I was thinking about the reading from last night, and the fact that Selfe kept implying that many instructors/administrators believe that visual literacy is a lesser form compared to alphabetic literacy. I have to say that while I don't really agree with that, I do emphasize alphabetic over visual literacy in my classroom. I would like to spend more time discussing visual analysis with my students, but we really don't have the time. I use the visual analysis as a springboard into rhetorical analysis of essays. It works very well, and provides the students with a solid foundation for doing a rhetorical analysis. The students really enjoy picking apart the visuals that we analyze in class (much more than the essays).
At the end of each semester, I have the students write an essay about the assignment that they felt they learned the most from during the class. It is generally a 50/50 split between the visual analysis and the research paper. The students comment on how they had never really analyzed anything for its visual value, and they seem to remember this most out of everything we have done. It provides them with the analytical skills they can apply to just about anything in life. However valuable this assignment may be, I still don't feel that I can stray from my typical course curriculum. I may have more freedom than high school teachers who have to deal with the restraints of testing, but I have a feeling that the powers that be at SCSU would still want us to focus on the writing in 191, not the visual elements.
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Nancy, I agree. I would want "permission" to do more visual literacy before I add much more to my 191 class. The department or university needs to agree that writing/creating a webpage, for example, is just as valuable as, and can replace, writing a 8-10 page research paper. But I do intend to add more than just one assignment of visual literacy like I did in the fall semester. I want to try a box essay with my students and see how they do.
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