1. Art and Diseño

Copyright 2012 by the
Mid-South Educational Research Association
RESEARCH IN THE SCHOOLS
2012, Vol. 19, No. 1, 12-25
Teachers as Designers: Multimodal Immersion and Strategic Reading on the Internet
Bridget Dalton
University of Colorado Boulder
Blaine E. Smith
Vanderbilt University
This study examined teachers’ literacy and technology integration in their design of Internet-based
lessons for Grade 1-6 students using a tool that scaffolds the design process to focus on Internet
resources and reading strategies. Twenty-six teachers’ lessons on a public database were analyzed
for design orientation, goals, curricular integration, linked web site characteristics, reading
strategies, and student response. Findings suggested that the tool shaped teachers’ designs,
supporting embedding of Internet multimodal resources and comprehension strategies in online
lessons. Teachers’ dominant design orientation was to provide students with a multimodal immersion
experience to enhance understanding and engagement with literature or other subject-matter. The
majority of teachers took advantage of reading strategies support, with more than one half
customizing pedagogical agents. Few teachers used web evaluation or media literacies support. The
potential for educative design tools is discussed.
Multimodal literacy and learning on the Internet
are core components of 21st century literacies, as
promulgated in the Common Core State Standards
Initiative (2011) and position papers of the
International Reading Association (2009) and
National Council of Teachers of English (2008).
Technology is assumed to be part of the solution to
“transforming American education” to achieve highquality education for all students (National Education
Technology Plan, 2010, p. ix). It is expected that
teachers will be able to integrate technology
effectively into instruction and prepare their students
to be creative producers and critical consumers of
digital media, resources, and tools. Much of this
learning and interaction is taking place on the
Internet, a new literacies learning environment that
offers affordances and challenges for reading and
learning (Coiro, 2011; Dalton & Proctor, 2008; Leu,
Kinzer, Coiro, & Cammack, 2004). Although there
is general consensus amongst stakeholders
concerning the necessity of teaching digital literacies,
there are wide gaps between the standards and
teachers’ actual practices (Lankshear & Knobel,
2007), and between adolescents’ experience with
technology in and outside of school (Ito et al., 2009).
Many teachers lack the skills and knowledge to
integrate technology successfully (e.g., Koehler,
Mishra, & Yahya, 2007; NEA/AFT, 2008) and report
feeling ill-prepared to develop the new literacies
endemic to the Internet or to support students who
struggle to comprehend and apply its sophisticated,
complex information (Grunwald Associates LLC,
2009; Mallette & Karchmer, 2002).
Further,
teachers’ technology integration often promotes
traditional approaches to instruction and literacy
(Wallace, 2004).
Correspondence concerning this article should be
addressed to Bridget Dalton, University of Colorado
Boulder, School of Education, 249 UCB, Boulder,
CO 80309
Email: [email protected]
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Although professional development in this area
is woefully understudied (Lawless & Pellegrino,
2007), recent reviews highlight the complex
interaction of teachers’ beliefs, goals, content
knowledge, and pedagogy, with technology and
school contextual factors (Gerard, Varma, Corliss, &
Linn, 2011; Lawless & Pellegrino, 2007). What
appears to be most challenging for teachers is the use
of technology in service of disciplinary learning, or
as Mishra and Koehler (2006) frame it, instruction
that integrates teachers’ technology, pedagogy, and
content knowledge (TPACK). Thus far, research has
relied heavily on teachers’ self-reports of efficacy
using technology after participating in professional
development, with limited empirical work examining
teachers’ situated practice. A potentially revealing
window into teachers’ disciplinary technology
integration is their publication of Internet-based
lessons to online databases, particularly when there
are design tool features to assist teachers in their
lesson design.
The purpose of the current study was to learn
how teachers might integrate literacy and technology
in their design of Internet-based lessons using
Strategy Tutor (CAST, Inc.), a free online tool that
scaffolds the design process to focus on Internet
resources and embedded strategies for reading online.
Our longer-term inquiry will investigate the role of
digital design tools as learning tools for teachers,
tools that could potentially support teachers in their
efforts to integrate literacy and technology.
learning guides for students, providing strategy think
alouds and models, just as teachers and peers do
when engaged in instructional conversations about
text.
We also look to the research on educative
curriculum showing the value of designing materials
(in this case, a digital tool) to promote both teacher
learning and student learning (Ball & Cohen, 1996;
Davis & Krajeik, 2005). In the case of ST, teachers
work within a design structure that prompts for
student instructional support and allows for teacher
manipulation of strategy coaching support. This type
of contextualized application is in concert with
technology integration research demonstrating the
importance of alignment with curriculum goals and
pedagogical compatibility (Zhao, Pugh, Sheldon, &
Byers, 2002). It supports teacher customization of
existing material, rather than starting from scratch, an
approach that has garnered recent support (Ainsworth
& Fleming, 2006). Teachers’ review and adaptation
of technology-based learning supports for their
students can simultaneously be a professional
development experience (Gerard et al., 2011).
