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None of these students had created a video composition before. And yet, using archival footage from Rauner and on-campus interviews, these first-time filmmakers produced a moving short film about student activism and apathy. As you watch the film, note that the filmmakers’ choices (of image, interviews, music, and transitions) are very clearly rooted in an awareness of the effect that they hoped to have on their audience.

  One might argue—and argue correctly—that teaching students an awareness of audience does not require that we study or assign multimedia compositions. But students are deeply engaged with these media, often relying on them to make very important life decisions, like whom to vote for in the next presidential election and why. This engagement leads students to feel that multimedia compositions matter, and that these compositions have a power that other compositions don’t have—perhaps because they believe multimedia compositions have a broad and genuinely interested audience are therefore more likely to be seen.

Indeed, a group of students working on a short film reported to me that they had spent an hour heatedly arguing about a single transition in their film. These were students who often overlooked transitions in their written work.

At USC, officials have set up a center where non-film majors can go to get help crafting videos for classes. It's called the Institute for Multimedia Literacy. Among recent projects: a geology class that asked students to make short documentaries instead of writing term papers.

The first dimensional shift has to do with literacy and how it is evolving. Literacy today involves not only text, but also image and screen literacy. The ability to "read" multimedia texts and to feel comfortable with new, multiple-media genres is decidedly nontrivial.