Participate and share: Poster 
The results of this study and its driving questions are interpreted through the design tenets of the multiliteracies pedagogy as developed by the New London Group (NLG, 1996). These tenets were part of theorized pedagogy meant to expose learners to the necessary literacies necessary to navigate communication and interactions in a more global and connected world as well as mediate the differences between individuals in their public, private, and civic lives.
Available Design
Resources to which a composer has access. In the context of composing, this may take the look of a section of images in a search. In addition, the knowledge of how to search for those images and resources would be part of available design. These are culturally and socially situated where individuals will not necessarily have the same sets of available designs with which to work.
Design
The activity and processes of implementation, re-presentation, and/or recontextualization of available design. Design represents the use and placement of that resource for the purpose and intent of the composer and has the same social functions that Halliday (1978) outlined in his work (i.e. ideation, social, intertextual).
Redesign
The outcome of design which may come in the form of a product or new meaning, from design processes and activities. It is something new, that has traces of available design as well as "historically and culturally received patterns of meaning" (NLG, 1996, p. 23). It has the influences of available designs. In the context of composing, this will be the completed or refined product which will in turn become a new available to design.
Intertextuality represents a bridge between the use of available design in the context of a new design or design processes and hybridity being the way the composer chooses to use the resource, which will never be a simple reuse or 1:1 re-presentation.
This study employed case study methodologies and may be considered a common case as the bounded context of this study can be described as “circumstances and conditions of an everyday situation” (Yin, 2018, p. 50). Data was collected from a range of sources. Screen capture technology provided data from screen recordings, think aloud audio, and front facing video recording. Data was also collected from participant composing products and retrospective surveys.
Participants/Context
This study involved four 5th grade participants completing a total of 6 tasks, five of which provided the data corpus for the study. Participants completed tasks over a month-long period at their own pace using a Weebly home base resource. The initial task was a training and orientation task which included videos and visual resources necessary to access and complete the five composing tasks.
Data Analysis
Analysis took place within the framework of Elo and Kyngas’s (2008) three part content analysis protocol including preparation, analysis, and reporting stages. Preparation phases included readying and familiarization with data sources. Multiple views of recorded video in time/as a whole were conducted, final products were saved and printed for analysis, and survey data was compiled into a single organized document. These preparations and reviews served as an orientation as to how participants approached, engaged in, and navigated the task(s).
Analysis was a “top down/bottom up” approach to the data (Charmaz, 2000). Screen recordings were slowed and stopped as necessary to memo specific actions and activities of participants (Grbich, 2013), effectively breaking down the composing into its minute, moment to moment activity. Slowing functions allowed for detailed descriptions to be made and connections between eye movements, facial expressions, and spoken thoughts in real time. Multiple viewings were necessary to refine descriptions, make connections between screen recording data sources, and identify timeframes for individually described activities and processes. Following specific activity descriptions, those notes and memos were reviewed for the purpose of naming the activity, followed by categorization of activity into larger process types. Timeframe data was used to construct visual timescapes for the activity categories and the focus of activity in regard to mode in order to observe patterns in composing. Theoretical framework tenets described previously where used to interpret activities types and categories. Throughout, analysis processes were recursive and iterative not only with individual recordings, but also across participants for the purposes of cohesion and alignment of data and categories that emerged.
Reporting is the last of the three stages of the Elo and Kyngas (2008) content analysis process. Results reported below are directly aligned with the study questions.
Q1: Process Activities
Analysis suggests 11 composing process activities. These 11 process activities take on aspects of composing that are directly and indirectly related to the creation of a product guided by the tasks as defined. Process activities are both covert and overt in nature; overt process activities being directly observable and covert process activities being not observable. Covert process activities were illustrated through the think aloud protocols and referenced in retrospective surveys. When analyzed through the design tenets of the multiliteracy theory, further description, categorization, and understanding is possible. Process activity descriptions are presented below.
Available Design Activity
Selection - An overt activity directly related to the creation of a multimodal product. The composer chooses resources (i.e. text, visual, spatial, information) with which to create the product.
Reference - An overt process activity indirectly related to the creation of a multimodal product. The composer accesses and uses resources outside of the product (e.g. instructions, exemplar products, websites, etc.).
Environment Setting - An overt process activity indirectly related to the creation of a multimodal product. The composer arranges the physical and digital environments within which they are working.
Design Activities
Text Entry - An overt process activity directly related to the creation of a multimodal product. The composer adds and/or modifies the text resources included in their product.
Manipulation - An overt process activity directly related to the creation of a multimodal product. The composer sizes, positions, and/or orientates both text and visual resources within their product.
