The Learning by Design approach supports learning in today’s increasingly multimodal communications environment. In the Learning Element, learning designers can indicate which modes of meaning students will use:
- Written Language: writing (representing meaning to another) and reading (representing meaning to oneself)—handwriting, the printed page, the screen.
- Oral Language: live or recorded speech (representing meaning to another); listening (representing meaning to oneself).
- Visual Representation: still or moving image, sculpture, craft (representing meaning to another); view, vista, scene, perspective (representing meaning to oneself).
- Audio Representation: music, ambient sounds, noises, alerts (representing meaning to another); hearing, listening (representing meaning to oneself).
- Tactile Representation: touch, smell and taste: the representation to oneself of bodily sensations and feelings or representations to others which ‘touch’ them bodily. Forms of tactile representation include kinaesthesia, physical contact, skin sensations (heat/cold, texture, pressure), grasp, manipulable objects, artefacts, cooking and eating, aromas.
- Gestural Representation: movements of the hands and arms, expressions of the face, eye movements and gaze, demeanours of the body, gait, clothing and fashion, hair style, dance, action sequences, timing, frequency, ceremony and ritual. Here gesture is understood broadly and metaphorically as a physical act of signing (as in ‘a gesture to …’), rather than the narrower literal meaning of hand and arm movement. Representation to oneself may take the form of feelings and emotions or rehearsing action sequences in one’s mind’s eye.
- Spatial Representation: proximity, spacing, layout, interpersonal distance, territoriality, architecture/building, streetscape, cityscape, landscape.
For more information visit the Multiliteracies page.