Multimodality, assessment and language education

Last Friday I visited the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds to participate in a seminar on the subject of Assessment and Feedback within Higher Education. I contributed a workshop around the possibilities and potential challenges of multimodal approaches to assessment and feedback within language education. Here are my slides with a full reference list at the end:

Although I have been talking and writing about multimodal assessment for a few years now, the context for Friday’s event presented a new challenge. When the dominant discourse around multimodal assessment concerns a move beyond the central authority of words, does multimodal assessment have a place within courses with a central interest in the study of language (as opposed to using language to communicate meaning of other subject matter)? This question was the starting position for my session which included an activity where, working in groups, colleagues reflected on what might be the critical questions that language educators need to ask in order to ascertain whether multimodality might perform a role around assessment and feedback. Rather than responding to the suggestions from each of the groups, I instead recorded the different ideas (hopefully true their intention) and have grouped them under four themes, below :

Rethinking the nature of assessment 

• Would a greater attention to multimodality make assessment richer?
• Thinking about affordances around multimodality, can we think about the types of meaning-making that a particular learning context supports?
• Are there instances where a greater attention to multimodality within assessment will support greater coherence between content and form? 
• Does multimodality provide us with a helpful way of thinking around threshold concepts?
• What do we know about the way that the curriculum (and the hidden curriculum) prepares students for the employment market and what role can multimodality play a role in supporting this?
• In considering whether multimodality can feature more heavily within assessment and feedback, we need to remain alert to the purpose of the assessment exercise and the course itself.

Assessment criteria and marking

• Do we need to rethink existing assessment criteria in order to match the preparation of multimodal assignments?
• What ‘chunks of knowledge’ should be assessed multimodality (compared to more conventionally through language) and how should we go about deciding and then executing this?
• Can multimodal assessment bring more enjoyment to the task of marking, compared to written essays?
• How granular do assessment criteria need to be in order to evaluate performance?
• Does attention to multimodality bring the need to individually pay attention to a greater array of meaning-making resources and if so, how complex will assessment become?
• Taking the example of an oral presentation/examination, are there ways that we could better attend to the ways that non-verbal modes such as gesture and attire contribute towards the communication of meaning?
• How accurately can multimodal assessment reflect a student’s knowledge and understanding of what matters (in the context of the course) and how can we be sure that we are assessing them correctly?

Resource implications

• When a student’s time is precious, and multimodal assessment approaches to assessment might take longer than a conventional entirely language-based approach, how much effort can we expect students to put into this?
• In an examination setting, will there realistically be enough time for a student to produce a multimodal assignment compared to a more conventional piece of written work?
• What are the time implications for us as tutors: will marking take longer than it currently does when we are already busy?
• Is multimodal assessment cost-effective?

Student needs and interests 

• Does a greater attention to multimodality within assessment enable us to better support students with additional support needs? Can multimodality contribute towards a more level field in this respect?
• Do students want there to be a greater emphasis on multimodality within assessment? What do we know about whether they would support such a move?
• What are the implications of giving students greater freedom to select the representational form of the work they submit for assessment (for instance through the selection and configuration of modes), assuming we choose to give them scope to do this?
• If multimodal assessment (and wider pedagogy) is seen to be an effective way of providing graduates with the qualities they need beyond the end of a degree, how do we go about predicting how the job market and society more broadly might change what is required over time?

Although many of the suggestions would apply to assessment and feedback practices across the disciplines, the centrality of language within the group's teaching meant that the workshop raised ideas that I hadn't encountered before. This provides a helpful reminder that the possibilities of multimodal assessment, and the potential barriers to its use, can vary across different learning contexts.

Thank you to Chiara La Sala from the Leeds Centre for Excellence in Language Teaching for the invitation to contribute to Friday's event. Thanks Also to Martin Thomas and Elisabetti Adami who took time out to meet and explore ideas with me. 

See also:
Stories of Transformative Multimodal Assessment
Multimodality and Mobile Learning in Bremen
Multimodal assessment in the presentation setting