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Computers and Composition 48 (2018) 103–114

Digital Writing, Multimodality, and Learning Transfer: Crafting

Connections between Composition and Online Composing

Ryan P. Shepherd
Department of English, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701-2979
Available online 18 April 2018

Abstract
Most university students have a wealth of prior writing experience from writing in digital spaces before entering their first
writing class, and much of this prior experience includes making meaning using multiple modes of communication. However, these
students may not perceive their digital and multimodal writing as connected to classroom practice. Because of this, they may have
a challenging time using writing knowledge learned in digital spaces to help with their academic writing. This study uses survey
and interview data gathered from first-year university students to help better understand what prior digital and multimodal writing
experiences students have as well as how students perceive the connections between these experiences and their own classroom
practice. The author suggests ways to help students see connections between their varied writing experiences in order to facilitate
learning transfer between their prior digital and multimodal experiences, their experiences in the composition classroom, and their
experiences in other contexts.
© 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: multimodality; composition; learning transfer; social media; prior knowledge

Digital writing and multimodality are deeply intertwined. It is difficult to think of examples of modern social
networks, apps, or other digital writing spaces that do not use multiple modes to convey information to readers
simultaneously. In fact, multimodality is not only encouraged but often required in popular forms of social media, such
as Instagram or Snapchat. Several scholars in composition studies have demonstrated the importance of both digital
writing (Buck, 2012; Fraiberg & Cui, 2016; Monty, 2015; Shepherd, 2015; Vie, 2008) and multimodality (Alexander
& Rhodes, 2014; Palmeri, 2012; Shipka, 2011), but fewer texts have explored how the multimodal writing that students
are already engaged with in digital spaces may inform and enhance the writing they do in composition classes. Several
articles and books on multimodality offer creative and engaging methods for composing in multiple modes (Alexander
& Rhodes, 2014), justifications for why multimodality is important to composition (Selfe, 2009; Yancey, 2004), and
effective ways for incorporating multimodality into classroom practice (Shipka, 2005, 2011). To build on these studies,
this study offers a glimpse into the types of digital and multimodal composing students are engaging in outside of
school and puts these practices into conversation with practices in composition classes. By putting these practices into
conversation, teachers may be able to foster learning transfer between students’ various writing experiences.

E-mail address: shepherr@ohio.edu

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2018.03.001
8755-4615/© 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
104 R.P. Shepherd / Computers and Composition 48 (2018) 103–114

Incoming freshmen often have years of experience as both consumers and producers of multimodal texts through
digital and social media. Most of these students regularly view and interpret content in digital spaces such as YouTube,
Instagram, or Snapchat that includes multiple modes of communication. Many have created posts in social media
spaces that include images, videos, and audio in addition to writing, sometimes editing or remixing content before they
post. Research in the field has often acknowledged the importance of exploring literacy practices, such as these and
others, that take place beyond the classroom (Fraiberg & Cui, 2016; Michaud, 2013; Monty, 2015; Roozen, 2008, 2009,
2012). We can further build on these studies by acknowledging the lived experiences that students already have with
multimodal texts created in digital spaces. In other words, we can help students bridge the gap between their “home
and academic” literacies (Monty, 2015, p. 128) by helping them to put their lived experiences with multimodality and
digital writing into the broader constellation of writing experiences they engage in both in and outside of school. We
can help them to understand “how their out-of-school literacies afford and constrain their academic socialization and
learning” (Fraiberg & Cui, 2016, p. 84) as well as how their academic learning may afford and constrain learning in
other contexts.
Students may not think of the multimodal composing they are doing outside of school as connected to composition
at all (DePalma & Alexander, 2015; Shepherd, 2015) and may not be reflecting on those practices in the same way they
do in the classroom context. When we bring multimodal composing into our writing classes, we can help students build
a broader definition of writing that includes the various contexts in which writing takes place in their lives: in digital
and analog spaces, in multimodal and text-based writing, both in and out of school. With a clear and direct connection
made between writing in various contexts, students may see their out-of-school writing as more important, may see it
as connected to classroom practice, and may be able to learn from it in a way that they were not able to previously.
Most of us in the field of computers and composition will see the connection between classroom writing and
multimodal writing in digital spaces as obvious, and the “broader definition” of writing that I present above may be
something that we have understood, internalized, and used for years as scholars, researchers, and teachers. However,
many of our students may struggle with this broader definition of writing. Of course, some of our students may not
have easy and regular access to digital technology, but even those who use digital media daily may not see what they
are doing as related to writing. Students must be not only made aware that writing is more than words on paper, but
they also must be convinced that their digital writing experiences have value and the broader definition of writing
that includes these experiences will be useful to them. If students do not perceive their digital and multimodal writing
as related to the content of their writing classes, it is unlikely that they will use these prior experiences to aid with
classroom content, and it is unlikely that they will use classroom knowledge when they return to these spaces outside
of class.
To better understand how teachers can help students bridge the connection between out-of-class and in-class com-
posing, I suggest exploring the widening literature on learning transfer in composition studies and beyond. By exploring
the advice given to us by scholars such as Kathleen Blake Yancey, Liane Robertson, and Kara Taczak (2014), Elizabeth
Wardle (2007), and Anne Beaufort (2007), composition teachers can help students to make use of the prior composition
experiences that they bring with them from digital and multimodal spaces to the classroom and can help students to
contextualize those experiences for use in future writing contexts. Using lessons from transfer literature will allow
teachers to contextualize the learning that students already have and build a bridge between classroom practice and
out-of-school literacies. In what follows, I present the results of a survey and interviews of freshman students about
their writing practices, I explore what transfer means and why it is important to the students’ previous writing history,
and I use this data and theory to build a framework for how to connect students’ prior experiences in multimodal and
digital composing to classroom practice.

