Multimodal communication in the classroom: what does it mean for us?

Experimentation has shown that in-class educational technologies, by permitting anonymous, authored participation, can dramatically alter student communications in the classroom. Now, the appearance of dual pen-and-keyboard computing devices in the university classroom, notably Tablet PCs, motivates thinking critically about how different expressive modalities could improve in-class student problem -solving and communication.This paper describes the use of Ubiquitous Presenter 2.0 in a study to discover the driving issues of multimodality for both in-class technologies and student exercises. This paper sensitizes instructors to the issues of modality and makes specific recommendations for application design. We find that the choice of modality is not merely one of efficiency or naturalness, but is loaded with numerous personal, social, and material considerations. Although use of the pen (over typed text) is generally preferred, we find that choice itself is critical to encouraging student creativity, collaboration, and communication.