Writing for Interactive Media
To
a large degree, the "genres" assigned to students in the Writing for
Interactive Media class at Johnson County Community College were defined by Best
Buy rather than rhetorical or computer consensus. As a career course, this class
was developed with the charge that the assignments should relate to Interactive
Media as it was being produced and used throughout the economy -- which meant
that web pages were only the tip of the ice berg.
In
the interactive media class, students work on five different projects. The
instructional apparatus and materials are drawn from disciplines like
composition, creative writing, technical writing, advertising/public relations,
broadcast journalism, linguistics, graphic design, and logic (the current
textbook is Domenic Stansberry's inventive Labyrinths: The Art of Interactive Writing and Design, Content Development for New Media). The projects were
selected with the help of JCCC’s CIM task force, which is comprised of
professionals working in the field as well as instructors from computer science
(technology and applications specialists), communication design, business
administration, photography, music, and journalism. This variety of primary
expertise is, by the way, very reflective of the students who take the class --
some have advanced degrees in the arts, but are struggling with their first
programming classes; others dream in code, but dread the thought of being
responsible for or asked to contribute content.
The task force’s guidelines for the Writing for Interactive Media class
(an elective in their certificate program) specified that the course should
cover a various means of delivery, including the world-wide web, educational
and entertainment CD’s, computer documentation, and kiosks. JCCC’s English
program’s guidelines for writing courses emphasize process-orientation,
rhetorical instruction, appropriate research skills, and critical and
evaluative thinking. With
the guidance of the task force and the braver of my composition colleagues,
the many Interactive software applications on the were sorted into major
"assignment" categories based on the kind of experience the
reader was seeking out and how and when the user interacted with the media.
From there, it was just a matter of designing the assignments and facing
the unique challenges of writing for an interactive media.
Writing for Interactive
Media Assignments