1. Methods

The purpose of both the survey and the interviews was to understand the types of writing students were doing
outside of school as well as the perceptions they had of those types of writing. With IRB approval, I distributed the link
for the survey through listservs and social media for composition instructors in September of 2015 with a request to
pass the link along to students. By the time the survey closed in October of 2015, 151 first-year composition students
from various universities in the US and Canada had responded. All respondents were beginning their freshman year,
were currently enrolled in a writing course, and were at least 18 years of age. Despite efforts to distribute the survey
widely to different instructors at a range of institutions, nearly 75% of responses were from students at large, doctoral-
 R.P. Shepherd / Computers and Composition 48 (2018) 103–114 105

Table 1
Interviewees.
Pseudonym Age Gender1 Race2 High School University Major

Alyssa 18 Female Black & White Governor’s HS Midwestern public R2 Athletic Training
Daniel 18 Male Latino & White Large public HS Southern public R1 Engineering
Elizabeth 18 Female White Performing arts HS Midwestern public R2 Early Childhood Education
Enrique 18 Male Latino & White Large public HS Southwestern public R1 Computer Science/Innovation & Society
Evan 18 Male Hispanic Small public “test-in” HS Southwestern public R1 Political Science
Jessica 19 Female White Home schooled Midwestern public R2 Photo Journalism/Creative Writing
Kayla 18 Female White & Egyptian Private liberal arts HS Western private R2 Not specified
Lily 19 Female Asian Large public HS Southwestern public R1 Computer Information Systems
Michael 18 Male White Large public HS Midwestern public R2 Meteorology/Journalism
Samuel 18 Male Asian Large public HS East Coast public M1 Electrical Computer Engineering

granting institutions, with 20% from large or mid-sized masters-granting institutions, and only 5% from smaller state
universities, liberal arts colleges, and community colleges. This may mean that results are skewed toward students at
larger institutions. Those students are likelier to have access to technology and have the ability to buy their own tech
than students at smaller institutions. Survey questions (see Appendix 1) were largely yes/no questions or Likert-scale
questions although space for explanation and elaboration was given. The survey was organized not to lead to specific,
pre-determined answers. General questions about writing came earlier in the survey and questions specifically about
digital writing came later so as not to prime students to think specifically about digital writing early in the survey.
The survey respondents were asked if they would be willing to participate in follow-up interviews. From the pool
of 60 students who agreed to be interviewed, 10 students were selected to achieve maximum diversity in educational
background, current educational experiences, and identity demographics (see Table 1). All names used for interviewees
are pseudonyms. Interviews were conducted in October of 2015 in my office or via Skype. All of the interviews were
recorded with the consent of the students and IRB approval. Interview questions (see Appendix 2) were designed to
build off of survey responses and get more detail about students’ past writing experiences, including their experiences
with writing in school and their out-of-school, digital, and multimodal writing experiences. Because of the limited
pool of interviewees, certain demographics (such as honors students) were overrepresented and others (such as African
American students and students from smaller institutions) were underrepresented. As with the surveys, most of the final
interviewees were from large, doctoral-granting institutions. The results from both the survey and interviews provided
insight into students’ experiences with multimodality and digital composing, their perceptions of those experiences,
and their perceived connections between those experiences and composing in the classroom that may be interfering
with learning transfer.

