Here are their recommendations:
- Keep it short: Videos, for instance, should be fewer than 3 minutes.
- Use popular media: “For instance, we prompted instructors to use media available to the public whenever possible, including YouTube videos and podcasts. The benefits of using open source technologies are twofold: They lessen the instructor workload, including time spent learning new programs and creating instructional tools, and they also contribute to students' social interaction.”
- Plan for reuse: Use multimodal instruction for key terms and for instruction that can be used (wholesale or easily adapted) in multiple courses
- Interactive feedback: “In a course that places such high emphasis on multimodal composition, instructors were encouraged to provide interactive feedback using sound, writing, and video programs; these various mediums also accommodate multiple learning styles as well.”
- Instructors should be given support in terms of technology, pedagogy, and assessment: “It was critical to revisit the rhetorical concepts driving each project and provide clear scoring guides that offered the flexibility for students to select a genre appropriate for the audience, purpose, and rhetorical situation; therefore, we led assessment workshops that focused on assisting instructors in grading and providing feedback to students on multimodal projects and portfolios.”
**This webtext utilized video and hyperlinks throughout the piece. The videos, however, were not as effective because they used powerpoints and voice overs, meaning these were analogue lectures moved into digital form.