEX lab, the shared about their experience with friends and family. Seeing my students get excited about course material and reflect on the role technology plays in their life was very rewarding.

Below is an example of one student from this course who used the Multibrush to create a three-dimensional drawing.

 

INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES

Adapted from an assignment Camilla Gutiérrez designed for CMLIT 13 in Fall 2020.

Because our Virtual Worlds course material focused on how technology mediates storytelling, our final project allows students to demonstrate what they’ve learned by creating a digital remediation of some of our texts’ content using an interactive narrative creator, Twine.

LEGENDARY ADAPTATION

In my course on Arthurian Literature, we focus on how many of the legends are remediations or adaptations of previous writings. To encourage students to think critically about these adaptions, I assign them to create an adaptation of their own. I work with the staff of Penn State’s Media Commons to introduce students to the many technology resources available through the library. These resources—such as cameras and audio equipment, the One Button Studio, 3D printers, and a range of software for recording video and audio and creating images—allows students to remediate elements of Arthurian legends into new formats. As a semester final, students produce their own adaptation; projects may include academic or creative writing assignments, podcasts, YouTube videos, 3D objects, comic strips, and other art projects. Students can also choose to make a nonlinear narrative using Twine or create a virtual art gallery using artsteps.

In addition to introducing students to a range of resources that I hope will prove useful to them during their time at Penn State, creative projects are also a great way to engage students with the course material and get them thinking critically about it. The podcast project, for example, encourages students to imagine a distinct audience—separate from their instructor—who might consume their material. Students must then adapt their material for this new audience while also thinking about how the oral format impacts how audiences receive their content. For a student creating a virtual art gallery, they must not only justify how they select the materials they display, but they need to create a narrative that ties the material together through the content they include on the museum label and the arrangement. This project also encourages students to reflect on the ethics of display and the importance of material culture, allowing students to engage with course material in a range of ways perhaps not possible through a traditional academic essay.