Lim, Fei Victor

2022, Lim, Fei Victor, Toh, Weimin

Mobile devices have become increasingly ubiquitous in the contemporary communication landscape. Riding this trend, educational apps have proliferated the market, with many which claim to support and improve children’s learning and literacy development. Caregivers are often faced with the challenge of discerning the value of these educational apps and in choosing the appropriate apps for their children. In this paper, we discuss the development of a set of considerations to support caregivers in their curation of educational apps. This is done by performing a review of 28 past studies done on educational apps and synthesizing their findings to draw out common themes from the literature. These themes are then categorized into nine considerations in the form of guiding questions that caregivers can use to curate educational apps for their children’s digital play and learning. In the final part of our paper, we apply the set of considerations to three educational apps to demonstrate its utility.

2022, Toh, Weimin, Lim, Fei Victor

This paper explores the implications of youths’ out-of-school gaming practices for teaching and learning in formal and informal learning contexts. We report on a study where we examined the video game play of two youths using a case study approach. User experience approaches, e.g. the think-aloud protocol and interviews, were grounded in the theoretical framework of social semiotics to analyse the gameplay videos and to discuss the implications for the youths’ learning. The paper contends that youths are demonstrating critical thinking, empathy, and multimodal literacy through their gameplay. We offer suggestions for how adults can use video games for youths’ learning.

2023, Lim, Fei Victor

With the COVID-19 pandemic and the advancements made in digital technology, there is a growing interest amongst educators in how to design online learning experiences for students. This chapter introduces the role of teachers as designers of learning and discusses the importance of their use of semiotic technologies for the representation of knowledge, enactment of pedagogic relations, and the organization of students’ learning. It also explores how students make meaning using words and other multimodal resources during online learning. In particular, the chapter focuses on the use of semiotic technologies of social media, using the example of Edmodo, for the design of synchronous online learning experiences in higher education. Based on reflections on the design and implementation of the lessons, the chapter reports on how synchronous learning experiences with social media can encourage collaborative knowledge-building amongst students and offer opportunities for their digital multimodal composing to learn and to express their learning. This understanding can inform researchers on the extent to which the digital medium enables and limits ways of meaning-making. The chapter presents a case for how the affordances of digital tools, such as the popular social media platforms, can be harnessed in the design of meaningful learning experiences.

2022, Lim, Fei Victor

This chapter challenges the notion of e-pedagogies and explores what it means for language learning in the Singapore secondary school context. It discusses the reflection of a Singapore English Language teacher in implementing digitally-mediated teaching during the ‘home-based learning’ period amid the pandemic and explores the implications of the experience on the understanding of what e-pedagogies are. During the period of home-based learning, teaching and learning activities were conducted through video-conferencing, learning platforms, and multimedia resources to digitalise the delivery of the lessons. It has been well-recognised that the effectiveness of digitally-mediated learning is not the technologies but how they are used by the teachers as designers of learning. In the Singapore context, some teachers have found it challenging to design effective home-based learning experiences for their students given the lack of training and limited opportunities for teachers to design digitally-mediated learning previously. The experience with home-based learning has highlighted the importance of preparing teachers to design for effective digitally-mediated learning experiences. I problematise the notion of e-pedagogies as a new set of pedagogical practices by highlighting the shared fundamentals of teaching in both the physical classroom and online space. Pedagogies are based on the learning theories of behaviourism and social constructivism, albeit with different pedagogical expressions shaped by the affordances of the medium. This is exemplified with pedagogical approaches, such as the conversational framework and the reflexive pedagogy, which, while promoted by the affordances of teaching in a digital environment, is equally relevant in their application for classroom instruction. Rather than advancing the notion of a unique set of pedagogies for online teaching, understanding the materiality in which the practice is situated and thinking of the entire interaction scenario in which the technologies are embedded can be more productive in drawing out the commonalities in pedagogical principles across media. Such an orientation can allay the teachers’ anxieties towards online teaching and build on, rather than ignore, their deep reservoirs of pedagogical knowledge accumulated from years of experience in classroom instruction.

2022, Shi, Huawei, Lim, Fei Victor

This chapter adopts multimodal content analysis (Bell, 2001; Joo et al., 2019) to examine an introductory video to an online English course, the textbook accompanying the course, as well as the online course itself, for students in China. The analysis aims to surface the discursive construction and representation of values and the expression of ideologies on English in the English language teaching (ELT) materials (Hu & Mckay, 2014). In particular, the analysis highlights the privileging of Anglocentric representations and dominance of the native speaker model (Kirkpatrick, 2007). Such representations are observed to persist in the Chinese society despite the present status of English as a world language with an increasing number of English language speakers from many parts of the world in the outer circle (Kachru, 1992). Through the analysis, we discuss the expressions of cultural hegemony (Gramsci, 1971), in this case, the western cultural bias implicit in ELT materials propagated to students in China. We advance the argument that such ideological positioning (van Dijk, 2011) of ELT materials is unproductive as such an essentialist definition of EL proficiency is unattainable for non-native speakers (Kirkpatrick, 2007). Even worse, such an association between the English language and nationality can be deleterious as it propagates the unhelpful notion of English where standards and norms are determined by nationality rather than by use.

