Enhancing the visual literacy of first-year students by means of self-directed multimodal mobile learning

Abstract

The concept of literacy has progressively developed over time. The latest changes were mainly driven by the affordances offered by technology. Even though the basic literacy skills of reading and writing have not disappeared, their application has evolved from a linear process involving printed text to a process that requires the ability to access and process a multimodal combination of text and images to create meaning. This variety of diverse and complex modes of meaning-making and their technologies, as well as the special skills needed in the 21st-century learning environment, have led to the term multiliteracies. The need to be multiliterate underlines the reality for focused pedagogical attention to not only multiliteracies but also the inclusion of different modes in the teaching and learning process. Even though all the different literacies have a place and a role to play, visual literacy (VL) has been recognised as one of the core literacies of the 21st century. Many studies have been conducted within the VL domain and the body of research is still growing, yet few studies have aimed to determine the VL of students and address their needs. Visual literacy remains largely neglected in the higher education (HE) setting, probably as a result of the lack of practical guidelines as well as the scope of the research field. The aim of this study was to find a way to address the basic and general VL skills needed by students to succeed in a multimodal environment. First-year students within the South African context experience a variety of literacy challenges when entering HE. It would be unrealistic to suggest that there could be a single solution to all these challenges. However, one of the attempts to address these challenges includes academic literacy modules. It seemed a viable idea to examine the possibility of including VL in the academic literacy module. In preparation for doing so, the relevant concepts within the multiliteracies environment – namely literacy, VL, academic literacy, multimodality, self-directed learning (SDL) and mobile learning – were explored to provide the necessary theoretical and conceptual frameworks for the study. A mixed-methods research approach with an integrated methodology was used for the empirical part of the current study. The research question that guided the study implied several contexts that influenced the study, namely the professional, organisational, institutional, and theoretical contexts. The participants in the study were first-year students enrolled in the academic literacy course at a South African university in a rural area. The method included two phases of asking questions and two phases that involved documents and artefacts. The different phases were integrated, as the previous phase served to inform some aspects of the content of the next phase. This integration guided the emergence and refinement of themes relevant to the needs, barriers and opportunities of the

VL of students within the context of the study. The aim of the first phase, a document analysis, was to determine the VL needs of students as well as to determine the extent to which VL received attention in the academic literacy module. The findings of this phase led to the conceptualisation of a framework for incorporating VL into the academic literacy module. The second phase, an online closed-question-type questionnaire, aimed at determining the VL competencies (VLC) first-year students had in respect of what they needed (as revealed by the findings of phase 1) when they entered HE. The third phase in the form of individual semi-structured interviews was used to gain a deeper understanding of the information gathered in phase two. The final phase was an artefact analysis of academic assignments with visual components submitted by the interviewees. This offered a look at the practical implementation of what students had revealed in the previous two phases about their interaction with visuals. The insight in terms of multimodality, SDL and mobile learning, as gained in the theoretical phase of the study, was then applied to the evidence and claims of the empirical phase to determine the suitability of addressing the VL of students by employing self-directed multimodal mobile activities. It was determined that multimodal activities offered the perfect opportunity to foster self-directedness. In addition, the role of the mobile device in embracing the affordances of technology was also confirmed. These conclusions led to several practical recommendations. One suggestion would be the application of the multimodal model of Picciano (2017) in combination with the SDL process of Guglielmino (2013) or the model by Oswalt (2003) to address the VL of students in a structured way. In addition, several recommendations were made in respect of content, activities and ways of fostering SDL. These can serve as a point of departure for lecturers and researchers who wish to apply a multimodal mobile approach to components within their subject area or field of study (in this case, VL) with the aim of also fostering the self-directedness of their students.