Building student engagement and creativity: A workshop on American multimodal fiction

This article examines the educational benefits of a workshop on American multimodal fiction. Despite growing research in the fields of multimodality studies and teaching and learning processes, the capacity of print-based multimodal fiction for creative pedagogical objectives remained largely unaddressed. In this workshop, students were introduced to a body of print-based novels that combine writing with design and typographic elements, images and maps, and were able to experience them first-hand in class. The books were arranged in different parts of the room in working stations and students experienced them autonomously. Their impressions fed into the creative work they submitted, where they were asked to re-imagine a short story into a multimodal text. The outcome of this process demonstrated the significance of student engagement in class, the potential of primary material to stimulate curiosity and sharpen their skillset and the capacity of print-based literary texts for inspiring creative output in the digital age.