Reading Modalities: Conditions of Interface Between Student and Text

TILT program: Teaching and Learning Development Grant (TLDG)

Principal Investigator: Eldritch Priest, associate professor, School for the Contemporary Arts, Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology

Project team: Matt Horrigan, co-applicant and research assistant, School for the Contemporary Arts, Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology; Roman Dubrule, research assistant, School for the Contemporary Arts, Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology

Timeframe: March 2022 to January 2024

Funding: $5000

Courses addressed:

• CA 344 -- Thinking and Writing About Sound
• CA 414 -- Special Topics in Art, Cinema and Performance Studies: Hauntology

Final Report: View Eldritch Priest's final report (PDF), and manuscript (PDF)

Description:

This project sought to transform how students learn critical reading and writing by exploring shared principles across various media sources like video essays and songs. The research team developed a narrative-centered teaching approach that emerged organically from classroom experimentation and student feedback in interdisciplinary arts’ contexts.

The project evolved through iterative course design, beginning with research into critical pedagogy inspired by Paolo Freire and bell hooks, coinciding with ChatGPT's launch. The team implemented a "content nugget" method where students contributed weekly links to artworks and news stories relevant to readings, creating choice-and-concretization tasks resistant to automated cheating. This approach revealed that students preferred traditional text-based readings over prescribed videos, leading to a refined understanding of how multimodal content functions best in educational contexts.

Three key pedagogical solutions emerged: narrative as a unifying framework across theory, fiction, experimentation, and artwork; hermeneutic coding that frames research questions as narrative mysteries; and speculativity as an epistemic tool particularly suited to arts and humanities students with limited resources. The project challenged assumptions about multimedia learning while developing innovative approaches to academic integrity and critical thinking in the age of AI-assisted writing.

Questions addressed:

• How can students be coached to notice shared principles across scholarly and vernacular sources?
• What teaching methods best support critical reading and writing in interdisciplinary arts contexts?
• How can pedagogical approaches adapt to challenges posed by AI-assisted writing tools?
• What role does narrative play in uniting diverse forms of academic and creative expression?

Knowledge sharing: Initial informal sharing through School for the Contemporary Arts’ conversations with plans for two academic essays: "Teaching Speculative Writing" and "On Not Bringing Your Whole Self to Class." Development of internal best practices document for grading in the OpenAI era continues at Alexander College.

Keywords: Critical pedagogy, narrative pedagogy, interdisciplinary teaching, academic integrity, AI-assisted writing, multimodal learning, speculative writing, hermeneutic coding, contemporary arts education, critical reading strategies, AI