Multimodal approaches to use mobile, digital devices in learning practies

In this paper, I discuss the potential of multimodal approaches to enhance learning processes. I draw on a case based on Danish Master Courses in ICT and didactic designs where multimodal approaches are in the center of students’ practical design experience as well as in generation of theoretical knowledge. The design of the master courses takes its starting point in the assumption that theoretical knowledge generates from practical experiences. Thus, the organization of the students’ learning processes revolves around practical multimodal experiences followed by iterative reflexive sessions that support and facilitate the processes of transforming experiences into theoretical knowledge.

I argue that this didactic concept enhances a sensitive cognition based on rationality as described by the philosopher Baumgarten (1750). Furthermore, I argue that the emergence of mobile digital devices revitalizes the methodological discussions of embodied experiences, performative learning forms and the potential of aesthetic learning processes in education. This methodological discussion involves knowledge from the art disciplines as well as disciplines attached to the educational sciences (philosophy, anthropology, psychology and sociology) and outlines the prospect of a trans-disciplinary learning mode. The learning mode reflects the current society where knowledge production is social collaborative process and is produced in formal as well as informal and non-formal contexts.

My discussion’s theoretical framework draws on recent currents in the field of multimodality and learning, visual culture pedagogy, ict and didactic designs, art and aesthetics.