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ContextWe have already seen (within the Literature Review) that multimodal scholarly practice is firmly established within some corners of the university campus. The question thus emerges as to whether tutors occupying emerging digital environments might learn from colleagues working in disciplines where it is the convention for students to present ideas across a range of modes, and where the traditional essay carries less significance. Thus my observation exercise comprised two visits to observe undergraduate students and their tutors participating in an assignment concerned with ‘Architectural Design: Assembly’. To offer some brief background, the summative assessment component of the course challenged students to research, develop and propose an architectural design, presented through the form of two A2 sheets for wall display, alongside other work within a portfolio.
Visit 1: Final review ('The crit')
Although the focus of my dissertation is upon tutor experiences, in order to understand the assessment context it was helpful to observe students in the classroom setting. The ‘crit exercise’ provided a useful opportunity to observe students as they participated in a multimodal communication event that involved presenting and then collecting feedback on their works-in-progress. This semi-formal exercise took place simultaneously over four ‘crit rooms’ across campus. Within this setting, each student was allocated a specified amount of studio space to display her work.
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The collected portfolios comprised a range of artefacts, with ideas communicated through architectural plans, photographs, hand-made 3-D models, sketchbooks and other visual forms. The combination of digital and traditional forms reminds us of the encouragement in some corners of the literature to understand multimodality as a blending of established and emerging technologies (for example Jewitt 2006). This willingness and ability of students to combine a range of traditional communication resources (sketches, photographs, models) with emerging digital approaches (computer-generated plans, digitally enhanced photographs) usefully illustrates my earlier argument that multimodality is an evolutionary process where established and emerging forms co-exist and hybridise to create new representational forms.
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The representational artefacts on display varied, with some students evidently more able or inclined to experiment with a broader range of representational forms (echoing what we saw in Chapter 2 where some DE students were more willing to embrace the digital multimodal form). Nevertheless, in each case the portfolio represented the simultaneous employment of a range of communicational modes in a way that is consistent with our understanding of multimodality as defined by Kress (2005, 2009) and Jewitt (2006, 2009). What was also common across the work on display was the limited use of text as part of the multimodal assemblage. The employment of printed text rarely moved beyond a basic, functional purpose, predominantly being used in label form (‘front elevation’, ‘Assembly: 1-1500mm’). Elsewhere, hand-written notes had been added to sketchbooks: therefore within the Architecture crit, text performed a minor supporting role, with much greater communicational significance placed on visual modes (as proposed by Rose (2001) and Kress and van Leeuwen (2001) amongst others.)
This multimodal assemblage was further extended to include oral and also non-verbal communicational modes as each student delivered a short presentation to explain her work. The student’s body language, gesture and physical appearance reminds us that multimodality, in Jewitt’s view, extends beyond language to include image, gesture, gaze, posture and other modes that are employed to communicate ideas and information (2006, 2009). Two important points emerge from this part of the observation exercise. Firstly, the simultaneous use of a range of modes (as depicted in the interactive image), supports the claim by Bezemer and Kress (2008) and Jewitt (2006) that we look beyond a new-versus-old paradigm to recognise that multimodal scholarly practice pre-dates recent developments in digital technology. Secondly, it has been shown that there are disciplines where text is already afforded a very limited role within the assessment setting, a situation that tends to be overlooked within the literature. This is a useful contribution to the debate over whether visuality can deprivilege text as the significant representational mode within the academy, as suggested for instance by Kress and van Leeuwen (2001): simply, text cannot be deprivileged in those disciplines - such as architecture - where it does not already hold sway. |
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Returning to the review exercise, the student’s presentation was followed by dialogue and feedback from tutors that centred around the three learning outcomes for the course: attending to whether the student had an awareness of the principles of assembly (‘You seem to be ignoring the material of the city’); the capacity to exploit interior and exterior architectural forms (‘That’s an imaginative and clever use of the garden space’) and; the student’s ability to represent their ideas within the portfolio format (‘These are excellent visuals: they’re very clear, very professional’).
