How Do I Assign Literacy Narratives?

—I ask my students to use the DALN as a research site before I ask them to consider composing their own literacy narratives in print and/or multimodal forms. I do this to widen their understanding and our discussion of what we mean when we talk about literacy and literacies (writ large). My undergraduate students have historically been far more willing to consider many literacies than my MFA Creative Writing graduate students (at the beginning of the project).

The first assignment focuses on getting a feel for the materials in the DALN and generating a list of questions about what students find there: href=”http://www.cwcon2013.sbmalley.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/DALN-listening-assignment-sbm.pdf”>DALN listening assignment sbm

The second assignment asks student to develop inquiry question about literacies and to use patterns/data from the DALN to say something about their literacy discoveries: href=”http://www.cwcon2013.sbmalley.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/DALN-analysis-assignment-sbm.pdf”>DALN analysis assignment sbm

The third assignment asks students to share their  literacy narratives in both print and multimodal forms. The “profile” assignment for the multimodal piece asks students to articulate the rationale for their composing choices: href=”http://www.cwcon2013.sbmalley.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/literacy_narrative_assignment.pdf”>literacy_narrative_assignment
href=”http://www.cwcon2013.sbmalley.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/multimodal-literacy-narrative.pdf”>multimodal literacy narrative

In my graduate Composition Theory and Praxis class, I ask the MFA Creative Writing students to ONLY present their completed composition in multimodal form. I push them in this way because they are typically very, very comfortable with print and resistant to digital and multimodal “writing.” I also suggest that in composing in unfamiliar modes and spaces, they might appreciate how their first-year writing students may feel when confronted with the print-text production demands in FYW:
href=”http://www.cwcon2013.sbmalley.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/grad-lit-narrative-assignment.pdf”>grad lit narrative assignment

In graduate and undergraduate classes, I ask my students to contribute their work to the title=”DALN” href=”http://daln.osu.edu/” target=”_blank”>DALN. Some of their contributions can by found with the tags cccwr1 and cccctp. (I am still sorting out finding the work when students forget to include the tag)