Communicative interactions in everyday and college-assessed digital literacy practices: transcribing and analysing multimodal texts

Abstract

This paper explores integrating a range of digital media into classroom practice to establish the effectiveness of the media and its encompassing modes as a pedagogical tool with a focus on assessment. Directing attention on a communication skills module, research indicated that bringing a range of digital media into the classroom motivated and aided further education students to achieve. The challenge of finding ways to converge everyday and college-assessed literacy practices is complex on many levels and demands an understanding of emerging digital literacy practices, particularly the adaptations students make at the level of mode. A concern was that the full nature of digital media and the semiotic resources students use is not recognised, and the potential digital literacy practices have may be underestimated. Taking an ethnographic perspective, one research goal was to gain insight into how students engage with digital media by developing multimodal transcription grids. The notions of ‘funds of knowledge’ and ‘social capital’ are drawn on to underpin an analysis of a range of digital media to establish how the benefits of digital media can be further understood and used within an educational setting, particularly for assessment.

Keywords:

• Multimodal
• digital literacy practices
• further education
• intermodal relationships