By Craig Haas
ENC1136: Multimodal Writing/Digital Literacy (Spring 2021)
Instructor: Brandon Murakami
This course focuses on the topic of “digital literacy” and its relationship to multimodal composition, widely defined. As an alternative to ENC1102 (“Rhetoric and Academic Research”), the second course in UF’s sequence of “First-Year Writing,” students work to compose well-researched, creative, and thoughtful pieces while being attentive to the affordances and constraints of each of the mediums they synthesized. There are three different composition projects, though I provide examples from only one here: the Image/Text assignment.
Positioned between the “traditional” Digital Technology Research Paper and the Audio/Video assignment, the Image/Text assignment asks students to explore the relationship between alphanumeric text and the static image to compose their own imagetext. This imagetext could take the form of a picturebook, a comic, infographics, or a zine, to name a few. At the same time, students were asked to “translate” academic research and jargon for their target audience—often children or the general public—while employing their knowledge of the elements and principles of visual and graphic design, color theory, and composition theory.
Craig Haas’ spectacular infographic, “Under the Sea” presents both the sombering statistics and the dangers that overfishing inflicts on the environment. Craig aims to raise awareness about how we can become more ethical consumers of seafood as well as what we can do to protect our oceans’ diverse ecologies. Bringing together stark statistics with colorful and playful visuals, Craig’s infographic energizes his readers by leaving them with a sense of agency to enact the solutions we still have at our disposable to stem the impact our species has on countless oceanic ones.
Craig Haas is a first-year student at the University of Florida majoring in accounting. As a student in the Fisher School of Accounting, Craig has dreams of working with one of the Big Four Accounting firms and specializing in the field of audit because of his enthusiasm for new experiences. During his time at the University of Florida, Craig has researched overfishing’s effect on climate change in his latest research project titled, “Under The Sea”. As an Out-of-State student from New York, Craig has enjoyed getting involved in the University Athletic Association as a volunteer student photographer for Florida Gators’ sporting events and as an accepted member of the Florida Leadership Academy, a business club that prides itself on accepting the top-100 business sophomores at the University of Florida.