Up Next in ENGL 1500/2500: Multimodal Unit

The multimodal unit allows instructors to engage in many creative approaches to their lessons. Get some inspiration to really get your ENGL 1500/2500 students thinking out of the box this semester!

Daocheng Lin shares an activity in which students explore an unfamiliar culture through an aesthetic lens. It is adapted from Hanson’s (2022) “Infographics Performative Rhetorical Analysis Timeline,” which draws on Kostelnick’s (2020) aesthetic principles, Karen Barad’s concept of performative enactment, and recent empirical studies on data arts and historical examples (Lin et al., 2025; Lan et al., 2025).
Additionally, there are several collaborations at ISU that instructors can arrange to encourage their students to think creatively. Get inspired by booking a tour with University Museums or the Student Innovation Center, or contact a Digital Scholarship Librarian to schedule workshop sessions as part of your ENGL 1500 or 2500 lessons.

Creative Spaces at ISU

A visual literacy tour in University Museums is a great way to engage students and get them thinking about the visual mode for their multimodal assignment. Instructors may request free tours for their classes by filling out this form at least two weeks in advance. The potential locations are the Brunnier Art Museum (Scheman Building), the Farm House Museum (very close to Ross and Curtiss Hall), Christian Petersen Art Museum and Anderson Sculpture Garden (Morrill Hall) or the Art on Campus collection (in or around one or more buildings on campus, including Parks Library). A worksheet is available for instructors to download ahead of the tour. More information about visual literacy tours can be found on the university website.

The Student Innovation Center is a great place for students to brainstorm ideas and discover the spaces and equipment available to them for multimedia projects. Instructors can request a tour of the Digital Media Studio Makerspace for free. Tours last approximately 20 minutes. However, a room at the Student Innovation Center can also be reserved to take the rest of the class either before or after the tour. Plan out your lesson for the day as an introduction to the topic followed by a makerspace tour or use the time after the tour for brainstorming or reflection activities with your students!

Digital StoryMaps Workshop

A possibility for the multimodal project is to create a digital storymap. All ISU students have a free ArcGIS account and Michael Cummings, Digital Scholarship Librarian, can coordinate with instructors to teach a workshop on what storymaps are and how to make them. The workshop consists of 2-3 sessions that include the basics on how to use the software, storymap examples, and tips for effective storytelling using this tool, as well as practice time for students to work on their project and ask questions. Contact Michael Cummings at mrc2@iastate.edu.

Exploring Cultural Differences Through Data Arts

Purpose of the activity:

• Deepen understanding of cultural differences: students will explore other cultures through concrete examples of data art that convey factual experiences in an artistic form.
• Engage multimodal methods and aesthetics: data art archives serve as rich sites for multimodal analysis and composition.
• Foster collaboration: as a group activity with assigned roles, this exercise encourages meaningful collaboration among students.

Materials or resources needed:

• A data arts archive, such as the Information is Beautiful Awards or VISAP.
• Access to Google Slides.
• It is advisable to teach the visual rhetoric unit and the basics of multimodality before this activity.

Description of the activity:

1. Assign students to groups of approximately five members each.
2. Prepare a world map for each group to mark its chosen region. Students should select an area they are not familiar with.
3. Group members explore the data arts website together and select a case from a culture they wish to explore. (5 minutes)
4. Each group pastes the URL and a screenshot of their selected case onto the shared Google Slides.
5. In the same Google Slides file, each group claims a section that includes five heuristics: color, imagery (e.g., illustrations, charts), storytelling, interaction, and argument. The first four are aesthetic categories; the last is an argumentative category.
6. The instructor explains the heuristics and demonstrates how to apply them in Google Slides.
   1. Each heuristic slide is designed in two parts. On the left, an arrow represents a timeline. Students take screenshots of elements they notice in the data art and paste them above the arrow, then record their emotional responses below it.
   2.  They should capture 5–8 elements in sequence, based on the order in which they notice them. For example, a student assigned to “color” would screenshot the first color they notice, place it in the upper left of the timeline, and note their emotional response in the lower left. On the right side, students add an overview following the prompts provided.
   3. Examples of heuristics are: color, storytelling, imagery, interaction, and argument.
7. Group members discuss and assign one heuristic to each member. (2 minutes)
8. Each student works individually to explore their assigned heuristic, taking screenshots of elements they notice and recording their emotional responses in sequence. In this step, students should not use online search tools such as Wikipedia; they should record only their initial gut responses. (5–8 minutes)
9. Groups present their slides about the data arts to the class.
10. After presentations, students may use Wikipedia and other resources to research the culture represented in their chosen data art. They then discuss their findings with group members.

Potential adaptation:

This activity can also be applied to other forms of art, such as traditional oil paintings or music videos.

Works Cited
Hanson, V. L. (2022). Performing Data and Visualizing Difference: Developing a Performative Rhetoric of Infographics for the Writing Classroom. College Composition & Communication, 73(3), 465–492. https://doi.org/10.58680/ccc202231875
Kostelnick, C. (2020). The Art of Visual Design: The Rhetoric of Aesthetics in Technical Communication. Technical Communication, 67(4), 6–27.
Lan, X., Wang, Y., Peng, L., & Ma, X. (2025, February 7). More Than Beautiful: Exploring Design Features, Practical Perspectives, and Implications of Artistic Data Visualization. arXiv.Org. https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.04940v1