This blog relates to a problem I confront in myself in
imagining the process of understanding and complying with any possible Assessment
Guidance relating to Multimodal Assessment. The ‘musings’ here relate to
the problem and how to formulate a personal response and feedback to learners should
such a task ever be set.
It may form part of formal research on the topic of
multimodal assessment.
The
Problem as I see it.
Imagine that a learner is tasked to provide a multimedia
project (in PowerPoint or some other multimedia carrier platform) that uses
multiple media to illustrate some everyday experience that they have recorded
and reflected upon. In the same product, they are asked to ‘analyse how the way
you have illustrated the experience’ can be connected to ‘psychological
theories and research’ in part of the curriculum.
This assessment task is both innovative and potentially
transformative in its educational potential, but as it stands it feels to me
that it might result in less than clear outcomes in summative assessment for putative
learners, tutors or marking moderators.
The problems are, for me, as follows:
The
distinction between i) products that are multimedia and, ii) analyses of them that are
necessarily multimodal.
The
terms aren’t always distinguished but it is appropriate to do so here, such
that ‘media’ covers material objects which employ a particular mix of ‘modes’
of communication and representation (visual, auditory, gestural) but may
privilege one, as radio, for instance privileges the auditory.
Media
are not culturally stable however, either synchronically or diachronically. The
modes used in ‘newspapers’ vary over a number of diachronic and synchronic
domains.
Mode
emphasises the conceptual tools through which communication and representation
is afforded. One medium will certainly carry multiple modes in any of its
realizations. Even a ‘book without pictures or conversation’ (such as that
imagined by Alice) can be read multimodally. Written text is also distributed
spatially and often uses modal variants – of font and emphasis in text, for
instance.
Whilst
you can produce a multimedia product without any cognisance of multimodality,
you cannot analyse it without the latter, since any language of description
requires awareness of the affordances of visual or auditory or connectivity
(hyperlinkage) modalities
The
level of multimodal literacy required.
Such
literacy is not a given but will vary both in quality, quantity and
metacognition across a large learner group varied by ranges of age, employment,
social, economic and other variables. Not all the trends of the appropriate
literacies can be gauged or predicted and will be open to unhelpful assumptions
(such as the effects of a ‘digital generation’).
The
language of description of ‘the way you have illustrated the experience’ available to each learner.
The
existence of an emergent potential ‘language of description’. The most
sophisticated but pedagogically usable one is that in Bezemer & Kress (2016:
76 – 78). It urges the analysis of ‘multimodal’ across 4 semiotic principles: framing, selection, arrangement and
foregrounding.
The
level of awareness of appropriate language of description in assessors, the
assessed learners and the variability of the gap between assessors and assessed
learners across the possible combinations of interaction between both groups in
the pedagogic (and assessment) process.
I tried to imagine visually the tension I see between what
Bezemer & Kress see as fundamental to multimedia meaning-making and an
assessment criteria.
Let us
imagine, for instance that an assessment criterion is the clarity of the
exposition of the experience recounted, later reflection on it and the way in
which a multimedia representation on that is linked to curricular content. I
imagined Fig A.
Figure A imagines Bezemer & Kress’ components for a
language of description as sandwiched between the learner’s awareness that a
project has been set and the assessor’s awareness that the clarity of this
product’s communication is to be tested.
As with, any other sandwich it can be assessed
without analysing its contents – in terms of the assessor’s culturally modified
and professionally orientated taste.
Fig B
complicates the picture a lot. I have made two intellectual leaps here. I am,
in line with relevant theorists, naming the product of multimodal production process, a text, which does
not imply the modality of written language. A photograph can be a text. I use
this term to relate ‘text’ to its circumambient contexts.
Fig B insets out TEXT (fig A) as the product of a process of composition
that possesses DESIGN and RHETORICAL VARIANTS – different affordances in each
of its modes for telling its story. That text is influenced by many contexts. I include
3:
The
Culture which prescribes the resources and their conventional readings.
The
Teaching and Learning Context, which covers learning in the context of a number
of teaching media (not all being human), and
The
context of the Prescribed Curriculum which includes the social construction of
the discipline of Psychology as well as institutional and societal or governmental
requirements.
Our project replaces the potential duality of text in
facilitating assessment of both a material outcome of learning task AND the
process of the text’s composition revealed in decisions about the use of
variable affordance within and between the relevant modes used in it. Only the
latter can yield sure ‘signs of learning’ (Bezemer & Kress 2016: 54)
Having felt that, I found it said in an early article by Molle
& Prior (2008:557), although in a different context, that of English for
academic purposes.
All the Best
Steve
Bezemer,
J. & Kress, G. (2016) Multimodality,
Learning and Communication: A Social Semiotic Frame London, Routledge
Molle, D.
& Prior, P. (2008) ‘Multimodal Genre systems in EAP Writing pedagogy:
Reflecting on a Needs Analysis’ in TESOL
Quarterly 42 (4). 541 – 556.
