Project Rationale:
As a PhD student, I like to think of myself as a media scholar, with a special interest in media literacy and critical pedagogy. As a teaching assistant within the Department of Communication & Journalism, I’m required to instruct two, three-credit courses each semester in order to fulfill my contract and receive full tuition and a living stipend. Each spring semester I have a more flexible teaching assignment, in which I have the opportunity to teach courses more aligned with my experience and research interests, but each fall I’m assigned two sections of public speaking to instruct. I don’t particularly enjoy teaching these courses, as I have very little interest in rhetoric or interpersonal communication research—I enjoy researching, teaching, and thinking about mass media. However, these courses do afford me the opportunity to experiment with some new pedagogical strategies and, sometimes, the chance to apply media literacy frameworks to public speaking content. The project outlined here represents an attempt to integrate media literacy into a class project which serves as both a bridge between two major course assignments and a critical, inquiry-based approach to the course content.
Project Context:
The public speaking course as currently designed requires our undergraduate students to research, prepare, deliver, and reflect on four speeches within a public narrative framework: the first is a diagnostic, semi-impromptu speech that focuses on a “story of self”; the second is an informative speech, in which students collaborate in teams to choose a controversial issue related to their community and create a webinar with each of their individual speeches related to that issue—also called the “story of us”; the third is a persuasive speech, or “story of now”, in which students identify a problem that they would like to call attention to within their communities and convince their audience to take action to address that problem; the final speech asks students to connect the concepts explored in the course to their academic and/or career goals by creating a special occasion speech which incorporates those goals. Currently, my students are completing their team webinars (story of us) and they will begin planning their persuasive speeches (story us now). This project will bridge the two speech assignments by emphasizing differences in the purpose and style of informative and persuasive speeches while also exploring the ways information can be shaped into persuasive messages through the use of language, audience analysis, and Aristotle’s artistic proofs (ethos, logos, pathos). In regard to these content areas, the students have already read about and discussed the three proofs and audience analysis, so this project will serve as a refresher and creative application of those concepts. The students will be reading textbook chapters on creative and persuasive language, including rhetorical devices, so this project will serve as a good introduction to those ideas that will be explored in more depth over the next few weeks.
Project Description:
The goal of the project is to transition from the “story of us” to the “story of now” by engaging students in a two-tiered, critical media literacy activity in which students construct and deconstruct persuasive messages, applying appropriate course content (artistic proofs, audience analysis, and rhetorical and stylistic devices). The project will be completed over one modular week, including one synchronous class session. Students will have just completed recording and sharing their team webinars on BrightSpace, in which they collaboratively researched a controversial issue and presented multiple perpectives on that issue through informative speeches.
During the synchronous class meeting students will discuss the connections between informative speeches and persuasive speeches. They will explore persuasive messages by viewing and deconstructing commercials, identifying the purpose of the commercials, the message of the commercial, the persuasive tools the commercial uses, and the audience the commercial targets. Students will connect the persuasive tools that advertisers use to Aristotle’s artistic proofs (ethos, pathos, logos) and the rhetorical and stylistic devices they’ve read about. Then students will be challenged to design a PSA commercial around the controversial issues they explored in their informative speeches. They will collaborate in their teams to design a 30-second PSA with a clear persuasive message and call to action for a specific demographic audience that incorporates multiple persuasive tools and language devices, while utilizing the specific audio/visual language of advertising. Each team will write a script and draw a storyboard. Then teams will pitch or perform their PSAs, while the other teams should be able to identify the issue, call to action, target audience, and persuasive tools and language devices used.
During the asynchronous week students will individually create a critical remix of a print or video advertisement. They can choose an advertisement that connects to their informative speech topic or to a different topic they want to explore in their persuasive speech. The goal is to change the print or video advertisement in a significant way—they can change the textual message and/or the visuals of the print ad; they can add audio or textual commentary to the video ad and/or edit in new content—and in a critical way—the ad should be altered to make a critical statement about the message, author, intent, and/or construction that connects to the student’s research around the topic and the problem/solution message they want to communicate within their persuasive speech. Essentially, students are creating a critical remix or counter-advertisement which will help them to shape their own persuasive actuation messages. Students will publish their remixed media texts, either an image file or embedded video file, on BrightSpace along with a written reflection on why that particular advertisement was chosen, how it was remixed, and what critical statement is being made.
Resources for Educators:
Example of a critical remix (print advertisement):
Original print ad 
Ad stripped of assets 
Critical Remix
Included here is an example of what someone could do in regard to altering a print advertisement with a new message, using the same basic format of the original ad. The three image show the process of stripping the text from the ad and replacing it with a new pro-environment message that critically challenges the ad’s original pro-oil industry message. This could be used as a practice example in class or outside of class. (Created using Pixlr)
Example of a critical remix (video advertisement):
Included here is an example of what someone could do in regard to altering a commercial through adding text commentary that is critical of the commercial’s message and technique. The remix is also an example of how one could re-edit the original commercial. (Created using iMovie)
Core media literacy concepts and key questions (from Center for Media Literacy)
Culture Jamming from the Center for Communication & Civic Engagement at the University of Washington.