There is a clear need to understand how
technology integration works as an interactive system
of technology, pedagogy, and content. However,
educative digital tools that are designed both for
teacher learning and student learning are relatively
new. In the case of the ST designed lessons, teachers
have used a scaffolded tool to create and publish
Internet-based literacy lessons that also scaffold
student learners in ways that are consistent with
research-based instruction. However, teachers shape
and are shaped by their tools (Vygotsky, 1978). How
teachers design with the specific ST tool is not of
utmost importance. What is important is to use the
ST lesson designs as one window into teachers’
scaffolded digital design of reading and learning with
the Internet. Multiple windows will be required to
develop a design framework that reflects the complex
interaction of teacher, pedagogy, content, and other
contextual factors that contribute to, or impede,
successful integration.
Conceptual Framework
This work draws on multiple perspectives and
lines of inquiry. Broadly, it is situated in a cognitive
apprenticeship model of learning, where literacy is
socially constructed and learners develop in
interaction
with
tools,
signs,
and
more
knowledgeable others (Cognition and Technology
Group, Vanderbilt Learning Technology Center,
1993; Vygotsky, 1978). Given our focus on teachers’
scaffolded Strategy Tutor (ST) design, tools and
modes are especially salient. From a universal design
for learning perspective (Rose & Meyer, 2002), the
ST tool carries some of the load of lesson planning,
providing a structure for integrating Internet
resources that will offer multiple means of
representation and embedded reading strategies
prompts and pedagogical agents to support students’
strategic learning and expression. The supports for
students’ online reading comprehension draw on
research-based
reading
strategies
instruction
developed for text (Palincsar & Brown, 1984;
Pressley, 2006) and extended to digital text (Dalton
& Proctor, 2007; Dalton, Proctor, Uccelli, Mo, &
Snow, 2011). The pedagogical agents operate as
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Method
Strategy Tutor Online Tool and Resources
Strategy Tutor was developed by CAST, Inc.,
with support from Carnegie Corporation of New
York
(freely
available
online
at
http://cst.cast.org/cst/auth-login). According to the
ST website, it is a web-based tool “designed to
support students and teachers doing reading and
research on the Internet.” The tool includes a website
for students, and one for teachers. On the student
side, students read and interact with web pages,
accessing coaches with strategies for reading
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TEACHERS AS DESIGNERS: MULTIMODAL IMMERSION AND STRATEGIC READING
ON THE INTERNET
comprehension, web evaluation, and media literacy,
and typing responses into an electronic work log.
The ST teacher site includes resources for teaching
on the Internet, reading strategies, web evaluation
and media literacy, a public database of ST lessons, a
lesson authoring tool, and, for each teacher, access to
their students’ work logs.
The focus of our analysis was on the lessons
created with the ST authoring tool and published to
the database. The authoring tool guides teachers
through setting goals and developing activities linked
to Internet resources and strategy coaches, or
pedagogical agents. ST includes two strategy
coaches, Keisha and Pablo, who offer a generic think
aloud for each of the strategies and response options
(predict, question, summarize, visualize, clarify,
feeling, web evaluation, media literacy, reflect, and
journal). A third coach, Lea, provides a rubric for
each strategy. Teachers have the option of accepting
the default coaching content, or customizing it. They
may also add background and vocabulary builder
sections and publish lessons to the public database or
to their own private database. Figure 1 shows one
part of a lesson.
ST Data Set Collection and Coding
Each lesson in the ST database indicates a title,
teacher’s name (or pseudonym), subject area, and
grade level. For the purposes of this study, we
reviewed lessons available from 2007 to 2011 To
focus on lessons designed for students in elementary
school, we included all lessons identified as
appropriate for Grades K-6 (this included some
lessons for Grades 6 and higher).
We analyzed each teacher’s lesson design
document and viewed the lesson online, interacting
with it as a student would. The design document is an
editable form with input boxes for a goal,
introduction to the lesson, instructions, a background
builder with hyperlinks to web content, a vocabulary
builder, directions for each activity (i.e., a lesson
could have one more activities), customizable
pedagogical agents for strategies and rubrics coaches
at the activity level, and web pages and online
content linked by URL to the ST lesson and
activities. The only required author input, however,
was goal and lesson directions.
Figure 1. Screenshot of teacher-designed lesson showing Internet content, directions, and strategy coaches.
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Web page modes, hyperlinks, and types. Each
website hyperlinked in the lesson was analyzed,
starting with the main web page and then considering
other pages (or layers) that the teacher specifically
asked students to visit (see Figure 1). Web pages
were coded for types of mode (e.g., written text,
graphics, video, animation, audio, games), use of
hyperlinks (embedded in the text or in menus that
linked internally to the website or externally), and
type of website (educational, commercial,
organization, or government).
