This study investigates the ways in which queer and trans people of color (QTPoC) navigate digital social platforms in order to create, connect, and share. As social media and other digital platforms are being used more in writing and communication instruction, it has become necessary for scholars to look critically at these tools and how we use them in the classroom. While research has been done highlighting methods and motivations of use of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, this research adds to the conversation of skills our QTPoC students, specifically, have, and what they have to teach us about communication online. The goal of this research was to explore how QTPoC use various platforms, to compare this with what the platforms argued for in terms of engagement, and establish ways of reflecting on our classrooms in order to better facilitate anti-oppressive classroom experiences.

This dissertation reports findings of a two part study. First, participatory interviews allowed QTPoC users to build a narrative around their platform engagement. The second part of the study included a digital rhetorical analysis that focused on the structure of the platforms, and what types of communication affordances were privileged.

Three major themes were identified during the course of data analysis: interaction, community, and curation. The theme of interaction was concerned with specific tools that were used strategically in order to create, connect, and share content. In the case of the community theme, these were issues that participants highlighted of particular interest or import in terms of their identification within the QTPoC community. Lastly, the theme of curation dealt with issues of preserving and spreading QTPoC content.

Within these themes, participants talked about fighting isolation, amplifying voices, content creation, and more. I argue that instructors of digital rhetoric and communication can take steps toward anti-oppressive classroom design by centering QTPoC needs in terms of undertaking and assigning platform analysis, centering queered digital spaces, teaching moderation, and remixing common platform features to fit our classrooms' needs.

Student self-evaluations constitute a learning opportunity for students within basic communication courses. As such, scholars have analyzed how goal setting is part of self-evaluation (Schunk; LeFebvre), how student estimations of their own ability affect their performance (LeFebvre et al.), and how students engage in self-evaluations (MacGregor). However, no research on the basic communication course has specifically analyzed the relationship between self-evaluations and metacognition. To better understand this relationship, this study was designed to describe metacognition’s role within self-evaluations by examining the topics through which students exhibited metacognition within their answers. As a result of this qualitative research, metacognition in basic communication course self-evaluations has been shown to share features with the metacognitive markers in eportfolios in composition as described by Bokser et al. (2016). This study can contribute to the basic communication field’s knowledge about how the genre of self-evaluation relates to metacognition by identifying how self-evaluations could contribute to student transfer of skills through giving students the chance to practice metacognitive skills.

This thesis will examine ways of teaching college composition through a lens where civility, citizenship, and community are the focus of the composition classroom. By drawing from critical composition pedagogy scholars and rich examples of civil/civic dialogue from the media, I will construct a series of actionable strategies to foster civil dialogue in the multimodal college composition classroom. Using scholarship in the field of rhetoric and composition, this classroom-based research project will seek to answer questions such as: "How can a first-year college composition class teach civil dialogue and promote understanding in a society where the loudest, shrillest voices win?" and "How can a university implement and assess civility awareness?" This study adds to the conversation regarding the need to work toward a more civil society and explores ways to work toward this by way of the first-year college composition classroom.

The purpose of this study is to explore how the interaction between ecocomposition and (eco)feminist pedagogy can create generative spaces for critical literacies and reflexive thinking in the multimodal composition classroom. A review of scholarship in ecocomposition praxis reveals a need for further inquiry into ecocomposition as a multimodal experience. This research study seeks to better understand how ecocomposition and multimodal communication can encourage the acquisition of critical literacy in foundational composition courses by examining student work on two communication assignments: a personal narrative essay about a meaningful place and a multimodal documentary photo essay about a local place. The analysis in this study shows that incorporating multimodal assignments into an ecocomposition course will help students engage in critical thinking about the ways in which human discourse and environments interact as well as the extent to which concepts of place, space, and environment are human constructions worthy of critical inquiry.

This research study explores the composing practices of several first-year composition students in two English 250 classes offered at Iowa State University. The study examines and analyzes intercultural awareness students have regarding race, diversity, and life, their own and others’. Using the inductive analysis research design, the research establishes a baseline perspective of students as they perceive themselves or not perceive themselves as “raced bodies.” Additionally, the baseline informs concurrent and emerging themes that students portray when exploring their own self-authorship and their persistent beliefs about how race and culture are or are not significant to composition studies. The relevance of the critical race lens, an identification of racial influences present in all sectors of US society, is a key element of this research study, for in it, the researcher discovers the extent of the social, cultural, and racial influences students perceive in the classroom. The English 250 classes taught had students from various racial backgrounds and skillsets. The class began with the Implicit Association Test on Race that informed students of the test’s interpretation of any pre-existing racial biases they may have had. The course curriculum encouraged students to view themselves from educational, social, and cultural perspectives that helped them gain confidence in self-authorship. The curriculum also included readings from a multicultural reader and racially/culturally-based analyses of scholarship on and about authors from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds. Subsequent analysis of student work yielded results that revealed any initial biases students had about race. It also revealed the extent to which students achieved cultural awareness during the course.

