Creative Writing in New Media

The interactive documentary (iDoc) The Hollow is an excellent example of this genre–it is more cohesive and narrative-driven than a website but more dynamic than a traditional documentary. The interactive documentary is a fractured text that presents information to the reader almost as a buffet–the reader is free to make choices as to which materials they will interact, how deeply they will engage with it, and (to some degree) what order they access the materials. Unlike the traditional, linear documentary or essay, the interactive documentary does not rely on the geography of the text to make connections; instead, it relies on the network of connections internal to the reader.

I noted that the structure of this iDoc allows the reader freedom to explore the content (contributions — mostly videos or interviews with 30 residents of McDowell County, West Virginia, plus interactives, music and graphics) with a good deal of freedom. This iDoc experience, however, is not a complete sandbox. The materials are organized into six separate sections which can be navigated between roughly in the same way you can find shortcuts through IKEA–the ability to subvert the planned path exists, but it’s hidden. Within each themed page, materials are presented in a set order, and the content is previewed in visuals and soundbites that are triggered by scrolling, but the actual content is accessed only when — and if — the audience selects it, and in whatever order they select it in for that section.

My fascination with this documentary is as a collaborative document that allows multiple creators to contribute individual pieces that contribute to the purpose of the whole. It can be a living document with the addition, updating, and deletion of materials. This will be a text my students explore and that will be a part of a future assignment.

http://hollowdocumentary.com/

Sections:

• The way it was
• These Roots
• For each other
• For the land
• When coal was king
• Around the bend

Looking for great content for your VR headset (whether a $7 Google cardboard or a $200 Oculus) or just looking to see what can be done with immersive 360* video? The New York Times “360 Video Channel” (https://www.nytimes.com/video/360-video) offers a long list of short documentary videos (2-30 minutes) that give a sense of this medium’s storytelling abilities. The film featured here is the award-winning Traveling While Black, an excellent film the connects The Green Book of the early 20th century to the dangers faced by Blacks today.

Of particular interest in the films is the use of the POV — when and why it is restricted, the use of reflective surfaces to show multiple visual texts at once, the dominance of voice and dialogue as a focus (you might not be looking at the mother describing having to decide whether to stay with her two younger sons at a crime scene or to ride in the ambulance with the body of her oldest son, the victim of a police shooting–you can look away, but you cannot ignore her story).

In the space of a few months, it is possible that we might have Hugo-winning authors in our classes. And this could be true for literally hundreds of thousands of classrooms as well as hundreds of thousands of offices worldwide. This spring, fanfiction archive An Archive of Our Own (AO3 — https://archiveofourown.org/) was nominated for a Hugo award in the Related Works category, and it’s a big deal

Okay — let me backtrack:

• Hugo Awards: The Hugo Awards have been presented to outstanding works by the World Science Fiction Society since 1953. The works nominated span across all media types and include not only sci-fi but horror, fantasy or works the members of WorldCon deem appropriate.
• Related Works: This is a catch-all category for works that are largely tangential to the corpus of creative works–past winners have included encyclopedias, compendiums, and critical or literary analysis.

Now, some people will tell you this is NOT a big deal, and their arguments go something like this:

1. the nomination and voting processes for the Hugos are incredibly open to fans, not just “experts”
2. fanfiction is not “real” writing
3. the nomination is as much for the sites organizational apparatus and search mechanism as for the content

Here’s why it is a big deal: the nomination represents a shift — for some people a shift that will still take years to happen in their view, but a shift nevertheless.

One piece of that shift is decidedly cultural–it was only 3 to 6 years ago that the Hugo nomination process was utterly disrupted by the attempts of the right-wing Sad Puppies movement to dominate the nominations. In 2015, at the height of the Gamergate controversy*, the Hugo nomination rules made it possible for the Sad Puppies to impose a full slate of nominees in many categories that were so unpopular or offensive/irritating to the larger body that “No Award” won in the majority of categories. The Hugos made important changes to their process to prevent this domination while still allowing the process to be fan-driven.

