Syllabus

Why this study program

What did lead us to design and implement a transnational study program for the integration of multimodal digital literacy with the teaching of English for International Communication?

First of all, multimodal, digital and intercultural competences are essential requirements for graduates’ access to today’s labour market. We have worked on that not only to increase students’ employability, but also to strengthen their critical skills as citizens: in today’s world, we are literally surrounded by communicative stimuli that are verbal in a minimal part such as, for instance, memes.

Most of texts communicate through the combination of different resources like written language, images, layouts, music, gestures, speeches, moving images. Thera are called multimodal or multi-semiotic texts.

In addition, many texts are mediated by digital technologies, thus it is crucial for people to learn how to properly understand such digital pieces of communication.

Although traditional education still has its focus on verbal text, in the twenty-first century it is more urgent than ever to train students and workers in multimodality and digital communication, since the underlying purpose is to create contemporary literacy.

On the other hand, applying this kind analysis to the field of intercultural communication seemed to us very important as to raise awareness on the increasing complexities of an interconnected world.

Structure, Readings and Activities

We are proposing our syllabus as a model to be replicated because it is thought of in every detail, both in terms of contents (e.g. digital texts in CLIL contexts) and forms (e.g. teaching and learning methods, in particular experimenting on peer-assessment methods and criteria in higher education).

The joint syllabus featured a core initial session based on the selected core readings where the foundational concepts regarding multimodality, digital literacies and intercultural communication are introduced.

Then the courses featured five workshops each one dedicated to specific digital text such as blogs, fanvids, promotional video, video-chats and webpages.

During the workshops, the students’ assignments were introduced. Each student had to choose one text type and then produce as assignment a digital text type, an essay that explains the design choices and peer assess the work that another student has done on a similar text type and with whom she has been anonymously paired.

The academic courses that have been involved in the project are different in terms of the level (both graduate BA level and postgraduate MA level), in terms of their duration (from 6 to 12 ECTS) and degree courses involved, from Foreign Languages to Marketing Studies (see the table below).

1. Core Sessions and the related Core Readings

The first lessons of each course were dedicated, through frontal teaching, to the explanation of the core concepts the aim of which is to familiarize students with the basic concepts of digital multimodality, applied to intercultural contexts. In details, in these lessons, students have been introduced to core concepts such as the notion of mode, to the different approaches of multimodality and to an array of basic analytical tools and its related terminology. Part of the lessons were also dedicated to the introduction of the concept of digital literacies and intercultural communication. The list of the core readings that have been selected for the core session can be read below. 

Core Readings

1. Jewitt, Carey (ed.) 2014 [2011], The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis. London/ New York: Routledge, pp. 22-28/ 31-43.
2. Roderick, Ian. 2016. Critical Discourse Studies and Technology. A Multimodal Approach to Analysing Technoculture. London/New York: Bloomsbury, pp. 9-13.
3. Jewitt, Carey, Bezemer, Jeff, O’Halloran, Kay L. 2016. Introducing Multimodality. London/ New York: Routledge, pp. 14-29.
4. Jones, Rodney H., Hafner Christoph, A. 2012. Understanding Digital Literacies: A Practical Introduction. London & New York: Routledge, pp. 1-15; 124-128.
5. Mode Glossary (https://multimodalityglossary.wordpress.com)

2. Travelling workshops

Each focused on a specific digital text type and carried out through teachers’ mobility among the participant organizations. The 5 digital text types are:

• “about us” pages, the web page dedicated to present the subject to which the site is dedicated, in its organization, in its personality, its values, its history and its prospects
• Corporate promotional videos, i.e. any type of promotional video content created for and commissioned by a business, company, corporation, or organization
• fan video, videos made by the fans of media products, which set a selection of scenes and / or images to a chosen song
• weblogs, i.e. a chronologically ordered and progressively updated web page
• video mediated interactions, interactions between people via the Internet, mediated by apps and software such as Skype, Hangouts or Facetime

Students not only have to analyze the complex processes of creating meaning through these digital texts, but they have to challenge creating one of them.

As a matter of fact, one of the most innovative things about our syllabus, is that features the design and the production of these multi-modal contents by students.