MAKERTEXT AS MULTIMODAL WRITING ASSIGNMENT

Innovative Methods and Practices of Academic Writing and Writing Instruction

MAKERTEXT AS MULTIMODAL WRITING ASSIGNMENT

Daniel Spielmann

Writing Center at Goethe University, Frankfurt / Main, Germany

Digital technologies offer a wide variety of possibilities for the development of new writing assignments that can be used to foster both writing competencies and digital literacies (Hicks 2013). A makertext is a writing assignment that invites a group of writers to collaboratively co­create a multimodal text in a relatively short period of time. This workshop seeks to introduce the audience to this kind of assignment and to discuss its potential and possible drawbacks. After a short introduction describing some practical experience with the assignment in the context of writing instruction, the audience will be invited to jointly work on an online document and to assemble a piece of text in response to a given writing prompt. The audience will then share their first­hand experience with synchronous online writing and discuss possible adaptions and applications of the makertext writing assignment for individual academic contexts and research and teaching purposes. For this workshop, each participant will need to have access to a networked computer and an up to date browser.

References

HICKS, T. (2013) ​ Crafting Digital Writing: Composing Texts Across Media and Genres​ . Portsmouth: Heinemann.