Month: March 2023

Multimodal Seminars and Networks

My research interests are focused on multimodality through a wide lens. I am interested in how people communicate and make meaning, and how people learn. In this post I have listed some of the networks and seminar series I follow. If you are new to multimodality, this list might be useful.

Research Centres and Networks

  • UCL Knowledge Lab;
    • “is a crucible for the study of technology in learning and teaching, and a vantage point from which to design digital media and artefacts that change the way people think and construct knowledge”
  • The Visual and Multimodal Research Forum;
    • “is a hub for researchers across the world who are interested in multimodality. It aims to provide a platform for dialogue and collaboration for advancing visual and multimodal research across disciplines, with a particular emphasis on communication and learning”
  • Research network in medical education (Karolinska Institutet);
  • “is a community for researchers within medical education, to share ideas and learn from each other”

Multimodal Seminar Series

  • The Online Multimodality Talks series; (UCL Institute of Education, University of Leeds, Stockholm University)
    • “a joint initiative for researchers across the world who are interested in multimodality. It aims to provide a platform for dialogue for advancing multimodal research across disciplines. Multimodality draws attention to how meaning is made through the combined use of semiotic resources such as gesture, speech, face expression, body movement and proxemics, (still and moving) image, objects, sound and music, writing, colour, layout, and the built environment”
  • Bremen-Groningen Online Workshops on Multimodality;
    • “a series of workshops organized around various topics and themes of recent multimodality research in order to discuss newest research questions, newly developed methods and frameworks, and/or latest results from empirical work”
  • Research Forum for Interaction and Learning (ReFIL)
    • “focuses on issues concerning analyses of interaction, primarily relevant to the field of Education”

Other Seminar Series and Networks

Multimodality on Social Media

In the Twitter flow you can find several accounts foused on multimodality.

More

Assessments, Texts and AI

When Artificial Intelligence [AI] can be prompted to produce text that can pass for being written by a human, and can generate images, or write music, and generate voice and image that ‘impersonate’ a specific person – then we need to reconsider how we teach and assess.

There are many opinions about assessment in education and several positions in research. I am in this post not going to go into any of these, but I do recognise that there are differences. However, regardless of how you see or approach assessments, if you are worried I suggest that you use more than one way to find out about your students’ learning.

It the students’ are writing – add something else as well. This could be a filmed presentation or a discussion in class, or some other form where the student has to apply knowledge in some way that can be traced and evidenced as their learning. There are many ways assessments can be constructed where AI would not be a problem. Why not use ChatGPT as part of an assignment – maybe analyse the resulting text? There is room for creativity here – map the student’s knowledge and learning in multiple ways.

We also need to start thinking about what AI can, as well as cannot, do or be.