WORKING MULTIMODALLY: CHALLENGES FOR ASSESSMENT BY CHRISTIAN METRICK Week 10: Digital Literacies: New Models of Assessment

Welcome to week 10: New Models of Assessment Hi everyone and welcome to week 10! What we will be doing in this presentation is I will be going over one of the readings this week. For the Ning discussion this week, you can choose to focus on one question a little more in depth or tackle a couple of questions, it is your choice. There may be some similarities between Loralea’s presentation and my own, so if you would like you can choose a discussion question that possibly relates to both presentations...the choice is yours. I look forward to the discussions this week!

Working Multimodally: Challenges for assessment Wyatt-Smith, C. & Kimber, K. (2009). This article proposes the viewpoint that current usually print dominated assessment methods and tools do not provide an accurate measure for assessing students’ multimodal creations. “Given the complexity of multimodal presentations, where image, written word, spoken word, gesture and movement are combined within the New London Group’s (2000) notion of a multiliterate design, closer investigation is both timely and foundational for English teaching. If an appreciation of the multifaceted nature of multimodal texts can be developed into a set of broad principles, then it is possible to arrive at a new vision for assessment.”

Defining multimodality… The article stresses the need for defining multimodality, however with numerous definitions and rapidly changing technology this is not easy. “At the core of all of these examples is recognition that meaning is made, interpreted, communicated and shared through many different representations where in verbal language might be only one.” “Each of these different ways of representing meaning – image, gesture, sound, music, speech, writing, gaze, movement et cetera – is a mode with its own distinctive features or semiotic resources that can be called upon in any combination to make meaning.”

Concept 1: Design The Design Curriculum included 6 design elements based on research by the New London Group Linguistic, Visual, Audio, Gestural, Spatial, Multimodal 4 components of pedagogy situated practice Overt instruction critical framing transformed practice The design process supports the idea that design can relate to reaching deeper understanding on a topic. “If students are to engage intellectually, artistically and technologically with design in multimodal text creations, teachers need to commit to both the concept and the process of design in their own design of tasks and related assessment.”

Concept 2: Visualisation of literacy the importance of the visual/verbal in multimodal texts, and building a grammar for defining visual design specific colour values like saturation, purity, modulation, differentiation, hue, and even the provenance of names were identified for their impact on meaning font style, size and shape, or even their kinetic appearance on screen to achieve particular effects

Concept 3: Modes and modal affordances The shaping of meaning in a multimodal text is linked to the ways in which different modes (words, images, sounds, colours, gestures or movement) and their particular modal affordances (much like the variations related to colour above) are called upon and combined.

Concept 4: Transmodal operation The concept of “transmodal operation” describes how a digital meaning-maker is required to move between and across different modes and even technology platforms to create a text and communicate meaning. “transmodal facility”, defined as that fine-tuned ability to work with and across source texts, technology platforms and modes of representations to create new digital texts where critical thinking about content and concepts is balanced with the aesthetics of design

Concept 5: Cohesion refers to the ways in which the selected visual, verbal and even aural elements are displayed and combined to achieve unity. Headings, sub-headings, lexical choices and cohesive ties directly affect cognitive structuring and meaning making. Image, colour, spatial layout and navigational linking have particular relevance for achieving cohesion in a screen-based multimodal text, as does sound.

Concept 6: Staged multimodality the concept of “staged multimodality” is to capture something of the organic process of creation. Thus the notion of “staged multimodality” draws attention away from the multimodal product itself to focus more pointedly on the whole process and complexity of multimodal text production and presentation.

Assessing multimodal texts… A shift from summative assessment of learning (finished product) to assessment for learning (the learning process), new terms and descriptors are essential during the production stage of multimodal texts Rubrics are no longer the best most appropriate choice of assessment; rather negotiated discussions with students and teachers on indicators of quality in multimodal texts Web 2.0 allows collaborative interaction and feedback from the teacher, peer to peer, online experts, or online communities Blogs, wiki’s, eportfolios or other technologies can foster constant reflection and improvement

Assessing multimodal texts continued… “All entail inquiries into how students might improve their metacognitive capacities, and the robustness of their learning, by recasting assessment as integral to the learning process, rather than remaining focused on end-products.”

Assessing multimodally… Principles Principle 1: The development of language and metalanguage to shape multimodal assessment needs to be organic, shared and negotiated. Principle 2. The development of assessment practices for dynamic multimodal texts should involve dynamic tools. Principle 3. The assessment of multimodal learning should be concerned with the process of learning – from conception to reflection – not just the final product.

Discussion Questions 1. In your classroom or professional experience, have you used any dynamic tools (blogs, wikis, e- portfolio's) for assessing multimodal texts? Were there any benefits? Were there many challenges? 2. In this fictitious situation, your co-worker in a grade level meeting is determined to use a rubric to assess all the students in your grade on their multimodal presentations. How do you respond? Do you agree or disagree? Please defend your position.

Discussion questions continued 3. Please view the Photo Story presentation for this week. (please note if you cannot view this photo story you can use the digital poem or visual essay from the previous weeks) Please refer to slides 5-10 in this presentation. Describe some of the different concepts that are utilized in this photo story. What assessment and evaluation criteria might you use for this photo story? What might your assessment tool look like?