Freshman or introductory rhetoric and composition courses are the cornerstone of virtually any writing program (as they should be), and thus my experience with developing pedagogical materials starts here. I began teaching in Penn State’s ENGL 15 course, entitled Rhetoric and Composition. After two semesters of teaching the program’s default syllabus, instructors are allowed to design a syllabus of their own within programmatic constraints like learning objectives, number and depth of assignments, and grading standards. This syllabus was developed for the Fall 2023 semester with attention to conventional genres like the literacy narrative and the position, but also to genres that foreground digital technology like the ad analysis and, most importantly, the multimodal project.
In my conception of the course in conjunction with my teaching philosophy, I wanted to highlight the ways in which students can use their rhetoric and composition skills both inside and outside the classroom. One way I went about integrating this goal into the syllabus is in how I emphasized the development of a writing process that students could then use in any other writing context. Further, I used digital tools like Google Forms, Google Docs, Canvas discussion boards, YouTube videos, and more to facilitate day-to-day instruction. Relatedly, I often applied rhetorical strategies to common writing exercises like email writing and skim reading. Perhaps most obviously, the course’s final project, the multimodal project, encouraged students to apply the rhetorical skills they had been developing all semester to a medium of their choice that was more than just text on a page. Students chose mediums from PowerPoints, infographics, podcasts, TikToks, and Instagrams, and in doing so, they had to reflexively explain how they saw their multimodal compositions utilizing some of the same skills they used in their writing. Altogether, this version of ENGL 15 was designed to be additive to Penn State’s core course while being more finely attuned to digital technologies that students seem to respond well to as well as will likely need to know how to use and use well in their day-to-day lives.
Below is my spin on Penn State’s ENGL 15 course description and syllabus.
ENGL 15 is an intensive, rhetorically and digitally based experience in reading and writing that will prepare students to both understand the communications that surrounds them and to succeed in their communication efforts. Thus, in this course, we will focus specifically on analyzing verbal and visual texts (our reading) as well as on producing such texts (our writing), always in terms of rhetorical principles. This course will emphasize improving students’ rhetorical literacy, critical literacy, and functional literacy, as describe in Stuart Selber’s concept of multiliteracies (Multiliteracies for a Digital Age).
The goal of ENGL 15, then, is to help students build on what they already know how to do as they become more confident readers and writers in this ever increasingly digital world. Students will become more attuned to their goals as a writer, more aware of the ongoing conversation surrounding chosen topics, and more resourceful in terms of the appropriate delivery of information, the rhetorical appeals at their disposal, and the needs and expectations of their audience. Students will also learn to research and synthesize multiple outside sources in order to support your arguments effectively and ethically. Finally, students will apply these literacies in their compositions in a variety of mediums in order to participate more skillfully in both professional and personal spheres.
Altogether, by the end of the course, students will be able to critically assess the rhetoric of other texts, to develop thoughtfully constructed texts of their own, and to apply these skills to genres that they will encounter both inside and outside the university.
Ash Mayes 