One of the easiest ways to bring digital literacy and digital creativity into the classroom is by taking an existing assignment and simply asking students to complete that assignment by using an alternative media platform. Meaning, instructors might take a mid-term quiz or a reflective writing assignment and swap the platform: e.g., asking students to work in Adobe Spark or create a video via Adobe Rush (among others) instead of writing a paper in Microsoft Word. By doing this, instructors open the productive elements of the course to an increased array of student capacities of expression, which invites students to think about the task, the challenge, or the project in a completely different way. By swapping the platform, the root orientation changes for students. Which is to say, for a variety of reason textual assignments and quizzes have, unfortunately, become reductively aligned with proof of learning and grade assessment, but a rich media project (whether scrolling Spark narrative, interactive webtext, or video essay, among other choices) shifts the focus toward (a) engagement with course content, (b) the practices of representing one’s thinking in and through different modes, and (c) conveying ideas and understanding across media.
The easy part, of course, is merely swapping the platforms (e.g., shifting from essay to Spark page). The hard part is figuring out how to handle this in practice and how to situate it for the students. One can, in fact, just make the swap without any other changes and see what happens, working in what might be situated as a reactionary approach. This can be a positive maneuver in many ways as each course, assignment, platform choice, and the like will yield different kinds of outputs from students. But a reactionary approach does require a certain level of flexibility on the part of the instructor and, more importantly, requires a lot of upfront conversations with the students so they understand that the project, its value, and its assessment are organic and ecological in their development. I have done this more than couple of times, particularly with new modes of engagement, experimental activities, or when having more open-ended assignments; and I have developed a set of strategies for this approach (which can be viewed here: Open-Ended Assignment). But even without having a set of experiences to lean on, one can adopt this reactionary approach and work with the students (in conversation and creation) to enhance the content engagement in the class and to achieve course goals.
Most people, however, need a bit more guidance than just swapping the platform and seeing what happens. For those in this category, I offer the following considerations: low-stakes learning and altering expectations.
Low-stakes Learning
First, instructors should have students begin working in the platform with low-stakes activities. This will allow both the instructor and the students to adjust. For example, instructors might have students provide a summary of a course reading via video post (e.g., vlog) or, using Spark page, have students create a critical analysis of or even a critical response to a course artifact. These introductory activities work best, in my experience, as completion assignments with instructor-selected requirements (or, as I prefer to call them, obstructions). By taking a low-stakes approach and setting a required number of digital elements or techniques appropriate to the platform, instructors can ensure (1) that students gain some familiarity with the platform and working in other media as a matter of process, (2) that they engage in course content in altered ways before they attempt such things for a larger percentage of the course grade, and (3) that the learn/possess the basic technical skills necessary for the targeted platform.
- The latter considerations here are important and build on Froebel's (fractal) learning principles as well as the learning techniques central to video games: teaching, via situated learning, the basic maneuvers that will be central to the more complex assignment engagements that come later. For example, one of my favorite activities as a way of helping familiarize students with the Adobe Spark suite is to have them work, in-class, to create Spark Posts that offer (critical/insightful) visualizations of key course concepts (from readings, discussions, etc.). I do this in many ways: sometimes the students can only use one or two words in their visual creations, others they can use an entire quote, and in still other iterations I have them write a haiku with their post. Once they are done with their making/learning activity, we share them as a class, and the students (in groups or individually) take turns presenting their image and discussing how/what it demonstrates or represents. In so doing, the students learn the basic techniques of working with the Adobe Spark suite, but do so while engaging course content. (It is also worth nothing that I employ this in my more advanced digital writing classes as well, but in place of Spark Post, I have the students work in Photoshop).
One additional dynamic to consider in this low-stakes orientation is in relation to the platform swap itself. That is, if an instructor is completely new to digital media work, I encourage them to start with the Adobe Spark suite. It has an incredibly low learning curve and requires very little (if any) trouble shooting. In this sense, then, an instructor might start by swapping an essay assignment with an Adobe Spark page creation. Then, later in the course or even the next semester, try the platform swap with more complex media practices: e.g., have the students create videos or make podcasts or produce interactive training media (web, video, or otherwise). Which is to say, while I am all for jumping right into the thick of things, experience has taught me that working up in complexity tends to produce more sustainable results.
Altering Expectations
Second, whenever we switch to new modes and new means of mediation, we must also alter our expectations and augment our assessment practices. For example, a webtext version of an essay assignment does not merely yield a more visually oriented essay; and thinking in this way ignores the rich complexities of webtext representation (visual, hypertextual, and the like) (see Brooke, Lingua Fracta: Toward a Rhetoric of New Media). Which is to say, webtexts (whether scrolling Spark pages or otherwise) are not inherently geared toward the production of “the essay,” nor should they be. This is not to say that webtexts cannot be essays, but rather that the affordances of the media come to bear on far more than just visual representation. Thus, when going into a platform swap approach for the first time, instructors need to be willing to move off standard assessment practices and assignment expectations and open themselves to what the students are actually saying, how they are saying it, and the different ways in which those creations demonstrate an engagement and understanding of course content.
Or, put another way, people (instructors) should try to avoid evaluating the quality of a steak (student media creation) based on how much it looks, tastes, and behaves like the soup (traditional paper) that they had last semester.
While the Platform Swap is a simple maneuver, it should provide exposure with measured expectation. Even when done poorly, it at least provides students with an alternative mode of engagement with course content. But when done well, it fosters positive associations with digital writing/making practices, which can increase student success in future activities that require more and more levels of sophistication with digital media/digital creativity.
Credits:
Created with images by NeuPaddy - "subway person man" • GulArt - "present offer show" • Paul Hanaoka - "untitled image"