2. Survey and Interview Responses

In both the survey and the interviews, I asked participants to define the term “writing.” Many of these responses
focused on terms such as “expression” and “creativity.” For example, in the interviews, Lily said that writing was, “the
words that you use to express yourself, your thoughts, or your beliefs.” One striking finding is that many of definitions
from both the survey and interviews included the word “paper.” Of the 132 survey participants who responded to this
question, 33 (or 25%) used the word “paper.” Two representative examples of this definition of writing include, “A
paper version of thoughts,” and “A way of expressing one’s feelings and opinions through pen and paper.” Please note
that in that 25%, I have only included definitions in which “paper” was used to mean thin sheets of wood, not when it

1 Gender and Race are reported exactly as specified by the interviewee.

2 It is worth noting that when survey respondents were asked about their writing history, 92% said they had written on social media, but when
asked about their social media use, 99% said they had written on at least one social media space. I suspect this is because some survey respondents
were hesitant to consider social media writing. When the question focused on writing (“Which of the following types of writing have you done in
the past?”), respondents were less likely to answer that they had written on social media than when the question focused on the spaces being used
for writing (“In which of the following digital spaces have you written something in the past?”).
106 R.P. Shepherd / Computers and Composition 48 (2018) 103–114

Chart 1. Types of Writing.

was used as a synonym for “report” or “essay.” The interviews yielded comparable results to the survey, with two of
the ten interviewees using the word “paper” in their definitions of the word “writing.”
This alone would not be surprising if it were not for how few of the participants mentioned anything digital, such as
the words “digital,” “computer,” or even “typing.” Of the 132 participants in the survey who defined writing, only five
mentioned anything digital. All five who mentioned words such as “digital” or “computer” also mentioned the word
“paper” in their definitions, such as “The action of marking your ideas on paper or digitally.” None of the interviewees
mentioned anything digital. None of the definitions from either the interviews or the surveys seem to suggest writing
as anything beyond alphabetic text.
These definitions show that the students who were surveyed and interviewed seemed to think of writing as an analog
technology first and a digital technology second (if at all). This is surprising when considering just how much the
participants reported composing in digital spaces. Among the 133 participants who responded to questions about their
writing history on the survey (See Chart 1), 99% (132) stated they had written an email, 98% (131) said that they had
written a text message, and 92% (123) said that they had written on social media. In comparison, 95% (126) said that
they had written a report for class at some time in the past. When asked about where this writing was taking place
in digital spaces, the most common responses were Facebook (89%), Snapchat (73%), Instagram (66%), and Twitter
(63%). Only 7 (5%) participants out of the 134 who responded to the question about social media history had not
written in any of these four spaces, and only one participant had not written on social media at all.2 Sixty-two (46%)
had written in all four of these social media spaces, and an additional 21 (16%) had written in at least three of the
four spaces. These spaces are not only digital but also either commonly (Facebook, Twitter) or exclusively (Snapchat,
Instagram) spaces in which multimodal composing takes place. In fact, it is difficult to define writing in these spaces
with alphabetic texts alone: images, video, audio, and links to other media play a significant role in making meaning
in each of these spaces. While students were not defining writing in a digital or multimodal sense, the overwhelming
majority of them had composed in digital spaces and the majority had composed multimodally.
The participants in the survey and interviews were composing regularly in these digital spaces. In fact, many of
the participants report writing as much or more in these spaces as they had written for school. More than half of the
respondents (54%) said that they had done as much writing (25%) or more writing (29%) outside of school than in
school (See Chart 2). Follow-up questions about this writing from the interviews suggest that most of this writing
is digital, multimodal, and takes place on social media. All 10 of the interviewees wrote on social media, and 9 of
the 10 focused exclusively or nearly exclusively on social media writing when asked to describe their past writing
experiences outside of school. When describing their experiences on social media, images played an important role in
their digital composing. Only one interviewee had substantial writing experiences outside of school that did not involve
social media, but these experiences, too, were digital and multimodal: creating websites for non-profit organizations
 R.P. Shepherd / Computers and Composition 48 (2018) 103–114 107

Chart 2. Have you done more writing in school or outside of school?