So how does the AO3 nomination demonstrate a cultural shift? AO3 is an online archive for user-generated fanfiction. The site was established by the Organization for Transformative Works, a non-profit dedicated to archiving fanworks, and has been run by the registered users, who are overwhelmingly female. The archive is a play on words from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and was established in part in reaction to the harsh criticism most fanfiction received from the male administrators and members at FanLib. The archive is also regarded as highly LGBTQ-friendly — in short, almost everything the Sad Puppies were opposed to in 21st-century sci-fi/fantasy/horror genres.

Beyond signaling a more inclusive community in WorldCon and the Hugos, however, the nomination of AO3 also represents a growing regard for fanfiction itself. Fanfiction, of course, has long been acceptable so long as it had the right pedigree–if you are John Gardner writing Grendel, Seth Graham-Smith inserting zombies in Pride and Prejudice, or Verdi scoring Macbeth or Falstaff, but if you are EL James developing racy Twilight fanfic, not so much. Many, of course, can draw real distinctions–there is a difference between Margaret Atwood’s Hogarth series entry Hag Seed and an immature and inarticulate retelling of The Tempest, but the importance of fanfiction is often not in the texts written but in the storyworlds built and, even more important, the audiences engaged.

Since 2013, Pemberley Digital Studios has been reimagining and retelling classic stories in a transmedia format. Before they were officially Pemberley Digital Studios, the team of Hank Green and Bernie Su launched their first and arguably most successful series, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, an updated adaptation of Pride & Prejudice with communications grad student living at home while completing a vlog-based thesis project. The series contained 100+ episodes of 5-9 minutes released on a two-per-week schedule. That series was followed up Welcome to Sanditon (28-episodes, Austen’s Sanditon), Emma Approved (77 episodes, Austen’s Emma), Frankenstein MD (24 episodes, Shelley’s Frankenstein), and The March Family Letters (50 episodes, Alcott’s Little Women).

The March Family Letters (2015), done in cooperation with PBS video (as was Frankenstein MD), in many ways seemed to signal the end of Pemberley Digital Studios. After 5 series in two years, production stopped.

Until Fall 2018 when Pemberly Studios suddenly and unexpectedly came back with a 17-episode arch not based on any Austen novel, but one that exemplifies Pemberley studios efforts to build a cohesive storyworld based on the major and independent Austen novels. The 17-episode arch focused Emma’s efforts to identify a new career for Mr. Collins (the annoying failed beau from The Lizzie Bennet Diaries).

This is not the first “character crossover” Pemberley has used to knit its adaptations of stand-alone novels into a storyworld: in the original Emma Approved, the shallow and boastful Lizzie Bennet Diary character Charlotte Lee is used in Emma Approved in place of the Augusta Hawkins character from the original Emma novel. Likewise, the character GiGi Darcy (Georgina in Pride & Prejudice) takes the role of the outsider Charlotte Heywood in Welcome to Sanditon, based on Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon.

Using crossover characters works to expand Austen’s novels into a larger universe, which is ironic when we consider that Austen’s novels largely reflect the closed and insular world their characters were restricted to. However, it does appeal to the modern taste for seriality (stories that bloom beyond the scope of the original material) as well as reward insiders–when fans of The Lizzie Bennett Diaries see Charlotte Lee walk into Emma’s office, they know the character, they are privy to inside jokes, and they get a reward new fans don’t get.

This strategy of making Austen’s novels into a single connected universe is, in fact, the whole purpose of the 17-episode Emma Approved, Revival series. The producers reinforce that they are making these separate stories into a combined universe with the introduction (or reintroduction) of Mr. Collin’s from the Diaries, but the true purpose for the series is made clear in the very last episode when, after solving Mr. Collin’s non-canon problem, Alex Knightley (George in the book, Alex in the web series) invites the audience to vote on which client Emma should take on next: Anne Elliot, Tom Parker, or Knightley’s brother, John. For fans of Austen or fans of Pemberley Studios, these names ring bells:

• Anne Elliot is the heroine of Austen’s novel Persuasion. Her name is mentioned early in Emma Approved, Revival in connection with a canceled event (the Elliot/Wentworth wedding) that sent Emma into a tailspin
• Tom Parker, the ineffectual mayor from Welcome to Sanditon.
• John Knightley, Mr. Knightley’s brother who appears in Emma and has an off-camera roll in Emma Approved.

