Composing for the Small Screen:Rhetorical Instruction and

Online Video Publics

Elizabeth LoshUniversity of California, Irvine

What writing program administrators can learn looking outside their disciplines

What composition instructors can learn from those who aren’t designated writing faculty

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A Vision of Students Today (2007)

Their Google Doc

(Re)Visions of Students Today (2008)

Improvisation and The Cutting Room Floor

Ethnographies of YouTube

Cutting as Subject Matter:More Work from Wesch’s Students

The YouTube Video Essay

Demonstrating organizational and editing strategies more vividly

Generating highly engaged – and even embodied – forms of rhetoric

Making manifest the dialogic and networked character of the writing situation

Supporting approaches to pedagogy for “inventing the university”

Fostering practices aimed at public writing and semiotic mobility and thus encouraging sensitivity to new questions about authorship and audience

Addressing campus objectives in incorporating visual, multi-modal, or digital rhetorics and literacies and preparing students for public speaking or presentation situations

Connecting everyday vernacular discourse to formalized academic scholarship and the culture of knowledge to the culture of information

Local Upper Division Writing Standards

Critical Thinking & Analysis: The approach to the assigned topic of

study is insightful, and/or creative, persuasive, unique, and worth developing: the level of thinking/analysis is sophisticated; the ideas are clearly communicated with focus and specificity; the topic is considered/discussed from several facets or perspectives; the writer understands discipline-specific methods for producing knowledge; the content seems expertly tailored to the disciplinary audience.

Local Upper Division Writing Standards

Use of Evidence/Research:

Uses evidence appropriately and effectively, with clear understanding of the disciplinary audience’s expectations; considers (if appropriate) the previous knowledge generated within the discipline (e.g. literature review); evidence/sources used to help develop and exemplify overall argument/ purpose of the writer; evidence/sources are clearly and correctly represented and smoothly integrated into writer’s argument/ purpose; correct and appropriate use of citation methods for the disciplinary genre.

Local Upper Division Writing Standards

Development & Structure:

The prose exhibits a clear articulation of the genre/discipline’s methods of organizing written discourse; the organization is apparent, coherent, and contributes to the overall goals; the insightful, specific, focused development of the main purpose/thesis is effectively organized in paragraphs or sections (as appropriate to the genre/discipline); sophisticated transitional relations; the reader is effortlessly guided through the chain or reasoning or progression of ideas.

Local Upper Division Writing Standards

Generic & Disciplinary Conventions:

The writing is styled and eloquent, with an easy flow, rhythm, and cadence; sentences have clear purpose and varied structure; sentences and paragraphing are complex enough to show skill with a wide range of rhetorical, disciplinary, or generic conventions; the writer chooses words for their precise meanings and uses an appropriate level of specificity, illustrating his/her facility with the discipline’s discourse; mechanics (spelling, punctuation, grammar, usage, and paragraphing) enhance overall readability and purpose; almost entirely free of errors, evidence of careful editing and proofreading.

What can be learned about academic writing from non-academic videos

Coming out announcements

Disability rights manifestos

Student investment in writing for social media

“Writing a blog, in some ways, is more difficult than writing a five page paper. For example, with a five page paper we all know the structure and the material that must be included in it. It must have an intro, supporting body paragraphs, and a conclusion. However, with a blog, you must have your own style of writing. If someone wrote a five page paper format on a blog the reader will be bored. I have found blogs to have shorter paragraphs and have more examples. Moreover, most blogs have a lot of hyperlinks to support their examples and sources. Finding these links is more difficult than the traditional five page paper formats. It requires more reading and makes you an expert at the subject. Therefore, I think reading different blogs and writing one is a very important part of improving your writing.”

- Student in Digital Rhetoric class, 2008

But what happens to instructors on camera?

Understandable Skepticism

“Interesting that the future of writing is actually a text-less video.”

- James Kotecki

Elements of traditional composition may become invisible even to the students

“I enjoy how there is a greater emphasis on discussion and understanding rather than researching and essay writing.”

Building in Measurable Metrics for Writing

The Proposal

The Shot List

The Script

Blog Reflections and Reactions

World of Word Counts

Elements of Peer Review

The Luxury of Context

The Challenges

Could raise liability issues if students use copyrighted materials

Could further reliance on stock imagery and popular search terms

Could undermine attention to argument, particularly when content is limited by length, file size, or character count

Could stymie development of alternatives to corporate platforms for online video and risk privacy of students

Could introduce extraneous standards into academic communities of consensus and contract: views vs. grades

Could make assessment nearly impossible, given the explosion of genres: allegory, satire, emblem, etc.

Could deepen the digital divide between what Manuel Castells calls the “interacting” and the “interacted upon”

Six Common Content-Creation Approaches

Text essays read aloud and recorded; video clips, images, text, motion graphics, or music are added to the clips of the speaker’s voice at a later stage of the editing process

“Vlog” formats in which the student reads from a script into a webcam or rehearses elements of the argument through seeming improvisation to foster an appearance of authenticity

Ultimate PowerPoint: still or moving images intercut with pithy student text

Documentary (or mockumentary) compositions

Rock videos (or contrafacta) as personal reflections or public statements

Information visualizations or informational aesthetics.

The Challenges

A Thousand Flowers The 2007 Digital Rhetoric Class

The School of Humanities had created tutorials for iMovie to promote film editing for curricular work.

But students had a range of technical proficiencies and so used iMovie, FinalCut Pro, and MovieMaker for editing their essays.

They also deployed screen capture technologies, machinima with videogame scenes, and animations with Flash and other software programs.

Ironically, a year later, more than half of the students had pulled their video essays off YouTube, even the prize-winning multimedia piece for the campus and other models of student work.

The Challenges

Emerging Consensus The 2008 Digital Rhetoric Class

Most students used similar film editing techniques.

Students were less likely to use resources from support staff.

Students were more likely to turn in proposals, scripts, and shot lists early.

A stronger sense of the genre of the video essay was supported by a web pages with model essays of student and faculty work.

They were also less likely to pull their video essays off YouTube.

The Challenges

Not Digital Generations

2007

2008

Providing Examples like “Facebook World”