Growing out of research in Technical Communication, Composition Studies, and Writing Program Administration, the articles in this dissertation explicitly seek to address changes in the practices and products of writing and writing studies wrought by the so-called “digital revolution” in communication technology, which has been ongoing in these fields since at least 1982 and the publication of the first Computers and Composition newsletter. After more than three decades of concentrated study, the problems posed by the communication revolution have been brought into clear relief by a succession of scholars, and the complex and semi-coordinated project of remediating ourselves, our discourses, and our disciplines is in many respects well underway. Nevertheless, significant challenges face multimodal pedagogy in the context of Writing Program Administration, challenges that take the form of entrenched conflict regarding the ownership and distribution of personal information and intellectual property. These articles examine problems at the level of the student, the teacher, and the program and argue for a new kind of Writing Program Administrator who uses multiliteracies to rethink how writing programs should produce and practice writing and the teaching of writing in the 21st-century.

Working from the assumption that the composition curriculum is an ideal place for communication assignments focused on public writing within a local place, I've created a qualitative research study to explore ways to involve first-year composition students in social action projects that 1) help students connect local problems with an understanding of broader, systemic causes, and that 2) ask students to engage in and critically reflect on their ability to effect change on their college campus or in their local community through small, local actions using multimodal communication strategies. This study adds to the conversation about alternatives to service-learning projects and explores ways to make social action accessible and relevant to first-year composition students.

Although research on teachers’ comments on student papers is fairly common and has remained an ongoing area of interest since at least the 1970s, composition studies has not yet investigated how teachers’ commenting beliefs and practices change over time, particularly graduate teaching assistants’ (GTAs’) commenting practices. GTAs are an important subgroup of composition instructors to study because not only do they teach a considerable number of first-year composition (FYC) classes across the country, they are also the future of the profession. This dissertation reports the results of a mixed-methods longitudinal study of novice GTAs’ commenting beliefs (i.e., goals, perceived strengths and weaknesses) and practices across their first two years of teaching FYC classes at a large, land-grant university. This research also examines the connections between GTAs’ beliefs and practices and their programs of study and experiences with writing pedagogy education (WPE).

The results of this study indicate that GTAs’ comments do undergo some change, and this change is effected by the GTAs’ time spent teaching, recent WPE experiences, degree programs, and areas of study. However, in nearly all cases, the effect that these variables have on GTAs’ comments is small. In addition, interviews with GTAs reveal that their self–reported commenting goals, strengths, and weaknesses also change over time. GTAs who had acceptable or positive experiences as students and/or teachers that conflicted with their perceived commenting expectations developed some resistance to these expectations, especially after their first semester of teaching. Over time, GTAs also moved from being doubtful of their credibility to more assured, from being concerned with their students’ emotional reactions to their own emotions, and from emphasizing the content of their comments to valuing the ways in which they were writing the comments. These results indicate that more formal WPE may have an impact on GTAs’ teaching practices and should include a focus on the emotional labor connected to teaching writing.

First-year composition courses have long been a focus of considerable research and pedagogical development in English studies. In recent years, we have seen a movement to transform the traditional first-year composition course from one that focuses exclusively on writing to one that is "multimodal," integrating elements of oral and visual communication to better prepare students for communication practices in the twenty-first century. The successful development of these multimodal communication courses requires collaboration between faculty in various disciplines such as speech and design. However, little research has been conducted on the ways in which interdisciplinary collaboration on multimodal communication courses could be made more productive. Particularly in the case of English and speech departments, a long history of separation has made it difficult for faculty and scholars in these disciplines to work together.

This dissertation presents a study conducted on the interdisciplinary collaborative experiences of speech and English faculty at a small Midwestern liberal arts university who came together to develop a multimodal communication course. Through one-on-one interviews with faculty who participated in creating this course, I was able to determine some of the discontinuities that arose between members of the two disciplines. I apply Sanne F. Akkerman and Arthur Bakker's model of boundary crossing learning mechanisms to illustrate the ways in which the collaboration between speech and English faculty could have been more productive. Ultimately, this study calls for a reuniting of speech and composition in the service of creating more effective multimodal communication classes that integrate the pedagogical traditions of each discipline.

The purpose of this study is to explore the ways that a classically-conceived ethos is enacted in the visual design elements of Web sites. A review of scholarship in classical ethos and design, specifically on the Web, indicates that the presence of classical rhetoric is still strong even in modern modes of communication such as Web sites. Two Web sites are analyzed for their use of ethos as identified by Kostelnick and Roberts. This study seeks to understand how classical ethos is present in the designs of professional communicators, with the hope of understanding how classical rhetoric might continue to be emphasized in professional communication and composition pedagogy.