Multimodal and multimedia – are they the same?
Image by Christiana Mergan from Pixabay
Multimodalities comprise symbols and our decisions to use them as well as our interpretations of them. For instance, the letters and words of this blog entry represent a visual mode of language that, taken together, present a text to an audience – it’s something we read!
As teachers plan for literacy instruction, we need to keep in mind the visual, textual, kinesthetic and auditory modes of communication. Literacy and the development of the communication competencies are not just about reading and writing!
Multimedia comprises the various types of presentations that we can select to exhibit our chosen symbols – instead of a blog entry or some other print media, it could be an audiobook, which is an aural mode of language, or a video, which is both visual and aural.
Jason Tham from Texas Tech offers a great explanation for differentiating multimodal from multimedia while Claire Lauer (2009) concludes that how we use each word is perhaps better understood contextually.
Just as every square is a rectangle but not every rectangle is a square, so every multimodal project is multimedia but not every multimedia project is multimodal. (Tham, 2015)
Transfer
Alongside multimodal learning is the concept of learning transfer. By relating “past knowledge” to a “current challenge,” we facilitate for ourselves a more general theory, which helps us to transpose or “transfer” something previously learned into new situations (Shepherd, 2018, p. 109). Sometimes, the transfer seems fairly obvious: we understand the words of this blog entry after learning how to read and write.
Other times, though, multimodal learning is not so taken for granted. It can become challenging if it requires more intentional reflection or speculation, such as when students are asked to remember something from last year or imagine how today’s lessons might help in the future.
Multimodal learning might even require students to connect seemingly unrelated experiences, whether literally or metaphorically. For example, Shepherd (2018) likens driving a car to driving a truck, which is fairly obvious, and then to skiing, which requires a more studious comparison. That can be challenging if students don’t readily see any relevance or similarity between these experiences. And the comparisons don’t need to be immediately scholarly. Could reading a meme, posting on Instagram, or playing Guitar Hero count as experience for coursework?
Of course, students will bring more to the classroom than video games and social media. But it’s by helping students, on their own terms, to build upon what they already know that teachers can facilitate multimodal transfer of learning. At the same time, using multimodal and multimedia tools, teachers can expand their own repertoire, maybe even in ways they didn’t know were possible (Savage & Vogel, 1996).
Create, Make, Innovate: Getting Hands-on with Learning Design
Recap of the session in the Scarfe Foyer Fall 2019:
Lights, camera… action! And action. And action. And action!
At this week’s Create, Make, Innovate! activity session, on Tuesday, October 8th, 2019, Teacher Candidates had the chance to take the Director’s chair and make some fun animated movies using a downloadable moviemaking app called Stop Motion Studio.
After just a few minutes of play and experimentation, this app readily offers users plenty of potential for conveying ideas visually to an audience. And, of course, time invested in a more meticulous approach soon demonstrates just how precise that decision-making can become. The results can be spectacular, as seen in this little mashup video put together by Eric Lee to showcase some lovely examples of stop motion video.
Resources
Check out the Scarfe Digital Sandbox for a variety of other multimodal tools, including Explain Everything, ShowMe, and ScribJab, as well as multimedia technologies such as Haiku Deck, Animoto, and Book Creator.
Each of these apps has its own focus, which can help teachers conduct specific assessments and meet particular objectives. By complementing, supplementing, and extending our approaches to teaching and learning, all of these apps can help students learn to express themselves independently in engaging, creative ways.
“To glimpse the promise of multimedia and judge the extent to which we should invest our energies in it, we need to look beyond current applications… [and consider] the potential range of its uses.” (Savage & Vogel, 1996, p. 127)
Acknowledgement: post author, Scott Robertson; editor, Yvonne Dawydiak
Interdisciplinarity, collaboration, hands-on learning – that’s the spirit of Create, Make, Innovate! We want to promote enthusiasm for sharing and learning across age groups and across subject disciplines.
Make, Create, Innovate sessions took place during the Fall 2019 in the foyer of the Neville B. Scarfe building and were hosted by Scott Robertson, a project assistant on a small TLEF grant with Dr. Lorrie Miller, Dr. Marina-Milner Bolotin and Yvonne Dawydiak, Teacher Education.
If you have an idea or an inspiration for a resource or future session, please let us know! scarfe.sandbox@ubc.ca
References
Lauer, C. (2009, December). Contending with terms: “Multimodal” and “Multimedia” in the academic and public spheres. Computers and Composition, 26(4), 225–239. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2009.09.001
Savage, T. M. & Vogel, K. E. (1996, Fall). Multimedia: A revolution in higher education? College Teaching, 44(4), 127–131. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/stable/27558793
Shepherd, R. P. (2018, June). Digital writing, multimodality, and learning transfer: Crafting connections between composition and online composing. Computers and Composition, 48, 103–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2018.03.001
Feature Photo Credit: Mohamed Hassan on Stockvault
What an insightful article! It reminds me of an article I read today about using multimedia for educational purposes. https://acyc.io/multimedia-learning-in-education-a-complete-guide/