Website readability. Given teachers’ concerns
about the difficulty of Internet text for students who
are reading below grade level (Karchmer, 2001), we
wondered whether teachers’ web site choices would
be tailored to their students’ grade level. We
calculated the Flesch-Kincaid readability score of
each webpage, which computes readability based on
word length and average sentence length (Flesch,
1948; Kincaid, Fishburne, Rogers, & Chissom,
1975). We acknowledge that this type of formula
ignores important comprehension factors and does
not address the role of multimedia in online reading.
However, we deemed it a reasonable measure for
estimating written text difficulty across the various
web pages. For each page that teachers directed
students to visit, we highlighted the body of text,
excluding menus, sidebars, and advertisements,
pasted it into a Microsoft Word document, and used
the readability tool to compute the Flesch-Kincaid
grade level score.
ST integration with curriculum and
instruction. Each lesson was coded for evidence of
explicit or implicit ST integration with curriculum
and instruction. Explicit integration was signaled by
reference in the lesson to connecting the student
product or ST learning experience with the
classroom. For example, ST directions might ask
students to use information from the lesson to create
a product to share in class or to view a video in
preparation for reading a novel. Implicit integration
was coded when the lesson did not make explicit
reference to class instruction, and yet it was clear that
the lesson was related to commonplace standards and
curriculum for the grade level. For example, one
lesson asked sixth-grade students to “learn about the
life and works of Edgar Allen Poe,” without linking it
to events happening in the class, such as a larger
study of Poe’s works or other student projects.
However, Poe is commonly studied in the middle
grades, and thus a determination could be made that
this lesson represented integration in the
reading/language arts curriculum.
ST strategic reading and customization of
coaches. The introduction, goals, and directions
sections of each lesson design document were
reviewed and coded for specific mention of a ST
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strategy or response option, including teacher
questions. In addition, we conducted a more detailed
analysis of coach customization, because teachers
have the option of using the default coaching content
or customizing any or all of the coaches for each
lesson/activity. The two strategy coaches provide a
default generic think aloud for each strategy/response
type, whereas the rubric coach provides a generic
strategy rubric. Using similar content analysis
procedures outlined above, we read through the
content several times, noting categories and
interesting aspects of the design approach. We
identified patterns of customization that focused on
the type of strategy, coach scripting processes, use of
generic or lesson specific content, and attention to
metacognition.
Data Analysis
We employed NVivo qualitative data analysis
software (http://www.qsrinternational.com/#tab_you)
to develop and refine a coding scheme using a priori
categories based on our knowledge of the design
goals and features of the ST tool (e.g., teachers’ use
of embedded strategies and coaching support) and
effective technology integration (e.g., teachers’
explicit/implicit links of ST experience to classroom).
In addition, we used open and axial coding (Strauss
& Corbin, 1990) for categories that emerged from the
data set (e.g., teachers’ approach to customizing
coach content and requests for students to create
external multimodal products) (Glaser, 1992; Glaser
& Strauss, 1967). We engaged in an iterative
process, beginning with a set of nine lessons from a
larger database that included elementary and
secondary teachers and moving to analysis of the 26
lessons of interest for this study.
Both authors met regularly to review the codes,
discuss emergent categories and patterns, and relate
these to our conceptual framework. We sought out
contradictions and anomalies in the data set,
sometimes revising the coding scheme and
sometimes making note of the anomaly for
explanatory purposes. Constant comparison analysis
(Glaser & Strauss, 1967) led to findings related to
teachers’ overarching design approaches, goals,
curricula and pedagogy integration, designs for
strategic learning, designs for multimodal
representation and expression, and web site
readability.
Findings
The final data set represents 26 teachers’ ST
lessons. Twelve teachers designed lessons for Grades
3-5 (46.2%), 13 designed lessons for Grades 6+
(50%) and one teacher created a lesson for first and
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TEACHERS AS DESIGNERS: MULTIMODAL IMMERSION AND STRATEGIC READING
ON THE INTERNET
second graders (3.8%). Teachers also identified the
subject area focus of their lessons. The majority of
lessons were designed for reading/language arts
(57.8%), followed by social studies (23.1%) and
science (11.5%). The remaining two lessons were
designed for art and music (3.8%) and ‘other’ (3.8%).
Although teachers situated their lessons within a
subject, they often included interdisciplinary
activities (e.g., a literature lesson asks students to
view a historical timeline in preparation for reading a
novel set during that time period).
