Voices in the Classroom
"Teaching a Visual Rhetoric"
by Caryn Talty M.A.
Northern Illinois University
ctalty15@juno.com

Abstract:

The following pages are a reflection on my technology experiences as a freshman composition instructor. I hope this e-portfolio clearly illustrates the need within our community to apply a solid e-space theory in freshman English composition, one that clearly defines our collaborative goal in regards to visual rhetoric. As a community we must merge our traditional curriculum with the concepts currently used in the electronic marketplace. We are not a separate entity running concurrently with the marketplace, but rather, a separate ends to the same means. In short, I believe electronic media should be viewed as a tool rather than a distraction; it should incorporate academic literacy with visual and hypertextual literacy, creating a new genre of composition studies.


Part One: Learning the technological ropes while teaching a composition course

In my first semester as a freshman composition instructor, feeling a bit overwhelmed, I taught the traditional essay form and collected formal papers from my students on a weekly basis. As the semester wore on and I became more familiar with electronic media, thanks in large part to the resources available at NIU, I decided to offer an extra credit Web assignment for my students. I spent only two class periods talking about electronic spaces, their form and functionality. We surfed and commented on images, links, and text. I was pleased with the response and my students seemed delighted to step away from the traditional essay form. Yet, when they were given the opportunity to design their own Web spaces my students did what I felt was the unthinkable. They did not design their pages by the few electronic samples I had shown them, but instead they designed their Webs to follow the strict parameters of the academy. I was pleased with their unbridled enthusiasm, but their overall bad design practices disturbed me. I had gaudy cartoon images, flashy animations, dark texts against busy dark background images, or no design at all. The idea that the assignment wasn’t actually “graded,” and the notion that they could do whatever they desired, save something completely inappropriate under NIU guidelines, made everyone willing to at least try. But what were they trying to do? Were they applying current marketplace practices or mimicking the rules of the academy? There was no generalization, no carry-over of skills from one genre to another. If we say that what we are really teaching our students is critical analysis and written communication skills, then we fail if we don't teach them to generalize their writing for their specified audience. Electronic writing operates under a different set of rules, offers a new kind of literacy. We must teach our students to both understand and transcend the traditional form, to mold it for the electronic space, thus creating a variant which considers the electronic audience addressed, and his or her expectations as reader/ learner.

RESEARCHING THE SUBJECT...
Today we are seeing an undeniable shift from written rhetoric to visual rhetoric, and we can expect the process to move slowly, but perhaps we should take notice. According to Walter Ong: “histories of the relationship between literature and culture have something to say about the status and behavior of readers” (56). After viewing my initial attempts at incorporating technology after the fact, and doing so without regard for the basic principles of visual rhetoric, it is easy to see why my students failed to meet the mark, and why I left the experience feeling overwhelmed and my students left misguided. Simply put, there was no synthesis between current marketplace practices and what I was teaching in the computer lab. Did my students learn the difference between academic writing and electronic marketplace rhetoric? I don't believe so. Were they able to incorporate elements of both in a cohesive manner? Certainly not.

The Internet calls to question traditional views of audience-addressed writing. “By privileging composing as the main site of instruction,” says John Trimbur, “the teaching of writing has taken up what Karl Marx calls a ‘one-sided’ view of production and thereby has largely erased the cycle that links the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of writing” (190). Trimbur also claims that “in writing instruction delivery has been an afterthought at best, assigned mainly to technical and professional communication and associated largely with such matters of document design as page layout, typography, visual display of information, and Web design” (190). As rhetors, we must redirect our focus to reflect the changing literacies of our readers. Delivery is no longer only for the technical and professional writer; the principles of visual display and Web design need to become transparent aspects of every composition class, regardless of whether or not the instructor has the ability to physically design sites for the Internet.

Part Two: Attempting to control the chaos of the electronic space by creating a template
The following semester I designed a template , hoping this would help make the connection between academic literacy and electronic literacy. I asked my students to add their text, embedded links, and images using Microsoft Frontpage, a WYSIWYG that allows users to design Web sites without actually learning any code. This time I also assigned a grade for their efforts, as the format was very similar to the traditional written style. I believed the added structure was going to alleviate student concerns and the overall chaos of computer lab days. What I discovered, however, surprised me. Their level of enthusiasm was much lower; only the technologically savvy students seemed daring and confident even though I offered a template to guide them. In addition, all of their Web sites were too similar to my example; they were only physical imitations of my form, mere copies lacking any true visual literacy at all. I had taught them little if any principles of visual design, and I did not allow for individual creativity. As a matter of fact, only one student chose to incorporate visual imagery that was not a point-and-click "theme" option in the Frontpage program.

Most importantly, very few students truly understood the concept of audience addressed writing. They were still writing to please the instructor, still imitating what they thought the academy wanted them to say. There was no real connection to the idea that writing is a form of communication, and that the electronic space is a place which evokes a different kind of authorship, one that must incorporate the increasing demands of an empowered reader. 

