Date of Award

June 2014

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Writing Program

Advisor(s)

Eileen E. Schell

Second Advisor

Iswari P. Pandey

Keywords

Essayist Literacy, Media Convergence, Multiliteracies, New Media, Remediation, Writing Pedagogy

Subject Categories

Arts and Humanities

Abstract

New Media, Multiliteracies, and the Globalized Classroom contends that changing demographic diversity in American higher education and increasing globalization call for curricular and pedagogical transformation of writing courses. The writing curriculum for "globalized classrooms" should be responsive to the resources students bring with them to the classroom and cultivate in them the multiple literacies--both old and new--needed to successfully navigate an increasingly global workplace and a complexly interwoven world. The scaffolding of students' natural meaning making capacities, and teaching of multiple literacies, such as visual, academic, critical, digital, multimodal, and intercultural, should take place simultaneously in the writing classes for "new literacies are in a synergistic, reciprocal, and constantly evolving relationship with older literacies" (Swenson et al. 357). The interplay of new and old literacies in literate activities in the academy and professions can lead to productive interactions and work. In fact, this study is an experiment with and investigation into how diverse students in a sophomore level writing class in a large research university in the U.S. North East responded to a curriculum and pedagogical approach framed around the idea of multiple literacies. The pilot course drew insights and resources from some closely aligned fields of new media, globalization, World Englishes, intercultural communication, literacy studies, and media studies, exploring and exploiting the potentials these intersecting fields have for improving the practice of teaching writing to a diverse body of students. It took a multiliterate approach to teaching writing in its expanded sense with assignments in multiple media and modes-- alphabetic and digital literacy narratives, rhetorical analysis of a digital artifact (music video, ad, cartoon/movie clip etc.), argument essay, remediation of argument essay into web forms for local and global audiences, collaborative documentary production, blogging, and small group presentations.

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Open Access

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