Multimodal literacies involves understanding and learning concepts through various mediums. It involves producing and building knowledge through modes such as oral, written, gestures, visual and tactile.

the use of multimodal literacy in education often leads to deeper learning and may change the role of the learner from a knowledge receiver to an active knowledge producer.

Simulations are a great example of such learning. My first experience with simulations was through a flight simulator game. It’s a great example of how the traditional mode of learning - reading a textbook or classroom lectures - would not be sufficient to learn the skill of flying a plane. And it needed to be supplemented by one that had a stronger correlation to the actual activity and allowed the learner to be an active participant with agency rather than just a knowledge consumer.

In my experience simulations can be used as a great complement to traditional learning methods such as textbooks. For instance one can attend a lecture on collaboration and working in teams and then use a simulation to practice the concept and see how it plays out in real life. In some cases the theory framework could follow the simulation play so that the learners experiences are debriefed and key messages delineated.

A simulation recently released by Harvard called Patient Zero illustrates this concept beautifully. https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/7215-HTM-ENG The simulation is designed to simulate a government response to a zombie pandemic - a great parallel to the COVID-19 pandemic. Learner’s play in teams and have control over the world They want to govern, type of government etc. As thr game progresses they are presented with a series of challenges and response options that they work through as a team.

The reason the simulation is effective for learning resilience and crisis management relies firstly on the audio visual design. Trailer - https://youtu.be/xgbylURmqdM

It is designed just like a movie as you can see in the trailer and is thus engaging despite being an hour long play. It provides a safe environment to practice actions that would have far reaching consequences on people and national economies in the real world. in this safe environment learner’s are able to put theoretical concepts to test and take risks that would be difficult to practice in real life, and getting immediate feedback on their actions. The other great advantage of using simulations in classrooms is that each person in the group is at exactly the same starting level with respect to the situation at hand. No one has more or less information about the situation unless so required by the simulation design, allowing a fair comparison of actions and results with usually no ‘wrong’ answers.

Thus Simulations as a form of learning synthesises several modes to increase effectiveness of learning - audio, visual, verbal, written, collaborative etc and allows for creative output. The focus shifts from just consuming data and key terms to actively practising the skill.