I met up with Michael and Jeremy last night to run a couple of ideas past them. I'll blog about that later however I've had some clarity this morning on a significant change I might make to the dissertation. 

Bearing in mind the difficulty (technology, conceptually, time required) to include aural components within my dissemination, I feel inclined to drop that area. As I've acknowledged elsewhere, this was always going to be a bit ambitious, particularly in terms of the need to create an aural 'channel' that is representative, integrated or complementary to the text and visuals on the page. Basically, how do I create a piece of music that is significant to or representative of 'Data collection'? Or 'Methodology'? Or Lit review? This would be hard to realise. It might also be difficult to justify within the rationale i.e. how can I show that music actually contributes to the communication of (my) meaning in the same way that image or text would. I don't think I can. It would be easier to drop the sound element of dissemination, then. 

Dropping the aural element of dissemination also impacts upon the wider dissertation: I'll also need to drop the 'sound' from my title. But then, when I come to think of it, the content is actually attending to text and visuality much more than aural anyway (in fact, it only gets a couple of token mentions). So the dissertation title becomes: A constellation of image and text: tutor experiences of multimodal assessment in the digital classroom.

What does this actually mean in terms of the dissertation:

• I need to include in the introduction/lit review that multimodality tends to be dominated by textuality and visuality and that maybe this will be reflected in discussion - hmm, not sure about this - does it offer and implied shift in focus in what I'm setting out to do - my focus is on multimodal assessment, not just abut image and text
  
• within data analysis and discussion I need to spend more time attending the the textual and visual themes than might otherwise have been the case
  
• in terms of dissemination I need to spend more time interweaving image and text
• also in terms of dissemination, my front cover constellation image needs to have a balance between image and text and to drop the pictured sound components

Of course, I'll also need to get Sian's take on this: on dropping sound and changing the title.

Or to put I another, maybe it need to be more focused. As I've been carrying out my literature review I've begun to get the sense that maybe I should focus on how tutors judge the quality of multimodal artifcats, rather than a more approach in general to how tutors feel about multimodal artifacts. While this is covered to an extent within my three proposed research questions, it feels like my dissertation title should similarly reflect this focus.

"A constellation of images, words and sounds: measuring the quality of multimodal artifacts in the online classroom"

As the working title reflects, I've made a few other changes based upon my recent reading. 'Words' has replaced 'text' and encapsulates both written and spoken language.

I've also opted for the more specific 'online' classroom, to reflect that I will be interviewing tutors from an online programme. I like the phrase 'digital classroom' however that could include predominantly campus-based provision.

This is all still a work in progress and is likely to change again as my reading continues. I think the title suggested above represents an improvement however.

Maybe I also need to add something before 'Constellation'? Perhaps something to reflect that it is fluid and changing as an environment. Maybe:

"A changing constellation of images, words and sounds: measuring the quality of multimodal artifacts in the online classroom"


OK, maybe I need something better than 'changing' which hints at fluidity.