SpeakingWithStudents_Webtext


Speaking  with  Students:
Profiles  in  Digital  Pedagogy

by  Virginia  Kuhn,  with  DJ  Johnson  and  David  Lopez
University  of  Southern  California
Institute  for  Multimedia  Literacy

Published  in  Kairos:  A  Journal  of    Rhetoric,  Technology,  and  Pedagogy
Issue  14.2  Spring,  2010
http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/14.2/interviews/kuhn/index.html

Introduction

The  Honors  in  Multimedia  Scholarship  Program

Founded  in  1998,  the  Institute  for  Multimedia  Literacy  
(IML)  is  an  organized  research  unit  dedicated  to  devel-­
oping  educational  programs  and  conducting  research  on  
the  changing  nature  of  literacy  in  a  networked  culture.  
Although  its  institutional  home  is  the  School  of  Cinematic  
Arts,  the  IML  supports  faculty  research  and  curricula  that  
seek  to  transform  the  nature  of  scholarship  within  the  
disciplines.  The  Honors  in  Multimedia  Scholarship  
program  is  an  university-­wide  undergraduate  program  
located  at  the  IML;;  it  received  official  sanction  and  began  
enrolling  its  first  cohort  in  Fall  2004,  basing  the  curricu-­
lum  on  the  previous  six  years  of  experience  deploying  
multimedia  scholarship  in  courses  across  the  USC  
campus.  The  Honors  program  was  the  first  of  several  
academic  programs  launched  by  the  IML.

In  2006,  the  IML,  in  collaboration  with  USC’s  College  of  
Letters,  Arts  and  Sciences,  created  the  Multimedia  in  the  
Core  Program  which  unites  General  Education  courses  
with  multimedia  labs,  offering  all  USC  students  the  
opportunity  to  explore  new  forms  of  scholarly  expres-­
sion.  The  following  year,  the  Multimedia  Across  the  
College  Program  was  created;;  here,  upper  division  
courses  are  paired  with  multimedia  instruction,  allowing  
students  to  investigate  media-­based  forms  of  scholarly  
research  and  production.  This  year  (2009),  the  IML's  
Minor  in  Digital  Studies  was  approved  which  expanded  
the  course  offering  further.  IML  courses  now  include  
everything  from  photo-­essays  to  Web-­based  documenta-­
ries,  from  interactive  videos  to  sophisticated  Web  sites,  
and  from  kinetic  typography  to  3-­D  visualizations.  All  IML  
courses  include  a  hands-­on  lab  component,  in  addition  
to  a  theoretical  foundation  borne  of  critical  studies,  
semiotics,  cinema  studies,  composition  and  rhetorical  
theory.

Like  all  IML  academic  programs,  the  Honors  program  is  
both  reactive  and  proactive  in  relation  to  digital  technolo-­
gies  for  expression  and  communication.  That  is  to  say,  
while  the  idea  is  to  identify  and  engage  new  media  and  
the  emerging  practices  they  engender,  the  program  is  
explicitly  designed  to  be  transformative  in  that  it  hopes  to  
teach  a  new  generation  of  scholars  to  enhance  tradi-­
tional  academic  practices  through  multimedia.  The  
Honors  program  stands  apart  from  other  IML  programs,  
however,  in  that  its  goal  is  advanced  digital  literacy.  As  
such,  the  program  culminates  in  the  creation  of  a  
media-­rich,  digital  thesis  project.  Honors  cohorts  are  
small  (15-­25  students  per  year)  and  they  are  well  
supported  both  technologically  and  conceptually.  
Students  take  IML440  and  IML444  during  their  senior  
year,  where  they  plan  and  execute  these  projects  which  
are  grounded  in  their  disciplinary  major.  Each  student  
has  two  faculty  advisors,  one  from  the  IML,  and  one  from  
their  major  and  this  ensures  the  type  of  student-­faculty  
interaction  that  aids  their  scholarship,  and  allows  us  to  
be  pedagogically  responsive.