The ST authoring tool offers explicit support for
integrating Internet content through hyperlinks in the
Background Builder and Activities sections. Further,
the strategy coaches offer instructional support for
reading strategies, web evaluation, and media
literacy. For this group of 26 teachers, the most
prevalent design approach was multimodal immersion
(see Table 1). Approximately 80% used the Internet
to extend the classroom walls to enhance students’
reading of literature (46.2%) and to support contentarea learning (34.6%). These lessons used multiple
modes, including written text, video, simulations,
games, animation, audio, and graphics, to engage
students in learning. There was little attention to web
evaluation or media literacy skills. Rather, teachers
selected and vetted the websites to link within ST.
Teachers’ ST Design Orientations
Table 1
Teachers’ ST Designs for Internet-based Lessons
Teachers’ ST Designs
Design Approach
n
%
Multimodal Immersion
Literature driven
Content driven
Developing web evaluation or media literacy
Primary document access
Miscellaneous
21
12
9
2
1
2
80.8
46.2
34.6
07.7
03.8
07.7
ST integration
Integrated
Explicit
Implicit
Not integrated
25
14
11
1
96.2
53.8
42.3
3.8
Modes of Internet content
Unimodal
Text
Image
Bimodal (text and image)
Multimodal
Text, image, video
Text w/audio, image, video,
Text w/audio, image,
Text, image, interactive game
Text, image, interactive game, video
Text, image, podcast
3
2
1
10
13
3
3
2
2
2
1
11.5
07.7
03.8
38.5
50.0
11.5
11.5
07.7
07.7
07.7
03.8
Flesch-Kincaid Website Readability
Teachers’ grade level audience
1 - 2 (n = 1)
3 - 5 (n = 12)
6 + (n = 13)
Score
M, (SD), range
1.6, (3.2), 0.0 - 06.3
9.1, (2.5), 3.6 - 12.0
8.7, (2.4), 3.8 - 12.0
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Figure 2. Teachers’ dominant design orientation: Multimodal immersion to enhance learning and engagement.
Although most of the teachers focused on the
multimodal potential of Internet-based lessons, a few
focused on other affordances and/or ST features. For
example, one teacher used ST to provide access to
primary source documents and another created a
visual literacy lesson, two design approaches more
common amongst secondary level teachers (Dalton &
Smith, 2009). The remaining two teachers were
somewhat idiosyncratic in their approach, with one
creating a lesson linking to beginning reading skills
practice and another using ST to communicate
directions for an offline task (e.g., write a persuasive
letter), without providing learning activities or
hyperlinks to the Internet.
To illustrate further teachers’ design of
multimodal learning experiences, consider two
examples (see Figure 2). In the first case, the teacher
uses the multimodal capacity of the Internet to
prepare her students to read the award-winning novel,
Number the Stars, and in the second case, the teacher
engages students in learning about the 1066 Battle of
Hastings.
Example 1: “Introduction to Number the Stars”.
Using Background Builder web links, as well as
linked and unlinked activities, this lesson
contextualizes Number the Stars for students
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multimodally through use of a video, maps, historical
images, and text. In ST, the teacher introduces this
lesson designed for a third- to fifth-grade
reading/language arts class:
Dear Students,
During the next few weeks we will be
reading Number the Stars by Lois Lowry.
To build your background knowledge about
the historical setting of the book, you will be
exploring websites and videos pertaining to
the holocaust and the Danish rescue of
Jewish citizens. Then after reading the first
chapter of the novel, you will write a
personal response in your [ST] journals.
In the Background Builder, students are taken to
a YouTube video about the Holocaust, along with an
interactive map that includes historical photographs
and text with audio that describes how Danish people
rescued thousands of Jews during WWII. In the first
activity, students read a website about the Danish
rescue effort and respond to questions posed by the
teacher in the ST journal (e.g., “What was unique
about how Denmark responded to the Nazi's attempt
to deport the Jewish population?”). Having developed
students’ background knowledge, the teacher then
focuses their attention on the novel, creating ST
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TEACHERS AS DESIGNERS: MULTIMODAL IMMERSION AND STRATEGIC READING
ON THE INTERNET
activities with customized coaching support for
responding to teacher questions and applying
strategies. Students read chapter 1 from Number the
Stars offline and then respond online within ST to
answer text-specific questions and use one of the ST
strategies, prediction (e.g., “predict why there are
soldiers on the street corners in Copenhagen where
the protagonists live”). For the second activity, the
teacher contextualizes the ST feelings prompt,
writing script for the coach, Keisha:
In chapter 1 Annemarie talks about how the
presence of the German soldiers has
disrupted her life. She cannot run around
outside without being scared of getting
yelled at and she cannot have common food
items such as butter, coffee, and sugar which
go to the soldiers. How would you feel if an
enemy took over your town and made you
follow their rules?
Students are also prompted to respond in the ST
journal about their reaction to the book thus far or to
ask questions about the book thus far.