It is interesting to note a number of similarities between the observed assessment approaches and those identified during interview with tutors from the DE programme. First of all, in both settings students are provided with opportunities to hone their technical and rhetorical skills in a formative setting (in the DE programme we might think about the use of blogs as an equivalent experiment space to the crit, where students try out ideas). Secondly, and more obviously, there is an expectation that students will look beyond text to represent their ideas. Thirdly, students in each setting become aware of alternative representational approaches and strategies through exposure to the work of their peers. Fourthly, student-tutor dialogue helps students understand how their work-in-progress sits in relation to assessment, even if the level and form of this dialogue differs notably between the two contexts, as discussed below. Visit 2: Tutor ‘Assessment day’
The Final review was followed by an assessment day where tutors gathered to mark the submitted work. Prior to formally commencing the assessment of student work, the tutors met to clarify the format and approach that would be taken during the course of the day. Documentation was circulated, followed by a discussion of how standards would be applied against the collected work. The tutors then visited each of the crit rooms where student work was on display and discussed how different examples of work fared against the assessment criteria.
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With consensus achieved, the team then broke into pairs to mark each student’s work. This involved studying architectural plans, photographs and images; holding models up the light to closely examine them; flicking through sketchbooks and then discussing the overall impact of the work. It was interesting to note that, although comments were made about the technical quality of the artefacts (‘These are beautifully realised images’), discussion tended to focus on how the collected work satisfied the brief and fared against the assessment criteria. Rather than discussing each individual communicational component (such as a sketch, elevation or model), the tutors took a holistic approach, reflecting on the impact and meaning communicated by the entire assemblage of work.
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A common example of this was seen in the way that tutors would closely examine a 3-D model alongside the elevations, photographs and the other depictions that it was intended to work with. This approached allow the tutor to reflect on the particular meaning generated by the specific configuration of communicational modes, thus allowing for the distinct representational power of the multimodal artefact (Kress and Leeuwen 2001, Jewitt 2006).
Thus, as with the crit exercise, the observation of the Assessment day provides a clear picture of the similarities between the practices of DE tutors and those of their colleagues in Architecture. Just as a number of the DE tutors described spending time immersing themselves in the assessment criteria prior to reflecting on the quality of a digital multimodal assignment, the Architecture tutors were seen to do likewise at the start of the day. More significantly however, both groups of tutors took a holistic approach, where they attempted to make sense of the communicational entirety of each student’s work, rather than judging the quality of individual components in turn. Having identified a number of notable similarities in the approaches of Architecture tutors and their DE counterparts, it is important to also draw attention to some key differences. First of all, the uncertainty that some DE tutors experienced surrounding the use of images was not observed amongst their colleagues in Architecture (presumably on account of their immersion with a highly visual discipline). A more significant difference however was shown in the nature of feedback within the different settings. While the value of discussion surrounding multimodal assessment was acknowledged by DE tutors (in Chapter 3), the crit exercise was indicative of a wider approach across the Architecture course where students were expected to engage in regular and ongoing dialogue with tutors, where their developing response to the brief was discussed. The crit exercise itself provided around 20 minutes of compulsory, personalised, face-to-face dialogue with tutors, set within a wider 6 hour session where students were exposed to equivalent dialogue between tutors and their peers. Whilst the interview data identified opportunities for students to gain feedback on the form of their work within the DE programme, the approach is less structured and in-depth compared to the intense and ongoing dialogic approach within Architecture. ConclusionWithin this chapter I have drawn on my observation of established assessment practices within Architecture to argue that multimodality should be seen as pre-dating recent technological advances within the classroom. Furthermore, I have shown that Architecture students exploit a range of traditional and emerging representation forms to share their ideas. I have also pointed to a number of similarities between the assessment approaches of tutors in the traditional campus setting and their counterparts in digital environments. These different arguments all point towards an understanding of multimodality that is less concerned with a new-versus-old paradigm and instead encourages us to think in terms of an evolution in academic literacy where students and tutors call on a range of ways to communicate and reflect on the representation of academic ideas and knowledge.
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