Scaffolding multimodality: writing process, collaboration and digital tools

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Howell

Purpose This study was conducted in ninth- and tenth-grade classrooms with the goal of studying effective scaffolding for improving argumentative writing, both conventional and digital/multimodal. Design/methodology/approach The author conducted a formative experiment in two high-school classrooms to study ways teachers integrated forms of multimodal composition in their classrooms and provided associated scaffolding. Findings Findings regarding scaffolding included the embedding of scaffolding in the writing process to blend conventional and digital forms, the use of collaboration as a needed, though resisted, part of this scaffolding, and the consideration of digital tools that mediate students’ argumentative writing. Originality/value This study explored the implementation of a multimodal literacies intervention, providing empirical findings to a field that has remained largely theoretical.

2019 ◽  
Vol 120 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 59-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Danell Teasley

Purpose The explosive growth in the number of digital tools utilized in everyday learning activities generates data at an unprecedented scale, providing exciting challenges that cross scholarly communities. This paper aims to provide an overview of learning analytics (LA) with the aim of helping members of the information and learning sciences communities understand how educational Big Data is relevant to their research agendas and how they can contribute to this growing new field. Design/methodology/approach Highlighting shared values and issues illustrates why LA is the perfect meeting ground for information and the learning sciences, and suggests how by working together effective LA tools can be designed to innovate education. Findings Analytics-driven performance dashboards are offered as a specific example of one research area where information and learning scientists can make a significant contribution to LA research. Recent reviews of existing dashboard studies point to a dearth of evaluation with regard to either theory or outcomes. Here, the relevant expertise from researchers in both the learning sciences and information science is offered as an important opportunity to improve the design and evaluation of student-facing dashboards. Originality/value This paper outlines important ties between three scholarly communities to illustrate how their combined research expertise is crucial to advancing how we understand learning and for developing LA-based interventions that meet the values that we all share.


2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
IdaMae Louise Craddock

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the implementation of a mobile makerspace program in a public school setting. Insights, challenges, successes, projects as well as recommendations will be shared. Design/methodology/approach – This paper describes a mobile makerspace program in a public high school in Virginia. It discusses the growth of mobile making, the advantages and disadvantages of mobility, and how the program was implemented. Findings – Mobile makerspaces are a fast-growing manifestation of maker culture. It is possible to have a makerspace in a public school and take the maker culture to other schools in the area. Having a steady supply of students or library interns that are willing to travel to other schools is critical. Originality/value – Makerspaces in libraries is still a relatively new phenomenon. While the research is coming on stationary makerspaces, mobile making is a new horizon for the maker movement. This paper seeks to provide a description of one such program.


2022 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Angel Trejo-Rangel ◽  
Adriano Mota Ferreira ◽  
Victor Marchezini ◽  
Daniel Andres Rodriguez ◽  
Melissa da Silva Oliveira ◽  
...  

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to encourage graduate students to facilitate a participatory mapping activity with high school students, to have their voices heard in the disaster risk reduction (DRR) agenda.Design/methodology/approachA participatory mapping, youth-led session, was conducted with 22 high school students, where they had to identify flood and landslide-prone areas. Then, they were asked to propose and plan DRR measures in collaboration with local partners in São Luiz do Paraitinga, Brazil.FindingsThe participatory method engaged the graduate students and the high school students in the DRR debate, allowing them to map hazards and vulnerabilities, and to discuss five incubation projects for enhancing DRR in the city.Originality/valueThis research highlights the importance of involving young people in DRR formulation and planning to build local capacities in younger generations. The outputs were shared with the local civil defense and a local non-governmental organization (NGO), who suggested recommendations to improve the five incubation projects.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Higgs ◽  
Grace MyHyun Kim

Purpose Research on nonschool settings suggests young people benefit from digital multimodal composition. Less is known about how digital composing can support students as they interpret required literary class texts. To understand the potential benefits and challenges of digitally composing for literary analysis, design interviews with two high school students were conducted to examine their processes as they designed digital multimodal compositions to interpret Anglo-Saxon poems. Grounded in the social semiotic theory of multimodality, this study aims to examine how students engaged in literary analysis and interpretive digital composition within secondary ELA. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative classroom data were collected through digital means over a six-week period: a whole-class student survey, focal student semistructured design interviews, emails, field notes, analytic memos and student-created digital artifacts. Findings Students’ print-based literary engagements and digital multimodal composition processes were mutually shaped. Additionally, digital multimodal composition offered entry points into challenging print-based literary texts, resulting in understandings enacted across multiple forms of mediation. Research limitations/implications The study focused on one cycle of multimodal composition. Additional studies of students’ digital multimodal composition processes in ELA classrooms over time could be beneficial to the field. Practical implications The study identifies an approach to digital multimodal composition that may help teachers address and integrate core disciplinary objectives. Originality/value This study contributes to scholarship concerned with how “new” technologies and “old” literacies co-exist in contexts requiring students to engage in expanded communication modes alongside specific academic literacies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 426-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Kjellberg ◽  
Jutta Haider

