The Course Goals and Practices of E110 tell us that students will compose print and digital texts:

“The composition process is more than just putting words on the page or screen. In addition to writing print-based texts, you will also practice composing online, often making use of visual and audio forms.”

And this is exciting work! It represents an opportunity to thoughtfully and purposefully explore a range of textual production and consumption (and in between) with students. But, like all of our course goals and practices, it’s easier said than done.

I (Caitlin Larracey) spoke at the most recent faculty retreat to share tips, tricks, and frameworks behind digital writing. My slides are below.

There are a range of resources throughout the slides to direct your attention to scholarship about digital/multimodal writing, resources about assignments, and assistance with the technological side of it.

I wanted to add here though the insightful points added to our discussion by Alice Boone and David Kim. Alice talked about “playbor,” asking us to consider the platforms students use to write on in the classroom and the monetization of that work (that we often characterize as play). David noted that, though there may be “simple” or “easy” ways to consider digital writing in the classroom, it’s also important to have an understanding of the technologies that you are asking students to use – their interfaces and mechanisms, underlying assumptions and business models.

We welcome more discussion of digital writing in composition and hope these conversations can happen on the blog, in our classrooms, and at future professional development events.