Sample Student Work
Emojis
One group, which included students Megan Dunn, Cody Lyon, Callie Wilhite, and Cassie Urbanowski, created a packet of downloadable Woolf emojis through the platform Telegram. (Those links require you to have the app loaded to your phone; to view the emojis without doing so, here are screenshots of their first set, their second set, and their third set of emojis.) These emojis represent multiple Woolf novels, including references to Mrs. Dalloway, The Voyage Out, Orlando, and To the Lighthouse. They also reference imagery that she uses throughout her career, including snails and flowers. This emoticon set represents their desire to integrate references to Virginia Woolf into their everyday practices of texting and other digital forms of communication.
Tumblr Exhibitions
Emily Boyd used the blogging platform Tumblr to create the Oak Tree Exhibition, which features four original artworks made by the student, which she curated by adding them onto a new Tumblr and writing a lengthy paragraph that accompanies each piece of artwork. Her descriptions, which are written using scholarly citation practices, explain how the artwork was inspired by particular scenes in Woolf's Orlando.Another student, Miguel Lopez, also used Tumblr to blend visual art and scholarship about Virginia Woolf. This one, titled PokéWoolf, arranges sets of Pokémon characters that are picked for particular characters in Mrs. Dalloway. Miguel describes it as a "mashup" because it indeed remixes multiple, discrete cultural phenomenons into one new, single creative production.
Although Emily worked primarily by hand to create her artwork (which she then imaged and uploaded), Miguel made liberal use of born-digital images and Photoshop. Both students, however, equally strive to combine scholarly and artistic modes of interpretation, and their work beautifully bridges everyday practices of digital culture with scholarship.
Twitter and Storify
One group, consisting of Darienne Dickey, Kelcy Klein, Jordan Cooley, and Travis Howell, staged a Twitter event based on Woolf's Between the Acts. This event replicated both the characters' exterior actions and interior thoughts. They then curated that Twitter event by posting in on Storify. Darienne then created a tutorial for Storify so that future students could easily make their Twitter events easier to share by placing them onto Storify. This group's effort shows how to combine multiple platforms to enjoy the immediacy of Twitter without sacrificing the stability of other platforms, and their attention to pedagogy (to teaching other students how to do this) is particularly exciting.Ideamache
Maggie Doyle created this interactive, annotated image on the Ideamache platform. This image annotation and creation platform is meant to be similar to pinboards (like Pinterest) but includes interactive elements that are similar to the animations and navigation norms of animated slideshows (like Prezi). Maggie used this platform to create an interactive, attractive timeline that shows three types of data: historical (what was going on in the world), biographical (what was going on in Woolf's life), and literary (which important literary works were being published). Also a pedagogical effort, like that of Twitter group above, Maggie's Ideamache represented an effort to teach her peers.
Infographics
About halfway through the semester, Shawna asked students to complete a survey. This survey asked students to explain how they studied for the course and how they developed coping strategies for reading difficult texts, as well as asking them what their most and least favorite texts were and which strategies Shawna had been using were most and least helpful for them. Megan, Cody, Callie, and Cassie (in addition to the emojis), summarized these survey results into a PointPoint presentation that was made to look like an infographic. The group also used GroupMe to ask students additional questions.
Another student, Sarah Vickers, also created an infographic, using actual infographic software (try Canva if you are interested in trying your hand). Her infographic, "Reading Mrs. Dalloway: A Guide," is designed in a blue-and-white scheme to soothe and comfort readers who may feel anxious about reading experimental, stream-of-consciousness texts. Unlike the group infographic mentioned above, whose purpose was to help the class and the instructor evaluate how well the course was proceeding (and what we might do to improve it), this infographic has the more focused purpose of preparing any person reading Mrs. Dalloway for the first time.
Another student, Sarah Vickers, also created an infographic, using actual infographic software (try Canva if you are interested in trying your hand). Her infographic, "Reading Mrs. Dalloway: A Guide," is designed in a blue-and-white scheme to soothe and comfort readers who may feel anxious about reading experimental, stream-of-consciousness texts. Unlike the group infographic mentioned above, whose purpose was to help the class and the instructor evaluate how well the course was proceeding (and what we might do to improve it), this infographic has the more focused purpose of preparing any person reading Mrs. Dalloway for the first time.