and writing music reviews for a music website start-up. This is not to say that all of the writing the interviewees did
outside of school was on social media: 5 of the 10 mentioned occasionally keeping a journal or diary and 3 occasionally
wrote poetry or song lyrics. However, none of the interviewees focused on these specific writing experiences in their
interviews. For all the interviewees, social media seemed to be the primary if not the exclusive space of writing outside
of school. Digital writing was a very important part of the interviewees writing lives. Much like the survey, nearly half
(4 out of 10) of the interviewees said that they had done as much or more writing outside of school than in. When
asked, all interviewees said they had done more multimodal writing outside of school. A few of the interviewees had
done relatively little writing in high school, but all of the interviewees wrote regularly (and often extensively) on social
media.
Many students who participated in the survey had done multimodal writing both in and out of school, but this type
of writing was much more common outside of school. Photos (33%) and charts/graphs (31%) were the most common
multimodal elements used by students when writing for school, but 52% of the participants in the survey said that
they had never done any multimodal writing for school. Seventy percent had created some type of multimodal text
outside of school with 61% of survey participants using images with out-of-school writing, 37% using videos, 31%
using audio, and 31% using hyperlinks to other media. The interviewees clarified even further that multimodal writing
was common in out-of-school writing. All 10 interviewees had composed multimodal texts outside of school, but they
had to stretch to think of times they wrote multimodally for school. As when Doug Brent (2012) asked students to
connect workplace and school writing, I also felt that when students tried to connect multimodal and school writing,
“the connections seemed a bit forced” (p. 585). Interviewees often struggled to think of examples in which they had
used multimodality in their school writing, sometimes saying things like they “might” have used images or charts and
graphs with their writing at some point. Of the multimodal practices referred to in the context of school, interviewees
had most commonly stated that they had used charts/graphs in math classes and/or images in scientific writing.
Based on the responses above, it seems clear that a great deal of multimodal writing takes place outside of school
before students enter university with most of this writing taking place in digital spaces, such as Facebook, Snapchat,
Instagram, and Twitter. Some multimodal writing is taking place in school as well, but it seems to be much less
common. Despite the evidence that students are composing regularly in digital and multimodal forms, many of these
students seemed reluctant to include these types of writing in their definitions of writing. Past research (DePalma &
Alexander, 2015; Shepherd, 2015) suggests that students may not see social media use or multimodal writing as related
to academic writing, may see digital writing as something other than writing, and may even see digital writing as
oppositional to academic writing. The surveys seem to bear this out, but the interviews offer hope. When specifically
asked to think of social media use, digital writing, and multimodal writing as writing, students were quick to make
connections without prompting. By the end of the interviews, 9 of the 10 interviewees said that they believed digital
writing and university writing were related.
These data suggest that students may not initially see digital writing or multimodal writing as related to academic
writing but that they can be prompted to make connections. Because the perception of similarity between learning
contexts is critically important to learning transfer, the lack of connection in the students’ minds serves as an impediment
to learning from one context being used in another. If students were to learn concepts about or tactics for writing on
108 R.P. Shepherd / Computers and Composition 48 (2018) 103–114

social media, they would be unlikely to use what they had learned in first-year composition (and vice versa). The
interviews do suggest that it is easy to get students to make those connections—just asking the interviewees how those
spaces may be connected prompted them to make connections—though the connections were relatively simple. This
is a good first step toward helping students connect their digital and multimodal writing experiences to their writing
experiences in the classroom. The biggest hurdle seems to be convincing students that the writing contexts share similar
traits in common. Once students have that perceived similarity, additional connections can be built by the students with
some assistance from instructors.

3. Transfer

In order to understand how and why the perceived similarity of writing contexts is important for student learning,
it is important to understand exactly what learning transfer is and what we know about how it is facilitated. While
the idea of transfer is widely used in the field, it is often used by instructors in an incomplete way. In articles in the
field of computers and writing, “transfer” is sometimes inserted without an explanation of what it means or how it
might be achieved (see, for example, Monty, 2015; or Wolff, 2013). The term became something of a buzzword with
books and articles by scholars such as Beaufort (2007); Wardle (2007); and David W. Smit (2004), and with special
issues of both Writing Program Administration (Fall/Winter 2007) and Composition Forum (Fall 2012). However, the
central idea of learning transfer is present in much earlier works in composition studies, even if the word “transfer”
was not used (McCarthy, 1987; and Russell, 1995, for example), and there has been an interest in transfer research
in education for many years as well (Beach, 1999; Bransford & Schwartz, 1999; Haskell, 2001; Saloman & Perkins,
1989). Part of the recent and growing interest in transfer is likely due to pedagogical philosophies based in transfer
research such as the Writing about Writing (WAW) movement (Downs & Wardle, 2007) and the Teaching for Transfer
(TFT) movement (Yancey et al., 2014). The field has shown a growing interest in transfer, and the works above provide
a strong framework for understanding transfer.
That said, the complicated and nuanced nature of transfer is often not fully embraced by some teachers in the field.
At the most basic level, there are misunderstandings about what exactly “transfer” means. In this section, I hope to
clarify what I mean when I use the word in this article and to offer a clear explanation of how and why transfer is
important to composition studies broadly and computers and composition in particular.
Part of what makes “transfer” a tricky concept is the term itself. The term “transfer” operates under a central metaphor
of moving something from one place to another—such as transferring funds between bank accounts, transferring credits
to a new university, or transferring from one bus to another. This leads to an idea—perhaps even subconsciously—that
what teachers are trying to do when they try to encourage transfer is to move knowledge from one place to another.
Rebecca Lorimer Leonard and Rebecca Nowacek (2016) note this tension in the word itself when they say, “transfer
involves the process of ‘carrying across,’ suggesting a simple movement from one location to another” (p. 259). This
understanding of the word “transfer” as a “simple movement” in education contexts operates under a metaphor that
relies on an outdated understanding of learning, the banking model of education (Friere, 2000): students come in to a
class, teachers fill them with knowledge, and the students move on to “withdraw” that knowledge when the situation
arises. Very few in the field buy into the banking model of education, but the term “transfer” brings up associations
with this model. Perhaps the most common way that the term “transfer” is used is when people transfer money in
the bank, and many of us are likely to subconsciously associate the term with this action. It is because of this tension
within the term that other scholars have suggested we use different terms when we talk about transfer: “generalization”
(Beach, 1999), “preparation for future learning” (Bransford & Schwartz), “sequestered problem-solving” (Schwartz,
Bransford, & Sears, 2005), “transformation” (Brent, 2012), “boundary crossing” (Rieff & Bawarshi, 2011), or “adaptive
remediation” (Alexander, DePalma, & Ringer, 2016) just to name a few alternate or closely related terms. However,
so far none of these terms have stuck in composition studies, and so—for better or for worse—we have continued to
use the term “transfer.”
But if learning transfer is not referring to that “simple movement,” what is it referring to? Instead of thinking of
transfer as a literal “transfer,” it is more useful to think of it as creating a bridge or connection between one area of
knowledge and another inside of the learner’s mind. As a simple example, imagine that you have just learned how to
drive a car. You have learned how to accelerate, how to brake, how to turn, and so on. Now imagine you are asked to
drive a large box truck. It is likely that you will perceive these two situations as similar and will be able to connect
them easily—probably without much conscious thought. This will allow you to use your knowledge of driving a car
 R.P. Shepherd / Computers and Composition 48 (2018) 103–114 109