Example 2: “Battle of Hastings/Norman
Invasion, 1066.” The goal of this lesson, designed for
a social studies class of Grade 6 and above, is for
students to “read and understand” the Battle of
Hastings, “identify the key players,” and “understand
maps of the battle and surrounding areas.” The
teacher developed four activities that allow student to
learn multimodally—through reading digital text and
maps and playing a game that simulates the battle
(Figure 2). To understand the conflict in England
leading up to the battle, the teacher first directs
students to a learner-centered website where they
read and view historical images (e.g., scenes from the
Bayeux Tapestry). Here, students are asked to use
two ST strategies, summarizing what they read,
predicting the effects of the Norman Invasion on
England, and to identify “why each of the three main
players felt they were the rightful descendant of the
English throne.” Next, students are led to two links
with maps, one depicting the battle ground and
another showing the route each opponent travelled to
arrive in Hastings. Using these maps and responding
in ST, students summarize how the Normans won
and predict “at least three difficult decisions Harold
[the English King] would have to make.” Lastly,
students are directed to a web simulation game where
they re-enact the Battle of Hastings—choosing a side
to play on (Normans or Saxons) and making tactical
battle decisions. Once they have won the game,
students summarize in ST “how William won and
Harold lost the Battle of Hastings.”
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Designing for Curricular Integration and
Instructional Goals
Each lesson was coded for evidence of ST
integration with curriculum and instruction. Tables 1
and 2 show that teachers invested effort in designing
lessons that supported their curriculum and teaching
goals. The teacher was the maestro, structuring one
or more activities with content, strategy prompts, and
questions to guide students’ learning journey.
Analysis of teachers’ stated goals revealed four
general
categories,
developing
knowledge,
developing reading comprehension and strategy use,
developing literary analysis, and developing media
literacy skills.
Teachers’ focus on developing
knowledge was signaled by language such as
‘develop background’ and ‘learn about.’ When
focusing on improving reading comprehension
specifically, they typically mentioned strategy use,
and when focusing on text analysis, they focused on
story elements or expository text features. Although
media literacy skills were rarely addressed, teachers
tended to apply text-based strategies, such as making
a prediction about what is happening in a photograph.
The final example in Table 2 shows how teachers
wove different types of goals into their ST lessons. In
this Hurricane Katrina lesson, there were multiple
foci, including developing knowledge about
Hurricane Katrina, applying that knowledge to their
understanding of a YA novel set in the 9th Ward
district during the hurricane, and developing reading
strategies, personal response, and intertextual
analysis.
The teacher also applies print-based
strategies to digital modes (e.g., summarize the
video).
Designing for Multiple Modes of Representation
One of the assumed major benefits of learning on
the Internet is the opportunity to learn through
multiple representations, or modes, including written
and spoken text, image, video, and sound. The vast
majority (85.5%) took advantage of diverse modes,
offering either bimodal content (38.5%) or
multimodal content (54 %) (see Table 1). Some
teachers (11.5%) chose unimodal representation,
typically asking students to read a text or view an
image. The dominance of text and image modes is
clear, with every lesson including text to be read, and
all but two of the 26 lessons including images to be
viewed. Video was next in frequency of use,
followed by podcasts.
Designing for Website Readability
Teachers often express concern that Internet text
is too difficult, especially for their struggling readers.
In ST, teachers select the hyperlinked websites for
their students. As Table 1 illustrates, most lessons
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included website text well above students’ grade
level. Based on Flesh-Kincaid readability scores,
website text difficulty of lessons averaged 9.1 (SD =
2.5) for students in Grades 3-5, and 8.7 (SD = 2.4) for
students in Grades 6+. Another way to think about
website difficulty is to consider the type of website as
signaled by the URL. A total of 94 websites were
used as resources in these lessons:
61 were
commercial (.com), 18 were organizations (.org), 10
were governmental (.gov), 4 were educational (.edu),
and 1 was a .net site.
and the multimodal nature of the Web, we were
interested in how teachers designed for students’
response and development of culminating products.
Twenty-five of 26 teachers designed lessons asking
for some type of student response or final product
(see Table 3). A majority (61.6 %) of the lessons
asked students to type a response into their online ST
work logs, either applying an ST strategy or typing
in the journal (the latter included answering teacher
questions). Typically, students responded while
interacting with web pages: 30.8 % of the lessons
asked for ST responses only, and 30.8 % asked
students to respond within ST and to create an
external product.
An additional 34.6 % of the
lessons asked only for an external product.
Designing for Student Expression During and
After Online Reading
Given the ST option for students to type into an
online work log while they are viewing web pages,
Table 2
Teachers’ Instructional Goals in ST lessons



Goals and key words
Example
Goal: Develop
knowledge, including
background knowledge
1. Lesson: Endangered Species
Grade level: 6+; Content area: Science
“You will be researching endangered species to develop background knowledge that will
enhance your understanding of the connections between the biotic and abiotic factors in
the environment.”
