Stuart Selber: Multiliteracies for a Digital Age

Part 1:

Write a 2-3 paragraph summary of your key takeaways from Multiliteracies for a Digital Age and make sure to include 5 metadata tags for the book

I really enjoyed reading Selber's Multiliteracies for a Digital Age in its entirety. I used excerpts from his book last year in my seminar paper for our other course in considering what a computer literate student should be able to do, but this time I was able to read from start to finish, conceptualizing how Selber's discussions about literacy fit into our discussions about multimodality, new media, and the role of computers within the composition classroom. 

Selber offers three different types of literacy in approaching computer literacy initiatives at the institutional, curricular, departmental, and pedagogical levels: functional, critical, and rhetorical. Within each of these literacies, Selber breaks them down further to explore the different components that contribute to each. The only problem I had for Selber's text was that the charts did absolutely nothing for me within each chapter. I am an especially visual person, so I always appreciate when information is presented to me in such a way that I'm able to conceptualize the information in ways that are spatial or categorical (in that they also extend the information that the text may offer). However, I felt as though all Selber did with the majority of his charts was organize the same text in a top down approach (sometimes literally word for word). It wasn't until the last chapter where we were given a more circular graphic to represent the computer literacy application (p. 185) that I felt as though I gained something from the visual. 

I also was a bit disgruntled with how little time Selber spent on graduate student computer literacy. We got a bit of discussion about the online teaching certification in the end of the book and a brief nod towards graduate student computer literacy within the functional literacy chapter (with also a discussion about access to technology based on rank, which made me think of Northern Michigan University and how as an adjunct you have to teach a certain amount of credits to get a "newer" Thinkpad and classrooms that have/don't have technology access, which is something that affects us greatly based on which building we teach in at WSU). I felt this was a bit of a hole in the conversation and one that is important and worth spending more time on. 

My personal opinion aside, I really appreciated how Selber attempted to complicate and extend the notion of functional literacy to mean something much deeper than the material hardware and proficiency in operating the machine. It was also interesting to me how Selber discussed that people often associate functional literacy with a working incentive, stating "people inevitably link functional literacy with literacy for work, especially with concrete training in technological skills, because such a commonsense linkage capitalized on the economic benefits that could be derived from investments in literacy initiatives" (34). I thought this was important to mention in juxtaposition with the classical notion of function as an attempt to "living the good life", which is a particularly Platonic notion. 

Critical literacy extends this conversation in that it "interrogates biases, power moves, and human implications" (86). It is also important to note that within each discussion of the different literacies, Selber plays with the metaphors that are commonly attributed to each (functional= tool, critical=cultural artifact, rhetorical=hypertexual media, which breaks down even further to encompass nonlinear, nodes, and associative links). Selber mentions that although the literacies to do not have to be linear, in considering computer literacies, functional and critical literacies often feed into rhetorical literacy.

 Rhetorical literacy deals primarily with interface design and asks students to assume the role of producer. In creating, analyzing, and mapping interface design, rhetorical literacy asks us to move beyond purpose, audience, and occasion and calls for action. Selber maps out particular components of rhetorical literacy as persuasion, deliberation, reflection, and social action (146). I was particularly taken by the reflection component in that it asks students to be critical of interface design in considering questions such as "who gets left out? To whom is this designed for?". I found it interesting that Selber both cites and references critique to Selfe and Selfe's The Politics of the Interface. as this is a central text that I think of in considering critical reflection of interface design. 

Selber ends his book with a discussion as to how to implement his notions of literacy into an institution, department, curriculum, courses, and pedagogy. I thought he had some really good takeaways here and he reminded me a bit of Palmeri in how he focused less on theory, but rather more on praxis (I liked the discussion of analyzing a listsrserv). One thing I found interesting is that throughout his book, his makes mention of how all of these literacies are pertinent to writing classrooms, yet almost all of his examples are overtly for a technical writing classroom. How can we envision these types of assignments and philosophies to extend to first year comp? I found myself often writing DTC 101? in the margins, because I see this as something that appropriately fits into an introductory DTC 101 course, but I'm struggling with ways to extend some of the theory to EN 101 (I did however like his discussion about email etiquette as a part of computer literacy and this is something i've done with comp courses in the past). 

Part 2:

 How is (or is) the way Selber works with multiliteracies compatible with how other authors we've read this semester have engaged with multimodality?

Although Selber is talking about multiliteracies, I saw a lot of connection between the scholarship we've read in regards to new media scholarship, collaboration, and the extension of literacies outside of the classroom with the literacies developed within. As an overtly obvious connection (one that's even referenced within the text) Selber and Yancey make similar arguments in their attention to 21st century literacies. I also saw a bit of a connection between Cheryl Ball's discussion about distinguishing between scholarship about new media and new media scholarship and Selber's notion of nonlinear text (168). With this notion of nonlinear text, he's really talking directly about what Ball refers to as new media scholarship. 

In addition, I saw a lot of nod's to Kress in Selber's arguments about how computer literacy is always considering the social implications about design, power, and action (I found myself writing "Kress" multiple times within the margins). There's also a nod to Marback within the rhetorical literacy chapter with Selber's discussion of the "wicked" problems of design (though he doesn't cite Marbeck). In addition, Selber talks within the rhetorical literacy chapter about speed and that "speed might be manipulated to achieve certain rhetorical effects" (138), which made me think about DeVoss and Ridolfo and rhetorical velocity. In short, although the text doesn't explicitly mention "multimodality" there are many connections going on within the text in reference to past readings and conversations centered around the role technology plays within the writing classroom. 

metadata tags: #praxis, #functionalliteracy, #criticalliteracy, #rhetoricalliteracy, #interfacedesign