Evaluating Multimodal Assessment Frameworks: The Interactive Audience as a Missing Element of Online Multimodal Composition

• In Event: Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations in Learning With Digital Tools

Abstract

Although the practice of multimodal composition is not new, online multimodal composition is a more recent phenomenon that has significantly altered the sociocultural context in which composition takes place. Online multimodal writing often occurs through membership in a participatory culture (Jenkins, 2006); thus, audience has radically shifted from static, imagined readers to actual, accessible readers and responders. Employing a qualitative content analysis approach (Neuendorf, 2002), we explore existing assessment frameworks and analyze how these frameworks construct quality in multimodal composition through their criteria and how these criteria address the need for consideration of the interactive audience. Preliminary findings indicate that although multimodal composition is defined consistently across texts, the affordances of the online aspect are largely missing from assessment frameworks.

Authors

• Ewa McGrail, Georgia State University

• Nadia Behizadeh, Georgia State University