Adopting a Multimodal Approach to Address the Multiliteracy Needs of My Students
In this article, Sarsar discusses how she created a website a unit in one of her courses. In this website, she created several different components so as to have a multimodal experience for the students. She was curious to see how the students would respond to this type of learning environment as compared to a more traditional environment. The reason she was curious about this was due to as many have put it, the digital divide, that is occurring within our society.
As technologies are changing and our younger generations are growing up with more and more technology in their lives, it is believed that the educational experience needs to change as well. This is what Sarsar was trying to discover. How well would the students react to the information being presented in several different ways on a website as compared to just reading it from a textbook and discussing it within the classroom environment.
Within the website there were several different components. Some of these components were readings, homework, photo and video galleries, discussion boards, and homework pages. In order to discover what the students thought of this type of instruction, she asked several students to go onto the website and leave their opinions in a discussion board. The react from the students was very positive. They seems to like this type of instruction better than just reading a textbook and talking about it in class.
All of this Sarsar believes makes sense. As you look at what students are doing outside of class, this concept ties into that. They are watching TV or videos, surfing the internet, and playing games. She wanted to see if taking these ideas and putting them into a classroom setting would affect the students knowledge and retention of the knowledge, thus decreasing the digital divide between her and the students.
Her conclusion seems simple. If classrooms can have multimodal approach to learning the digital divide will be kept to a minimum between homes and schools. The only problem that she sees is the possibility of the divide between students that have the capital to have some of these technologies at home and the ones that do not.
Sarsar, Nasreddine. June 22, 2008. Adopting a multimodal approach to address the multiliteracy needs of my students. Online submission – research paper.