• Design for a “Floating” unit for a technical communication course that concludes in a formal 4-6 page proposal that suggests improvements to the peer review process.
• Designed for completely online course but works well for hybrid or face-to-face delivery system as well
• Affirm Clay Spinuzzi’s (1996) assertion that writing instructors should not be in the business of replicated the “workplace.”
• Intervention into online peer review process that accounts for:
• Theories of Multiliteracy
• Theories of Multimodality

• “Conversation of Mankind” (1984)
• Social Construction
• Developing Language for Writing
• Potential to minimize “teacher authority”
• “Virtual Peer Review” (2004)
• Face-to-face peer review privileges speech
• Speech as primary mode is limited in online writing environments

Neither Bruffe nor Breuch nor water cooler lore suggests that the peer review process attunes itself to modality and the way social media and “advanced” web technologies function differently in terms of modality.

How might we begin to understand the peer review process in ways that account for the recent advances in our thinking about multiliteracy and multimodality?
What changes are necessary for the peer review process to account for
“multitheories” advocated by Selber and Kress?

Kress and Multimodality
• We communicate in modes
• Multimodality must resist privileging one mode of communication over the other.
• The problem with concepts like “language” is that they are “not a big enouch receptacle for all the semiotic stuff we felt sure we could pour into it” (15).
• Language is not able to hold all this stuff because language theories
(specifically linguistics and pragmatics) “recognize the presence of other modes—in terms such as ‘extra-linguistic’, ‘para-linguistic’, ‘non-verbal’ or in different kinds of acknowledgment to features of ‘context’” (59) that are in service to speech and text.

Table 1: Selber’s Tripartite Theory of Multiliteracy (p. 25)
Category
Functional
Metaphor
Tool
Subject
Position
User
Objective
Critical
Rhetorical
Cultural Artifact Questioner
Hypertextual
Media
Producer
Effective
Employment
Informed
Critique
Reflexive
Practice

Kress assumes fluency with technologies that help designers assemble and orchestrate the various modes for an audience.
Selber cautions instructors against such assumptions.
Thus, as instruction moves further online and as online learning becomes increasingly driven by technology, students and teachers alike are going to need to have a solid foundation of multiliteracy while they begin to develop multimodal awareness.

• Stuart Selber’s Multiliteracies for a Digital Age
• Pignetti, D. and Inman, J.A. (2005) [Review in Composition Forum ]
• Gunter Kress’s Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary
Communication
• Weinberg, J. (2010) [Review I Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric and Technical, and
Pedagogy ]
• Oleksiak, T. (2012) [Review I Rhetoric Society Quarterly ]
• Wimba Tutorial (included in Moodle)
• Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch’s “Virtual Peer Review”
• Technical Communication Today

Peer Review Format
Track Changes with Single Email
Exchange
Audio Commenting
Small Group Synchronous Chat
Video Conferencing
Mode(s) Engaged
Writing and layout
Speech
Writing and Movement
Writing, Speech, Movement, Gesture, and Image

This floating unit focuses on the following learning outcomes:
1. Constructively work with others on a collaborative assignment
2. Understand the relationship between peer review technologies and Selber’s notions of functional, critical, and rhetorical literacies
3. Understand the affordances and limitations of a given mode or a multimodal ensemble
4. Develop the generic sophistication required for writing a proposal

Date of Session:
Members Involved:
Format of the Session:
Response:
When you reflect on your peer review process consider the following:
• What worked well in this review format?
• What was difficult in this review format?
• To what extent did the highlighted modes or the technological constraints hinder the way you understood what your peer was communicating?
• What do you think contributed to the success or failures of this format with respect to the modes being highlighted?
• What else might you want to take note of in your reflections about the modes and their affordances in this specific process?

Introduction:
Describe the topic, the purpose of your document, the importance of the topic, all background information necessary, and your overall conclusion.
The Current Situation:
Describe 1 specific peer review format in as much detail as possible and the limitations of this process or format. This section should focus on the format’s limitations with respect to Selber or Kress’s theories.
The Project Plan:
State the solution, state the objectives of your plan, describe the plan’s steps, and articulate clear deliverables.
The Conclusion:
Summarize the main points, suggest further steps to take, pprovide a professional closing and contact information.

Bruffee, K. (1984) Collaboration and the conversation of mankind. College English ,
46 , 635-652.
Breuch, Lee-Ann K. (2004) Enhancing online collaboration: Virtual peer review in the writing classroom. In K. Cargile Cook and K. Grant-Davie (Eds.), Online education:
Global questions, local answers . (pp. 141-156). Amityville: Baywood Publishing
Company Inc.
Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication . New York: Routledge.
Selber, Stuart. (2004) Multiliteracies for a Digital Age. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
UP.
Spinuzzi, C. (1996). Pseudotransactionality, activity theory, and professional writing instruction. In J. Dubinsky (Ed.), Teaching technical communication: Critical issues for the classroom (pp. 337-347). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s.