James Benjamin Boisvert-Storey Creative Writer

Pedagogical Possibilities

Writing classes are most often about creating traditional academic essays--a wonderful genre that encourages critical thinking, textual analysis, research, and composition skills. Yet not all deliverables in a writing course need be so text-oriented. In fact, visual learners, Kiersey Artisans, and creative people of all kinds appreciate assignments that deviate now and again from the relentless creation of academic prose. Below are three examples of visual design assignments from my L204: Introduction to Fiction course. All have traditional text-based alternatives for those students who would rather avoid visual design, but student feedback about art-based projects has been overwhelmingly positive, even from those students who claim to have no artistic skill of their own. All three also support formal writing assignments that come later in the term.

Create: Representation of Setting in Nnedi Okorafor's "Spider the Artist"

Examples of student work. Most students produce collages from Google Image searches, but a few who are artistically inclined do this:

Create: "The Comet" plot exercise

Examples of student work.

CREATE: Brainstorming VENN Diagram

Sample Student Work

Create: Akai's Next Move Comic Frame

Sample student work:

CREATE: Dictation Submission

COMMITMENTS: In L204: Introduction to Fiction, our students end the semester creating a Revision Portfolio, where 1,000 words of formal prose are revised and changes are annotated. The Portfolio also includes a Cover Page, Statement of Learning, Revision Plan, Before and After Drafts, and a Tip Sheet of takeaways. Students typically submit traditional PDFs or Word Documents. In the future, these might become ePortfolios, with real visual design aesthetics and consideration for reader/viewer consumption of material (visual rhetoric).