Final

Assignment: Multi-Modal Techno-Cultural Research Project

In this assignment you will explore some aspect of techno-cultural change weve touched upon
this semesterwhether in your small projects, your blogs, your larger blog presentation, or in
class discussions. Your goal is to research, analyze, produce, and synthesize several interesting
texts into a multimodal exploration for your reader. To do so you will combine audio, video, web
design and print text to create a 10-15 page multimodal equivalentthinking not only about
what your topic is but also about how it is displayed. Ideally, you will choose a research topic
that will benefit you in your future career: how has tech changed publishing, education, music,
etc. But your research question should be more complex than just how has tech changed x, y, or
z. Choose a specific sub-topic within those broad headings, i.e, how has tech changed
collaboration between teachers.
[General Project Requirements]:
1. Your topic must be about technological changehow some new technology has changed
some pre-existing culture: how has tech changed love, music, gender, class, race,
psychology, etc.
Your topic must be exigentyou must make clear to your reader why this topic
important to study by illustrating some problem or gap in research before you begin hour
analysis proper.
2. You must perform some primary researchideally this would include interviews with
members of the community you are analyzing as well as observations/textual analysis of the
literacy artifacts (texts) that this community produces.
This analysis must be systematized in some way; i.e., you draw similarities and trends
from your analyses, which attempt to answer some kind of research question.
You must justify who and what you analyzed in terms of your research questionyou
cant just pick random people and things.
You create or use others key terms in order to describe the trends you see.
3. You must perform some secondary researchspecifically, you must use ten sources
somewhere in your essay. At least 5 of them must be academic textsfrom journals or
books about your topic. All these sources should be used to either set the stage for analysis or
to analyze your primary research.
4. You must use two of the big media weve used (Photoshop, Audition, Premiere, Web
Design) in class and one we havent used in class (YouTube Doubler, Google Map Maker,
Prezi, screen capture, etc.).
5. You must meet with me at least once (ideally twice) about your topic.
6. You will give a presentation on your research at the end of the semester.
[Examples]:
See our Henry Jenkins readings.
See the academic journal Kairos: http://kairos.technorhetoric.net
See the undergraduate journal the Jump: http://jump.dwrl.utexas.edu/issues