The growing interest in the relationship between multimodality and assessment is presented against the backdrop of an increasingly digital society. In the same way that the emergence of multimodality as a field of critical research is closely tied to technological innovation over the last decade and a half (Kress 2005), so discussion around multimodal assessment is entwined with new digital ways of constructing and consuming knowledge, even if the rationale for multimodal assessment is somewhat more varied and complex than is immediately obvious. It is a feature of the literature that discussion frequently opens by identifying the need for assessment practice to evolve in order to keep up with the changes taking place beyond the boundaries of the classroom and campus. In her discussion of the digital turn within literacy, Mills (2010) argues for multimodal assessment to adapt in order to better reflect the ‘life validity’ of social contexts that exist beyond schools (p. 262). A similar position is taken by Miller et al. (2013) in their study of digital video composition, where they point to the ‘authentic’ nature of multimodal assessment, through its ability to better reflect the reality experienced outside of the classroom. This is a reality, the literature repeatedly affirms, that is being profoundly shaped by the proliferation of digital content and devices, which in turn present an ever-growing array of ways of consuming and communicating knowledge. The evolving nature of knowledge-construction is neatly captured by Arlene Archer in her discussion of the challenges that multimodality poses to teaching writing when she describes the ‘changing representational landscape’ (2011 p. 387) in which teaching, learning and assessment finds itself situated. If the notion of being ‘situated’ implies stasis over movement, this aptly reflects the regularity with which assessment is presented as being rooted to a language-based tradition as society around changes it, articulated for instance in Jewitt’s (2005) discussion of contemporary multimodal writing and reading practices, where she points to the reluctance of assessment to adapt to the way that literacy is reconfigured by the screen. Thus, even if the literature does not always make explicit why assessment practice should necessarily be in concert with the changes taking in wider society, it is nevertheless one of the themes that contributes heavily towards the growing critical interest in the multimodal assessment.