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Associate Professor of English Florida State University
mrneal@fsu.edu
MICHAEL R. NEAL
Neal is an associate professor of English at Florida State University, where he explores intersections between composition, digital technologies, and writing assessment. He teaches undergraduate courses in the Editing, Writing, and Media major track in English as well as graduate courses in Rhetoric and Composition.
With over thirty years of university teaching experience, I continue to enjoy engaging students in projects that challenge them to consider authentic purposes and audiences for their work. For me this means that students should write with the mindset that their ideas matter and that their writing can bring change to their lives, the lives of those around them, and to their communities. Therefore, students in my classes produce multimodal texts that can circulate in culture if they choose and that engage rhetorical situations that matter to them in culturally relevant genres (e.g., digital videos, podcasts, webtexts, family or organizational archives, design projects, ethics projects). I do not see composition courses as remedial or skill-oriented to prepare students for other opportunities. Rather, writing classes have valuable content that if learned well and internalized can transfer to many other occasions in and out of school.
Core Pedagogical Values
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accessibility and flexibility based on student's goals, interests, and abilities;
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balancing text production, analysis, and reflection;
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giving students freedom to experiment with new content, modalities, genres, and writing technologies;
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encouraging inquiry, exploration, and experimentation to expand students knowledge and abilities;
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challenging students to make and articulate rhetorically based decisions about their texts;
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providing venues for students to consider authentic audiences for their work; and
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attempting to bring fun, energy, and engagement back into student learning.
Student Multimodal Composition Projects
(used with student permission)
 Ethics of RepresentationStudents consider ethical implications or how subjects are represented in media. |  Slice of LifeStudents create videos that document aspects of their lives while in school. |  Photo EssayStudents take and visually analyze objects in the world around them. |
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 Podcast/VodcastStudents narrate audio or video episodes to stream online on a variety of topics. |  Op-DocsModeled after the NYT's Op-Docs, students engage in cultural commentary and documentary. |  Fan CultureStudents engage with pop culture and analyze the messages they communicate. |
 Public MemoryStudents rhetorically analyze monuments/memorials and then redesign them for different purposes. |  Professional ePortfoliosStudents develop ePortfolios to showcase their work and to demonstrate skills and knowledge to external audiences. |  Personal Digital ArchiveStudents curate archival artifacts from their lives, their families, or organizations in which they are involved. |
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