Multimodal Composition

Boston College | First-Year Writing Seminar | Spring 2024

Course Description

Multimodal compositions are understood as “texts that exceed the alphabetic and may include still and moving images, animations, color, words, music and sound” (Takayoshi & Selfe). 

This First-Year Seminar is designed for students who are looking for a flexible, self-directed course that gives you practice composing in different situations and with different technologies. By the end of the course, you’ll have completed several individualized projects and leave with a firm grasp of what it means to read and compose rhetorically. This means that no matter your major or ultimate career trajectory, you’ll leave this course equipped with the skills to approach any writing task. 

This course is student-centered, collaborative, and studio-based. This means that your engagement is not only crucial for your own learning and development as a writer, but key to the course’s success overall. If you’ve never participated in a workshop or studio-based course before, the type of learning that this course requires might feel a bit different at first— there will be minimal teacher-directed discussion so that the bulk of our time together can be focused on your work— individually and in community with one another.

Course Design

The course was divided into seven different modules, each with a corresponding digital badge. Four of the badges were required (Foundations, Formalized Curiosity, Remix, and Digital Portfolio). Three of the badges were optional (DIY Literacy, Multimodal Mapping, and Choose Your Own Composition). Each badge was divided into three levels of activity, increasing in difficulty with each level. The number of badges completed correlated to a certain grade in the course:

F = 1 or no required badges completed

D= 2 -3 required badges completed

C = 4 required badges completed

B = 4 required + 1 optional badge completed

A = 4 required + 2 optional badges completed

To view the public issuer site for all badges, please visit this page.

To view the earning criteria for each badge, please visit this page.

  • Foundations Badge

    To earn this badge, students must complete a number of activities to orient them to the course and make an individual plan for their badge completion.

  • Formalized Curiosity Badge

    Inspired by Zora Neal Hurston’s claim that “research is formalized curiosity,” this badge requires students to demonstrate proficiency with BC Libraries’ Core Skills and to contribute academic research to a collaboratively produced Google Site.

  • Remix Badge

    To earn this badge, students must either remediate or remix a piece of composition, considering how the various rhetorical elements involved in the creation of the composition influence and shape one another.

  • Digital Portfolio Badge

    To earn this badge, students must create a digital portfolio that combines the work they’ve done for the course with reflections on their products and process.

  • DIY Literacy

    To earn this badge, students explore what it means to be “literate” and how to go about learning a new “literacy” by engaging with BC’s campus Makerspace, The Hatchery. After completing The Hatchery’s orientation and trainings of their own choosing, students create something new and then write a literacy narrative describing the literacy they developed through this experience.

  • Multimodal Mapping

    To earn this badge, students create a digital map that includes multiple modes (photos, audio files, text) of a physical location.

  • Choose Your Own Composition

    To earn this badge, students develop a project plan to create a multimodal composition of their own choice.