Despite all my efforts, I had failed again. What was I doing wrong? I continually asked myself hard questions about current practices and how they differed from the electronic marketplace. I knew that visual rhetoric had to be taught in an ongoing fashion, but I also knew that the academy expected students to develop traditional critical writing skills. I knew I had to not only understand the theory behind the practice, but had to develop a practice that was sound, holistic; I decided to bend my traditional practices to incorporate acceptable electronic principles of design. I realized that my students could not write traditional essays in class and then slap them up onto the web at the end of the semester and call that visual rhetoric. Elements of both styles, if they both must be taught, had to be taught concurrently, and well as their varying literacies. I contemplated whether traditional essays could be used as sample texts to be altered for the web during the early part of a semester, and decided that in the future I would just forego the separation of essay and web, and let the electronic portfolio take the place of the traditional written portfolio.

RESEARCHING THE SUBJECT...
Additionally, Phil Anderson and Anne Aronson give reasons why some traditionalists are opposed to incorporating a delivery analysis in their curriculums. They believe the “static, form-centered approach to writing” for which we all are accustomed, contains certain “precepts” that “help to explain why visual images are so marginalized in academic writing” (118). Furthermore, they claim that the current-traditional method only promotes reader-based prose, writing that summarizes disciplinary texts and ignores personal knowledge. They argue that this practice leaves students with the misconceived notion that knowledge is to be read, not discovered or created by the students themselves (119). I agree, and I’d like to add “not visualized” or “conceptualized” through a multimedia presentation. So often students have admitted to making a career of writing “flat” meaningless essays that fit an assignment intellectually but lacked any passion or personal commitment to the particular subject. Anderson and Aronson believe that this autonomous text “is an ideological artifact, not an adequate explanation of what really goes on in writing and reading,” yet they like to point out that it “shapes” our everyday practice of teaching writing. In short, the academic community still privileges the word over the image (119). “The condensed, multi-layered nature of the image is antithetical to the long, linear reach of the academic essay” (120). Anderson and Aronson believe that Blair’s influence on the academy, his “refined taste” and appreciation for canonical literature, has fostered a kind of “intellectual snobbery that continues today within the academy.... The implication is that incorporating visual imagery and design into the academic essay may taint it; it might become something that can be thrown up on the Web next to advertisements for miniature camcorders” (123). 

Part Three: Teaching visual rhetoric as a specific genre of composition studies In the third and final semester of my project, I incorporated the principles of visual rhetoric from the start, making it part of my overall composition class curriculum. This time I created, from the beginning, a completely web-based paperless class. All assignments given, received, and read were either posted to our webboard, a private, controlled online environment, or were part of an overall Web site portfolio project due at the end of the semester. What I discovered amazed me. Rather than develop several incongruent essays on various topics, my students began to think in terms of holistic themes. And the process of writing took on new meaning as Web pages were designed, altered, sometimes even redesigned, to fit into the overall context that my students were building over the course of a semester. The essay was seen as a process, not a product, and designs were constantly tested against different audiences to ensure their effectiveness. Students understood that changes in form were ongoing, that in the electronic space text is constantly mendable, pliable, changeable. In addition, their content was geared toward a more realistic audience than the traditional writing instructor. My ethos faded behind the notion that there was a real audience out there in the electronic space. They were writing for not only their peers, but the general public as well. In short, they had a sense of power and commitment to the task because they had a real voice, and they understood the navigational power of the reader in the electronic space.

RESEARCHING THE SUBJECT...
What does this mean? Well, perhaps we need to consider that the marketplace of electronic discourse communities and our own rhetorical communities are not just separate themes running concurrently in our increasingly technological world, but rather, they are separate ends to the same means. Rhetoric operates much like the birch tree. It is pliant, flexible, often changing its form. The tree will bend in compliance to the wind’s forces just as Bitzer’s rhetorical situation will make a “fitting response,” one firmly established by its situation (10). A birch tree by the sea will often grow crooked, bending its limbs sideways to flow within the force of a constant ocean breeze. It houses living things, seaside birds, insects, and small rodents burrow in the ground near its shade-bearing trunk. The birch tree does not exist separately from the wind, but lives within its environment, establishes itself as a functional member of its ecosystem. This is how we rhetors need to view our roles within our current rhetorical situation. In short, we are the tree and technology is the wind that constantly blows us into shape. How we mold ourselves depends completely on our ever-changing electronic environment, its prevalence in our society, the trends it sets in conjunction with our consumer society.

