Multimodality: on video mediated counselling for educational purposes

In this paper, I address an ongoing discussion in Danish E-learning research about how to take advantage of the fact that digital media facilitate other communication forms than text, so-called ‘multimodal' communication, which should not be confused with the term ‘multimedia'. While multimedia represent the use of various media for communication, multimodality refers to the different symbol systems we employ in communication practices. As new educational practices emerge from the application of ICT, multimodality becomes a matter for all teachers when they plan, practice and reflect on their teaching and learning situations. The choices they make involve e-learning resources like videos, social platforms and mobile devices, not just as digital artefacts we interact with, but the entire practice of using digital media.
In a life-long learning perspective, multimodality is potentially very useful for developing pedagogies where a synergy of different symbol systems facilitates new and flexible learning situations that can meet different needs of different learners. The present paper includes an example from a Danish university program