Adopting the multimodal task-based framework, while clearly innovative in reshaping the experiences students have in composing, seems challenging when working at the primary and secondary level. I’m interested in thinking about what adopting this framework on a small scale, for introduction purposes, can look like in a high school classroom. Considering how often new practices are found by teachers, promised to be adopted, and then are, or not, tried with varying consistencies, it’s important to think about how to feasibly make a multimodal composing work for us.
In this week's reading, Jody Shipka describes some of the results that can happen for students when working on multimodal assignments for the first time in their educational experiences. She states, in A Multimodal Task-Based Framework for Composing, “Making a shift rom highly prescriptive assignments to multimodal assignments is challenging for students unaccustomed to thinking about and accounting for the work they are trying to achieve”. (292) Though she goes on to defend working from this framework, it’s important to acknowledge the autonomy both teachers and students, may or may not, have at the primary and secondary levels. This isn’t to say teachers cannot create multimodal assignments for their students and be successful, even under the most strict of environments. But it is to point out that how teachers think about the multimodal tasks they create is important so that they aren’t attempting to take on something that isn’t feasible for them or their students.
I think to the responsibilities for students mentioned by Jody Shipka mention which include (287):
The product(s)
The operations, processes, or methodologies
The resources, materials, and technologies
The conditions
I think help teachers think about the type of assignments that can be created, on a small scale, where students not only have an opportunity to take these on, but also access to resources necessary to make them happen. For example, asking students to choose a social issue they are passionate about and create a 5-10 minute activity to teach and contribute to their efforts seems like a potentially feasible project to take on. Either way, I encourage teachers before determining to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as they say, to reflect on how multimodal tasks could and should look like for them and their students.
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