Perhaps current traditionalists should look at the positive implications of a Web site project which incorporates visual rhetoric. Lanham tells us “in electronic media, readers, writers, producers, and users experience the text as something “bi-stable,” something that oscillates from the transparent to the opaque, from the unself-conscious to the self-conscious, from that which is looked through to that which is looked at” (80-83). In visualized English studies, Stroupe tells us, “writers are ... conscious of the need to resist the traditional impulse to isolate themselves in the cozy kitchen of verbal literacy. [...] Words don’t simply talk to words, but to images, links, horizontal lines—to every feature of the iconographic page” (618). This is the new literacy that surrounds our culture—a literacy that will eventually effect the way composition is taught, making the Harvard School of Thought an antiquated means of writing, because in our society effective writing has and continues to be synonymous with communication. 
    Visual rhetoric is only one aspect of electronic writing that sets it apart from the traditional print text. “Hypertext seems to suggest... a different way of thinking about writing than does the traditional essay form,” Thomas Reynolds explains. “Theorists of hypertext such as George Landow and Jay David Bolter tend to emphasize the associational character of (hypertextual) writing. ‘Connectivity’ of texts and ideas takes precedence over the linear assumptions of print forms” (142). Simply put, the author of a Web site understands that he or she has no control over the depth, breadth, or route a reader will take when viewing his or her site. The control is not in the writer’s words, but with the reader’s choices. This altered attitude about the roles we must play in order to communicate, the considerations we must have about the written and visual word, and the importance of disseminating information in a reader friendly manner makes us better writers.
Part Four: A final reflection

I believe composition instructors must alter traditional attitudes about composition. What are the real-world roles we play in written communication? How do our curriculums reflect what's going on in today's world? Dissemination of information must be reader friendly, and that means visually stimulating, intelligent writing. We can no longer ignore the visual form; it brings added power to the symbols themselves, creating a message with a deeper scope and value in our mainstream society.

In my own teaching experiences I have seen first hand how attitudes must change in order to solicit the right kind of fusion between academic writing and current marketplace practices. There was a striking difference between my attitude about writing in my freshman composition class ten years ago and my attitude about it in the technical writing course I took last year. As a freshman, I struggled to find a topic for which I felt comfortable writing. I knew it had to be of academic quality, and that only my instructor was going to read it outside of the two classmates chosen to be in my peer editing group. The night before the paper was due I knew I had less than the required amount of words, so I did what most students at that age believe is necessary; I stretched what I had to say into longer, clumsier, needless phrases. Years later I learned that brevity is key. The purpose for writing is not to meet a length requirement; it is to communicate ideas in a clear and concise manner. I learned this because I had to write for the Web. It wasn’t practice; it wasn’t meaningless, or without an audience. I had a voice, and it was going to be heard by someone who would ultimately dictate to me whether or not my message was successful.

If principles of visual rhetoric are taught correctly, rather than cheapen the academic essay, the electronic media enhances it, broadens the scope and depth by which the information is presented and disseminated; and if presented within a specially organized discourse community of peers, this form of writing will succeed in fostering a passion for the subject that surpasses the traditional written essay form.

But writing for the Web is only one aspect of visual literacy. Reynolds reminds us that visual literacy incorporates a number of forms that must be considered: online discussion groups, Blogs, MOOs, Web sites, and emails. “Each can teach basic writing in exciting new ways” (Reynolds 135). It is our job as an institution for literacy, to sift through the various electronic forms available, experiment with our various ideologies, come to terms with what works, what doesn’t, what is harmful to our culture, what must be preserved. If we don’t do this, if we ignore the barrage of information on the Web, how it is constructed (or mis-constructed) for common readers, then who will? The wind is blowing—are we going to bend or break?

Works Cited:

Anderson, Phil and Anne Aronson. “Visualizing the Academic Essay,” Questioning
   Authority: Stories Told in School. Ed. Linda Adler-Kassner and Susanmarie Harrington. The U of Michigan P: Ann    
   Arbor, 2001.

Bitzer, Lloyd. “The Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy and Rhetoric , 1:1, 1968. (1-14).

Lanham, Richard A. The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts.
    U of Chicago P, 1993.

Reynolds, Thomas. “Expository Essay Form and the Future of Newer Electronic Forms
    as Academic Expression,” Questioning Authority: Stories Told in School. Ed.
    Linda Adler-Kassner and Susanmarie Harrington. The U of Michigan P: Ann
   Arbor, 2001.

Trimbur, John. “Composition and the Circulation of Writing,” CCC, 52:2, December 2000.

Bibliography:
Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Nostalgic Angels: Rearticulating Hypertext Writing. Ablex
    Publishing Corp: New Jersey, 1997.

Nielson, Jakob. “How Users Read on the Web.” Alertbox. 1 October, 1997.
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Ong, Walter. “The Writer’s Always a Fiction,” Cross Talk in Comp Theory: A Reader.
    Ed. Victor Villanueva, Jr. NCTE: Urbana, 1997.

Selfe, Cynthia. “Technology and Literacy: A Story about the Perils of Not Paying
     Attention” CCC, 50:3. February 1999.

Stroupe, Craig. “Visualizing English: Recognizing the Hybrid Literacy of Visual and
     Verbal Authorship on the Web,” College English , 62:5, May 2000. (607-632).

Taylor, Paul. “Social Epistemic Rhetoric and Chaotic Discourse,” Re-Imagining
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Walker, Janice. “Resisting Resistance: Power and Control in the Technologized
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