Using Wearable Technology to Collect Multimodal Data in the Study of Learners' Digital Literacy Practices

摘要

Technology allows us to learn new languages and communicate with others relatively free of time and place. Although technology has already proven its effectiveness for language learning outside the classroom, the potential of this effectiveness for in-class learning and teaching has yet to be explored in detail. Traditional research methods such as interviews and survey data tend to fall short in accurately describing digital literacy practices that are outside the scope of the researcher. This paper presents a study in which multimodal data, collected through wearable technology, is used to map trajectories of digital English literacy practices of students across various spaces outside the classroom. This method illustrates how multimodal data can provide better insight into digital literacy events as they move across-social spaces than traditional forms of data collection. It also demonstrates how multimodal data can be used as the input for focus group sessions to corroborate findings and add validity to qualitative data in research on digital English literacy practices.