Blaine E. Smith , Amanda Yoshiko Shimizu , Sarah K. Burriss , Melanie Hundley , Emily Pendergrass
{"title":"Multimodal composing with generative AI: Examining preservice teachers’ processes and perspectives","authors":"Blaine E. Smith , Amanda Yoshiko Shimizu , Sarah K. Burriss , Melanie Hundley , Emily Pendergrass","doi":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102896","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102896","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The question of how generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) will reshape communication is causing questions and concerns across the field of education, particular literacy and writing classrooms. Although important questions have surfaced surrounding the varied effects on writing instruction and ethical implications of AI in the classroom, there are calls for deeper investigations about how these tools might shape multimodal composing processes. This study builds upon this developing field by exploring how 21 university students in literacy education courses multimodally composed with generative AI and their perspectives on the use of AI in the classroom. Data sources included screen capture and video observations, design interviews, pre- and post- surveys, and multimodal products. Through qualitative and multimodal analysis, four main themes emerged for understanding preservice teachers’ multimodal composing processes: (1) composing was an iterative process of prompting guided by the AI tools, (2) composers exhibited two distinct processes when designing their projects, (3) AI shaped creative possibilities, and (4) play, humor, and surprise served a key function while composing. Preservice teachers’ perspectives also revealed insights into how AI shaped engagement with content, the importance of scaffolding AI in the classroom, and how ethics were intertwined with technical function and teaching beliefs.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":35773,"journal":{"name":"Computers and Composition","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 102896"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143159624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From multimodal space to digital multimodal text: Making choices in digital multimodal compositions inspired by museum visits in higher education","authors":"Nóra Wünsch-Nagy","doi":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102909","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102909","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Access to generative artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed the pedagogical and creative potential of digital practices in multimodal pedagogies, and more specifically, digital multimodal compositions (DMC). This study aims to explore and understand choices in a DMC project from the perspectives of student experiences and the teacher's pedagogical practices including learning design, assessment, and the integration of AI in the context of a semester-long university course. To answer these questions, the case study presents the analysis of the teacher's choices in terms of course design, and scaffolding and assessment practices. It also explores the challenges students face through the analysis of their pre- and post-course questionnaires, digital multimodal composition artefacts and reflective notes. The study makes suggestions in terms of pedagogical sequences to support students’ choice-making, and the integration of semiotic software and generative AI tools into DMC projects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":35773,"journal":{"name":"Computers and Composition","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 102909"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143159073","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Flexible use: Tracing technological propositions through an educational ecology","authors":"Jeanne Dutton","doi":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102907","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102907","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>To stave off extinction, many Small Liberal Arts Colleges (SLACs) have undertaken dramatic initiatives—often scripted by outside consultants—to bolster their financial solvency, increase their enrollment, excite donor interest, and revitalize their pedagogy, Writing Scholars like Overstreet (2022) and Devoss, Cushman and Grabill (2005) have called for more fine-grained analysis of the sites of Higher Education and the changes that occur in how they teach and engage in the activity of writing and composition. Though multiple studies have measured the efficacy of a newly introduced technological systems of practice to improve writing, much less research has gone into understanding the compositional design of what ‘good’ represents or how value may skew toward the various ideologies that support other stakeholders in addition to the implementing entity. Writing technologies, measured by the criteria of the very literacies which they enact (digital proficiency determining the value of digital tools, for example, mobile proficiency determining the value of mobile tools) often introduce cycles of spending in SLACs which compel them to re-invest in simulacrums of the externally defined modern or good even as the internal struggles that justify spending remain consistent and problematic. This study, borrowing from the spatial analysis of scholars like Pigg (2014) and genre studies of Spinuzzi (2003), looks at how the propositions of a 1:1 technology initiative cut across a local community and were shared, lived, and governed collectively to see the multimodal whole of a community plan to create innovation and improve their social condition.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":35773,"journal":{"name":"Computers and Composition","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 102907"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143159074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hem Lal Pandey , Purna Chandra Bhusal , Sanjeev Niraula
