A Multimodal Framework for Computer Mediated Learning: The Reshaping of Curriculum Knowledge and Learning

Abstract

In this thesis I turn the lens of multimodality on technology-mediated learning in
classrooms. I analyse the representational and communicative modes that a range of
computer applications make available to students including still image, movement,
speech, sound-effect, and writing.

Two central aims inform the thesis. The first aim is to provide a better theoretical
understanding of the relationship between the multimodal meaning making resources
made available by new technologies, school knowledge and practices. The second aim is
to contribute to the development of multimodal theory through its application to
technology-mediated learning. In the process I comment on the questions that this raises
for conceptions of literacy.

In the thesis I develop a multimodal analytical framework for the examination of the
characteristics of technology-mediated learning by presenting a detailed analysis of three
examples of technology-mediated learning. The first concerns the use of a CD-ROM
version of the Steinbeck novel OfMice and Men in the English classroom. The focus is
on the transformation of the entity ‘character’ on the one hand, and the practices of
reading on the other, in the move from page to screen. The second example explores
students’ use of a computer programming application Toontalk and the production of the
mathematical concepts of ‘rule’ and ‘bounce’ through game building. The multimodal
construction of the entity ‘states of matter’, in a CD-ROM Multimedia Science School is
explored in the third example. Drawing on these instances of representation in English,
Mathematics, and Science I investigate how the multimodal representations afforded by
new technologies reshape school knowledge, and, in doing so, influence (possibilities for)
learning, subjectivity and traditional concepts of literacy. The thesis demonstrates that
traditional conceptions of literacy are reshaped through technology-mediated learning and
can be thought of as a process of multimodal design.

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