Three different characters from what should be three different storyworlds–and yet, the choice Knightley seems to be offering is a false one because no matter which option the viewers vote for, the next production is Persuasion. How do I know? There are some clues. Since casting for Anne and John (along with Wentworth) started before Emma Approved, Revival launched, the script and plot must be well in hand, which only leaves the question as to what roles Pemberley Studios will be swapping out to create a more cohesive universe.

Persuasion is Anne’s story, so fitting in John Knightly and Tom Parker is the challenge. Both are established family men, so the obvious candidate would be Charles Musgrove (Anne’s brother-in-law, a good fit for Tom Parker, but not for John Knightley, who is already established as the husband of Emma’s sister), Captain Harville, or Admiral Croft. The problem is that none of these are major roles in the book, so solving their problems would not give much to the story. The meatier roles (Anne’s cousin William Elliot and Captain Benwick) are both widowers. This might not pose a barrier to Tom Parker in one of these roles (we haven’t met his wife on screen, so she could be killed off or divorced with few repercussions to the storyworld) but John Knightley is married to Emma’s sister, who we’ve met in the original Emma Approved. Killing off Emma’s sister is not Austen-esque, at least not Pemberley Studios Austen. It’s possible he could separate from his wife, play the Benwick role and return to her rather than marrying Anne’s primary competition for Wentworth’s attention. but …Nah.

So what is the point of all of this rambling? When undertaking to create within a storyworld (original, established, or adapted), writers make use of different writing skills and must understand and follow the codes that rule that storyworld. You can’t kill Emma’s sister for the same reason you can’t make Hermione be Harry Potter’s cousin, dilithium crystals grow on trees in Nebraska, or George Smiley a ladies’ man. Those changes violate rules that would change too much in those storyworlds. Serial writing and sequential novels are often treated with less respect than stand-alone novels, particularly when they are in already-marginalized genres like mystery, romance, sci-fi, or fantasy, but there is an art to it that deserve close syudy.

Many of the essays in The Routledge Handbook of Digital Writing explore the possibility that writing might become an activity largely turned over to computers — not just as a generator of the finished product, but as the creator of content while humans take on the role of editors. If the idea seems too sci-fi for serious consideration…well, every sci-fi fan knows that as soon as the idea is dismissed, there is a fast cut scene, creepy music, and the exact thing we said could never happen–that’s what happens. So is it possible that computers could write meaningful prose? Yes. And no.

Yes, but…

Computers can and will write meaningful prose, but the texts they produce will almost certainly be rote texts. Think of our own current practices. I know very few working professionals that do not have a few “letter templates” stored in their computers–templates for letters of recommendations, thank-you-for-writing notes, or we’re-sorry-you-are-not-happy missives. When the need arises for such a piece of writing, we pull up the template, customize it to the specific situation, proofread, and we are done. So long as we are dealing with a type of writing that obeys a clear formula, our computer-stored template saves us time and gets the job done.

Spin-bots and paraphrasing software work are much less sophisticated than writing to a formula as a spinbot is essentially a substitution algorithm. And, of course, at the moment, they do not work exceptionally well, as shown in the example below where the first two paragraphs of an earlier blog posting have been “spun.”

Over the last few years, it has not been uncommon for me to hear a YA author or an aspiring YA author to lament that no one is interested in publishing their work unless it is part of a trilogy. This complaint is usually made with the grave shaking of the head and an implication (often unstated although much more often stated) that publishers are not interested in literature these days so much as they are interested in a franchise. The publishers are not, these authors claim, looking for the next To Kill a Mockingbird so much as the next Hunger Game or Divergent series that can be packaged and repackaged as movies, TV series, games, or toys.

But what if it turns out that this mania for series and the ubiquitous YA trilogies is not driven by a publisher’s attention to a bottom line (well, maybe just not entirely driven by that) as by actual changes in the expectations of the audience? What if today’s younger and maturing audiences are actually demanding not only a good story or an interesting character but their expectation of literature is that it affords them a playground with space for them to interact?