{"title":"Large language models and digital multimodal composition in the first-year composition classrooms: An encroachment and/or enhancement dilemma","authors":"Hem Lal Pandey , Purna Chandra Bhusal , Sanjeev Niraula","doi":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102892","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102892","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines the perspectives of twenty-five First-Year Composition (FYC) instructors on the impact of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Digital Multimodal Composition (DMC) in FYC classrooms. The primary objectives are to assess instructors' views on the effects of LLMs like ChatGPT on FYC pedagogy and to explore how DMC can be brought into conversation within these impacts. Employing qualitative surveys with open-ended questions, the study collected, coded, and thematized the data, generating three major key themes: creativity, plagiarism, and DMC engagement. The FYC instructors' perspectives and observations indicate that LLMs have both encroaching and enhancing effects on FYC classrooms, wherein DMC may be a potential tool to attenuate the negative impacts of LLMs by fostering student engagement. This study highlights the complex, dilemmatic perspectives of FYC instructors and underscores the urgent need for LLM and DMC literacy to advance FYC pedagogy in the context of technological advancements.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":35773,"journal":{"name":"Computers and Composition","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 102892"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143159076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Equitable writing classrooms and programs in the shadow of AI","authors":"Megan McIntyre","doi":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102908","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102908","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Each year, in TA orientation, in the practicum course, and in professional development sessions, I ask TAs and instructors to consider what is, for me, the key question at the heart of our work as writing teachers: what do we owe our students? And a related and equally important question: what do we owe ourselves? In 2024, just over two years into the public existence of OpenAI's ChatGPT, the contexts for these questions are perhaps more complicated than ever, but I think the answers are mostly the same: we owe our students equitable classrooms, space to try and to fail, compassion and care, and authentic engagement. We owe them the rights our discipline affirmed almost fifty years ago when CCCC adopted Students’ Right to Their Own Language as the official position of the largest organization of writing teachers in the world. This article reviews an approach to the current Generative AI moment that is rooted in these commitments and reflects an approach I call “informed refusal,” which allows us to acknowledge the existence of generative AI without requiring students to use generative AI products. We can continue to teach critical literacies and attend to the things that make first-year writing classrooms unique, especially our attention to individualized feedback on students’ writing and our attention to helping students build self-efficacy via sustainable writing processes and reflective habits of mind. At the same time, I argue against the adoption of detectors and other writing surveillance technologies because of the ways that such tools reinforce overly simplistic notions of plagiarism (Moore-Howard) and can harm our relationships with students.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":35773,"journal":{"name":"Computers and Composition","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 102908"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143159075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Daniel Libertz, Kamal Belmihoub, Constantin Schreiber, Lisa Blankenship
{"title":"Preparing for a new paradigm: A mixed-methods study of student experience in on-site, hybrid, and online writing courses","authors":"Daniel Libertz, Kamal Belmihoub, Constantin Schreiber, Lisa Blankenship","doi":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102904","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102904","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly all students have had some kind of experience with modalities beyond traditional, on-site teaching. We wanted to study how first-year writing students experienced different modalities (i.e., on-site, hybrid, and online) to learn more about how best to support students and faculty in the future. This paper presents results of a mixed-methods study investigating differences in first-year writing student levels of confusion, satisfaction with social interaction, and preferences for modality in learning about writing. We found significant differences (with mostly small effects and some medium and large effects) in lower levels of confusion and higher satisfaction with social interaction in on-site classes relative to hybrid and online classes. We also found that students preferred a modality for a writing class for different and sophisticated reasons. On the basis of these results, we recommend more support for teaching in all modalities, more investigation of strengths/weaknesses of synchronous and asynchronous approaches, and more support offered to students before and during their writing classes for how best to learn <em>how to learn</em> in a given modality.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":35773,"journal":{"name":"Computers and Composition","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 102904"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142745260","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chin-Hsi Lin , Keyi Zhou , Lanqing Li , Lanfang Sun
