This article reports on a multimodal podcasting unit conducted during a two-week modified summer bridge program for at-risk incoming first-year students. The examples from student work show how teaching a multimodal genre encourages writers to draw from their prior knowledge of standardized genres learned in high school to effectively transition to college composition.

This article explores shared language development in secondary to postsecondary transitions. Based on survey findings of secondary students, the authors advocate using a shared language corpus to access and collect student and instructor language about writing to smooth secondary to postsecondary transitions and transitions beyond the FYC classroom.

This article uses theories of technical communication and archives to advance a pedagogy that includes archival production in the technical communication classroom. By developing and maintaining local classroom archives, students directly engage in valuable processes of appraisal, selection, collaboration, and retention. The anticipated outcomes of this work are the critical practice of making connections, the decentering of the self, the ability to work through noise, and the ability to imagine future users of the archive. The authors conclude that local classroom archives are one new means of meaningful instruction in the technical communication classroom and the local archive concept has great potential for further development.