Lighting the Fire of Literacies: Exploring the Influence of Multimodal Writing on Student Engagement

This research looks at how students engage in multimodality in relation to the writing process, building off of the work from the New London Group, who coined the term multiliteracies in 1996. With the continued advances in technology, the idea and scope of multiliteracies and multimodality expands as well. This is a field that requires continued exploration, as this research attempts to do. Students were given an initial survey on their interest in personal and academic writing. The survey included a likert scale and open ended responses. Students then completed two assignments concerning sides in the American Revolution. Project elements included research, student artwork, and both paper and digital presentations. Throughout the assignments, students were interviewed about their process and work. The guiding questions for this research concerned how students engage in multimodal practices during the writing process and what multimodal representations students would create to demonstrate their understanding