As we near the end of the quarter, the first words of our final project have been spoken. Now that our research papers have been written and submitted, it’s our new task to transform them. We’re taking all of the research processes we’ve practiced over this past quarter to create a multimodal project!
Source: Giphy
Rather than writing a paper directed towards your teacher, a multimodal project will allow you to address a real audience with a real purpose. Who really needs to hear about your research? How will your audience most effectively view and interpret your findings?
What makes multimodal different is the use of technology. For our project, we had several different options available to transform our research paper into a condensed, informative source. This included, but wasn’t limited to, an audio essay, a video, screencasts, images, infographics, and websites.
Looking at My Research
In short, my research paper compared coed to single sex schools and I argued that coeducation was the more beneficial school system for many long-term reasons. I decided that I wanted my audience to be either incoming college students or the parents of students. In order to inform my audience of my research, I decided to create a video using Camtasia.
What’s Different
Everyone’s multimodal projects will look different according to their desired audience, but the one thing that should be the same across the board is the short length. No one will want to read a boring 10 page paper about research; you have to transform it so your audience is able to take away the large key points of your work.
For my video, I paired very short and concise sentences with related images. I also changed the color of certain words in those sentences to emphasize the importance of the message I was trying to get across. In the background, I decided to add upbeat music to keep my audience engaged about this much more serious topic. I thought that it created a lighter mood, but didn’t distract the audience from the topic itself.
I plan on sharing my finalized multimodal project on my blog, so be on the look out!