when you try to drive a box truck (Salomon & Perkins, 1989). The connections will not be a one-to-one match, but
they will be close enough for you to perceive the similarity and build a bridge in your mind connecting the knowledge
of the two contexts. You will be able to accelerate, brake, and turn without relearning these things. What you have done
is generalized the knowledge: you have created a larger theory of “driving” that includes both your past knowledge
of driving a car and your current challenge of driving a box truck. No knowledge has been moved or “withdrawn.”
Instead, entirely within your own head, you have made a connection that has made prior knowledge accessible in a
new situation.
The perceived similarity between the two contexts is extremely important. The perception of similarity is highly
subjective and greatly affects both how likely and how well someone would be able to use what they have learned in a
new situation. If you had not perceived driving the car and driving the box truck as being similar, the task would have
been much harder. You would have had to relearn many things and would been what Lucille Parkinson McCarthy (1987)
refers to as “a stranger in strange lands,” forced to relearn things from scratch. In the driving example, the knowledge
of driving a car and driving a box truck would be perceived as similar by most people. They would easily connect the
context of driving a car to that of driving a box truck without conscious thought or metacognitive awareness. This kind
of transfer is the easier version learning transfer, referred to as “low-road transfer” (Salomon & Perkins, 1989).
Most meaningful transfer is much harder than this and requires what Gavriel Salomon and David N. Perkins
(1989) refer to as “mindful abstraction,” or a conscious reflection on how contexts might connect to other contexts.
“Mindful abstraction” is connected to concepts commonly referenced in composition studies such as “reflection” or
“metacognition.” As an example of the more difficult kind of transfer that requires mindful abstraction, let’s return to
the example of driving a car. Again, imagine you have just learned to drive a car—accelerating, braking, turning, and
so on—and again imagine you are faced with a new challenge. This time, imagine you are learning to ski. Unlike with
the example of the box truck, most people would probably not easily connect these two contexts without conscious
thought. But if you were to take some time to consciously try to connect the two contexts—to try to “mindfully
abstract”—you could probably find a great deal of similarity. Both contexts require the learner to consider things like
acceleration, stopping distance, turning radius, right of way, obstacle avoidance, and so on. Now that you are aware of
this connection, you can continue to mindfully abstract knowledge and connect the two contexts, making the learning
in one context more available in the other. In fact, many of you reading this may have already started the process of
connecting these two areas just be reading the previous example: you have started to metacognitively connect driving
and skiing. Again, no knowledge has moved; it has just become connected within your mind to a new context. You have
generalized that knowledge beyond the low-road category of “driving” to a more complex and nuanced category that
includes both driving and skiing, maybe what we can call “assisted movement.” Transfer that requires this additional
metacognitive and reflective step is referred to as “high-road transfer” (Salomon & Perkins, 1989). The difference
between high-road and low-road transfer is not in the inherent similarity or difference of the situations, but in the
perceived similarity or difference in the mind of the learner: what might be low-road transfer for one learner might be
high-road transfer for another.3
High-road transfer itself can be broken into two broad types: forward-reaching and backward-reaching high-road
transfer. Forward-reaching transfer is when a learner is encouraged to reflect on future contexts where new knowledge
could be used. For example, imagine you are in the process of learning to drive, and you are asked to think about a
situation sometime in the future when you will be learning to ski. If you were to mentally connect the current lessons
of learning to drive to the future context of learning to ski, you would be engaging in forward-reaching high-road
transfer. This is what we do when we ask our students to think about how lessons from the class might be used in
other classes or their future workplace. Backward-reaching transfer is when a learner is encouraged to think back on
past learning when she encounters a new learning challenge. For example, imagine you are learning to ski, and you
are asked to reflect on when you learned how to drive. If you were to mentally connect the past lessons of learning
to drive to the current context of learning to ski, you would be engaging in backward-reaching high-road transfer.
This is what we do when we ask our students to think about how what they learned in high school might apply to an