The  Multimedia  Thesis

The  first  Honors  cohort  completed  their  thesis  projects  in  
2008  and  the  second  in  2009;;  the  planning  and  execu-­
tion  of  these  projects  is  the  topic  of  these  student  
profiles.  The  students  featured  here  are  mainly  from  the  
inaugural  class,  and  graduated  with  the  Honors  designa-­
tion  in  2008  (they  are  filmed  against  a  green  back-­
ground).  There  are  also  two  students  from  the  2009  
cohort  (they  are  pictured  against  blue-­gray  draping).  One  
of  the  greatest  challenges  of  creating  these  projects  is  
that  there  are  few  models  for  scholarly  multimedia.  
Born-­digital  work  requires  us  to  consider  the  ability  to  
explore  issues  with  the  sort  of  depth  that  comes  from  
deploying  the  registers  of  text,  image  and  interactivity,  
while  it  also  has  the  potential  to  involve  the  
reader/viewer  in  unprecedented  ways.  As  scholars  (both  

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teachers  and  students),  we  must  ask  ourselves  what  we  
can  do  with  digital  media  that  we  could  not  do  otherwise,  
but  we  must  also  avoid  uncritically  adopting  the  conven-­
tions  of  commercial  or  entertainment  media.

Since  the  goal  of  the  Honors  program  is  to  be  both  
academic  and  innovative,  we  did  not  want  to  impose  
generic  conventions  on  the  projects  students  might  
create,  feeling  that  this  might  limit  them.    At  the  same  
time,  we  needed  to  be  sure  we  retained  the  type  of  rigor  
appropriate  to  academic  endeavors.  Thus,  the  thesis  
parameters,  conceived  by  the  planning  team,  and  
updated  by  its  program  directors  (Steve  Anderson,  from  
2004  to  2006,  and  Virginia  Kuhn  from  2007  to  the  
present),  provide  a  way  to  ensure  standards,  while  
encouraging  transformation  and  enhancement  of  schol-­
arship  in  light  of  emergent  technologies.  These  param-­
eters  are  presented  and  discussed  throughout  the  
process  of  planning  and  executing  their  projects  and,  in  
this  way,  students  gain  the  ability  to  articulate  and  defend  
the  choices  made  in  their  work.

Speaking  with  Students:  The  Webtext  

This  webtext  features  students  discussing  their  work.  
This  reflective  aspect  is  valuable  on  many  levels,  and  
documenting  and  sharing  such  reflection  in  this  webext  is  
equally  vital.  Here's  why:

Media  Variety

The  digital  archive  able  to  house  projects  that  cross  
numerous  platforms  does  not  exist.  These  projects  run  
the  gamut  from  3D  environments  built  in  the  virtual  world  
of  Second  Life,  to  the  weighty  files  of  a  Korsakow  filmic  
database,  to  animated  Flash-­based  webtexts,  to  sophisti-­
cated  Sophie  projects.  Storing  numerous  file  types  in  an  
online  archive  requires  conversion  into  some  uniform  
format  which  will  limit  functionality.  Perhaps  more  
profoundly  though,  the  rise  of  social  networking  stimu-­
lates  a  sense  of  collaborative  dynamism  —  we  want  
reader  feedback,  user  input,  and  viewer-­generated  
content  that  extends  and  reinforces  our  efforts.  And  while  
this  impulse  may  merely  highlight  the  fact  that  academic  
work  is  always  part  of  a  larger  conversation,  the  respon-­
sibility  for  maintaining  the  dynamic  portion  of  digital  work  
is  problematic.  Standards  are  difficult  to  establish  since  
applications  are  perpetually  evolving.  Further,  many  
digital  objects  will  have  several  iterations  depending  on

how  a  viewer  might  access  them,  particularly  with  new  
mobile  content  which  requires  a  different  sort  of  optimi-­
zation  than,  say,  a  standard  webtext.

Application  Obsolescence

With  no  standards  for  maintenance,  old  applications  will  
not  run  in  just  a  few  short  years,  making  archiving  whole  
projects  increasingly  untenable  (even  as  algorithms  that  
revert  to  earlier  operating  systems  are  gaining  some  
ground).  These  videos  offer  insight  into  the  process  as  
much  as  the  product.  UCLA's  Howard  Besser  suggests  
that  archivists  must  shift  their  mindset  from  saving  
completed  works  to  asset  management.    Given  the  
demand  for  ancillary  materials  (outtakes,  scripts,  story-­
boards),  Besser  suggests  archivists  should  focus  on  
"saving  a  side  body  of  materials  that  contextualize  a  
work"  (14).  For  our  purposes,  capturing  a  snapshot  of  
student  work  while  they  contextualize  it  makes  complete  
sense  —  the  video  format  is  fairly  stable  and  self-­
contained.  Moreover,  institutionalized  curricula  cannot  
hope  to  keep  up  with  the  rapidly  evolving  applications  
that  arise  in  the  Web  2.0  world  and  so  we  must  teach  
students  how  to  learn  rather  than  what  to  learn.  These  
pieces  lend  critical  insight  into  students'  processes  while  
they  give  the  IML  a  uniform  repository  that  provides  a  
model  for  students  and  faculty  alike.  For  even  as  digital  
scholarship  is  on  the  rise,  there  remains  a  dearth  of  
models  on  which  to  base  such  efforts.  In  cases  where  
the  student  has  opted  to  maintain  their  work  online,  urls  
are  given.

