Author: Leah Heilig

Technology is increasingly becoming a requirement in composition courses. After all, many of our students have practically grown up using smartphones, so the assumption is that they will automatically be comfortable with multimodal projects that incorporate technological components with traditional writing. Yet such pedagogy does not take into account students battling anxiety. These students might appear disinterested or “lazy,” when in fact the idea of creating a multimodal project among peers causes extreme stress. In these cases, anxiety might be related to a mental health disorder, or the technology itself can induce symptoms in students who might not otherwise experience anxiety…