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

organizing the data generated criteria for sampling the data as well as analytical
insights and questions. The sampling criteria are purposive and reflect the research
questions that I set out in Chapter One of this thesis. The data was sampled for
critical instances of:

• Learning in which the multimodal resources made available by computer
applications appears to impact on the shape of curriculum knowledge.

• Student engagement with these resources in ways that appears to reshape school
practices.

• A clear modal shift such as the move from image based to writing based learning.

• Information being ‘transducted’ across modes.

• The different ways that the students engage with the resources that the computer
applications make available to them.

I applied the above criteria to the data in order to identify episodes for analysis.

Multimodal Transcription

Transcripts are a representation of an event. Making a transcript is therefore a
theoretical practice that marks what is theoretically important or unimportant to the
transcriber. A transcript shapes that which will be attended to and it shapes the
analysis by making some aspects ‘present’ for analysis. Moving beyond language
requires a transcription process which takes account of all modal resources that are in
focus and the means to examine how these resource work together to make meaning.

To achieve a multimodal transcript a theoretically integrated set of descriptive
dimensions highlighted as important in the literature are used. These include
dimensions of the modes of gaze, gesture, body posture, the semiotic objects of
action, image, and speech (Bateson, 1987; Bitti and Poggi, 1991; Merlau-Ponty,
1969; Crowder, 1996). Viewing each video sample a transcript is made recording
each mode with time as an anchor as shown in figure 3.1.

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