Over the previous few years, it has not been unusual for me to pay attention a YA creator or an aspiring YA author to lament that no one is inquisitive about publishing their paintings unless it is part of a trilogy. This grievance is commonly made with the grave shaking of the top and an implication (sometimes unspoken despite the fact that a whole lot extra frequently stated) that publishers are not interested in literature these days so much as they’re interested by a franchise. The publishers are not, those authors claim, looking for the next To Kill a Mockingbird a lot as the next starvation recreation or Divergent collection that may be packaged and repackaged as films, television series, games, or toys.

however what if it seems that this mania for collection and the ever-present YA trilogies is not driven with the aid of a publisher’s attention to a backside line (well, maybe simply now not totally pushed by way of that) as with the aid of real adjustments within the expectancies of the audience? What if cutting-edge younger and maturing audiences are truly demanding no longer simplest an awesome story or a thrilling man or woman but their expectation of literature is that it gives them a playground with space for them to have interaction?

Indeed, writing to a formula is key to computer-generated “original prose.” If a particular “genre” of writing — the thank you note or the academic paragraph–can be written as an algorithm, then a computer can generate a rough draft of the target text with minimal input from the user–if the user provides the main argument and supporting details, in theory, there is no reason the computer cannot produce the required text. Indeed, a group of students created a “story generator” to produce a short story with some strategic or random input. The stories are unique but follow the same set of story beats. https://www.plot-generator.org.uk/story/

A”writing” algorithm might work in a similar way, except it would pull stock phrases or sentences from a corpus of material, so if I wanted to a letter turning someone down, the algorithm would grab the following sentences:

1. sentence thanking for interest
2. sentence noting the strength of application pool
3. sentence regretting their application was not accepted
4. sentence encouraging the applicant to watch for future opportunities.

And if I wanted to write a body paragraph to an argumentative essay, the algorithm would grab

1. a sentence stating a pro or con position
2. a sentence identifying the most common statistic-based reason for the position
3. a sentence explaining the significance of the position
4. a sentence identifying the most common values-based reason for the position.
5. a sentence relating the importance of the value to the larger community.
6. a sentence restating the argument.

Where would the computer be drawing these sentences from? In a perfect world, a corpus of a writer’s own work (think about it–if you stored all the sentences from every Alexander McCall-Smith mystery novel into a corpus, wrote out the basic algorithm for a cozy mystery, and hired an editor to fill in the right names and change “Botswana” or “desert” to “Scotland” and “bog,” the author could keep publishing for years after his death). However, traditional college freshmen do not have a corpus of work that can be used for academic writing, so it seems more likely a corpus will be created from academic publications, past student papers collected by businesses like Turnitin, and publishers looking to provide the most comprehensive support to students possible. Auto essay writers can be found on the web — they are expensive, often virus-ridden, and provide bad content. As natural language processing continues to develop, however, these things will smooth out.

And no…

So, in theory and in practice, it will be possible for a computer to handle routine and “routinized” types of writing; however, at this time, the propensity of the computer is to imitate, not originate. If the purpose of academic writing was to reiterate what others have said in the same language as anyone else, then a computer will eventually be able to write or substantially draft an essay or thesis that sounds like very much like most other academic writing.

Computer algorithms absorb the tone and phrasings so well that humans are not always able to control it. For example, in 2016, IBM’s TayTweets project trained a bot to comment engage with Twitter posts under highly controlled conditions. Through the 18+ month that the algorithm was learning to learn, it was exposed exclusively to positive casual conversations; however, within one day of being released into and feeding off of the whole of Tweeter, the algorithm began tweeting racist and misogynistic comments.

Never Alone is a side-scrolling puzzle-platformer developed by Upper One Games on a traditional Iñupiaq tale recorded by Robert Nasruk Cleveland in his collection Stories of the Black River People. The game was developed in cooperation with the Cook Inlet Tribal Council (Alaska), and the production drew on the talents of 40 tribal members.

The game tells the story of a young Iñupiat girl named Nuna who travels across the terrain of extreme northern Alaska with an arctic fox to learn what has befallen her family after her village was attacked and destroyed by The Terrible One. In the course of the game, the player is required to swap between Nuna and the fox to escape polar bears, to outsmart little people, traverse the tundra during a blizzard, defeat the Terrible One, and steal the Ice Giant’s axe.

Although that sounds like a lot of action, Never Alone‘s gameplay is not the most interesting thing about it. Although the designers set the challenges to become progressively harder, the basic skills are consistent and do not build as much as happens in other games. The reason this game is worthy of the awards it collected when released in 2014 and the reason it is worthy of study is that the game incorporates traditional storytelling and short i-documentary clips that are unlocked as the player progresses.