Goal: Develop reading
comprehension and
strategy use
2. Lesson: The Raven
Grade level: 6+; Content area: Reading/Lang.Arts
“In this lesson you will be using the strategies of visualization, feelings, clarification and
journal writing to assist you in improving your reading comprehension of the poem The
Raven.”
Goal: Develop
comprehension and
analysis of narrative
and expository text and
media
3. Lesson: Charlotte’s Web
Grade level: 3-5; Content area: Reading/Lang.Arts
“Students will: 1) Analyze and summarize the story of Charlotte’s Web. 2) Create or
reconstruct a sequence of events from the story. 3) Organize ideas on how to combine
pictures, captions, and dialogue to tell about a specific event or express a message. 4)
Develop comic strips to depict story-related events.”
Goal: Develop Media o
o
Literacy Skills
4. Lesson: Photo Essay
Grade level: 6+; Content area: Reading/Lang.Arts
“To make a prediction about what is happening in the photograph….You will ask a good
question about this picture….Use clues from the picture to clarify or make meaning out of
what may have occurred….Summarize what is happening in this photograph of a familiar
event that happened in your community.”
Integrated example: o
Students engage with o
strategies, analysis, o
personal response, and
content learning with
text and media
5. Lesson: Hurricane Katrina
Grade level: 6+; Content area: Reading/Lang.Arts
“The learners will: 1) Watch a video about Hurricane Katrina’s path. 2) Summarize the
video [following the growth and path of Katrina day by day]. 3) Predict what will happen
in the story. 4) Visualize what happened in the story [The 9 th Ward]. 5) Share their
feelings about the video and/or text. 6) Reflect/ Journal the connections made between the
video (history) and text. 7) Create a Venn Diagram showing the similarities/differences
between the video and story regarding Hurricane Katrina details.”
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ON THE INTERNET
Table 3
Teachers’ ST Design for Student Response and Product Creation
Types of responses/products
ST lessons
Within ST response and external products (n = 26)
Within ST response work log only
Within ST response work log and external product
External product only
No within ST response or external product
Modes and Types of Students’ External Products (n =19*)
Unimodal
Print-based ( 2 notebook responses; science journal response, written
persuasive letter)
Digital (online quiz)
Multimodal
Print-based (color flag; color and label map; research poster with text
and student-created images)
Digital ( e-comic, e-postcard, e-Venn diagram, photo essay, Poster with
typed text and digital visuals, Power Point presentation with text &
visuals, Quilt square created with online program.
%
8
8
9
1
30.8
30.8
34.6
03.8
6
4
31.6
21.1
2
10.5
11
3
57.9
15.8
8
42.1
Not able to determine (research presentation and timeline)
2
10.5
*Note. 17 lessons asked students to create external products; 2 lessons included 2 products, for a total of 19
products.
Designing for Students’ Multimodal Expression in
External Products
The types and modes of students’ external
products are presented in Table 3. Consistent with
their emphasis on multimodal immersion to enhance
learning, a majority of teachers asked students to
create multimodal products: 42.1% were composed
and published with digital tools (e.g., e-comics,
PowerPoint presentations, photo essays, among
others); 15.8% of the products involved creating
digital content and printing it out for a physical
display, such as labeling a map online and printing it
out, or creating digital images to print out and add to
a research poster; and 31.6% of students’ products
relied on unimodal expression, either print-based
writing or taking an online quiz.
Student ST, their use is not required. Teachers often
asked students to apply specific strategies or answer
questions in their lessons and activity directions (16
of 26 lessons included at least one request to respond
within ST using the student work log). For example,
one teacher wrote, “After viewing the pictures [of the
Industrial Revolution], predict whether The Song of
the Shirt will have a positive or negative tone and
give a supporting reason for your choice.” Teachers
explicitly prompted students to apply ST strategies
during their online reading, prompting summarize
most often (46%), followed by a second group of
moderate frequency, journal (38%), predict (35%),
visualize (26%), and question (23%). There were
fewer requests for clarification (15%), feeling (15%),
and reflect on progress (15%) responses. Media
literacy (8%) and web evaluation (4%) strategies
were rarely prompted by teachers.
Strategy coach customization. The research on
educative curriculum suggests the importance of
allowing teachers options for customization. ST is
fairly unique in the way that it scaffolds teachers’
customization of three pedagogical agents who offer
think alouds and rubrics for each of the strategies that
can be applied to the activities. Teachers can accept
the default coach content (treating the authoring glass
Designing for Strategic Learning with Strategy
Coaches
An important goal of Strategy Tutor is to support
students’ strategic reading and self-regulation. It
provides default coach support for each strategy in
the form of think alouds and rubrics (models are not
available unless the teacher creates them). Although
the two strategy coaches, Keisha and Pablo, and Lea,
the rubric coach, are available on demand within the
Spring 2012
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RESEARCH IN THE SCHOOLS
BRIDGET DALTON AND BLAINE E. SMITH
Teachers’ coach customization processes. ST
provides differentiated support to authors who could
work with existing coach content or create their own.
