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

In order to produce a product that attracts and appeals to the target
population, a product’s visual image, sound, and content all must
blend together to provide users with the sensory information that they
need to interpret and respond to the program. We are developing
information environments.

(Hakansson, 1990: 129)

This computer usability and design literature (e.g. Laurel, 1990; Neilsen, 2000;
Shriver, 1997) identifies a number of roles for image, sound, and moving image on
the screen. However, it tends to remain at the level of description and the
interpersonal and does not give a sense of how or why different representational
modes might function in the way that they do or their role in the construction of
information. Nor, most importantly for this thesis, does the literature highlight the
potentials of different modes for learning. Nonetheless the literature on usability and
design does offer some interesting routes for the analysis I present in this thesis by
suggesting the roles that different modes on screen often occupy.

The usability and design literature suggests that still image can be effectively used to
highlight overall patterns and trends, to demonstrate complex notions, to depict
spatial relations, to depict objects, and to visually create ‘mood’ and immediacy
(Clarke, 1997; Rivilin et. al, 1990). Similarly, colour has been found to be a
potentially powerful tool to direct attention, maintain attention, interest and
motivation, to increase retention of learning materials, and to show relations between
(that is, to link) items (Clarke, 1997). This literature also emphasises the role of
modal arrangements on screen and informational structures in screen design (Rivlin
et. al, 1990). In particular, elements can be visually grouped or separated through
modal configuration, for instance, through the use of colour, brightness, size, shape,
type style, spacing, alignment, slope, direction, speed (Rivlin et. al, 1990).

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