Course Info and Goals

Leave a reply

ENG/IMS 224: Digital Writing & Rhetoric

Professor:                              Dr. Lisa Blankenship, Department of English

Class Time & Location:        T R, 10:00-11:20am, BAC 264
Office Hours:                        T R, 11:30-12:30pm, and by appointment                                                                                          (I’ll accommodate your schedule)
Office:                                    Bachelor Hall 376
Office phone:                        513.529.5982
Email:                                     blankel@MiamiOH.edu (The best way to reach me)

Course Syllabus

Required Texts and Materials

  • There is no required text to purchase for this course. All course readings will be available to you digitally (primarily in .pdf format or as .html webtexts) on this course website and through databases on the Miami Libraries’ site.
  • Use of Google Drive to save work.
  • You also must check and use your MyMiami Email Account for course updates and announcements (username@MiamiOH.edu)

Course Overview & Goals

In this writing course, you will explore ways in which writing practices are changing in light of emerging digital technologies. Recognizing that the act of writing can no longer be confined to the production of printed words alone, you will engage in the analysis and production of digital multimodal texts that blend alphabetic, visual, and aural components.  You will learn key rhetorical concepts (e.g., argument, arrangement, appeals, audience, context, delivery, invention) that can guide both the reading and writing of digital multimodal texts. Ultimately, the goals of this course are for you to:

  • Employ fundamental rhetorical principles to analyze the persuasive strategies of digital multimodal web texts
  • Consider critically the unique affordances and constraints of diverse modalities of writing (alphabetic, visual, aural).
  • Identify how digital technologies and contexts influence multimodal writing processes and products.
  • Analyze how digital multimodal genres draw from and remediate older forms of writing.
  • Adapt digital multimodal composing to address audiences’ unique needs, beliefs, experiences, abilities, and aesthetic tastes.
  • Revise writing in light of feedback from peers and learn to give useful feedback to peers.
  • Engage in discussions of the rhetorical effectiveness of various digital multimodal texts
  • Reflect on writing processes for inventing, drafting, and revising digital multimodal texts.
  • Consider the ethical and legal responsibilities of writers in a digital age, particularly when publishing to the World Wide Web.
  • Employ effective practices of design and rhetoric to compose and publish multimodal texts (on the Web) for audiences beyond the classroom.

No prior web authoring or multimedia composing skills required.