3 At this point, I would like to point out that we as academics are often very good at high-road transfer. We have been trained through decades of

study and analysis to make connections between dissimilar situations. Because of this, we often make connections more easily than our students:
They simply are less experienced at this type of metacognition than we are, which is why they need an extra push to get some additional practice in
doing so. What may be low-road transfer for us is still high-road transfer for them. Because of this, it is important not to base perceived similarity
on your own perceptions of similarity.
110 R.P. Shepherd / Computers and Composition 48 (2018) 103–114

assignment in our class. Both types of high-road transfer are very important to learning, but in composition studies, we
have historically focused more on forward-reaching transfer (for example, Beaufort, 2007; Bergmann & Zepernick,
2007; Driscoll, 2011; Driscoll & Wells, 2012; Nelms & Dively, 2007; Nowacek, 2011; Wardle, 2007) and somewhat
less on backward-reaching transfer (DePalma & Alexander, 2015; Robertson, Taczak, & Yancey, 2012; Rounsaville,
Goldberg, & Bawarshi, 2008; Rounsaville, 2012). Of the articles that have focused on backward-reaching transfer,
only Michael-John DePalma and Kara Poe Alexander (2015) have focused on digital or multimodal writing. As a
field, we have tended to be more concerned with what students have learned in the classroom and helping them project
forward to new writing contexts than we have with learning what students already know and helping them connect
that knowledge to the current classroom context. I would argue that both of these types of transfer are important, and
students cannot successfully engage in one type of high-road transfer without the other. We need to help students not
only project forward to how they will use classroom content in future contexts, such as their future classes and job, but
also help students to project back to contexts where they may have written before entering the classroom, such as in
high school or on social media.
Both types of high-road transfer are quite difficult, and often require some outside help if the learner does not initially
perceive a similarity between learning contexts. Often this help can be as simple as pointing out the connection: even
knowing a connection is possible may help to facilitate transfer as both DePalma and Alexander (2015) and Mark
Andrew James (2008) have shown. But to make more meaningful connections, a teacher may need to convince students
of the connection between writing contexts and may need to help students build out a broader “theory” that includes
both contexts, such as with the example of “assisted movement” above. Creating a “theory of writing” is central to
the TFT pedagogy (Yancey et al., 2014). Ensuring that students are creating a theory of writing that includes their
past multimodal and digital writing experiences will help to connect these spaces to the classroom and is important to
moving forward as a writer.
For most students, connecting writing contexts requires the more difficult high-road transfer and not the simpler
low-road transfer. This has been shown by Doug Brent (2012) when he tried to get students to connect college writing
with workplace writing, and it is shown in the data above when students did not connect digital writing and college
writing until prompted. Because connecting writing contexts requires high-road transfer, students will not connect
writing contexts automatically but will likely need some assistance in abstracting their writing experiences to help
make that knowledge available in additional writing contexts. This is especially true for writing contexts students may
not perceive as valuable or may not even perceive as writing, such as writing that uses multiple modes to make meaning
and informal writing done on social media. Students often do not easily connect dissimilar writing contexts, may not
perceive certain kinds of writing as “real writing” or even “writing” at all, and may resist making a broader theory of
writing that includes these contexts. Creating a connection is the primary obstacle when facilitating learning transfer
between in-school composing and out-of-school digital and multimodal composing.
The difficulty of connecting contexts seems to have been borne out in the results of the survey and the interviews.
The students were not immediately perceiving connections between their experiences writing in digital and multimodal
spaces, even though they had as much experience or more with writing in these spaces as they did for school. When
they defined writing, they tended not to include these experiences at all—and occasionally even resisted the idea that
these experiences were writing. Historically, we have treated various writing experiences much like the example of
learning to drive a car and then learning to drive a box truck: we have assumed that students will perceive the similarity
and transfer the knowledge automatically through low-road transfer. The interviews and survey show that for digital
and multimodal writing, this is not the case. The writing experiences were much more like students learning to ski: they
require the careful reflection and mindful abstraction of high-road transfer in order to make use of their prior writing
experiences. Helping them build that connection will take work.

