{"id":1884,"date":"2021-01-11T10:00:46","date_gmt":"2021-01-11T16:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ele.local\/?p=1884"},"modified":"2021-02-19T16:11:51","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T22:11:51","slug":"meet-the-expert-how-this-education-professor-fosters-multimodal-learning-with-linguistically-diverse-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everylearnereverywhere.org\/es\/blog\/meet-the-expert-how-this-education-professor-fosters-multimodal-learning-with-linguistically-diverse-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Expert: How This Education Professor Fosters Multimodal Learning with Linguistically Diverse Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Blaine Smith says the intersection of equity-minded education with the digital tools she specializes in became especially clear to her during her first Assistant Professor position at the University of Miami.<\/p>\n

Working with culturally and linguistically diverse youth on a variety of research studies, Smith encouraged students to make meaningful connections to their lives when working on course projects. \u201cStudents were making references to the Black Lives Matter movement, climate change, immigration policies, and the border wall along Mexico,\u201d Smith says. \u201cOr if their parents immigrated from Cuba, students referenced the challenges of being an emergent bilingual in today\u2019s world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her student-centered assignments had long encouraged multimodal presentations that communicate through visuals, text, sound, and movement, which empower students to make connections between their personal lives, society, and the course content. Smith says, \u201cMultimodal projects open up multiple points of entry for students,\u201d reinforcing for every student that they can succeed at scholarly work and countering systematic racism.<\/p>\n

Today, Smith is Associate Professor of New Literacies and Bi\/Multilingual Immigrant Learners in the University of Arizona Department of Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies. Her seminars continue to emphasize multimodal composing, often with the goal of helping students increase their digital literacy skills. She works with pre-service and K-12 teachers from culturally and linguistically diverse and underserved schools, helping them integrate technology into their classrooms.<\/p>\n

Smith is now looking forward to sharing her experience as part of the Every Learner Everywhere\u00ae Expert Network, powered by ISTE<\/a>. She is one of seven consultants providing flexible on-demand coaching to higher education faculty and leaders who are working to advance equity and inclusion in blended and online modalities. Her areas of expertise include instructional strategies for integration of technology in diverse classrooms, instructional scaffolding, assessment and outcomes, teaching multimodal composition, and digital literacies.<\/p>\n

Personally meaningful connections<\/h4>\n

Smith is drawn to multimodal composing and multimodal assessments because, she says, \u201cthere\u2019s really power for students to express themselves in personally meaningful ways \u2014 ways they can leverage their linguistic and cultural backgrounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

A written essay isn\u2019t the only way for students to practice analysis skills, she says. For example, \u201cIn an English class, students can create a hyper-linked multimodal project or a video where they analyze literature through multiple modes and media.\u201d The benefit, Smith says, is that \u201cstudents are making personally meaningful connections in a way that\u2019s even more relevant to their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really important to expand our notion of what literacy is to encompass digital literacies,\u201d she says. \u201cStudents need to be prepared not only to read and write, but to communicate multimodally with digital tools in a variety of formats.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith cautions against assuming digital literacy will take care of itself because today\u2019s students are \u201cdigital natives.\u201d They aren\u2019t necessarily and may not even have access to essential digital tools. Working remotely with Indigenous students during the COVID-19 crisis, she discovered that many didn\u2019t have access to the internet at home, and it was imperative that the university\u00a0 provide mobile hotspot devices, saving students from long drives to find public access. (Hotspots devices allow the user to connect their computer to the internet by pulling data from cell tower signals, as an alternative to the cable or telephone lines that are the usual way individual homes get internet service.)<\/p>\n

Instructional scaffolding strategies<\/h4>\n

To assess students\u2019 access to and familiarity with digital tools, Smith recommends using a survey at the start of the course to determine the level of support faculty will need to provide.<\/p>\n

She guides the educators she works with to develop their own scaffolding techniques, which she says are especially necessary for students coming into online environments with less experience or fewer resources. For example, she advises her education students to:<\/p>\n