Media Theory of Composition - Teaching Methods and Pedagogical Basis

Teaching Methods and Pedagogical Basis

Media theory focuses on the agency that composing in new media can give writers. It is important not to simply add in new media as a problematic addendum to analogue writing; instead, teachers can take advantage of these “new” means by calling students to become both consumers or critics of new media as well as producers, as technology’s role in society becomes ever more prominent. Giving students the resources to take part in discourses around and through new media gives them the power and agency to act in this digital world.

The agency gained through new media composition also provides a basis for social change. Gunther Kress remarks on the potential for teaching design via new media composition in the classroom: Design takes for granted competence in the use of resources, but beyond that it requires the orchestration and remaking of these resources in the services of frameworks and models that express the maker's intentions in shaping the social and cultural environment. While critique looks at the present through the means of past production, design shapes the future through deliberate deployment of representational resources in the designer's interest.

Teachers cite the ease of which students pick up on the techniques of composition and analysis of new media. The visually-saturated and technologically-heavy society of today means that students and writers will need to question the communications and compositions around them as rhetorical moves integral to the culture students live in. Their familiarity with and knowledge of new media often results in positive, conscious appropriation of media, and opens the door for discussions of repurposing within culture. Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin say: No medium today, and certainly no single media event, seems to do its cultural work in isolation from other social and economic forces. What is new about new media comes from the particular ways in which they refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media.

One potentially useful method of teaching composition with media theory in mind is through the use of online classrooms. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and Online Writing Labs (OWLs) are becoming increasingly popular, especially with distance learning. These educational formats also typically deal with analogue texts, but provide technologically-based resources for this composition process via digital feedback and revision techniques.

Media theory has particular potential for teaching basic writers or students whose native language is not English. As a “literacy” that “translates” better across languages and demographics, new media can serve to engage students who were previously uninterested in composition, as well as allow these students to feel like they have more expertise or agency in the composing process. Furthermore, it allows for more creativity and exploration of rhetorical power in composition as students learn the semiotic power of various modes of discourse through technology.