To Boldly Go: Feedback as Digital, Multimodal Dialogue

Abstract

This article is concerned with digital, multimodal feedback that supports learning and assessment within education. Drawing on the research literature alongside a case study from a postgraduate program in digital education, I argue that approaching feedback as an ongoing dialogue presented in richly multimodal and digital form can support opportunities for learning that are imaginative, critical, and in-tune with our increasingly digitally-mediated society. Using the examples of a reflective blogging exercise and an assignment built in the Second Life virtual world, I demonstrate how the tutor’s emphasis on providing feedback in multimodal form, alongside more conventional print-based approaches, inspired and emboldened students towards the creation of apt and sophisticated coursework. At the same time, the crafting of multimodal feedback carries resource implications and can sit uncomfortably with some deep-rooted assumptions around language-based representations of academic knowledge. This article should be seen in the context of a growing pedagogic and institutional interest in feedback around assessment, alongside the emergence of new ways of communicating and consuming academic content in richly multimodal ways. In this setting, multimodality, technology, and interaction refers to the digitally-mediated dialogue that takes place between the student and tutor around assessment.