Abstract:

One of the main objectives of this study was to look into ways of redesigning the classroom learning environment and experience for about 600 freshman students at an English medium university in Istanbul, Turkey to comply with the demand made by faculties for students to become more competent in academic skills and independent learning. Hence encouraging students to become more inquiry based learners able to connect information, undertake research tasks and make decisions to improve their own learning in an academic context both inside and outside the classroom were further aspects to be looked into.

A modular one-semester course was designed to help promote multiple literacies so as to more effectively guide students in understanding, creating and communicating meanings both to further develop themselves and effectively participate in an academic and professional environment. Throughout two consecutive semesters of piloting this new course, a mixed methodological approach was undertaken to both quantitatively and qualitatively monitor and measure the effects of this new course on students’ academic skills development as well as approach to learning. The results were overall very promising in that they clearly showed an increase not only in students’ academic performance but also a positive change in their perception to acquiring academic skills and independent learning as such.

Thus the aim of this session will not only be to share a dataset of the findings of our project but also to share practical insights into how students were encouraged to undertake challenges in this new content-based skills course through samples from the methods and activities used. Thus it will demonstrate how multimodal ways of learning were employed to help build upon, expand and transform students’ learning and thereby improve their academic literacies effectively.

Keywords:

multimodal learning, academic literacies, collaborative learning, inquiry based learning