Review - A covert process activity directly related to the creation of a multimodal product. The composer looks back over work completed.
Contemplation - A covert process activity directly related to the creation of a multimodal product. The composer plans and thinks forward towards next steps in the composing process.
Transition - An overt process activity indirectly related to the creation of a multimodal product. These are extended time frames between process activities.
Waiting - An overt process activity indirectly related to the creation of a multimodal product. The composer experiences idle wait time as technology processes input and requests as well as technology difficulties.
Redesign Activity
Completion - An overt process activity directly related to the creation of a multimodal product. The composer's activity indicates that composing, in part or whole, is complete (e.g., naming of products, downloading of the finished product, the ending of screen recording, etc.).
The final process activity observed was break. Throughout the composing processes, participants broke from composing activity, whether it was moments of distraction within the physical or digital environments, or to get up for restroom breaks or to eat. As these instances were complete departures from composing activity, neither directly nor indirectly related, it is not included above.
Q2: Composing Patterns
Observations on the patterns in activity was a general influence of top to bottom, left to right composing where patterns of mode sequence varied by the individual. Initial observations of composing timescapes suggest that sub-cycles of multimodal composing activity are initiated in selection activity then moving to manipulation activities before a similar sub-cycle would repeat. Decision making begins with the selection of text types, information, and/or visual components that align best with the plan under which the composer is designing. This cycle was recursive and was dependent upon the availability of resources.
While findings for this question are not necessarily as pervasive in this study, each relates to what Smagorinsky, Zoss, and Reed (2006) refer to as “functional pragmatism” (p. 317). In the case of the cycles of composing, this is very related to the function of the platform on which students were composing, so participants composed within those bounded functions. In the case of the top-down, left-right pattern observed during composing, this may also be a social function. This pattern indicates a transfer of a concept of print that is an ingrained part of literary practice in Western culture and literacy practice.
Results of this study develop and extend the acts and processes of writing into digital realms where students in classrooms and individuals in their own public, private, and civic lives are often required to make meaning, both in consumption and production. The review of literature identified gaps and needs to which this study provides significant contribution, both for research and practice, with regard to the moment activity in which students engage when composing multimodally using digital tools and the cognitive processes that are associated with those activities.
Beyond the contribution of identifying process activities in which students engage, many of which support previous process study investigations (Emig 1971; Flower & Hayes, 1981, Sharp, 2016), this study highlights process activities that are unique to digital and multimodal composing, specifically process activities of selection and manipulation as well as completion. Selection activities occurred across multiple modalities where the evaluation of available resources in connection to a plan and goal held in short term memory was primary to the design activity towards an end product. Manipulation also occurred across modalities but specifically highlighted the necessity of considering “hybrid” modes when composing in digital environments. For instance, participants entered and modified text as in other types of digital composing activity, but when that specific activity was complete that text would become a visual object within their product. This created a text/visual hybrid. In working with the text as a visual object, the focus of mode activity would also take on a spatial focus as participants would modify the object for not only visual appeal but for the optimal use of spatial resources for meaning making. Each of these explicitly illustrate the complexities that were often discussed in literature. Completion highlights a unique affordance as digital environments offer a variety of publishing platforms for “finished” products. This process activity is the preparation for the redesigned product to become available design as illustrated in Figure 1 previously.
Findings shared begin to highlight underlying principles (Lankshear & Knobel, 2007) of digital composing, as well as activities that are unique to multimodal composition in digital environments. There is a potential, using these process activity findings to prioritize and inform development of digital aspects of a process model. Furthermore, related to development of a process activity metalangage and understanding of process activities, it is possible that definition of processes and activities described in this study can serve as a future conceptual framework to continue understanding the complexities of multimodal and digital composing acts and developing a unique digital composing lens.
There are potential impacts for practitioners in how they design and support digital multimodal tasks. These principles and associated language can enhance teachers’ ability to provide meaningful feedback to students in how they can best use multimodal aspects of digital tools to develop ideas. Related to this is the potential to enhance design of instruction and tasks. Finally, considering this information there is an opportunity for this work to be a resource in elaborating on vague standards that give only reference to the idea of multimodal aspects of writing.
Multimodal aspects cannot not be relegated solely to presentation aspects of product. They cannot be just a novelty or after thought on the back end of an act of writing, but must be included as a part of composing process instruction and learning experiences connected to development of ideas, mode (word) choice, and organization. This study and studies that grow from it have the opportunity to help researchers learn more about the power of multimodal meaning making, how the modalities work together, and how multimodal literacies can help students become more powerful and effective communicators in the worlds in which the live, work, and play.
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