Learning by Remixing: Assessing Students Design of Meaning in their Digital Responses to Academic Problems

摘要

Situated within the sociocultural perspective on teaching and learning (e.g., Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991) this study draws on theories of multimodality, social semiotic, mediated discourse, new media and remix culture to investigate the multimodal interactions in year 8 science students design of meaning in their digital multimodal responses to academic problems using the web. The purpose of this study is to design, test and evaluate a "learning by remixing" learning environment to support the students' learning of scientific concepts and development of multimodal literacy practices within the scientific semiotic knowledge domain. And the aim is to develop a pedagogical model for learning by remixing which supports the students' development of multimodal literacy for knowledge construction in the new media age. This paper investigates the types of multimodal interactions the students remix using the modalities they have available on the web in their design of meaning in their digital responses to academic problems. The objective is to propose a multimodal interactions framework for assessing students' design of meaning in multimodal digital artefacts.