The story elements appear in the game as cinematics or cutscenes; the animation style changes from the Disney-style animation used for the player-controlled segments to a sepia-toned native art style. The narration is in the Iñupiat language with subtitles in the player-selected language. The i-documentary “insights” are released where they can add depth and understanding to the cultural elements as the player encounters them. The insights also tie the cultural elements to the present. As one tribal elder says in the first insight, the Iñupiat are a living people and a living culture. Although the technology has changed, the essential struggle for survival remains, a point that comes home in the story of a young man about being stranded on an ice floe while out hunting with his father as a boy.

So often when my students and critics think about educational games, they jump to imagining fully immersive VR or AR games that put the experience at the center of the game. Never Alone provides a story-forward model that not only can give the players a chance to engage with the life-challenges the Iñupiat face but the opportunity to learn their stories, history, and values as well as hear their language.

A game is not always just an entertainment pastime. Although most of my students interested in game design come to the field on a quest to build quests–epic battles that with 100 hours worth of content, millions of choices embedded in a saga, and lots and lots of elves–many will eventually devote time on games that improve the world in different ways.

Serious games are games with a purpose beyond entertainment–they can be large, dedicated setups like the simulations used to train harbor masters directing dock traffic at major seaports or can be small games designed to make one quick point that might raise awareness.

Games are effective for many purposes because story is the common currency of the human brain. Although we often think of story as exclusively an expressive or entertainment, story can convey information in a variety of ways. Narratives are often arguments–Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha’s account of the Flint water crisis in What the Eyes Don’t See, or the story of every grade school kid explaining exactly why they had no choice but to sock that kid in the eye and it was NOT their fault. We use stories to convince others to accept our point of view. 

The game to the right is “My Cotton-Picking Life,” a game that can be played in less than a minute, but one that has been designed to do some work. After the user is told that cotton in Uzbekistan is hand-picked by child laborers, the user is invited to play. To play, the user clicks on the blue and green buttons at the bottom of the screen, which manipulates the arms. If the user stops for a few seconds, a speech bubble appears threatening a beating. When the player surrenders (it is boring to perform this small repetitive task even though it is not physically demanding), they are reminded that the real children cannot quit, and then we are given a score. I played with intense and complete focus for one minute and was told I had collected 0.3% of my required quota, meaning that it would have taken me over 5 hours of working as hard as I could to complete the task.

Obviously, the designers of the game do not expect their audience to devote 5–7 hours clicking 2 buttons in order to beat this game, so what are their goals? When I present this game to my students (because I will design an assignment asking them to analyze a game with a persuasive intention), I expect most of them will point to the button that allows you to donate money, but the purpose of this game starts way before anyone decides to donate. Most players will not give funds, but they will walk away with information they never had before: how many people in Johnson County knew they grow cotton in Uzbekistan? Or that they pick it by hand? Or that child labor laws do not exist? And the designers know that before they can get money or action from their audience, first they must achieve awareness.

Other persuasive games are extremely complex. In The McDonalds Game (http://www.mcvideogame.com/) created by La Molleindustria in 2006. The game has four zones for the player to manage: farmland, the slaughterhouse, the restaurants, and the marketing/lobbying section of the corporation. The player is required to balance the interests of the company with personal values in a series of moral choices (you need more produce from your farmland in Brazil? — do you want to tear down rain forest or buy up farms that sustain indigenous people? Shoud you increase beef production with hormones? It will cost you some public support, but you can fix that with the marketing team. This game has layers of information and wants to persuade the audience’s views about land policy, livestock ethics, corporate policy, international trade, political influence, and other things–but ultimately, they also want to influence the individual’s choice as to whether or not they turn in at that drive-thru.

Games like My Cotton-Picking Life and The McDonald’s Game can be found in many places, including the links below:

• http://gamethenews.net/index.php/my-cotton-picking-life/
• http://www.molleindustria.org/blog/
• http://persuasivegaming.nl/persuasive-games/

Of the many criticisms made concerning the workshop method of teaching creative writing (for example, that the method is being misapplied to undergraduate writers before they have mastered the basics, that workshop comments can be competitive or even mean rather than constructive), the one most relevant to the intersection of creative writing and new media is that traditional workshopping comes at the wrong time in the writing process.