Assessment

Although  it  is  unpopular  to  discuss  grading,  at  least  at  
the  faculty  level,  since  that  is  the  terrain  of  the  "bean  
counters,"  we  ignore  our  institutional  constraints  at  our  
peril.  Not  only  is  it  a  disservice  to  students  to  fail  to  
inform  them  of  the  criteria  by  which  they  will  be  judged  
—  their  financial  aid,  scholarships,  or  membership  in  
certain  student  groups  often  depends  upon  maintaining  
a  certain  GPA  —  given  its  relative  newness,  digital  work  
is  subject  to  the  charge  of  lack  of  academic  rigor.  
Without  the  sustained  analysis  that  comes  from  assess-­
ment  criteria,  digital  work  can  be  dismissed  as  bells  and  
whistles.  These  criteria  give  us  a  lexicon  with  which  to  
discuss  digital  work  among  ourselves  and  our  students,  
even  as  explaining  digital  work  in  language  that  is  
familiar  to  traditional  academics  helps  them  appreciate  
its  nuances  and  sophistication.    And  although  institu-­
tional  constraints  can  prove  frustrating,  this  is  something  

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Kairos  Issue  14.2  Spring,  2010                                     Kuhn,  with  Johnson  and  Lopez



that  academic  institutions  do  well:  they  force  a  type  of  
rigor  that  pushes  us  toward  excellence.  At  the  IML  we  
feel  our  project  parameters  help  to  highlight  aspects  that  
may  not  be  immediately  apparent  in  the  piece  itself  —  
they  approach  each  project  on  its  own  terms.  As  such,  
there  is  far  more  freedom  to  be  innovative  with  emerging  
platforms,  while  maintaining  high  quality  work.  

In  creating  the  student  profiles,  we  decided  that  a  
running  time  of  roughly  five  minutes  would  be  optimal.  
Much  longer  video  profiles  could  have  easily  been  
created  given  the  scholarly  depth  of  the  projects  and  
their  thickness  in  terms  of  the  multitude  of  layers  of  
visual,  aural  and  textual  elements  contained  in  each.  In  
addition,  the  student  interviews  covered  a  range  of  
topics  related  to  the  production  of  their  thesis  projects,  
from  initial  inspiration,  to  design  and  implementation,  to  
the  students’  subjective  response  to  their  completed  
work.  We  also  asked  them  to  discuss  how  their  work  in  
scholarly  multimedia  has  impacted  their  undergraduate  
education  and  how  it  has  shaped  their  future  educational  
and  professional  goals.  We  had  a  wealth  of  materials  
from  which  to  build  these  profiles,  which  heightened  the  
challenge  before  us:  how  do  we  maintain  the  integrity  of  
the  students'  projects  and  their  unique  voices  within  a  
five  minute  timeframe?  We  had  to  address  key  issues  
concerning  the  representation  of  students  and  their  work  
in  creating  these  profiles.  In  doing  so,  we  are  moved  to  
consider  best  practices  for  documenting  multimedia  
pedagogy,  student  experience  and  scholarly  digital  work.  
The  Notes  on  Process  section  accompanying  the  
student  profiles  illuminates  key  issues  faced  in  creating  
these  profiles  and  the  strategies  used  to  address  them.  
Whereas  many  of  these  strategies  are  grounded  in  
formal  techniques  of  documentary  production,  they  are  
deployed  in  deliberate  and  specific  ways  to  highlight  the  
scholarly  and  aesthetic  nuances  particular  to  each  
project.

In  order  to  visually  represent  the  depth  of  the  issues  
involved  in  this  Flash-­based  webtext,  we  created  a  type  
of  layering  effect  by  allowing  traces  of  one  page  or  
screen  to  remain  behind  another.  While  reading  one  
screen,  a  viewer  might  see  the  ghost  of  a  video  from  the  
previous  screen  still  playing.  The  color  gradation  was  
very  deliberately  adjusted  in  order  to  keep  the  text  
legible,  even  in  the  presence  of  these  traces.  We  believe  
this  feature  of  the  webtext  serves  as  a  reminder  of  the  
type  of  depth  that  is  emerging  in  digital  technologies  
both  in  and  out  of  the  confines  of  the  computer.

