As part of the eLearning project, I redesigned two of my course assignments to integrate technologies and apply inclusive teaching principles and pedagogical strategies. I added web design component to my “project new media” assignment and video production in the “project space” assignment. Earlier, students blogged on course readings for project new media, and presented paper posters in the project space—two of the three major assignments for my English 113B: Approaches to University Writing course. For the Spring, 2019, though, I redesigned both of these assignments. In the project new media, I asked students to remediate their 8-10 page argument essays into well-designed websites on a specific topic associated with the overarching unit theme instead of just asking them to post blog responses to the assigned course readings. I actually asked each student to design two versions of the website—one for general American public, and the second one targeted specifically to the community of the peer the student in question would be working closely with for the second half of that particular unit. The idea underlying two-version website emanated from various intercultural communication scholars who talk about “local” and “global” audiences and “two-way or multi-way adaptation” of communicative behaviors in interracial or intercultural communicative situations. As far as the project space, I added a group video project component to the assignment mix. Individually, I asked students to compose a 1,000 word analysis essay on how differerent physical and digital spaces (each student chose a physical and a digital space) shape our conception of world, self, and other. As expected in an analysis essay, they made a claim about those spaces, supported their claim with evidence, and drew a logical conclusion following adequate exploration and discussion of issue or questions pertaining to their chosen spaces.Concurrently, I put students in a small group of 3, and asked them to produce a 5-min long video presenting a claim about their chosen physical and digital spaces. Their argument could touch on the question of public and private spacce, the economics and the politics of space, and how we construct 'self,' 'other' and "community" in those spaces. They could also examine the stakes and tensions associated with those spaces. They had to be analytical and critical in their approach to video composition. I asked them to avoild simply comparing the physical with the digital, but rather analyze those spaces using theoretical concepts such as public and private sphere, ownership, privacy, copyright, third space, absolute and abstract space, representation of space and representationall space, and tactics and strategy. So, the underlying idea behind this assignment was to make student reflect on and practise producing differnet media content for different target audiences. Given the different rhetorical situation, including audience, media, and the overall context, students had to completely re-imagine the group project in different terms. They had to craft the language for general public as opposed to academic audience, locate and use diverse media resources (images, videos, audios, graphics, animations etc.), and they also had to explore ways to speak to multiple audiences from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Similarly, they had to find ways to make the text accessible to people with different disabilities, and different language proficiency levels, among other variables. I dedicated multiple class sessions on hands-on practice with the video composing technologies, such as IMovie/Camtasia, captioning, layering audio/video/text/voiceover, and overall video editing for precision, clarity, and accessibility.