This is a comprehensive resource that includes a great definition and history of culture jamming (critical remix and counter-advertising) with a lot of links to examples and sites for further exploration.
MOOC video from Renee Hobbs and Media Education Lab about copyright and fair use in the context of remix and transformation:
Renee Hobbs provides a breakdown of copyright and fair use and how educators and learners can and should use copyrighted media in educational settings.
Resources for Students:
“Where to Look for Sources” from Fogler Library’s Public Speaking & Information Literacy Guide.
Fogler Library has created a quick reference guide to their various research databases. This will help students in choosing their persuasive speech topics and find sources to use in shaping their critical commentary and messages.
“Fotoshop by Adobé” by Jesse Rosten:
A classic example of culture jamming (critical remix and counter-advertising). The author uses the language of make-up advertising to make a critical statement about the unrealistic beauty standards presented in those advertisements.
“Guide to Fair Use” video from The LAMP:
A quick guide to fair use and critical commentary for students as they create their critical remix projects.
Tools to Use:
PIXLR is a photo editing and graphic design tool, with a free version that is easy to use. For students remixing print advertisements, this tool will redefine (SAMR) that learning and creation experience.
Students can also use software or online tools that they may have access to on their devices. If students have access to and are comfortable using iMovie or Final Cut (Mac), Windows Movie Maker (PC), or Adobe Premiere, Photoshop or Indesign (Mac and PC), or any other photo editing, graphic design, or video editing tool. There are also a number of other online tools that students may be able to access.
Studiobinder is a media production tool which allows users to create storyboards, among other functions. It has a free, limited version that students can access. While students can easily create hand-drawn storyboards, this digital tool allows for a modification (SAMR) of the PSA design activity.
Kaltura is a video hosting platform that allows students to capture video directly within the platform and to do some minor editing. UMaine students have free access to the site through their university email accounts. While one may be able to produce their video remix projects using this platform, it may not be robust enough to handle all of student’s creative needs. However, a student could use the platform to produce their project reflections, which would significantly redefine (SAMR) that portion of the project.
Discussion:
Inquiry Question: How might we understand persuasive public speaking through a media literacy framework?
This project affords my public speaking students the opportunity to discover their persuasive speech topics through a creative project that challenges them to critically apply course content to a popular medium: advertising. The PSA design activity that kicks off the project, while constrained, allows students to collaboratively explore their creativity and apply specific persuasive elements. The critical remix activity is more open, allowing students to individually choose their starting point, the direction of their inquiry, and the critical scope of their final product, which should resemble the form of a print or video advertisement.
The ultimate learning goal of this project in the context of the course is for students to understand the purpose of persuasion and the various tools used to construct effective persuasive messages for audiences. The project provides a frame for students to explore and identify actuation topics for their persuasive speeches. Additionally, the project allows me to integrate critical media literacy competencies, especially advertising literacy skills, in a way that is appropriate to the context of the course and that applies and enriches the course content.
A scoring rubric was created for the critical remix portion of the project:
This project has multiple components in which students are challenged to engage creatively and critically in group inquiry and individual inquiry. While the final forms of each activity (group PSA design and individual critical remix) are pre-determined, students have complete autonomy over every other aspect of the project and are encouraged to connect the activities to issues they are passionate about and that are relevant to a community they belong to. All components of the project will also be shared and celebrated with the rest of the class.
There are two obvious barriers in implementing this project within my public speaking courses. The first barrier is time. One Zoom class session is perhaps not enough time to introduce the persuasive speech assignment, engage in discussion and analysis of advertising and persuasion, and for students to collaborate on and share their PSA designs. As well, one modular week is likely not an ideal amount of time for the students to really dive into the critical remix activity. The course syllabus is already far too tight to allow for any additional time for this project, unfortunately. The second barrier is the technical skills required to produce a quality critical remix. While the production qualities of the final product (in regard to the qualities of photo and video editing and graphic design) are far less important to me than the critical qualities of the product, in my experience students often find it difficult to complete projects when they don’t feel they have the skills to complete it in the way they envision. It’s important to continually remind students of what outcomes are most important, so they know where to best expend their intellectual and emotional labor, and exactly what the instructor is looking for in the final product. I’m sure there are many other barriers that will unexpectedly arise, including technology and communication barriers.
With this project, I’m most excited about the opportunity to shape the public speaking curriculum more towards my own interests and pedagogical priorities, It’s also very important to me to find some way of exposing all my students to media literacy and providing them with the opportunity to critically and actively engage with media texts and technologies. I hope I will be able to return to and expand this project in future iterations of the public speaking course. Depending on the success of the project, I’m also excited about sharing the project with the other public speaking instructors who may want to implement this project, or some version of this project, in their course sections.