{"id":21439,"date":"2024-09-05T07:21:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-05T11:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/?p=21439"},"modified":"2024-09-05T10:16:10","modified_gmt":"2024-09-05T14:16:10","slug":"on-building-and-leaving-a-multiliteracy-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org\/2024\/09\/05\/on-building-and-leaving-a-multiliteracy-center\/","title":{"rendered":"On Building (and Leaving) a Multiliteracy Center"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My context for developing a multiliteracy center was unique and rather complicated. When I was tasked in fall 2017 with building a new student support center for UMass Dartmouth\u2019s campus, I was prohibited from using the word \u201cwriting\u201d in the name of this center. I will not go at length into the reasons for this, as I have had the opportunity to explain via a recent publication (see Botvin & Buck, 2024<\/a>) but suffice it to say, the name and the purpose of this new center had to be deliberate and well-justified. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Image 1 caption\/alt-text: A view of the Writing and Multiliteracy Center at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Three tables and chairs are in front of a large window. No computer technologies are visible in this space from the angle the picture was taken.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The perspectives shared in the seminal 2012 Praxis<\/em> piece \u201cThe Idea of a Multiliteracy Center: Six Responses\u201d <\/a>reinforced that multiliteracy was an appropriate, if somewhat fraught, designator for the type of center I wanted to build. This term signaled to me an awareness of the twenty-first century conditions for writing as well as emphasized that those who utilized the center would themselves be multiliterate<\/em>. I envisioned a space that was endlessly expansive, where students could not only work on traditional written assignments and multimodal texts but where they could also communicate using a plurality of literacies and modalities. At the time, I was finalizing my book project Open-Access, Multimodality, and Writing Center Studies<\/em><\/a> (Palgrave, 2018) that focused on the ways that writing center practitioners engage with new technologies both in scholarship and in praxis. I thus felt well-prepared to lead this new center in what I believed to be an important and innovative direction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Did my vision come to fruition? In some ways, yes, and in other ways, no. Though as I\u2019ll clarify below, that the reality didn\u2019t match the expectation is not an entirely bad thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I write this piece amidst a significant personal transition. I left my role as founding director of the center at UMass Dartmouth and, in fall 2024, will be taking on the directorship of the writing center at Fordham University. I am grateful for this space to reflect on what it means to build (and leave) a multiliteracy center\u2013perhaps especially significant as we enter a new technological moment that will certainly have great import for writing center professionals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflection Point #1: (In)Accessibility<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the Multiliteracy and Communication Center opened at UMassD in fall 2018, one of the biggest challenges we faced was effectively conveying to the campus what, exactly, we did there.  The conclusion of \u201cThe Idea of a Multiliteracy Center\u201d hints at the difficulties that one might encounter when building such a center from the ground up, specifically that \u201cstarting a multiliteracy center from scratch amounts to re-inventing the wheel. The challenge, then, is not (only) to cram multiliteracy practices into an already overwhelmed learning ecology. Instead, the challenge is to convince stakeholders (including students, faculty, and administrators) that universities will serve learners more effectively if they establish multiliteracy centers.\u201d We dove into a significant on-campus marketing campaign to clarify that multiliteracy stood at the heart of our purpose. We quoted the New London group<\/a> on our website, defined multiliteracy in class visits and presentations, and increased tutor-training initiatives to respond to multimodal texts. Nevertheless our name proved challenging. We had folks across campus refer to us variously as the Multi-media Center, the Multicultural Center, the Multimodality Center, and various other permutations of Multi-[fill in the blank here]. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is important to acknowledge that the word<\/em> multiliteracy is not particularly accessible. I teach writing for public relations and quickly realized that the center essentially had a PR and name recognition problem. The opportunity arose in fall 2021 to change our name, as well as incorporate the word writing in a way that had not been previously permitted, and so we opted to become the Writing and Multiliteracy Center. This name shift did help to clarify our purpose, but aspiring multiliteracy center directors might want to think about developing a robust marketing campaign that renders the term multiliteracy more legible, in conjunction with adopting Allison Hitt\u2019s important recommendations about ensuring multiliteracy centers\u2019 greater accessibility<\/a>. Walking into a writing center to seek support is already a challenging enough endeavor; if it is not clear why that center exists or what its purpose is, that hurdle becomes even more insurmountable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflection Point #2: Institutional Support<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cTaking Stock: Multimodality in Writing Center Users\u2019 Texts\u201d<\/a> Jennifer Grouling and Jackie Grutsch McKinney assessed a sample of students\u2019 work brought to the writing center at Ball State University and found that fewer than 10% of these assignments were multimodal. The ability to support multimodal assignments was one of the main initial objectives of the center at UMassD, and having trained under the wonderful Drs. Grouling and McKinney at Ball State, I anticipated that we would see a similar proportion of multimodal assignments at UMassD. Grouling and Grutsch McKinney conclude that any quantity of multimodal work brought to a center is ultimately a success, as they \u201cbelieve that college should be a place where student practice the sort of communication that students will enact after college in their professional, civic, personal, and academic writing, and those communications will likely be multimodal\u201d 66). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This assertion undoubtedly motivated my objective in designing the Multiliteracy and Communication Center but what I failed to recognize is that the ability to successfully offer support for certain multimodal texts is greatly contingent upon institutional standards and resources. To work on, for example, an assignment that necessitates the use of a program like iMovie, one must have, at minimum:<\/p>\n\n\n\n