A Problem in Multimodal Assessment Imagined
© Steve Bamlett
This blog relates to a problem I confront in myself in imagining the process of understanding and complying with any possible Assessment Guidance relating to Multimodal Assessment. The ‘musings’ here relate to the problem and how to formulate a personal response and feedback to learners should such a task ever be set.
It may form part of formal research on the topic of multimodal assessment.
The Problem as I see it.
Imagine that a learner is tasked to provide a multimedia project (in PowerPoint or some other multimedia carrier platform) that uses multiple media to illustrate some everyday experience that they have recorded and reflected upon. In the same product, they are asked to ‘analyse how the way you have illustrated the experience’ can be connected to ‘psychological theories and research’ in part of the curriculum.
This assessment task is both innovative and potentially transformative in its educational potential, but as it stands it feels to me that it might result in less than clear outcomes in summative assessment for putative learners, tutors or marking moderators.
The problems are, for me, as follows:
The distinction between i) products that are multimedia and, ii) analyses of them that are necessarily multimodal.
The terms aren’t always distinguished but it is appropriate to do so here, such that ‘media’ covers material objects which employ a particular mix of ‘modes’ of communication and representation (visual, auditory, gestural) but may privilege one, as radio, for instance privileges the auditory.
Media are not culturally stable however, either synchronically or diachronically. The modes used in ‘newspapers’ vary over a number of diachronic and synchronic domains.
Mode emphasises the conceptual tools through which communication and representation is afforded. One medium will certainly carry multiple modes in any of its realizations. Even a ‘book without pictures or conversation’ (such as that imagined by Alice) can be read multimodally. Written text is also distributed spatially and often uses modal variants – of font and emphasis in text, for instance.
Whilst you can produce a multimedia product without any cognisance of multimodality, you cannot analyse it without the latter, since any language of description requires awareness of the affordances of visual or auditory or connectivity (hyperlinkage) modalities
The level of multimodal literacy required.
Such literacy is not a given but will vary both in quality, quantity and metacognition across a large learner group varied by ranges of age, employment, social, economic and other variables. Not all the trends of the appropriate literacies can be gauged or predicted and will be open to unhelpful assumptions (such as the effects of a ‘digital generation’).
The language of description of ‘the way you have illustrated the experience’ available to each learner.
The existence of an emergent potential ‘language of description’. The most sophisticated but pedagogically usable one is that in Bezemer & Kress (2016: 76 – 78). It urges the analysis of ‘multimodal’ across 4 semiotic principles: framing, selection, arrangement and foregrounding.
The level of awareness of appropriate language of description in assessors, the assessed learners and the variability of the gap between assessors and assessed learners across the possible combinations of interaction between both groups in the pedagogic (and assessment) process.
I tried to imagine visually the tension I see between what Bezemer & Kress see as fundamental to multimedia meaning-making and an assessment criteria.
Let us imagine, for instance that an assessment criterion is the clarity of the exposition of the experience recounted, later reflection on it and the way in which a multimedia representation on that is linked to curricular content. I imagined Fig A.
Figure A imagines Bezemer & Kress’ components for a language of description as sandwiched between the learner’s awareness that a project has been set and the assessor’s awareness that the clarity of this product’s communication is to be tested.
As with, any other sandwich it can be assessed without analysing its contents – in terms of the assessor’s culturally modified and professionally orientated taste.
Fig B complicates the picture a lot. I have made two intellectual leaps here. I am, in line with relevant theorists, naming the product of multimodal production process, a text, which does not imply the modality of written language. A photograph can be a text. I use this term to relate ‘text’ to its circumambient contexts.
Fig B insets out TEXT (fig A) as the product of a process of composition that possesses DESIGN and RHETORICAL VARIANTS – different affordances in each of its modes for telling its story. That text is influenced by many contexts. I include 3:
The Culture which prescribes the resources and their conventional readings.
The Teaching and Learning Context, which covers learning in the context of a number of teaching media (not all being human), and
The context of the Prescribed Curriculum which includes the social construction of the discipline of Psychology as well as institutional and societal or governmental requirements.
Our project replaces the potential duality of text in facilitating assessment of both a material outcome of learning task AND the process of the text’s composition revealed in decisions about the use of variable affordance within and between the relevant modes used in it. Only the latter can yield sure ‘signs of learning’ (Bezemer & Kress 2016: 54)
Having felt that, I found it said in an early article by Molle & Prior (2008:557), although in a different context, that of English for academic purposes.
All the Best
Steve
Bezemer, J. & Kress, G. (2016) Multimodality, Learning and Communication: A Social Semiotic Frame London, Routledge
Molle, D. & Prior, P. (2008) ‘Multimodal Genre systems in EAP Writing pedagogy: Reflecting on a Needs Analysis’ in TESOL Quarterly 42 (4). 541 – 556.