Multi-Modal Learning

Edgar Dale's Cone of Experience (1945 quoted in Metiri Group 2008) describes the way in which different types of communication are absorbed and, in particular, the fact that the more multi-modal the experience, the better the human brain can process, retain and understand a concept. Though a complex concept Dale's theory can be seen in day to day academic life in rich combination of face to face, textual and multimedia used to aid study in on-campus courses. Or the ways in which people express themselves changes across different media as witnessed in the unexpected results of less traditional techniques used in Fried Foster and Gibbons' (2007) research to analyze students information seeking and working behaviours. Different modes of learning and expression may all re-enforce and add to each other: for instance in planning this essay I wrote many preliminary thoughts and comments in electronic and print forms, ideas were re-enforced and added to by annotating readings, and then firmer ideas formed as the assignment was talked about with friends and course colleagues, planned topics, refined them and made a visual plan to re-enforce and develop my ideas (see below).

Indeed Dreyfus' theory of educational embodiment may in fact be a demonstration of Dale's multi-modal learning as in-person contact and discussion is adding another form of stimuli to a pool of modes that may include readings, visual elements such as slides in lectures, class discussions, presentations etc. Thus it may be possible to get over the barrier of distance in e-learning and/or scholarly communication through a truly multi-modal experience where information is repeated and re-enforced through, say, sound, visual elements and online discussion.

Beyond Hypertext

"Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose... The summation of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious rate, and the means we use for threading through the consequent maze to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged ships."

Bush (1945 cited in Treloar 1999).

Traditionally one of the most prestigious and important forms of scholarly communication has been the academic journal. Most such journals have changed little with the move to digital printing processes: online editions are frequently presented as pdf or html pages sitting within a very hierarchical journal structure that mirrors the page numbering and linear format of the printed equivalent (Murray-Rust 2008).

However information-seeking (and consumption) behaviors are manifested quite differently online than they are in a print context, with readers speed reading or skipping through content, assessing material quickly and often based on what is available easily rather than what is most appropriate for their area of research. This has been characterized by some as behaviour more reminiscent of retail shopping (with accumulation of information the end goal) rather than behaviour traditionally recognised as scholarly research (Nicholas 2008). Additionally the current generation of students and researchers are coming into academia with a grounding in computer and internet usage for recreational as well as educational usage, and highly developed understandings of the media and visual design (Withers and Sheldon 2008) as well as an unprecedented day to day relationship to technology (Clark 2003), and have concomitant expectations of the uses of technology in education.

Landow (1997) considers the rich possibilities of linking and restructuring information using "hypertext" and the impact such experimentation has upon the traditional notions of structure and assessment (Elliott 2007) in scholarly communications .