Didactical Design Principles to Apply When Introducing Student-generated Digital Multimodal Representations in the Science Classroom

Oct 15, 2026

Study examines designs for learning in multimodal science classrooms in Danish primary and lower-secondary schools. The project aims to help teachers develop an initial didactic design that increases students’ awareness of the affordances offered by different representational modes, strengthening student production of digital multimodal representations as learning and science-culture expressions. Using a design-based research approach and a social semiotic framework, the study formulates three design principles, including structured student dialogue, guided experimentation with data-representing representations, and reflection using known assessment criteria.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages11

Reading Time28 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Research gap and proposed design principles

Multimodal representation in science and student learning

Three research perspectives on representation and engagement

Andersen, M. F., and Munksby, N. (2018). Didactical Design Principles to Apply When Introducing Student-generated Digital Multimodal Representations in the Science Classroom. Designs for Learning, 10(1),112–122. DOI: [https://doi.org/10.16993/dfl.100](https://doi.org/10.16993/dfl.100) | RESEARCH
Didactical Design Principles to Apply When Introducing Student-generated Digital Multimodal Representationsin the Science Classroom
Mette Fredslund Andersen and Nicolai Munksby | | --- | | This project studies designs for learning in the multimodal science classroom in primary and lowersecondary schools in Denmark. The aim of the study is to work with teachers to develop a start-up didactic design that raises student awareness of the affordances provided by different representational modes and thus enhances student production of digital multimodal representations as an expression of learning and science culture. The project takes a design-based research (DBR) approach and uses a socialsemiotic theoretical framework. Research in using representations for teaching and learning in science reveals that students’ potential for learning concepts can be strengthened through the transformation of representations and the production of multimodal representations. The first design principle is to organize activities and dialogues among the students that will enhance awareness of the affordances provided by the different modes of representations. The second design principle is that students, through their own thorough practical experiments and dialogues, learn to use representations that show data. The third design principle is that students produce digital multimodal representations as expressions of their learning and reflect on and evaluate these on the basis of known assessment criteria for multimodal representations in science. | | Keywords: Science education and learning; Multimodal representations; Student-generated digital representations; Writing to learn; Didactical design | Introduction In Denmark, primary and lower-secondary schools are generally focusing a great deal of attention on integrating digital technologies in their teaching. One feature of such new technologies is that they enable the creation of digital representations. As such, the current digitization in progress at these schools is allowing teachers to present their material in new ways and, similarly, students to produce new representations of academic concepts and contexts. In science teaching, however, the use of such technologies remains limited, as a gap currently exists between teachers’ understanding of how school students learn science and the digital options that teachers have and are expected to use in their teaching (Søndergaard & Hasse, 2012). What is more, according to an Australian study, science teachers tend to choose representational modalities primarily with a view to accommodating their students’differing learning styles rather than as a way of conveying science content in itself (Prain & Waldrip, 2006) . Striving to close the gap between the ways students learn science and the digital options available for them to produce digital multimodal representations, this study proposes three initial design principles for teachers to apply. University College Copenhagen, DK Corresponding author: Mette Fredslund Andersen ([mefa@kp.dk](mefa@kp.dk)) As a field of discourse, science relies on a mix of multimodal forms of representation (Tytler et al., 2007) . For example, scientific concepts are represented through verbal language, formulae, models, graphs, diagramsand other visual representations (Prain & Waldrip, 2006) . One can therefore argue that working with multimodal representations in science classes plays an essential role in involving students in scientific culture, and that such representations are thus an especially apt way of working with the subject itself (Murcia, 2010) . Over the past fifteen years the research on student engagem

FAQs

What is the main goal of the project in the multimodal science classroom?

To develop a start-up didactic design with teachers that increases students’ awareness of the affordances of different representational modes and thereby enhances their production of digital multimodal representations.

What research approach and theoretical framework does the project use?

It uses a design-based research (DBR) approach and a social semiotic theoretical framework.

What are the three design principles proposed for teachers?

First, organize activities and dialogues to enhance awareness of representational affordances; second, use students’ practical experiments and dialogues to learn representations that show data; third, have students produce digital multimodal representations and evaluate them using known assessment criteria.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by mieayamfan