We  feel  that  these  students  are  pioneers  in  the  area  of  
digital  scholarship  and  deserve  to  be  documented  in  
ways  that  are  typically  reserved  for  faculty.  However,  we  
do  understand  that  no  interview,  no  film,  whether  edited  
inside  or  outside  of  the  camera,  is  ideologically  neutral.  
We  have  framed  students  in  a  particular  way  and  have  
created  these  five  minutes,  from  the  hour  or  so  of  
interview  footage  each  student  gave,  in  order  to  tell  a  
particular  story.  We  hope  the  story  is  one  the  student  
sees  as  valid  —  and,  indeed,  all  students  have  been  
quite  pleased  with  their  piece,  often  using  them  on  job  
and  graduate  school  applications  —  but  we  also  under-­
stand  the  extent  to  which  students  tell  us  what  we  want  
to  hear.  Our  only  way  to  reconcile  these  issues  is  full  
disclosure:  we  have  a  vested  interest  in  this  program,  
these  students  and  their  work.  To  mitigate  our  bias  
however,  we  have  adopted  Norman  Denizen's  approach  
to  the  construct  of  the  "interview"  as  a  form.  Throughout  
the  process  of  filming,  editing  and  writing  about  these  
interviews  we  have  sought  to  make  them  "reflexive,  
dialogic  [and]  performative"  (24)  such  that  by  creating  
them,  we  are  "learning  to  use  language  in  a  way  that  
brings  people  together"  (24)  rather  than  commodifying  
these  students  and  their  work  for  our  own  purposes.  We  
hope  you  find  these  pieces  as  stimulating  and  productive  
as  we  do.  

Virginia  Kuhn  is  the  Associate  Director  in  charge  of  the  
Honors  in  Multimedia  Scholarship  program  at  the  IML.  
Her  work  centers  on  the  ways  in  which  the  affordances  
of  digital  technologies  impact  thought,  discourse  and  
expression  in  a  highly  mediated  world.  
DJ  Johnson  has  been  the  video  documentarian  for  the  
IML  since  2003.  An  award-­winning  filmmaker,  Johnson  
has  extensive  experience  producing  and  directing  
documentaries  and  promotional  videos  for  educational  
institutions  and  social  service  organizations.
David  Lopez  is  an  Interactivity  Designer  for  the  IML.  For  
over  five  years,  he  has  consistently  worked  to  facilitate  
multimedia  results  from  raw  scholarly  enquiry.  

Works  Cited

Besser,  Howard.  Digital  Preservation  of  the  Moving
          Image  Material?  The  Moving  Image,  Fall,  2001.
          http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/~howard/Papers/amia-­
          longevity.html

Denizen,  Norman.  "The  reflexive  interview  and  a  perfor
          mative  social  science,"  in  Qualitative  Research,  Vol  1,  
          No.  1,  23-­46  (2001).

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Kairos  Issue  14.2  Spring,  2010                                     Kuhn,  with  Johnson  and  Lopez



USC  Institute  for  Multimedia  Literacy
Project  Parameters  

These  are  the  parameters  by  which  the  thesis  project  is  gauged.  Students  are  given  these  criteria  early  on,  and  can  
therefore  plan  accordingly.  These  parameters  are  flexible  enough  to  allow  student  innovation,  but  rigorous  enough  to  
ensure  academic  excellence.  Each  of  the  four  areas  is  subdivided  into  three  nuanced  categories,  and  within  the  
webtext  you  will  find  clips  that  demonstrate  the  ways  students  have  met  them.

Conceptual  Core

The  project’s  controlling  idea  must  be  apparent.  
The  project  must  be  productively  aligned  with  one  or  more  multimedia  genres.  
The  project  must  effectively  engage  with  the  primary  issue/s  of  the  subject  area  into  which  it  is  intervening.  

Research  Component

The  project  must  display  evidence  of  substantive  research  and  thoughtful  engagement  with  its  subject  matter.  
The  project  must  use  a  variety  of  credible  sources  and  cite  them  appropriately.  
The  project  ought  to  deploy  more  than  one  approach  to  an  issue.  

Form  &  Content

The  project’s  structural  or  formal  elements  must  serve  the  conceptual  core.  
The  project’s  design  decisions  must  be  deliberate,  controlled,  and  defensible.  
The  project’s  efficacy  must  be  unencumbered  by  technical  problems.  

Creative  Realization

The  project  must  approach  the  subject  in  a  creative  or  innovative  manner.  
The  project  must  use  media  and  design  principles  effectively.  
The  project  must  achieve  significant  goals  that  could  not  be  realized  on  paper.  

http://iml.usc.edu