Using Multimodal Writing to Motivate Struggling ... - Springer Link

Using Multimodal Writing to Motivate Struggling Students to Write By Brett Darrington and Tonia Dousay, University of Wyoming ©Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2015

Abstract One of the reasons that many secondary students fail English classes is because they are not motivated to write. This literature review was conducted to look into the use of multimodal works to increase the motivation for struggling students to write. Change theory was used to evaluate the benefits of multimodal works compared to more traditional writing projects. Overall, multimodal works were found to be motivating to students as compared to traditional, paper-based writing assignments. The review also raises concerns about accountability and feasibility for students and teachers who take on multimodal projects and concludes with recommendations for teachers who want to use multimodal works in their classrooms. Keywords: change theory, motivation, multimodal, writing, secondary students

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very semester, several students fail 11th grade English at a high school in Idaho, because they do not complete their writing assignments. It is not uncommon to hear similar stories from high school and introductory college writing teachers across the country. The failure rate is especially high for students who struggle with general literacy and language skills. Among the many culprits for the failure of students who struggle in writing classrooms is motivation (Boscolo & Hidi, 2007). Teachers can make efforts to scaffold the writing process for these students, but that alone does not seem to increase students’ motivation to write (Graham & Sandmel, 2011). Boscolo and Hidi (2007) noted that many students see writing as an obstacle to overcome, and not as a challenging and motivating task. Boscolo and

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Hidi also noted that traditional, paper-based school writing projects are often foreign to student interest and what they relate to in their daily life. One possible way to increase students’ motivation to write is through the use of multimodal writing projects. Pandya (2012) defined multimodal writing as “designing texts that engage verbal, visual, written, and other modes of meaning making” (p. 181). As this definition implies, a multimodal approach to writing is combining several communicative mediums. There is a great deal of potential to this approach when it comes to student motivation, especially for students who traditionally struggle in school (M. Siegal, 2012). Well-designed writing projects that use student-created multimedia and multimodal outputs have the potential to increase struggling students’ motivation to complete writing assignments by making the assignments more relevant to students’ lives and by creating more authentic audiences for students’ writing.

What Motivates Students to Write? Before moving into multimodal writing specifically, it is important to understand the qualities of writing assignments and writing contexts that motivate students to write. Daniels (2010) examined motivating learning environments. He pointed out the first assumption that a teacher needs to make: no one can force student motivation; rather, teachers must create a learning environment conducive to motivation. According to Daniels, there are three factors included in a motivating learning environment: Students feel like they have some control 1. over their learning environment (autonomy).

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Students feel like they have value within the context of the class and school (relatedness). 2. Students feel like they have the skills needed to complete the task (competence). 3. Daniels also noted that within these environments, teachers can help their students achieve active learning by encouraging students to use visuals, symbols, and other media, in addition to written text, to communicate. Teachers also should try, when possible, to create relevant learning tasks for students, as these also can be motivating. Lam and Law (2007) also discussed a series of motivating characteristics. Similar to Daniels (2010), they noted that motivating learning environments encourage student autonomy, and task relevance, but they also recognized that the challenge of a task can be motivating. If students feel like they are being challenged by a writing task, yet they are still able to achieve that task, they will find the task more motivating. They also found that when students are given a writing task that uses problem solving to pique their curiosity, they were more motivated. In addition to these characteristics, the character of the task and the audience also can be motivating. Students are motivated when they write for real audiences (Magnifico, 2010; Zumbrunn & Krause, 2012), and they are motivated when they feel that they are writing for a real purpose (Zumbrunn & Krause, 2012). Therefore, the authenticity of the audience and the perceived purpose behind the writing task are also motivating.

Change Theory One way to examine the motivational advantages that multimodal writing has over more traditional writing approaches is to look at the attributes of multimodal writing through the lens of change theory. Both change theory and motivation research look into what makes a person act. Therefore, change theory should provide a useful way of examining how motivational certain activities are compared to others. Rogers (2003) provided a framework for looking at the attributes of technologies and assessing how likely they are to be adopted by a potential user. In this case the potential adopter is a student and the technology teachers want them to adopt is writing. By assuming that traditional, paper-based writing is the current standard and that multimodal writing is the innovation to be assessed, this literature review uses Rogers’ attributes of innovations to show how multimodal writing makes it more likely to be adopted when compared to traditional writing approaches.

