Promotingteachers' and learners'

multi-literacy skills developmentthrough

cross-institutional exchanges

AILA 2011Harmony in diversity: language, culture, society

Symposium: CALL and the Learner

Mirjam Hauck, Faculty of Education and Language Studies

in a nutshell

two empirical case studies task-based telecollaborative learning format language learners, student teachers and tutors from

Germany, UK, Poland and the US promoting multi-literacy skills development through

> awareness raising of modes and meaning making online

multimodal communicative competence

“the ability to understand the combined potential of various modes for making meaning”

(Royce 2002)

closing the circle

multimodal communicative competence

multiliteracy learner and teacher autonomy

New London Group 2000

many modes for making meaning

a new kind of literacy

“a set of abilities and skills where aural, visual, and digital literacy overlap,” including “the ability to understand and use the power of images and sounds, to manipulate and transform digital media, to distribute them pervasively, and to easily adapt them to new forms”

(New Media Consortium 2005)

an “orchestration of meaning”

But ...

“we cannot expect learners to be competent users of the new media […] aware of their affordances and how to use them constructively”

(Hampel 2006)

new challenges for learners and teachers

critical use of modes

affective demands

intercultural differences

(Hauck & Hampel 2006)

pyramid of skills

(Hampel & Stickler 2005)

participants

project design

- a combination of pedagogical and technical training (Hubbard & Levy 2006; Hampel 2009)

- online tutoring skills and e-literacy skills development (Hampel & Hauck 2006)

- experiential modeling (Hoven 2006)

experiental modeling (Hoven 2006)

participants were discovering modes available online and their impact on meaning making and communication by engaging in hands-on analysis of web resources and social networking tools

case study 1

Task 1: - identification of modes involved in making up a multimodal environment

- consideration of the meaning making and communication possibilities they

offer the learner

case study 2

• Task 1: multiliteracy skills development based on Pegrum (2009)• Task 2: multimodal analysis of a website

mode was broken down:

- spoken mode (vocabulary, syntax, voice and pronunciation, non verbal signals);

- written mode (vocabulary, syntax, paragraphing, i.e. rhetorical structure, punctuation, etc.);

- image mode (photo, drawing, diagram, graph, logo, layout, colour three-dimensional representations, etc.);

- gestural mode (gestures, sign language, dance)

data collection and analysis

ethnography

case study action research

findings

in-depth analysis of one cross-institutional group

• forum contributions• journal entries• portfolio entries• pre- and post-questionnaires

mapped against “pyramid of skills”

case study 2: Megan (OU), Malgorzata (WSL), Katja & Ina (PH)

ICT competence, specific technical competence for the software, dealing with constraints and possibilities of the medium: forum

“you took a much wider view of a forum than I had considered by considering forums that are available to all or to bigger groups. At the OU we work on forums and they are usually restricted either to a small tutor group, a group of tutors or a course which makes it a much different experience (…). On the forums we use you can add pictures to your texts which also adds a different dimension.”

"to choose amongst the vast array of materials available online [...] is different in scope, if not in quality, from the ability to choose the right exercise or the right text book"

(Megan)

(Hampel & Stickler 2005)

dealing with constraints and possibilities of the medium

“As forum is based on writing I think that visual modes of communication such as pictures would facilitate the points. We can send them via e-mail to chosen forum participants or post as links.”

“(…) multi-modal literacy is not required for students to use forums. Forums for the most part involve writing as the form of communication. Even if there were multi-modal formats, the understanding of how they interact with each other is not necessary. What is important is the content.“

(Malgorzata )

(other)

indication of ...

• lack of awareness of

relationship and interaction between different formats of digital media and modes of communication

need to interpret this relationship, to acknowledge the impact on content and on how content is communicated to the reader

preliminary conclusions

• approach helped participants to develop awareness of and cope better with the mediating effect of Web 2.0 tools and environments

• is in line with Stein's (2000) call for a “multimodal pedagogy”

• illustrates that

“it is not sufficient to equip learners with creative and democratic representational online resources and expect that as a result student control over the learning process increases …

• have to promote the kind of literacy required to use the new democratic learning spaces to their best effect” (Hampel & Hauck 2006)

Thank you!

with Carolin Fuchs

Andreas Müller-Hartmann

and Gosia Kurek

Funded by CREET - the Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology at the Open University/UK