Beyond Writing in the Disciplines √ §

Multimodal communication is about making meaning through a combination of representation formats, e.g., words, images, sounds, and numbers. The ability to understand and design complex messages that mix modalities is crucial to students’ abilities to participate in academic disciplines and other professional domains. Students in all majors need to learn to distill research findings or creative products and present them in a variety of ways for a variety of audiences. In most disciplines, for example, students need to be as adept at preparing a slide show that combines graphics, text, sound and/or video, as they are at presenting their ideas orally in a clear and compelling way.

In this panel presentation, co-sponsored by the Writing Board and the Faculty Development Center, Lindsay Johnson (Music), Cynthia Wagner (Biology), and Marcela Mellinger and Nicki Belfiore (Social Work) will share a variety of multimodal communication assignments their students complete. They’ll also describe how they support students to prepare this work and how they assess the products. Your questions and discussion will close out the session.