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to understand what role researchers assign to online representations on the new digital communication sites that have emerged, such as Academia, ResearchGate or Mendeley. How are researchers’ online presentations created, managed, accessed and, more generally, viewed by academic researchers themselves? And how are expectations of the academic reward system navigated and re-shaped in response to the possibilities afforded by social media and other digital tools?Design/methodology/approachFocus groups have been used for empirical investigation to learn about the role online representation is assigned by the concerned researchers.FindingsThe study shows that traditional scholarly communication documents are what also scaffolds trust and builds reputation in the new setting. In this sense, the new social network sites reinforce rather than challenge the importance of formal publications.Originality/valueAn understanding of the different ways in which researchers fathom the complex connection between reputation and trust in relation to online visibility as a measure of, or at least an attempt at, publicity (either within academia or outside it) is essential. This paper emphasizes the need to tell different stories by exploring how researchers understand their own practices and reasons for them.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-9
Author(s):  
Mark Williams

Purpose HR is at the very heart of this cultural revolution, and everything from candidate selection and onboarding right through to training and development play a key role. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on Microsoft research highlighting productivity and digital transformation. Findings Organisations can future proof themselves by letting their employees become the driving force in the transition to digital. Originality/value This paper encourages readers to extend beyond simply using digital tools, opening up new channels of communication and inspiring new ways of thinking within an otherwise very traditional.


2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 760-774
Author(s):  
Helena Francke

Purpose The activities of academic researchers are increasingly regulated by neo-liberal ideals, including expectations that researchers are visible online and actively promote their output. The purpose of this paper is to explore how researchers take on this responsibility. It uses the concepts of genre, authorship and self-writing in order to understand how the story of an academic life is constructed on academic web profiles. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative content analysis was conducted of material on 64 profiles belonging to 20 researchers on institutional and personal websites, as well as on ResearchGate, Academica.edu and Google Scholar. Findings The study shows that while institutional websites primarily contain researcher-produced material, content on commercial platforms is often co-constructed through distributed authorship by the researcher, the platform and other platform users. Nine different ways in which the profile of an “academic self” may be said to highlight the particular strengths of a researcher are identified. These include both metrics-based strengths and qualitative forms of information about the academic life, such as experience, the importance of their research and good teaching. Social implications This study of academic web profiles contributes to a better understanding of how researchers self-govern the story of their academic self, or resist such governance, in online environments. Originality/value The study furthers the knowledge of how researchers make use of and respond to digital tools for online visibility opportunities and how the story of the “academic self” is “made” for such public presentation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Howell ◽  
Tracy Butler ◽  
David Reinking

We conducted a formative experiment investigating how an intervention that engaged students in constructing multimodal arguments could be integrated into high school English instruction to improve students’ argumentative writing. The intervention entailed three essential components: (a) construction of arguments defined as claims, evidence, and warrants; (b) digital tools that enabled the construction of multimodal arguments; and (c) a process approach to writing. The intervention was implemented for 11 weeks in high school English classrooms. Data included classroom observations; interviews with the teacher, students, and administrators; student reflections; and the products students created. These data, analyzed using grounded-theory coding and constant-comparison analysis, informed iterative modifications of the intervention. A retrospective analysis led to several assertions contributing to an emerging pedagogical theory that may guide efforts to promote high school students’ ability to construct arguments using digital tools.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-468
Author(s):  
Karen Lee Bar-Sinai ◽  
Tom Shaked ◽  
Aaron Sprecher

PurposeThe purpose of the paper is to advance remote robotic fabrication through an iterative and pedagogical protocol for shaping architectural grounds. Advancements in autonomous robotic tools enable to reach increasingly larger scales of architectural and landscape construction and operate in remote and inaccessible sites. In parallel, the relation of architecture to its environment is significantly reconsidered, as the building industry's contribution to the environmental stress increases. In response, new practices emerge, addressing the reshaping and modulation of environments using digital tools. The context of extra-terrestrial architecture provides a ground for exploring these issues, as future practice in this domain relies on the use of remote autonomous means for repurposing local matter. As a result, the novelty in robotic construction laboratories is tied to innovation in architectural pedagogy.Design/methodology/approachThis paper puts forth a pedagogical protocol and iterative framework for digital groundscaping using robotic tools. The framework is demonstrated through an intensive workshop led by the authors. To situate the discussion, digital groundscaping is linked to several conditions that characterize practice and relate to pedagogy. These conditions include the experimental dimension of knowledge in digital fabrication, the convergence of knowledge as part of the blur between the fields of architecture and landscape architecture and the bridging of heterogeneous knowledge sets (virtual and physical), which robotic fabrication on natural terrains entails.FindingsThe outcomes of the workshop indicate that iterative processes can assist in applying autonomous design protocols on remote grounds. The protocols were assessed in light of the roles of technological tools, design iterations and material agency in the robotic fabrication.Originality/valueThe paper concludes with observations linking the iterative protocol to new avenues in architectural pedagogy as means of advancing the capacity to digitally design, modulate and transform natural grounds.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 828-847 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuel Tamir ◽  
Khalid Arar

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine considerations employed in decision-making processes by Israeli high school leaders, when implementing the “Courage to Change” reform. The reform gave schools large supplementary resources in the form of “weekly instruction time” and they decided how to exploit these additional hours. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative analysis focused on data from interviews with staff from 19 high schools. Findings The research identified three types of consideration adopted by managerial staffs: “Hasty,” “Conservative” and “Path-breaking.” Findings contribute to theory concerning incremental decisions in schools concerning the allocation of resources, in line with the institutional approach, and also inform other schools coping with similar tasks. Originality/value The research is original both in its topic and context. Further conclusions and implications are discussed.


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