In the past, students were given the arduous task of selecting a research topic, spending days or weeks glued to a table in the school library, paraphrasing sources, regurgitating information, and calling it a research paper. There is a new trend in education called the multi-genre research project, and teachers are having great success with this new method, which takes the traditional research paper and brings it into the 21st Century classroom. What are the components of a multi-genre research project?
Multi-Genre
With a traditional research paper, students research sources and present their findings in an alphabetic text, essay form. With multi-genre research projects, students employ multiple sources for their research- text, internet, books, interviews, videos- and present the information using multiple genres. Some genres that the students could use include:
* poetry
* pamphlets
* interviews
* crossword puzzles
* videos
* diary entries
* pictures
* cartoons
* comics
* mock obituaries
* newspaper articles
The genres for multi-genre research projects are endless. The teacher decides how many genres they want students to have, but having at least six genres, and not more than 12 is a good comfort zone for multi-genre research projects.
Multi-Modal
In addition to incorporating multiple genres to present information in the research projects, teachers may require the multi-genre research projects to be multi-modal, as well. The mode in which traditional research papers are conveyed is always alphabetic text. Students wrote a regurgitated version of the sources they read and teachers had to read a stack of over a hundred papers. In a multi-modal, multi-genre research project, the research can be presented in multiple modes of text, audio, and video. This method is appealing to students who enjoy watching and making YouTube videos, which oftentimes present information in a multi-modal fashion with text, music and video.
Citing Sources
Instead of having students include the traditional “works cited” page to cite sources, with multi-genre research projects, the students cite their sources in a manner that is cohesive with the rest of the project. For instance, I created a multi-genre research project for a teaching methods class in college and my topic was “What is good writing and who gets to decide?” I made a mock newspaper and presented my findings and views using the multiple genres you naturally find in newspaper- articles, comics, pictures, poetry, and interviews. For my “works cited” page, I used a “contributors” footnote at the bottom of my newspaper.
Multi-genre research projects offer a modern twist on the traditional research paper. They allow students to delve deep into topics, but instead of paraphrasing and regurgitating, they are synthesizing and presenting information in creative innovative ways. As a high school English teacher, I have chosen to replace traditional research papers with multi-genre research projects and students love them.
Examples of Multi-Genre Research Projects
Tom Romano, an English professor and author on multi-genre research projects, has a website displaying examples of his student’s multi-genre research projects. You can also find more information about Tom Romano and multi-genre research projects here.
Sources:
http://www.users.muohio.edu/romanots/Tom_Romano.html