Michael replies...

When I e-mailed Michael just before Christmas I didn't expect an immediate response, and I certainly didn't anticipate that he would have gone into so much thought and detail. I'm going to post his full response below before working through the different items:

Hello there, James,

Great stuff on the research proposal. Enjoyed it and it is fun to see someone with such similar interests as mine. I am less on assessment but we share an equal fascination with unconventional modes of representation. 

1. I am attaching your research proposal with some notes attached. Great stuff and most of my comments are minor. I might consider at some point defining multimodality (as championed by Kress) and transliteracy (more of the McKenna camp). Kress is at IoE and has this weird mythical following and my supervisor has strongly cautioned me to avoid conflating multimodality and transliteracy (or even multimedia). My notes explain on this a bit. I would go with whatever Sian says, though and I think she uses multimodality. 
2. As for Literature Review (which I am doing now for the PhD so that is a nice coincidence), depending on the day I am quite systematic or quite serendipitous in my searching. Here are my tips as I see them. 
3. I think the trick for me has always been to find that one article that absolutely nails it for your research and then work forward and backward from there. I think for you that McKenna chapter is fantastically apt as she makes the case that these hypertext essays (same thing as what we are talking about-multimedia) are advancements and assessable and all that. So, that chapter (perhaps much more than Kress) might represent the foundation for your research. 
4. From there, I would go to Google Scholar, find that McKenna chapter (or anything similar she might have written) and then citation search that. This is quite easy on Google Scholar as they provide a link for every search result that says Cited by..... Click on that and you will see anyone that has cited this work for their research. Chances are the one that cited is awfully similar to it. See attached screenshot (and below)for that Cited by link. This is basically reverse citation engineering. 
5. Go back to the McKenna chapter (or whatever you choose) and go through her references for background. This stuff is invaluable for your lit review as it is basically evidence of someone establishing the heavy hitters in this space for you. I am not condoning plagiarism or anything like that, but nor do I feel it necessary to reinvent the wheel. McKenna writes a lot about multimedia so her background research would be perfect for your lit review (along with some assessment mechanisms, which I think she writes about as well). 
6. When you have exhausted these tasks, it is down to straight up searching, but this is problematic as not a single author has agreed on the terminology for "multimedia essay". So, you basically have to do a whole slew of searches (with quotation marks to establish the phrase and not the term) for a. "hypertext essay" assessment b. "multimedia essay" assessment c. "digital essay" assessment and on and on. I think to begin with your best bet is multimedia and assessment as search terms and work from there. 
7. I think rather than type these again and again, set up Google Scholar Search Alerts as these will alert you when new articles are published that fit your criteria. Helpful. The Create Alert link can be found at the bottom of each search results page on Google Scholar. 
8. More than anything with the dissertation I found was the tendency to write too much rather than not enough (the word limit is quite restrictive). So my advice is to be surgeon-like in reviewing these sources. If something doesn't relate to multimedia, literacy, or assessment, then dump it. Don't venture off task or focus for a moment (I got pinged for this). So this is also why I caution on using Kress and multimodality except for supporting accounts on why alternative forms of knowledge construction are so important. You could spend decades getting lost in that Kress maze. He is great for stressing that new modes of communication are important, but not necessarily practical uses for these new modes (or assessment mechanisms). He is really into socio-linguistics and social semiotics and that is a confusing realm. So use him, but mostly as supporting evidence on new modes of meaning making. Not as your analytical theory or framework or anything. Just my two cents. We can talk on the phone more about this if you want. 
9. I am going to send you in a separate email some articles I use. Better yet, do you use Dropbox? If so, I have all my research in nice little folders and I would be happy for you to peruse them as you need to. Full articles, etc. No point in going through my pain. If you have a Dropbox account, let me know; otherwise I can just invite you. Really cool tool for sharing/collaborating. All my research is just sitting there for you to look through if you want. Here is the link but let me know what email address you want to use for Dropbox and we can share a bit easier. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8wmxnrt13b0x87c/Zsigqs-chR. 

Awesome stuff, James! So excited to see your topic and what you are pursuing. I won't lie to you, I wish I was working with Sian as well. She is a joy to learn from. 

So go ahead and review and get back to me with questions and we can discuss. Happy to help my man! Merry Christmas!

As ever, fantastic (and fantastically generous) stuff from Michael. To make best use of his tips I'm going to summarise them now in a separate post.