4. Building Connections to Past Writing

High-road transfer is difficult—if not impossible—if learners do not perceive learning contexts as being connected
(DePalma & Alexander, 2015; James, 2008). If students in our writing classes do not see their prior experiences with
digital writing and multimodality as connected to their classroom writing, they are not likely to use lessons learned
when engaging in digital and multimodal writing assignments for our classes. And by the same token, they are unlikely
to use what they learn in our classes when they return to digital and multimodal spaces outside of the class. To help
students create those connections between writing contexts and make that knowledge available across both divides,
 R.P. Shepherd / Computers and Composition 48 (2018) 103–114 111

teaches can do three things to facilitate this kind of high-road transfer: they can help students create a new theory of
what counts as writing, they can help students directly connect past writing experiences to current and future writing
contexts, and they can help students view those past writing experiences as writing.
Creating a broader theory of writing can help students engage in learning transfer between writing contexts. This
involves more than teachers simply drafting a new definition of writing that includes multimodal elements and giving
this definition to students on a handout or on their syllabi. Instead, students should be encouraged to create their own
“theories” of writing (Yancey et al., 2014) that include multimodal ways of making meaning in addition to traditional
alphabetic texts. Students can start building a theory by creating their own definitions of writing, and then these
definitions can be interrogated and applied to real-world writing situations. Does their definition of writing allow for
traditionally academic types of writing such as argumentative writing, critique, and creative writing? But also, does
their definition of writing allow for posts, tweets, and snaps? Does it allow for meaning to be made by or in conjunction
with modes other than alphabetic text? If the answer is no to any of the questions, ask the students to reflect on why that
is—to offer arguments for why certain contexts are not writing. Why is a chart in a scientific article “writing” when
an infographic on Twitter is not? Why is an image in our textbook “writing” when a meme on Facebook is not? It is
important to remember that you are not giving students this definition: this is not the banking model of education. We
cannot simply move our knowledge into their heads. Instead, we need to persuade students that writing is more than
alphabetic text through sound reasoning and clear examples. We need to show them that writing can include meaning
made through images, videos, sounds, and diagrams, and that meaning can be enhanced or “powered up” (Gee & Hayes,
2011) by using multiple modes of meaning. Doing so can help them start to build a bridge between their multimodal
experiences and their school-based writing experiences. Much like when we created a theory of “assisted movement”
in the section above that included both driving and skiing, we are encouraging our students to create a broader theory
of writing that includes digital and multimodal writing as well as their more traditional writing experiences in the
classroom.
With this new theory of writing, students can begin to make connections between their previous writing experiences
and the current context of the classroom. DePalma and Alexander (2015) have shown that making this connection
may be a struggle—especially if students do not see digital and multimodal composing as being similar to composing
alphabetic texts. To help students connect their various writing experiences, composition teachers need to demonstrate
that connections between the contexts exist. The surveys and interviews in this study suggest that students have a great
deal of experience writing in digital spaces and using multiple modes to convey meaning. Draw on these experiences in
the classroom: ask the students to teach you how to make an effective snap or Instagram post. Ask them to explain how
the images and text work in conjunction to make meaning, and ask them to explain how the meaning is greater than
either of the single modes alone. But also make sure to ask how these same ideas might be used when creating a written
or multimodal text in the current writing class, in future classes, and in other writing contexts. Building connections
between in-school and out-of-school writing can begin by connecting similar school experiences to students’ digital
writing experiences. For example, teachers may discuss how charts and graphs used in math classes or images used in
scientific writing may be connected to how image is used in spaces like Instagram or Snapchat, how links and sharing
of media are used in spaces like Reddit or Pinterest, how video is used on spaces like YouTube and Vimeo, or how
audio is used in spaces like Soundcloud and Stitcher. In other words, ask students to connect multiple writing contexts
and connect them through guided reflection. This guided reflection will help students build the bridges in their minds
necessary for transfer to take place, but this will also further expand their theories of writing. We as teachers can help
students to cultivate “meta-awareness through reflection about the multiple literacies available” (DePalma, 2015, p.
631) to them in their writing practices. This meta-awareness will allow students to further build out their theory of
writing to include more types of writing from both in school and outside of school.
As students continue to build their theories of writing, they should be encouraged to reflect on the practices as writing.
This may start by connecting the practices above—such as composing on snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, or other social
media—to their definitions of writing. This will continue to open the door for other practices to be connected to current
and future writing challenges in the minds of the students. Students can continue to draw on these past experiences
as they encounter new ideas, genres, and exigencies in the classroom in a way that would not be possible without
their broader theory of writing. But in addition, we should also encourage forward-reaching transfer by encouraging
students to apply their theories of writing to imagined future writing contexts: for further classes, for future jobs, and
for digital writing they may do down the road.
112 R.P. Shepherd / Computers and Composition 48 (2018) 103–114