Analysis of each customized coaching script revealed
three different process approaches to coach
customization (Table 4). To use a building analogy,
teachers could renovate existing content, build an
addition to the content, and/or knock down and begin
anew. By necessity, if they created a model, they
were building an addition to the default think aloud.
If they revised either the existing think aloud or
rubric, they were renovating. And, if they deleted the
default content in its entirety, they were engaged in a
knock-down.
Of course, there were possible
combinations (e.g., revising the think aloud and
adding a model for a particular strategy coach).
Coach scripts also varied in content specificity. By
design, the default content is generic and can be
applied to any content. When teachers customized,
they created both generic content and content that
was specific to the lesson and text/media. They also
maintained the conversational tone of the agent
coaches whose default content and cartoon character
appearance positioned them as learning companions.
as full) or they may revise the content (treating the
authoring glass as half-full).
A total of 14 teachers, or 53.8%, customized at
least one strategy coach for their lesson. Overall, they
customized coaching content for 41 strategies,
averaging 2.93 coaches per lesson and an average of
7.2 changes to the think aloud, model, and/or rubric.
Where did teachers invest in customizing coach
content? The most popular customizations were the
prediction coach (57.1%) and the visualization coach
(50.0 %), followed by the journal coach (35.7%) and
summary coach (28.6 %). This might reflect the
importance and/or use of these strategies in the
classroom, as well as teachers’ familiarity with
providing think alouds, models, and rubrics for these
particular strategies and response options. The
coaches for feeling, reflect, and question received
minor customizing attention (21.4% each). Media
literacy was customized just once, and web
evaluation not at all. Teachers could revise Pablo
and Keisha’s think aloud and/or add a model to
accompany the think aloud—58 of the 103
customizations were revisions of existing think
alouds, and 38 were new models. Only seven
revisions to the rubric coach were made.
Table 4
Teachers’ Approaches to Customizing ST Coach Scripts
Coach customization
ST’s default coach script
Teachers’ coach scripting
1. Knockdown
ST Lesson: Mexico
Keisha,
default
summary
thinkaloud: I skimmed the text and
media and identified the most
important facts. I combined similar
facts and wrote a summary that
wasn’t too detailed.
No model.
Pablo, default feeling think aloud:
One of the things I like best about
searching on the web is the way that
you can get different viewpoints
from different people. I try to put
myself in the situation of one person
and think about how that person
feels.
No model.
Keisha, default visualization think
aloud: I try to use some of the
images on a website to help me
create a visualization that is very
clear and dramatic.
No model.
Teacher replaces summary think aloud with one that
is content specific: “Maps can give us a lot of
details or a little. I think it is important to know
the capital city, the main bodies of water, and
other important cities. She also adds a model
starter: The map of Mexico shows me…”
2. Renovate
ST Lesson: Each
Little Bird that Sings
3. Build an addition
ST Lesson: Trouble
with Jeremy Chance
Spring 2012
21
Teacher revises think aloud to be text specific: “One
of the things I like best about travelling on the web
is the way that you can get different feelings from
seeing different places. I try to put myself in the
situation of one person and think about how that
person feels. How do you think Comfort feels
living in the funeral home? How would you feel if
you lived in this funeral home?”
Teacher keeps think aloud and adds a text-specific
model: “I picked the phrase "brown tidal wave"
as my phrase. These words help me create a
picture in my mind about what the wave looked
like.
RESEARCH IN THE SCHOOLS
TEACHERS AS DESIGNERS: MULTIMODAL IMMERSION AND STRATEGIC READING
ON THE INTERNET
The first example in Table 4 illustrates a
knockdown coach script where the teacher replaces a
summary think aloud with one that is specific to her
lesson about Mexico. She uses first person and
highlights map features that are important to include
in a summary. She also provides a sentence starter to
help students begin their summaries. The second
renovate example illustrates how the teacher revised
the think aloud for the feeling response so that it was
specific to the novel her class was reading, This Little
Bird that Sings. She made word level substitutions,
replacing “searching” on the web with “traveling”
and substituting “different viewpoints” with
“different feelings from seeing different places.” She
accepted the next sentence as is and then added two
questions specific to how the character felt and how
the student might feel if they lived in a funeral home.
The final example shows how a teacher accepted the
default think aloud for the visualization strategy and
added a coach model.
scripts. To use a building analogy, they renovated,
knocked down, or made additions to the default
coach scripts. Often, these customizations were
specific to the text they were reading, either offline in
class or online, or to the multimodal representations
online. The degree to which teachers manipulated
the coaching content was not anticipated, suggesting
that working with existing scripts might scaffold
teachers’ instructional customization in important
ways.
