Deployment of Multimodal Tools by Net Geners: The Avatars of the Multiliterate World

Present day realities which are becoming increasingly complex, multimodal and virtual require Net Geners to employ a combination of linguistic, visual, audio, spatial, and gestural communicative modes. The scholarly push towards research on the use of multimodality in higher learning institutions has revealed that multimodal tools set affective challenges, varying degrees of motivation and anxiety on the undergraduates. In addressing these challenges, this study investigates the deployment of multimodal tools among 50 mechanical engineering undergraduates in a technical university. The multimodal parameters that encompass this study include media (screen), mode (speech and writing) and semiotic resources (fonts). The instruments that were used for data collection in the study are survey questionnaire and focused-group interviews. Findings reveal that blogs, social networking sites, discussion boards, Google docs, Learning Management System and chat tools are the favorites among the majority of the respondents as opposed to Wikis, Podcast, and Skype. In addition, multimodal activities like creating animation, editing audio and video as well as Desktop Publishing Programs are not popular among the undergraduates. Interview results confirm that these activities are lowly utilized due to a combination of factors like the lack of facilities, time, skill and a classroom ecology that does not create a necessity for the utilization of those tools. Unquestionably, the results indicate that it is the onus of the educators to provide the Net Geners with the opportunities to utilize this new democratic learning space to its full potential. This kind of learning space indeed empowers them to be autonomous learners who play an active role in shaping their own learning rather than being passive recipients of knowledge.