Transparency is key to the process of facilitating transfer. Students should be aware of the connections we want them
to make and why we want them to make the connections. It is important to mention transfer directly, and to explicitly
discuss their ideas of writing, connections they may see between writing contexts, and what those connections mean
to them as writers. When a new writing challenge is encountered, the first step should be to take an inventory: students
should be encouraged to reflect back on past writing experiences to see what prior experiences they may have that
will be useful in navigating the current challenge. That is to say, they should engage in backward-reaching, high-road
transfer. This is particularly important when we are “introducing” them to multimodal writing projects. Students may
perceive this as new territory (DePalma & Alexander, 2015), and they may be inadvertently making themselves “a
stranger in strange lands” (McCarthy, 1987). By helping students to engage in the mindful abstraction suggested in
learning transfer literature, perhaps we can help them to overcome some of the problems that come with considering
themselves “strangers” in new writing contexts. We can show them that they might not be strangers at all; they might
already be experts.
Of course, helping students to create a broader definition of writing can help them in the writing context of the
composition classroom. But the hope is that the connection does not end there. By helping students to make these
connections between two writing contexts and by projecting forward into new imagined contexts, they may be more
likely to make connections to other writing contexts more easily as well: connections to writing in other classes, to
writing for jobs, and to writing in their personal lives. When we connected learning to drive and learning to ski in our
minds, we created a broader definition of assisted movement that allowed us to connect these two contexts. But with
the broader definition of assisted movement available, we may be able to connect other learning to that category as
well: bicycling, skateboarding, using a wheelchair, or paragliding. We also need to help students to create a broader
definition of writing that includes digital writing and multimodality in addition to traditional print-based literacies in
order to help them create a larger theory of what counts as writing—and what can be connected—so that they can draw
on all of their writing experiences when they encounter new writing challenges.

5. Conclusion

Students may not perceive connections between writing they do in digital spaces and writing they do in the classroom.
In fact, digital and multimodal writing might not be perceived as valuable or might not be perceived as writing at all.
If students do not perceive a connection between in-school and out-of-school writing, it will make learning transfer
between these contexts difficult. The writing experiences they have from digital spaces may prove to be quite useful
to writing teachers. Students are likely to have a wealth of prior writing experiences outside of school: most of
these experiences are digital, and many of them are multimodal. Not taking advantage of these experiences would
be a missed opportunity. We would be “depriving students of valuable semiotic resources for meaning making” in
multimodal contexts, which may lead to a “narrow understanding of language and literacy” in our students (Selfe,
2009, p. 617). By not fully engaging with the multimodal texts that students are creating outside of school, we are
limiting them to a very narrow definition of what writing is and can be, and we are limiting “our understanding of
our students, their writing development, and the possibilities for transfer” (Cleary, 2013, p. 661). Making students
aware of connections between writing contexts inside and outside of school can encourage them to engage in the
mindful abstraction necessary for high-road learning transfer. We can encourage them to make connections between
these writing contexts in their mind and make learning from one context more available for use in another context. We
can even encourage them to make broader and more inclusive definitions of writing. Of course, these experiences can
help them to contextualize multimodal writing assignments in our own composition classes, but ideally, broadening
students’ definitions of writing may facilitate learning transfer in other contexts as well. Ultimately, the hope is that we
can encourage students to make mindful choices about modes in a range of writing contexts and to see those contexts
as connected sites of making and interpreting meaning.
Moving forward, teachers should attempt to create assignments and WPAs should design curricula that facilitate
this type of learning transfer, to engage with and connect writing across contexts. But we should also continue to study
two key areas to better understand how and when connections can be made: we need to know what students know,
and we need to know what students need to know. First, scholars need to take up the cause of exploring how writing
is done in specific multimodal spaces: to explore the literacies of Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, and Tinder.
Knowing what our students know and how they engage with multimodal literacies in a variety of spaces can help us
to facilitate the connections necessary for high-road learning transfer. Scholars should also explore how students are
 R.P. Shepherd / Computers and Composition 48 (2018) 103–114 113

perceiving writing in these spaces and look for ways to connect these writing experiences to other writing contexts. It
is important to understand where students are making connections, where they need to be making connections but are
not, and how to encourage connections to persist beyond the classroom context. We need to remind both our students
and ourselves that in-school and out-of-school writing “are so profoundly interconnected that it becomes difficult to
see where one ends and others begin” (Roozen, 2008, p. 27), and we need to remember that the “extradisciplinary
practice” of out-of-school writing is “a key element informing disciplinary writing and activity” (Roozen, 2012, p.
346).

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2018.03.001.
Ryan P. Shepherd is an Assistant Professor of English at Ohio University. His research focuses on multimodality, learning transfer, and social media.
In particular, he is interested in how composing in digital spaces connects to academic writing and writing in other contexts. His work has appeared
in Computers and Composition, Composition Studies, and The Journal of Response to Writing.

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