{"title":"Integrating generative AI into digital multimodal composition: A study of multicultural second-language classrooms","authors":"Chin-Hsi Lin , Keyi Zhou , Lanqing Li , Lanfang Sun","doi":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102895","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102895","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study examines the integration of generative AI tools into digital multimodal composition (DMC) within a multicultural context, examining their impact on students’ motivation, writing processes, and outcomes. Eleven culturally diverse students from two high schools in Hong Kong participated in the study. The study developed and employed a novel pedagogical framework, IDEA (Interpret, Design, Evaluate, and Articulate), to seamlessly incorporate generative AI into DMC practices. Data-collection methods included analysis of generative AI tool-usage history, classroom video observations, surveys, and interviews. The findings reveal that students leveraged generative AI’s capabilities across five key areas: content generation, feedback and revision, multilingual support, critical thinking, and visual representation. The integration of AI tools followed distinct stages in the composition process, resulting in enhancements to the vocabulary, grammar, and structural elements of students’ work. This research contributes to the growing body of knowledge on the intersection of generative AI, education, and multimodal literacy, with a particular emphasis on human-AI collaboration in multicultural settings. It also offers valuable insights for educators seeking to enhance students’ DMC skills through the thoughtful integration of generative AI tools, potentially increasing engagement, motivation, and creative expression among learners from diverse cultural backgrounds.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":35773,"journal":{"name":"Computers and Composition","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 102895"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142745259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Purposeful remixing with generative AI: Constructing designer voice in multimodal composing","authors":"Xiao Tan , Wei Xu , Chaoran Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102893","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102893","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In multimodal writing, students can mobilize both linguistic and non-linguistic resources to express their real or imagined identities. But at the same time, when students are limited to choosing from available online resources, their voices might be compromised due to the incompatibility between their authorial intentions and the materials available to them. This study, therefore, investigates whether the use of generative AI tools could help student authors construct a more consistent voice in multimodal writing. In this study, we have designed a photo essay assignment where students recount a story in the form of photo essays and prompt AI image-generating tools to create photos for their storytelling. Drawing on interview data, written reflections, written annotations, and multimodal products from seven focal participants, we have identified two remixing practices–<em>layering</em> and <em>blending</em>–through which students attempted to establish a coherent and unique voice in writing. The study sheds light on the intentional and discursive nature of multimodal writing with AI as afforded by the technological flexibility, while also highlighting the practical and ethical challenges that could be attributed to students’ insufficient prompt and multimodal literacy and the innate limitations of AI systems. This study provides important implications for incorporating AI tools in designing multimodal writing tasks.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":35773,"journal":{"name":"Computers and Composition","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 102893"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142745258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Student use of generative AI as a composing process supplement: Concerns for intellectual property and academic honesty","authors":"Emma Kostopolus","doi":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102894","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102894","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article discusses the nuanced challenges of using Generative Artificial Intelligence in multimodal compositions while maintaining an ethical adherence to ideas of academic honesty and intellectual property. Through examining hypothetical scenarios, we can see that multimodality complicates the concept of “fair use” in academic contexts, since image or audio generation via AI functions differently than text generated by a Large Language Model. In thinking through the case studies, the article presents an argument for how educators can still use Generative AI in their multimodal composition assignments, through teaching students to us it as a process supplement and to always be critically aware of their citational responsibilities. This understanding of Generative AI use is placed in conversation with our understanding of intellectual property law as relates to both the classroom and broader digital composing environments, to better prepare students to create texts in their future careers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":35773,"journal":{"name":"Computers and Composition","volume":"75 ","pages":"Article 102894"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142745408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A rhetorical consideration of the {XE “embedded”} index","authors":"J.A.T. Smith","doi":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102887","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.compcom.2024.102887","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This article, in the area of digital rhetoric, argues that the apparatus of the index is an authored text that bears all of the qualities of creative work. Its primary and distinguishing quality, moreover, is a hylomorphic one that bridges the temporal and material divide by taking the accidence in a text and naming it in substance. This dual nature is especially apparent in indexes that are produced by software, such as MS Word, that require the tagging of a main text to create what is called an “embedded index”; indexes of this sort exist both inside a main text and outside of it, in the tags and in the index list. Because the index both transforms (accidence to idea) and translates (from the main text to index list), the index has rhetorical force, interpreting a text for its readers. It does so as much by its content as by its formal qualities: syntactic, alphabetic, and columnar. Its persuasiveness in tandem with its intervention in the reading process, moreover, has social and political implications since the index can serve as both a means of rebellion and control for those who use and make them.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":35773,"journal":{"name":"Computers and Composition","volume":"74 ","pages":"Article 102887"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142655290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}