Multimodal Literacies: Communication and Learning in the Era of Digital Media (Coursera)

This course is based on the book Literacies.

This course is one of a series of eight MOOCs created by Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis for the Learning Design and Leadership program at the University of Illinois. If you find this MOOC helpful, please join us in others!

- e-Learning Ecologies: Innovative Approaches to Teaching and Learning for the Digital Age

- New Learning: Principles and Patterns of Pedagogy

- Assessment for Learning

- Learning, Knowledge, and Human Development

- Ubiquitous Learning and Instructional Technologies

- Negotiating Learner Differences: Towards Productive Diversity in Learning

- Literacy Teaching and Learning: Aims, Approaches and Pedagogies

- Multimodal Literacies: Communication and Learning in the Era of Digital Media

Syllabus

WEEK 1

Course Orientation + Multimodal Meaning and Synesthesia

This module introduces the key ideas of the course: communication, representation (or making meanings for oneself as an aid to thinking), and the design of meaning. Today, our tools for communication and representation have been widely expanded by digital tools. For these reasons, we need to extend our literacy pedagogy to encompass literacies in the plural, including a wider range of modes of meaning than alphabetic text alone.

WEEK 2

Making Meaning by Reading + Making Meaning by Writing + Making Visual Meaning

This module begins with an overview of the conventional focus of literacy pedagogy – reading and writing. In its second half, the module applies a parallel set of tools to analysis of visual meanings.

WEEK 3

Making Spatial, Tactile, and Gestural Meanings + Making Audio and Oral Meanings + Literacies to Think and to Learn

In this third module of the course, we examine spatial, tactile, gestural, audio, and oral meanings – all today part of a wider repertoire of teaching and learning that we call "literacies" in the plural, or "multiliteracies." In the final section of the module, we explore how we use literacies to think in characteristically "academic" ways. In this sense, literacies play a critical supportive role in the learning process.

WEEK 4

Literacies and Learner Differences + Literacies Standards and Assessment

The final module of the course examines the question of learner differences – including literacies learning at different age levels and second language learning. We also explore strategies for differentiated instruction. Finally, we investigate the range of assessment strategies that can be used to diagnose learner needs, offer feedback during the learning process, and evaluate learning outcomes.