William Cope
Nithin Kalorth
Jako Olivier
Ida Brandão
Mitchell PetersMultimodal Literacies MOOC’s Updates
Multimodal note taking for improved retention and deeper understanding
I have long been a believer in the power of multimodal note taking and actively encourage my students to add images to their note-taking. My experience and the experience that the majority of the students that try this approach is one of improved retention and a deeper understanding of the concepts.
Convincing students to take the time and put in the effort to add images, colours, arrows to their traditional notes can be challenging. Students are dubious of whether the extra effort (both mental and time-wise) will pay off. To assist them in understanding the value of mixing their notetaking up I introduce them to mind maps. Whilst these often start very basic and very text based, it has proved a useful way of helping students to understand that less text is sometimes much better than more. A focus on connection instead of pages of text, linked with lines and arrows helps break down the misnomer that to achieve a good score you must rewrite the textbook/source documents in full.
The extra time required to complete a task like this is of such great value. Students must breakdown information and then build it up again into something that they understand and can work with. This technique is powerful as a tool for communication, but its real strength is in its representation to the individual.
I have personally found this technique to work well across ability and age groups. The group that show the greatest difficulty are those who struggle with perfectionism and a fear of failure. This provides a great opportunity to normalise failure and focus on growth mindset.
Infographics are another mixedmodal technique that I encourage students to use. These are a great way of assessing student understanding as they require students to work with and synthesise information and not just regurgitate it.
Infographics can be a good way for those students who do struggle with perfectionism to begin linking imagery with text.
I think the best method to understand well in class is the multimodal note taking approach because it involves the use of various types of modes,and the example you mentioned about inforgraphics is the one of the best techniques to use as a multimodal note taking process.