2022, Adami, Elisabetta, Diamantopoulou, Sophia, Lim, Fei Victor

Gunther Kress’s multimodal and social semiotic theory of communication has moved beyond the realm of linguistics, which originally framed his work, and has reached out to inform other fields, such as those of education, museum studies, as well as the humanities and social sciences more broadly. This article brings together our insights in relation to a concept from Gunther Kress’s theory, that of design. Drawing from our research, we reflect on Kress’s conceptualisation of design in social semiotics and discuss how this idea has inspired us to advance research across the domains of formal learning in schools, informal learning and communication in museums, and in everyday communication and social interaction. We consider that the contribution of design is to challenge the boundaries of concepts such as ‘competence’, ‘interpretation’ and ‘critique’, associated respectively with the dominant discourses and practices in the worlds of education, museums and everyday communication and research practice. We look at design as: (1) learning; (2) transformation of resources; and (3) an engaged and engaging social semiotic research, and argue that as an interpretative resource it enables us to move beyond the limitations posed by institutions such as schools, museums and academia.

2022, Lim, Fei Victor, Toh, Weimin

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the value of digital technology – in preserving work, play and learning – at a time when physical interactions are constrained. Given the challenges involved in the sudden conscription towards digital teaching and learning, the reception of both teachers and students towards the adoption of digital technologies for home-based teaching and learning has been mixed. While appreciating the affordances of digital technologies in supporting the continuity of teaching during the lockdowns, concerns have been raised by teachers on the effectiveness of digital learning. Our chapter discusses the teacher’s use of semiotic technologies to design learning experiences for students. From the perspective of design considerations, we explore the different ways of meaning making in digital learning – in particular, how knowledge can be represented, pedagogic relations expressed and learning organised through the affordances of semiotic technologies. We do this by studying three types of semiotic technologies, namely, the ubiquitous video lectures, digital games for learning and social media, specifically in its appropriation as a learning platform. Our chapter concludes by reflecting on losses and gains in digital learning and the need for teachers to expand their pedagogical repertoire in the post-pandemic education normal.

2023, Lim, Fei Victor, Tan-Chia, Lydia

Designing Learning for Multimodal Literacy addresses the need to design learning for multimodal literacy in a world that is increasingly saturated with print and digital media.

In the current age, communication and interactions on social media are seldom made with language alone but are often accompanied with emojis, images, and videos, making meanings multimodally. Young people, including children, are also increasingly active in making videos of themselves, their ideas, and their experiences as part of their out-of-school literacy activities. In particular, for language teachers, the present shifts in our world require that teachers re-examine what they teach and how they can meaningfully and effectively teach the students in their classes today. At 8 years old, Alden created his own rap music video and shared it with the world. He wrote his own lyrics and set it against the music he remixed and meshed from a music download site. Alden is in your classroom today. As his teacher, what would you teach him? How would you engage him? Alden, and children like him, is the inspiration for why the authors have written this book. The changing times and changing learners place a demand on educators to continually reflect on what and how teachers are teaching their students – to ensure that learning in school remains relevant, relatable, and prepares them for the world of the future. Lim’s book outlines how teachers can design learning for multimodal literacy. It is a result of a collaboration between an educational researcher and a curriculum developer, and offers practical resources for practitioners but also design principles and consid-erations based on practice with a range of students to inform and inspire academics and postgraduate students.

It is poised to contribute to the global conversation and interest on how educa-tors can reflect on the zeitgeist of the digital age and design learning for multimodal literacy.

2022, Jiang, Jingxin, Lim, Fei Victor

In today’s neoliberal economy, digital platforms have led to a proliferation in science popularization where scientists package their messages for the wider public. Our study explores how science ideas are disseminated in one of the most widespread digitally mediated genres of science popularisation, the TED talks. We adopt a multimodal discourse analysis approach to explore how the presenter orchestrates her speech, visuals on slides, and hand gestures to achieve the communicative purposes of the TED talk. From the analysis, it is observed that the presenter uses many specific linguistic choices to clarify the ideas and build the speaker’s authority. These language choices are supported by visual choices and gestures. We unpack the presenter’s multimodal semiotic choices and examine how they work together to communicate scientific ideas to the layman and engage with the audience. Our study reveals a deeper understanding on the power of language, visuals, and gestures as communicative tools in presentations, and sheds light on how the three modes are orchestrated to present scientific ideas in an accessible and engaging manner as part of science popularization.

2022, Sun, He, Lim, Fei Victor, Low, Jiamin, Kee, Stephanie

The quantity and quality of children's digital screen media exposure is an emerging area of early childhood studies because of its strong social relevance, and this has been particularly true since the COVID-19 pandemic. The few existing parental questionnaires on children's digital screen media exposure mainly focus on monolingual children's media habits and address either the quantity or quality of children's media exposure. Inspired by the existing instruments, the current study introduces a new parental questionnaire to comprehensively assess the duration, frequency, content, design, and use of bilingual children's digital screen media exposure at home, before and since the COVID-19 pandemic. Focus group discussions and the first wave of our data collection on 141 3–6 years old Singaporean bilingual children indicate good face validity and internal consistency of the parental questionnaire. Our results reveal substantial differences in children’s quantity and quality of daily digital screen media exposure, as well as the discrepancies in their digital media habits between English and their mother tongue languages, before and since the COVID-19 pandemic.