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Relative advantage The first of Rogers’ (2003) attributes of innovations is relative advantage. Rogers described relative advantage as the attributes of an innovation that make it more appealing to a user than the concept it is replacing. Multimodal writing has four areas of relative advantage over traditional writing assignments: 1. The role of the audience in the work. 2. The amount of choice and control students have about their work. 3. The relevance of assignments to students’ lives and interests. 4. The novelty of media. Audience. The audience for a piece of writing can have an impact on how motivated students will be to complete a writing task (Magnifico, 2010; Zumbrunn & Krause, 2012). The traditional way of looking at the audience for a piece of writing is abstract. A writer only knows their audience as an imagined concept; only rarely do they receive timely feedback from a real audience (Magnifico, 2010). In traditional writing assignments, it can be difficult for a teacher to provide a “real” audience for students’ writing. In most instances, students write for their teacher. Even in instances where students write for other students, the need for rubric-driven writing can make the task seem artificial (Magnifico, 2010). The Internet and other new technologies have the potential to transform the relationship between an author and his or her readers, because the writers and readers have the potential to communicate in a nearly live environment. Magnifico (2010) noted that the Internet has brought readers and their audience together. As the feedback loop between readers and writers becomes more immediate, writing becomes more similar to performance tasks like speaking and acting, where a performer adjusts to their audience’s needs in real time (Magnifico, 2010). In many ways, multimodal writing provides a context for students to tap into an interactive audience. For instance, on fan-based websites like those for The Hunger Games or Sims, adolescents often create multimodal projects that combine audio, visuals, text, and other forms of media (Curwood, Magnifico, & Lammers, 2013; Magnifico, 2010). Curwood et al. (2013) called these types of works transformational. Students create most of these projects outside of school. The motivation seems to come from students wanting to become a member of a community, in this case, a fan-based community. In many of these fan-based communities, adolescents are scaffolded into the community


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with feedback from peers who help them gain access to the norms and skills of the broader group (Curwood et al., 2013). In this manner, an internet community serves as an authentic and motivating audience for students. While teachers may not want to co-op popular culture in their classrooms, they should keep internet audiences in mind. An example of how a teacher can link students with an authentic audience in a multimodal project is through the use of podcasting. In a podcasting project, students can start with more traditional writing and then publish that writing through a podcast. Goodson and Skillen (2010) found that connecting with an authentic audience by sharing their writing through a podcast was highly motivating to students. Choice and control. A second area of relative advantage that multimodal projects may have over traditional paper-based projects is the amount of choice and control students have about their work. Choice and autonomy are positively correlated with motivation for students (Daniels, 2010; Lam & Law, 2007). A multimodal project creates opportunities for more choices for students’ work, because a variety of media combinations are possible. Because of these choices, multimodal environments can help students feel like they have control over the output of their work and their work can reflect their personalities. Gomez, Schielble, Curwood, and Hassett (2010) claimed that student choice in multimodal works may be especially motivating for students who traditionally struggle on writing tasks in school. Relevance. Relevance is another area of relative advantage for multimodal work. As noted above, the relevance of writing assignments is a major factor in student motivation (Daniels, 2010; Lam & Law, 2007; Shernoff, Csikszentmihalyi, Shneider, & Shernoff, 2003; Zumbrunn & Krause, 2012). While a carefully crafted traditional writing assignment can be relevant to student needs, most are not (Boscolo & Hidi, 2007). Relevance for students can come in various forms. One means of creating relevance could be by having students create multimodal projects about subjects in which they have interest. Examples include fan-based websites (Curwood et al., 2013), mashups and remixes (Gainer & Lapp, 2010), or comic books (Zumbrunn & Krause, 2012). Another means of creating relevance is by having students write and create projects about their lives (Goodson & Skillen, 2010). When combined with an authentic audience, relevance can be a powerful motivator for students. Volume 59, Number 6

Novelty of media. The use of media itself also provides relevance. Many students find that using novel forms of media in their learning can be motivating (Lan, Hung, & Hsu, 2011). Examples include using music videos (Day, 2010) or music (Strovas, 2011) for student work and reading and writing e-books (D. Siegal, 2012). In each of these instances, students found the medium to be more motivating than more traditional assignments. Lan et al. (2011) found that media can motivate students to write, and it can lessen their anxiety about writing; however, in their study the researchers also noted that using multiple media formats did not necessarily increase student achievement.

