Last Friday my fellow Faculty Development and Research team members and I explored our artsy-fartsy sides with an inservice titled “Tutoring with Visual Rhetoric” in preparation for the First Year Writing Showcase (FYWS). For those of you who don’t know what the FYWS is, let me offer a brief explanation. The FYWS honors the work students have done in their first year program classes such as first-year writing, liberal studies, quantitative reasoning, and focal point seminars. Over the past few weeks interested students submitted their work to a panel of judges who are now in the process of selecting the most exceptional entries to display at the Showcase.
So, how does this affect you as a Writing Center Tutor? Chosen applicants are required to make an appointment with tutors to talk about converting their work into a visually appealing poster presentation, and you must be ready to help them!
As writing tutors we already rock at working with arguments, thesis statements, main points, and everything else that goes into a paper, but visual representation is a different animal. Tutors must be prepared to talk to FYWS students about representing these elements of their written work in a creative and thoughtful manner. To help with this endeavor here are a couple of resources that discuss things such as the Principles of Design, color theory, and font personalities:
- Our Inservice Powerpoint – This is a useful place to start to familiarize yourself with this discussion on visual rhetoric.
- The Lost Principles of Design – Great introduction to the Principles of Design–balance, contrast, direction/movement, emphasis, proportion, scale, repetition/rhythm/pattern, and unity–which are all important things to consider when creating a visual work.
- Purdue Owl: Visual Rhetoric – Encompasses everything we talked about at the inservice and more. It will be a wonderful resource to share with FYWS students!
- Color in Motion – Provides information on color theory and color emotion, and is simultaneously a really entertaining site to goof around on.
- NCSU Page on Poster Presentations – A very practical guide to creating effective poster presentations.
Also, don’t forgot to join us at the First Year Writing Showcase to see the students’ finished work! The event will be held on May 16 at 5pm-7pm in Cortelyou Commons in Lincoln Park.
Happy tutoring =)
2 replies on “Tutoring with Visual Rhetoric”
This is a great collection of visual rhetoric resources! Something I’ve struggled with both as a tutor and a former FYW instructor is that students sometimes find it a challenge to see how the visual elements and arrangment of their Digication portfolios or other visual compositions can affect their overall purpose. I’ll have to remember to refer to these site from now on– I think they’re very accessible and immediate for student use.
This is a great collection of visual rhetoric resources! Something I’ve struggled with both as a tutor and a former FYW instructor is that students sometimes find it a challenge to see how the visual elements and arrangment of their portfolios or other visual compositions can affect their overall purpose. I’ll have to remember to refer to these site from now on– I think they’re very accessible and immediate for student use.