Beginning to write my dissemination rationale

Within this section I offer a rationale for digital form I have taken for the dissemination of my dissertation. 

Introduction
The dissertation guide for the MSc in Digital Education invites any student intending to present ideas in a 'non-conventional form' to submit a 2000-word rationale [finish sentence]. This provides a welcome and valuable opportunity to contextualise and justify the approach that I have taken in presenting my work, including:

• a justification for representing my ideas in 'non-conventional form'
  
• what I intended to achieve
  
• the factors that have influenced the form of the work
  
• guidance for the reader on how it might be experienced
  

Within my research proposal I committed to presenting my ideas in non-conventional form - my intention was always to explore the possibility of offering more than words on page or screen. As the dissertation exercise has progressed, my thoughts on how this would be realised - recorded within my dissertation blog - have developed, influenced by a range of factors including the insights offered by interview participants, my examination of literature attending to multimodality, the pressure of time and also an recognition of the limitations of my own technical proficiency and critical skills within different modes of representation. As such, what follows is a reflective piece that outlines my position, interweaved with extracts from my blog, data from interviews with course tutors, and reference to the literature. 

[Note: Consistent with the approach across my dissemination, although this rationale is dominated by text, where appropriate, this is  juxtaposed with image (screen shots, photography, hand drawn sketches and notes) in order to convey meaning and aid the representation of ideas. I acknowledge that this might render this rationale inconsistent with the requirement (within the dissertation guide) for a 'conventional rationale', however as per my wider dissertation, such an approach would have jarred with the subject under discussion.]

My enthusiasm to present a non-conventional dissemination has been accompanied by an anxiety that the completed artefact will be seen as failing to exploit the opportunity for innovation and creativity that digital multimodality offers. My approach however has been to consider how I might best share my knowledge and ideas to the reader, ahead of an exercise in demonstrating or testing my own creative or technological proficiency. 

In electing to offer a multimodal artefact for assessment I have focused on the form that will best allow me to communicate ideas and knowledge. 

Considering the subject of my research, it is entirely appropriate that I should elect to present my dissertation in a digital multimodal format. Indeed, there is an argument that to do otherwise - to submit a conventional text-based essay - would have to be seen in itself as questioning the validity of the digital multimodal form in an academic setting.