Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres

10. Student Mastery in Metamodal Learning Environments: Moving beyond Multimodal Literacy

225 C h a pte r 1 0 Student Mastery in Metamodal Learning Environments Moving beyond Multimodal Literacy Mary Leigh Morbey and Carolyn Steele Although the abilities to interact with and within virtually mediated spaces are rapidly becoming basic life skills, our awareness and understanding of how this interaction differs from traditional media is still in its infancy. The most advanced research in multimodal literacies is focused on schoolchildren, implying that the earlier technologically appropriate interventions are introduced, the greater their benefits. However, the most advanced usage of virtualized media is by teenagers and young adults, so note Henry Jenkins and coauthors (2006) and James Gee (2007) in their investigations into participatory culture and video game affinity groups. This has spawned an entire subfield of research hoping to translate the seemingly insatiable demand for gaming in virtual worlds into more compelling educational resources. Undergirding this demand is a divide between computer-savvy youth for whom the computer is a metamedium (an interface through which they negotiate their identity and interact on a global level), and the adults around them who see computers largely as a pragmatic technology of convenience and efficiency. 226  Mary Leigh Morbey and Carolyn Steele This divide is particularly foregrounded in universities where the range of computer use can stretch from nonexistent to deeply immersive virtual reality. This chapter concentrates specifically on North American university contexts where, for the most part, the bulk of computer use is still focused on text-based data processing within traditional disciplinary boundaries, most notably in the social sciences and humanities . Far from pushing the boundaries of computer-mediated research, in most cases, the level of computer literacy among university professors has been slow to change since the introduction of the graphical user interface (GUI), which opened up new modes of communication and typical administrative functions to the general population. The hiring of junior faculty, having been raised within a digital culture, is rapidly shifting these norms. Many of the traditions and cultural practices that have solidified the university’s position as the bedrock of Western intellectual culture for the past millennium have also impeded its ability to remain relevant in a digital and global economy.1 For example, within the social sciences and humanities (which attract the majority of students in many universities) print-based scholarship continues to be privileged above all other forms, although increases in the cost of paper and printing are radically reducing the number of hard copy journals. The impact of this trend is still a matter of some debate. Likewise, academe has a well-earned reputation of being skeptical of innovation, although some of this can also be attributed to reductions in funding. Nonetheless, a university education is still considered a necessary prerequisite to a career in the knowledge economy. Universities are under increasing pressure from governments, industries, and parents to provide their graduates with mastery of current and emergent technological literacies. While millions of dollars are being spent on university-based research studying the impact of new technologies on society, few of these findings are being employed to transform how university students and instructors can use advanced, computer-based technologies in higher-level knowledge production for the organization of student experiences and composing practices. This contemporary context , containing traditional university educative philosophies and subsequent practices, creates the problematic faced in arguing toward a deliteralizing of approaches for student composition. According to the Stanford Metaverse Roadmap Project, in 2016 students aged thirteen to thirty will be spending over forty hours a week using interactive, Internet-based, 3-D visual environments for a wide range of purposes including education (Smart et al. 2007).2 For the Student Mastery in Metamodal Learning Environments  227 vanguard of these young people, most of the technical knowledge and skills they will be using in these activities will not be learned in an educational environment but rather through means like social networking, entertainment technologies, and individual experimentation. Given the economic power of the telecommunications, entertainment, and computer industries, this raises serious concerns about the degree of agency and awareness the next generation will have in negotiating their identities and activities in a virtually mediated world. More recently, we have seen the emergence of metamedia platforms within the realm of 3-D educative virtual environments (Young 2010). These are virtual environments that not only provide users with a dynamic , immersive experience but also enable them to create, construct, embed, unify, and...