Exploring the Design Patterns That Elementary School Students Use to Create Multimodal Display Boards in a Classroom Project

Abstract

The goal of the present study was to examine the design patterns of multimodal information representation that elementary students used to create a project display board, and to gain insights into their emerging identities as multimodal text authors. The study was conducted at an el ementary English dual-immersion school located in an urban city, Korea. Year-long inquiry-based instruction was offered for the entire body of fourth- to six-grade students. Students created their own project display boards as the culminating product of their inquiry learning, which were collected as the data for the examination of multimodal design patterns. Descriptive data analysis was conducted to identify the array of design elements, features, and layouts used in the display boards and to classify these student authors according to their different multimodal engage ment. The analysis resulted in three related but distinctive profiles of student authors, including (a) emergent authors mainly using images for aesthetical purposes, (b) conventional authors using written text as the dominant mode of information representation, and (c) developing multi modal authors integrating written texts and images into a spatial framing of messages. The result indicated different stages of multimodal literacy development with respect to use of design features, genre awareness, and audience consideration. Implications are discussed in relation to literacy research and practice.