Compatibility The next attribute of an innovation, according Rogers’ (2003) model, is the compatibility of an innovation with existing technologies, formats, and methods. The more compatible an innovation is with the existing “values, past experiences, and needs” (p. 240) of the adopter, the more likely the potential adopter is to adopt the innovation. Values. As noted by Boscolo and Hidi (2007), most traditional writing assignments fail to relate to students’ values and interests. Traditional writing assignments are completely foreign to most students because their generation rarely engages with the world in a purely textual manner. Interaction with multimodal products is far more common for most students and they bring their experiences with multimodal work with them to the school environment (M. Siegal, 2012). Past experiences. While multimodal writing is not always compatible with students’ past writing experiences within the context of school, it is more compatible with students’ writing experiences outside of school (M. Siegal, 2012). Buck (2012), for instance, found that it is not uncommon for adolescents to create multiple multimodal works and post them on multiple social networking sites. They see this creative experience as a normal part of life. Needs. Many students see multimodal skills, as compared to traditional writing, as being more applicable to future job skills they may need. As they learn to design using text, visuals, audio, and video, students feel like they are developing the skills they need to communicate in a modern world (M. Siegal, 2012). Another need for students is social acceptance and feeling like they are part of a group (Daniels, 2010). Since many students create multimodal projects outside of school, doing them in school may allow students to feel like they are doing


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something that their peers will admire, as compared to more traditional assignments.

Complexity The next of Rogers’ (2003) attributes of innovations is the complexity of an innovation. Rogers claimed that the more complex that an innovation is perceived to be the less likely users are to adopt it. Complexity seems to be an area of relative disadvantage for multimodal works, which because of the multiple modes of expression they use, are often far more complex than traditional types of writing. In these instances, not only do students have to master the content they are studying, but they have to master multiple platforms of expression to do well on a multimodal project. Nevertheless, if managed wisely, the complexity of multimodal work can be to its advantage. For instance, Anderson (2008) wrote about how low-level technologies can motivate students in their writing. He based this on the fact that overly-challenging technologies can inhibit motivation; likewise, those technologies that are too familiar do the same. Novel technologies that find the middle ground will be most successful. He uses examples of several technology-related writing formats including playlists, collages, and digital slides to make his claim. The success of middle-ground technologies can be explained by what Csikszentmihalyi (1990) described as “flow.” In his theory of flow, Csikszentmihalyi described a state of pleasure that we enter as we complete tasks that find the right balance between being challenging and our knowledge that we have the skills to be able to meet those challenges. In the midst of these tasks, we can lose track of time and feel completely engaged in our work. Shernoff et al., (2003) described how high school students reacted positively to activities that found the proper balance between challenge and skill. Using Csikszentmihalyi’s theory, teachers can design tasks that take advantage of the inherent complexity of multimodal works without overwhelming students.

Trialability Rogers (2003) described trialability as the ease with which an innovation can be used on a trial basis. The easier it is for a potential user to try a medium before they commit to it, the more likely it is that an innovation will be adopted. As previously mentioned, students have many opportunities to try out multimodal projects outside of school. There also are a multitude of free apps and programs for students to use on 32

their own. However, within a school setting, students do not always get many opportunities to complete these types of projects. The lack of opportunity to try and experiment with multimodal works within the school environment, as compared to their opportunities to work within more traditional contexts, may be a factor working against students’ motivation in a multimodal environment.

Observability Rogers’ (2003) final attribute of innovations relating to their rate of adoption is the observability of an innovation. He explained that more people will adopt an innovation when the results of that innovation are more visible to others within the community. Traditional, paper-based projects have a much smaller audience and very few people are willing to read students’ work. One advantage of multimodal works is that oftentimes they can be easily distributed and viewed by many people outside of the school system (see Curwood et al., 2013; Goodson & Skillen, 2010). The ability for others to see students’ work can be motivating for them and make it more likely they will complete their assigned writing.

Cautions For students While the use of multimodal writing may help to motivate students to complete their writing assignments, it is not a panacea for all that ails instruction. In fact, there are several concerns that multimodal writing projects bring up must be addressed in order to achieve success. One study, conducted by Nair, Tay, and Koh (2013), looked at the use of online blogs for writing journals by fifth grade students. While a blog is not necessarily a multimodal work and the students in the study were fifth graders, the study does bring up several issues with electronic submissions that are common in multimodal assignments. First, even though the research showed that students felt they were more motivated when writing in an electronic format, the researchers also found that there were lower submission rates as compared to paper-based methods. The lower rate of submission shows that even though many students felt motivated by the medium, they still did not complete their work, which is after all, the ultimate goal of increasing motivation. Additionally, they found that the electronic format was not universally motivating. In fact, while the majority of students reported an increase in motivation, several reported that their motivation to complete their work actually decreased. While other research


