Judith de Luce, Chair, Professor, Classics, CAS, Content, Pedagogy; W. Michele Simmons, Assistant Professor, Eng., Tech. Writing, CAS, Visual Rhetoric, Usability, Design; Gail Johnson, Manager, Teaching Technologies Center, Games, Pedagogy, Production; Felice Marcus, M.A., Database Technician; Britt Carr, Coordinator, Teaching Technologies Center, Making pages with Fireworks, Flash Database Technician; Jean Lutz, Director, Professor, Eng., Tech. Writing, CAS, Usability, Comprehensibility; Rachel Zinaman, Student, Journalism/Women’s Studies, Student input & evaluation of course materials, undergraduate teaching assistant for the Humanities & Technology Course (Spring Semester)

We will transform materials that could in fact, if printed out, constitute a simple textbook, into interactive assignments making use of visual rhetoric -- including games that allow students to achieve mastery of key concepts before they move on to the next "level." We will meet as a group to read materials about the effects of images on teaching, visual literacy, and game theory in relation to pedagogy. We will invite Joel Foreman from George Mason University to consult with us. He is in the forefront of using gaming in teaching and learning. We will ask our technology team to redesign the content now available on our site, crafting it into new learning objects. We will use these materials in the classes offered this Fall and Spring, along with print versions of the same content, in order to measure the effects of visual rhetoric and interactivity on student learning outcomes. Three major goals of this community are: 1) learning how the web can be used to create active learners; 2) developing interactive materials for this first- year seminar/ core course; 3) improving student learning outcomes by combining visuals with text.