Rethinking the essay: student perceptions of collaborative digital multimodal composition in the college classroom

ABSTRACT

This article urges reconsideration of the traditional essay in undergraduate education. Despite renewed critiques of its efficacy as a pedagogical tool, the essay stubbornly retains primacy. As studies confirm the learning benefits of collaboration and highlight the potential of multimodal composition to challenge and expand forms of knowledge production, the collaborative digital multimodal essay offers an alternative to the traditional essay. This study focuses on 35 students in two advanced undergraduate literary studies courses who were assigned a collaborative digital multimodal composition project in the online publishing platform Scalar. Thematic analysis of student reflections following the project indicate that students perceive collaborative digital multimodal writing to offer opportunities for more creativity and autonomy and to challenge conceptions of academic writing forms, conventions and practices. Collaborating to develop complex and coherent arguments remained a significant challenge as did the technical demands of the digital writing platform.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital writing
• multimodal composition
• collaborative writing
• essay

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).