While much scholarship on the multisensory and transmodal phenomenon of synaesthesia seeks to uncover its psychophysiological and neurological bases, recent research in multimodal literacy and language acquisition addresses it largely in terms of agentive processes of meaning-making and design. This paper takes as its starting point the latter's…

Adolescent mothers' feeding practices impact infant weight gain. Infant obesity, especially in low-income families, is rapidly increasing. The aim of the exploratory study reported here was to identify factors affecting low-income African American and non-Hispanic White adolescent mothers' infant feeding practices and useful learning modalities.…

This pilot study compared the use of an enriched multimedia eBook with traditional methods for teaching the gross anatomy of the heart and great vessels. Seventy-one first-year students from an Australian medical school participated in the study. Students' abilities were examined by pretest, intervention, and post-test measurements. Perceptions…

This study examines the effects of formative assessment feedback commentaries utilizing textual and aural media on the quality of knowledge elaboration within the written work of a sample of 104 higher education students. A randomized, mixed methodological approach was adopted that examined changes within the students' work over a period of one…

Classroom discussions of multimodal texts, in particular historical fiction picturebooks, offer an interpretive space where readers are positioned to construct meanings in transaction with the written language, visual images, and design elements created by authors, illustrators and publishers (Serafini & Ladd, 2008; Sipe, 1999). This study was…

Interactive whiteboards (IWBs) have increasingly become a technology tool used in the educational field. IWBs are touch-sensitive screens that work in conjunction with a computer and a projector, and which are used to display information from a computer. As a qualitative case study, this study investigated the SMART Board-infused instructional…

In this dissertation, I investigate the effects of a grounded learning experience on college students' mental models of physics systems. The grounded learning experience consisted of a priming stage and an instruction stage, and within each stage, one of two different types of visuo-haptic representation was applied: visuo-gestural simulation…

Educators can think of changes in the international literacy landscape as a powerful wave. In this report, the authors argue that given the changes affecting classrooms through information and communications technology, and increasing student diversity not only do they want to prepare for the wave, but they wish to harness its power. This…

This article argues that digital games and school-based literacy practices have much more in common than is reported in the research literature. We describe the role digital game paratexts--ancillary print and multimodal texts about digital games--can play in connecting pupils' gaming literacy practices to "traditional" school-based literacies…

Colour, a visual element of art and design, is a semiotic mode that is used strategically by sign-makers to communicate meaning. Understanding the meaning-making potential of colour can enhance students' understanding, appreciation, interpretation and composition of multimodal texts. This article features a case study of Anya, an 11-year-old…

Multimedia presentations that combine visual and verbal information are widely used for instructional purposes. While the design of the text-graphic relationship is difficult, several design strategies with the potential to reduce cognitive load have been identified in the literature. The purpose of this study is to examine how split-attention,…

To explore the multimodality of two representative EFL textbook series for Chinese college students, their visual and verbal semiotic modes were compared. The target textbooks are "Experiencing English" and "New Century College English". Through multimodal discourse analysis, the study aims to shed some light on how to develop…

Via interview data focused on instructor practices and values, this study sought to describe some of what performing and visual arts instructors do at the university level to effectively teach disciplinary values through writing. The study's research goals explored how relationships to writing process in visual and performing arts support…

Purpose: This paper aims to interrogate the place of literature in the digital world and the way a narrative is represented in digital spaces. In the changing landscape of digital, mobile and virtual texts, the authors aimed to examine how multimodal and animated elements in digital narratives engage young readers and encourage affective and…

Responding to "In defence of writing" by Havard Skaar, published in issue 43.1 of this journal (April 2009), the present article argues that (1) compared with text production "from scratch," producing texts through copy-and-paste requires a different type of--rather than less--semiotic work, and that (2) digitally produced writing may involve the…