The traditional workshop generally follows this formula:

• The author drafts a short story, a piece of a novel, one or a small group of poems; although the pieces are “in-progress” there is generally a high level of completeness to the work being workshopped. This is particularly true in academic courses.
• The texts are distributed to the workshop participants who read and comment on the texts.
• On the appointed day, the author presents the work, often reading it out loud.
• The other participants offer feedback or comments to the author. For this process, there is some variation.
  • Often, authors are not allowed to speak at all. The theory is that this prevents the author from being defensive or from explaining their text, which (in theory) should be self-explanatory since the author will not be with all of their readers to explain what the text means.
  • Sometimes, the author is allowed to answer direct questions

If all goes well, the author leaves with good insights and ideas for how to take his or her writing to the next level. That is, if the author is willing to make major changes to a piece they consider nearly finished. and if the workshop doesn’t go well — if commenters focus too much on their preferences and not what the piece is trying to do — then the author and the writing can suffer. Traditionally, academic workshops often have the effect of norming a piece of writing rather than elevating it. Comments ground the expectations for the text in the accepted norm of literary or writing,

Many critics of the current workshop-intensive pedagogy in undergraduate creative writing courses argue that students should spend more time focused on learning their craft — intentionally playing with the forms and with language itself — so that students produce a portfolio of wide-ranging exercises that they can then use to launch or inform more finished pieces. When creating their collection of low-risk writings, students should be encouraged to write things in a variety of genres and voices.

Workshops, these critics argue, also need to start much earlier in the creation process–before the course of the story is set, before the tone is established, and before hours of work has gone into moving a text to near completion. This would resemble the process commonly used in media ventures, the “Pixar” method. Because film and video are so expensive to produce (and this is even more true for games and other interactives), studios never create the entire product and then seek feedback. The creator comes to a “brain trust” when ideas are still fluid and tell the story of what they are trying to create. As they tell their story (not read), others ask questions about audience, the intention of elements, or the impact the author wants. Notes are made and shared. Then the creator goes off to create their draft and move their project closer to completion.

 

Vanderslice, Stephanie. Rethinking Creative Writing. National Association of Writers in Education, 2015.

Vanderslice looks at the history of established creative writing pedagogy, much of which is based on the Writers Workshop established at the University of Iowa in the 1940s. The criticisms of the workshop structure are these. First, that the workshop was designed to be used with polished writers in an exclusive graduate program (and is now being used in undergraduate programs and with students who have far less experience and instruction in writing. Second, the workshop structure focuses on the product rather than the process of composing. Third, workshop rules (the writer does not speak, participants discuss a text, often without any input from the writer on their goals for the piece) can foster competitiveness and overly harsh criticism. Finally, some critics (including many editors) complain that the traditional writing workshop “norm” the writing being produced–critiques and feedback reward people who write “literary” prose on serious topics and discourage experimentation or writing “genre” work (romance, scifi, fantasy, westerns, etc).

Vanderslice notes many programs that are making changes, starting with expanding the number of genres offered from the traditional prose, poetry, and playwriting to include media arts, new technologies, creative nonfiction, graphic literature, etc.). Genres like new media often change the dynamics of the writing process because they encourage collaboration and early feedback (because it is cheaper to make changes in the planning level than the production level).

Another important shift Vanderslice advocates is using creative writing classes to teach students how to live a creative life — not in an existential way, but in a “pay the rent” way. College teaching jobs are scarce, as are editing jobs and staff writing positions, but the demand for creative minds who understand writing and narrative is out there if the writer opens their expectations and maybe learns skills beyond traditional writing–if not coding itself, for example, than at least an understanding of what coding can do.

Response: Many of the criticisms Vanderslice notes are relevant not only to new media but for traditional composition classrooms. Asking students to give each other feedback before all the writing can be finished seems a logical way to inspire stronger or less obvious ideas for the direction of a text-in-progress (before hours are spent on a less interesting path and before a writer becomes less entrenched in an idea).

It only took me 4 weeks to get a little meta–this post is not so much on the topic of transmedia composition and creative writing as it is on considering the philosophy and pedagogy behind two MOOCs on the topic offered through Coursera.