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has noted an increase in motivation and achievement using multimodal work (Gomez et al., 2010), it is important to note that not all students will experience increased motivation. Likewise, while many students appreciate the increased choice that multimodal projects can offer, others can feel like a less-focused approach is more distracting (Lan et al., 2011). For teachers Along with issues for students, there also are several issues relating to multimodal work that teachers need to overcome. Among the areas of caution for multimodal work are the skills and time that teachers and instructors need to be able to create, administer, and evaluate an entire project. It can take a very skilled teacher to make it work well (Gomez et al., 2010). One reason that multimodal projects are so difficult is that they are hard to create (Lan et al., 2011). In fact, beyond simply creating the project, managing all the time and tools necessary can be a real issue for many teachers (Gomez et al., 2010). Even after a project has been administered, some teachers report that multimodal works can be difficult to assess (Nair & Koh, 2013). For all of these reasons, even though many teachers know that multimodal projects are motivating to students, many are reluctant to try them out of fear they may fail. Another caution is that the novelty of a medium may decrease over time. Rogers (2003) noted that when an innovation is adopted purely for social reasons (its perceived “newness” or the status it gives an individual) users may quickly drop the new innovation in search of another fad. While this may happen in the case of multimodal works, the old innovation will often be replaced by another technology, which should remain novel to the user. To avoid creating “stale” projects, teachers should not overly rely on one type of multimodal project, and they may need to revise their assignments over time to reflect newer technologies.

Accountability One last aspect that needs to be addressed is how multimodal work fits into America’s current accountability culture. This is an issue, because most of the assessments that measure student learning are based upon more traditional, paper-based writing, not multimodal projects. The issue is compounded because teachers often are assessed using these same measures, giving teachers less of an incentive to use multimodal works as part of their curriculum. The issue is even true of the new Common Core State Standards (M. Siegal, 2012). M. Siegal also noted that until the standards that students are measured upon reflect a new definition of literacy that includes Volume 59, Number 6

multimodal work, it will be difficult to answer the accountability question. Nevertheless, M. Siegal gives three reasons why multimodal work should be included in the curriculum despite a potential conflict with current standards and assessments: 1. As outside literacies change, so must school literacies. 2. Youth already bring multimodal practice to school. 3. Multimodal practice can help us think of struggling students as “students of promise” (p. 674). To answer the accountability critics, teachers need to find accurate ways to assess student work. One way teachers can do this, in addition to using traditional rubrics, is by using observation logs and student journals to measure student growth and understanding (Pandya, 2012). The issues involving accountability are not going away, and teachers who decide to use multimodal projects in their classes will need to balance student needs with institutional, state, and assessment concerns.

Recommendations While multimodal writing projects have potential for increasing students’ motivation to complete their work, this potential must be tempered by the cautions listed above. In response to both the potential benefits and cautions, we have three recommendations for secondary teachers: 1. Teachers should use multimodal writing alongside traditional writing. If a traditional piece of writing can be integrated into a motivating multimodal project, teachers can help motivate students, while also meeting their obligation to teach state and local standards. If it is difficult to integrate traditional writing into a project, Pandya (2012) recommends using a traditional writing assignment as a gateway into the project. Students may be more likely to complete the traditional writing if they know it will lead to something of more interest. 2. Teachers should create writing assignments that give students the most authentic audience, the most control over their work, and the most relevance to students’ lives and interests. Nevertheless, these elements should be balanced against realistic expectations for resources, class time, teacher knowledge, and time for assessment. Setting realistic expectations can help teachers realize that while their project may not be perfect, they are making it as motivating as possible. 3. Teachers need to balance the technology that students use in multimodal projects with realis-


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tic expectations of student skills and resources. As Anderson (2008) mentioned, it is important to find a good balance between what a student is capable of completing and what they will find challenging and stimulating. Additionally, it is not fair for a teacher to create a project for students to complete outside of school when some students may not have access to the technology needed to complete the work.

Conclusion Comparing multimodal work to traditional, paper-based projects using Roger’s (2003) attributes of innovations shows that multimodal writing has the potential to be more motivating to struggling students than traditional methods. This is especially true due to the authentic audience, student control, and relevance that multimodal work potentially affords. However, this potential must be balanced against logistical and accountability concerns. Accountability is a particularly important concern and more research needs to be completed to help address this issue. Nevertheless, if teachers work within their environments to create projects that use as many of the strengths of multimodal work as possible, it is likely that many students who are estranged from their current educational milieu may feel like they can be successful in writing classrooms. Brett Darrington is a recent masters graduate of the University of Wyoming and a 12th grade English teacher at Kimberly High School in Kimberly, ID. Contact him via email at: [email protected]. Tonia Dousay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Professional Studies at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, WY.

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