Instructor
Department of English
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Course(s) Targeted by this Innovation
ENGL 103: Rhetoric and Composition I
Purpose and Impact
English 103 is a general education requirement for all majors and for all incoming first year students that builds a foundation for academic writing skills in description, narration, exposition, persuasion, and argument that transfer across disciplines. Unfortunately, more students receive grades of D or F than we would like. Adding a visual literacy component to ENGL 103 has the potential to support student success in writing skills development and promote an inclusive and more equitable environment.
Description of Innovation
Research indicates that the use of visual literacy concepts, and infographics in particular, support writing skills development (Alrwele, Noura Shabak, 2017; Davis, M. Quinn, D., 2014). I plan to use infographics in three ways:
- Students will generate infographics to extend their own written ideas.
- In our peer-review project, students will create visual representations via infographics of their peers’ written ideas as a method for analyzing the ideas and writing of another.
- To address writer’s block, students will use infographics as a tool for planning writing to represent their ideas visually and then write essays based on the visuals that they create.
The use of infographics will provide an excellent resource for students to participate in the First-Year Composition’s yearly Writing Showcase, as well as to apply these visual literacy skills to other academic courses.