In this course, you will be both reading about and authoring multimedia texts. In order to do so, you will critically analyze and compose within a variety of multimedia genres such as digital stories, web texts, podcasts, movies, digital archives, etc. In addition to learning industry-standard publication and design software such as iMovie, Adobe Creative Cloud, and HTML/CSS coding, you will work with many modes (words, image, sound, hypertext, arrangement) of texts and will produce a variety of products that involve many different media, as well as explore some of the most recent theories regarding the challenges to authorship these types of products invoke. You will investigate the process and the rhetorical consequences of authoring in these digital environments—from conception to publication to distribution. One central theme for this course is that authoring multimedia does not necessarily require the latest technology and software. You will be reading and composing many media that rely on current digital technologies as well as more familiar technologies: the principles you will explore in this course are intended to apply as much to “low-tech” media as they do to “high-tech” media.

Course Objectives

1. Demonstrate an understanding of multimedia concepts such as usability, interactivity, hyper-text, remediation, visual culture, etc., through discussion and the products you create.

2. Demonstrate the ability to design and compose a variety of multimedia products (3) for a variety of audiences.

3. Demonstrate collaborative skills through collaborative projects and presentations.

4. Engage critical scholarship and popular opinion on the role of digital texts through a series of critical blog posts.