Rhetorical strategies (e.g. ways to extrapolate practice from texts)

case studies that foreground WHY writers decided to include multimodality. Or case comparisons of not-so-great design choices and better design choices....and some with unethical vs. ethical design (that is, design that not only meets persuasive goals but offers sustainable communication loops)

Prompts for creation of multimedia works, so students move from analysis of samples provided to producing their own work which they can then analyze in similar frameworks.

Discussions of the communicative and aesthetic philosophies and traditions engaged by the "media artifacts"/examples.

Situated prompts that encourage students to solve realistic communication problems.

I prefer that faculty find their own artifacts. I think a lot of textbook (and supplementary material) is taken up with example artifacts

Cultural/Social connections of technology made explicit--especially the historical dimension.

I'm not sure I find electronic supplements to a book helpful--I'd rather have the whole book online.

Any textbook that hopes to be successful in this field must approach multimodal composing holistically. It must provide functional and theoretical literacies in order to be successful. Frankly, I think the traditional textbook format may just simply not work at this moment for multimodal composing because so much is in flux. If a textbook is written, its going to have to spend time understanding and teaching technology.

All of the above have their place, but I would look for something that asks students to creat projects in response to rich rhetorical scenarios: something like "devise and implement a media solution for a student organization that hopes to communicate a message to..."