Like millions of people around the world, prior to this semester, I have signed up for MOOCs and then–yeah, nothing. I have had the same reasons for not completing (or even really starting) that everyone has used–work and “real world” tasks had a higher priority, I hadn’t paid for the course so my sense of obligation was low, being in a “class” with thousands of other people and no direct feedback was contrary to my idea of a meaningful educational experience. But for my sabbatical, I was determined to complete at least one MOOC. So far, I completed one, abandoned one, and am working on three more.

What made a successful MOOC for me

The University of New South Wales’s Transmedia Storytelling was a great experience; I came away with more ideas to try, more resources to investigate, more energy about this project. I believe the MOOC was successful because it legitimately offered the following things:

1. An anthology of points of view.  Each unit centered on a key concept (building a storyworld, planning the user experience, etc), and each unit was “hosted” by a UNSW professor with distinct expertise. Each of the 6 units of the course featured between 10-20 short videos, ranging from 1 to 15 minutes in length; each video developed one idea related to the unit’s main concept with insights from a wide range of professionals and academics from around the world — Henry Jenkins (the godfather of transmedia) contributed a half dozen “mini-lectures” carved out from the extensive interviews and roughly 20 other professionals.
2. A focus on the process, not the product. Although the course did ask participants to work on an idea throughout, the assignments focused on the process of creating a transmedia experience–it asked participants to list goals, to think about how different media could be used to complement each other, to plan how to engage different audiences with different media and platforms. It did not ask participants to actually create the product but to engage in the planning/brainstorming process.
3. An understanding of the limitations of a MOOC. This is not a college class, and this MOOC did not pretend to be. It was a survey-style introduction to a complex topic that gave the participant a trove of resources to use to learn more–including information about UNSW’s own program where some of these skills can be learned.

What made an unsuccessful MOOC experience for me

The Transmedia Writing course from Michigan State University was a far less successful MOOC (although I know they have an excellent program). To me, the lack of success came from failing to understand the difference between what an instructor can do in a classroom with one or two dozen students and what happens in a MOOC. These things made it less successful (for me):

1. One speaker with one set of experiences to draw from. The Michigan State MOOC featured one professor standing (I kid you not) against a white background. He seemed perfectly nice, but it was one guy talking about the basics of writing and story and peer review. He pleaded for participation in peer review almost to an obsessive level, which makes sense as peer review is the only feedback students in this MOOC get (note: you can’t acutally post your work to the boards for feedback without paying the $49 for a certificate, and even then, the feedback you get is from other participants in the class)
2. A focus on product over process. The course purported to walk students through three types of transmedia writing — the opening of a novel, the beginning of a screenplay, and a pitch document for a video game. The instruction was more or less “this is what the first chapter of a novel should do–now write a first chapter that follows these rules and post your finished product for others to comment on.”
3. Confusion between a MOOC and a college class. This MOOC was attempting to ask more from its participants in 6 weeks than any sane professor would ask from a student in a full semester, but more problematic than that was that the creator was trying to give participants the answer instead of giving them access to tools that would foster curiosity and exploration.

MOOCs & JCCC English

I do not foresee and doubt I would even recommend the creation of a MOOC from the JCCC English program, but as an exercise in brainstorming, I am writing this–If I were going to try to create a MOOC, I would keep these things in mind:

1. Create an anthology of voices covering the range of possible things to learn
2. Focus on encouraging participants to want to learn more, not in trying to answer a question completely
3. Distinguish between the goals of the MOOC and the goals of a traditional class.

All that being said, to create an anthology, the first and most challenging task would be to bribe, blackmail, hypnotize, and cajole my colleagues into participating in the creation of one collective MOOC, perhaps for JCCC’s literature classes — not as a substitute for any of the classes but to promote a love of stories and the desire to get more from literature. The goal would be to encourage thought about what literature is or how it affects us. The course would need to be organized into logical units (perhaps based on genres like prose, poetry, media arts, performance pieces), and colleagues would be pressed into creating short videos to explicate one literary element (character, setting, plot, flashback) or form (sonnet, ode, epic, comedy) by lecturing on one piece of literature they are passionate about. The names of all JCCC lit classes where they could learn more would be heavily featured in the materials along with an extensive list of resources.

That only sounds like a couple of hundred hours worth of work!