In contrast to previous findings showing
secondary teachers’ preference for written responses
and culminating products (Dalton & Smith, 2009),
many of these teachers complemented students’
multimodal experiences during online reading with
requests for bimodal and multimodal final products,
such as photo essays, e-comics, podcasts, and so
forth. This connection between multimodal reading
and multimodal expression came from the teachers; it
was not prompted by the ST design tool, suggesting
teachers’ strategic adaptation in service of their goals
to develop students’ multimodal literacies.
Taken together, the teachers’ various lesson
designs suggest that the tool shaped their designs,
supporting the embedding of Internet multimodal
resources and strategies for online comprehension
and learning. Their designs also show that they used
the tool in ways that supported well-established goals
and practices, such as enhancing text comprehension
with background building, reading strategies, and
answering teacher-posed questions. Finally, the
majority of the teachers extended beyond the
scaffolded ST design to engage students in creating
multimodal products that were external to the student
digital learning environment. Whether or not ST
functioned as an educative tool for teachers cannot be
determined from a study of their lesson designs
alone; however, their designs are consistent with the
pedagogical supports that are built into the ST
authoring tools, suggesting the educative potential of
this kind of design tool.
Discussion
Contrary to much of the literature indicating that
teachers encounter difficulties integrating technology
in meaningful ways, these findings suggest that the
26 teachers who published ST lessons to a publicly
available database were able to take advantage of an
authoring tool that scaffolded their design process in
service of literature-based or content-based learning
goals. Three design approaches and goal orientations
emerged, with the vast majority of teachers designing
to provide students a multimodal immersion
experience to enhance their understanding and
engagement with literature or other subject-matter
learning. These teachers took advantage of the media
on the Internet, linking to websites that included at
least bimodal representations, and more typically,
multimodal representations. To a much less degree,
teachers took advantage of the Internet’s capacity to
provide students access to primary source documents,
and a few focused on developing students’ media
literacy and search skills. Although it might be
somewhat surprising that web evaluation and media
literacy did not receive more attention, this finding is
consistent with others’ research indicating teachers’
preference for using technology to enhance existing
goals and curriculum (Mouza, 2009). Further, in this
context, teachers had vetted these websites and might
have felt less need to promote a critical stance toward
content they had already deemed valuable.
Teachers also took advantage of ST’s support for
reading comprehension strategies, frequently
prompting students to use ST strategies to respond
during online reading/viewing. Approximately 54%
of the teachers invested in customizing the ST coach
Spring 2012
Limitations and Implications
Although we suggest that it is necessary and
valuable to learn from the products teachers create
online, such as the lessons analyzed here, we are
aware of the limitations of such an approach. Much
is to be learned from gaining teachers’ perspectives
on their ST designs and from studying the actual
processes involved in designing the lesson, enacting
it in the classroom with diverse learners, and
potentially revising or developing new lessons. It is
also essential to study how students experience these
kinds of lessons and what effect they have on
learning and engagement. Do these scaffolded online
22
RESEARCH IN THE SCHOOLS
BRIDGET DALTON AND BLAINE E. SMITH
reading experiences enhance literacy and learning
within the specific lesson context? Do they promote
transfer and a more general development of online
reading comprehension and Internet inquiry? Finally,
although the research and development on ST
highlights students’ positive response to the tool
(Coyne et al., 2008), we did not attempt to analyze
affective features of the lesson designs. This is a
critically important and understudied aspect of
designing for learning on the Internet. Finally, ST is
a hybrid online application—it is both a teacher
professional development site and a student learning
tool. Teachers publish their works, which can then
be used by their peers. The social networking aspect
of teachers’ online publishing of instructional
material is virtually unexplored in the literature.
Finally, the suggestions for future research, although
framed in relation to ST, need to be applied to
teachers’ digital design tools more broadly. It is
likely that they will evolve in concert with emerging
technologies and media, a trend that might increase
their relevance and importance in supporting
teachers’ effective technology integration in literacy.
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Spring 2012
We would like to acknowledge CAST, Inc.,
Andreas Henriquez, and the Carnegie
Corporation of New York for their
development of Strategy Tutor, a free open
source tool available on the Internet. First
author Dalton was director of CAST’s
Strategy Tutor Project during Phase I
development and formative testing. Peggy
Coyne assumed leadership for Phase II,
completing a classroom-based study (Coyne,
Robinson, & Murray, 2008).
We acknowledge that the insider knowledge
held by Dalton may have influenced our
interpretation of data and conclusions.
However, neither Dalton nor Smith had
specific knowledge about the lessons in the
public database that were analyzed for this
study.
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