As a student who has spent the majority of her undergraduate years taking science based courses, I’m not really sure what made me decide to pick up a Professional Writing and Editing minor without ever having taken an actual English course at WVU. Furthermore, I’m not entirely sure what made me decide to start with English 303: Multimedia Writing. Maybe it was that I picked it at random, maybe it was that I thought it would be interesting, or maybe it was that it was the only thing that fit into my schedule, but now that the class is almost over, I can honestly say it’s not what I thought it would be.
When I hear the phrase “English class,” I think about lots of reading, lots of writing, and lots of reviewing. And while we did our share of that in this class, I was surprised to see how much time we spent discussing, collaborating, researching, and creating, as well. The interactivity was probably my favorite aspect of this course. From discussions, I got to learn something from every member of the class, and from collaboration, I got to learn something about every person I was working with.
Before picking up the minor, I was looking into some information about PWE and found this description of the Multimedia Writing course online:
English 303 Multimedia Writing. Study of communication and design issues in multimedia composition focuses on communication, creative expression, persuasion, interactivity, and rhetorical principles. Practice in composing multimedia documents such as online publications, interactive literary works and tutorials.
At the time, it didn’t mean much to me—not that I really understood what it meant anyway. But reading it again now, I think the class has accomplished all of these things. I can look at each part of this description and think back to a time during the semester when we practiced it. Whether tweeting or blogging, reading or discussing, bits of information managed to make their way inside my head. They made me think. Just as multimedia writing combines the use of several different content forms, I thought that this class combined the use of several different teaching methods. And what do you know? I may have actually learned something.
