Due to the large number of individuals retiring over the next ten years a critical shortage of people available to work within the manufacturing industry is looming (Dychtwald, Erickson, & Morison, 2006). This shortage is exacerbated by the lack of a properly educated workforce that meets the demands of the 21st century manufacturer (Judy…

This essay presents a case study of the modes used in training employees at a munitions plant in Ohio between 1940 and 1945. Theories of multimodal discourse and learning advanced by The New London Group (1996), Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen (2001) and Richard Mayer (2001) inform this analysis. With an unskilled labor force and many workers…