Writing Across Media (INFO 303/ WRIT 303)
Writing Across Media is an advanced composition course supported by the Center for Writing Studies and Illinois Informatics.
In Writing Across Media (WAM), students explore how to create tools for communicating across multiple forms of media beyond the written or spoken word. As a writing studies course, WAM foregrounds how writing—as an object and a practice—is shaped by multimodal interactions. Combining theory and practice, the course asks questions such as:
- How does one "read" a video game?
- What are the ethics of audio sampling?
- In what ways do gesture and physical space affect how we write?
- What avenues for persuasion and inquiry are afforded by technologies as different as typewriters, word processors, and camera phones?
- For what reasons are our approaches to reading, writing, and making different across physical and digital media?
Student projects in the past have taken the form of remix tracks, photographs, short films, dances, installations, podcasts, Snapchat stories, Twine games, objects from the C-U Community Fab Lab, and much more.
If you're a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and would like to teach Writing Across Media, contact centerforwritingstudies@illinois.edu for details.
Issues in Tutoring Writing (WRIT 300)
Issues in Tutoring Writing serves as an introduction to the work of writing centers, theories of composition, and writing pedagogy through readings, discussion, and observation. Theories of learning, collaborative learning, and the dynamics of the tutoring relationship will be discussed issues of working with specific writers such as English Language Learners will be explored. A relevant issue of interest will become the topic for an extended research paper. As theory is applied to practice, students will write, share their writing with others, and observe and participate in writing tutoring session.
Later in the semester students will consult with writers, either with an experienced consultant or alone. Satisfactory completion of all requirements of the class and approval of the Writers Workshop Director will allow students to submit an application to consult in the Writers Workshop the following semester.
For more information about WRIT 300, contact Writers Workshop director Dr. Carolyn Wisniewski at cwisnie@illinois.edu.