Learning with technologies in the digital age: Now and the future

Abstract

Currently, digital technologies are present in the design of learning in most educational contexts. Digital learning occurs in online or blending spaces that afford teacher-student and student-student interactions. This chapter introduces some of the main areas of interest in designing learning with digital multimodal technologies and its pedagogical implications. It focuses on the topics that are revisited in the volume and that will be of interest for scholars and end-users of digital learning: designing learning and simulation programmes, digital learning designs, digital learning with embodied teaching, digital learning interactions, and digital literacies. A way to conceptualise today’s notion of design in education is through the theoretic approach of designs for learning and designs in learning (Selander et al., 2021). This approach can effectively frame the design of simulation programmes for teacher education in the present digital era. Simulation-based education engages students in experiential learning; enhances the mastery of course materials; fosters critical thinking, communication, and collaboration skills among others; and embraces teaching strategies that recreate real complex realities that students will encounter as professionals (Schnurr & MacLeod, 2021). Digital learning designs have the potential to support teaching and learning. The study from a multimodal perspective of the design of digital resources (e.g., teaching videos on YouTube that scaffold knowledge), online learning environments (e.g., those created with Google Classroom and Moodle which promote critical inquiry skills), and online courses (which foster learners engagement) will bring to the forefront constrains and affordances of semiotic technologies and implications for learning and teaching. Embodied teaching enhances digital learning. Awareness of how gaze operates in video-mediated spaces (e.g., popular social media videos) or how non-verbal cues −gestures and facial expression− contribute to meaning making (e.g., when using OpenCourseWare videos) will set up the grounds for multimodal-centred teacher training programmes. Interaction is a cornerstone of both face-to-face and digital learning. In the virtual context, digital learning interactions take place synchronously and/or asynchronously and are linked to learners engagement. Digital learning interactions can be facilitated by apps that foster the construction of online communities through different communicative modes (e.g., Flipgrid which enables video discussions), tasks and online learning platforms that promote multimodal collaboration and communication (e.g., e-portfolios), or online learning analytics platforms that enhance collaborative multimodal meaning making (e.g., WiREAD+ which promotes collaborative critical reading online). Finally, digital education implies the development of digital literacies which are featured by multimodality. Teachers and learners are users and producers of new digital genres. The multimodal study of these digital genres (e.g., the genre of online video games reviews in the context of ESP learning) will have pedagogical implications in the development of learners’ multimodal literacy. Besides, formative classroom assessment of new multimodal texts (e.g., in one-to-one classrooms) will have implications for teachers’ development. These contributions embody the current trend in designing learning with semiotic technologies. In the last part of the chapter, we outline a forward-looking research and practice agenda that aims to facilitate the development of meaningful and effective designs of learning with digital technologies.