This study explores how digital media plays a role in creating a sense of authenticity in museum exhibitions. Cultural-historical museums deal with artifacts, memories, and events from past eras. It is the curator’s task to create reliable connections to history by organizing resources to present credible narratives and bring the past to life. Digital technologies like virtual reality and immersive projections may offer new rhetorical tools to foster a sense of connection to history. Although earlier research has centered on notions of aura and authenticity (e.g., Benjamin, 2008; Aravantis and Zuanni, 2021; Bolter et al., 2021; Latour and Lowe, 2011), our study contributes to this literature by approaching these ideas through the framework of social semiotics. It does so by examining how authenticity is constructed digitally and rhetorically through the use of semiotic resources like color, contextualization, light, and depth (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2021). These resources act as validity markers, indicating the represented level of authenticity. The study is part of a larger research project on the effects of digitization on exhibitions and visitor engagement, conducted in collaboration with staff from five museums in Sweden. Data includes photographs and video recordings of museum exhibits containing digital applications and transcripts from workshops with museum staff.

Prompted by an interest in the widespread and transformative impact digitization has had on museum practices in recent years, (cf. Arvantis & Zuanni, 2021; Vermehren et al, 2021), this paper presents an ongoing research project on digital materialities in museum exhibitions. Focusing on materiality, the project seeks to understand the affordances for meaning-making of digital media in relation to the epistemological commitments of modes, media, and material expression (cf. Bezemer & Kress; Björkvall & Karlsson, 2011; Lindstrand, 2022). The paper includes data from a series of workshops at museums that are part of the Swedish National Maritime and Transport Museums; Vasa Museum, Vrak – museum of Wrecks, Naval Museum, and Maritime Museum. The workshops were guided by key theoretical underpinnings from multimodal social semiotics. Based on empirical research into a wide variety of cases, we aim to offer a meta-language for assessing digital materiality which can be used as a basis for scientific analyses, as well as a tool for cross-professional discussions and informed decision-making in exhibition design. We claim that the digital makes objects available in a specific form and with a specific (simulated) materiality which adds discursive layers to the representations. It contributes to the possibility of adding shifts in how the visitor is positioned, as well as shifts in presentations. Aesthetical enhancement contributes to making the digital salient and a resource in the museum’s meta-representation of self. The digital may also be used to express epistemic modality. It is a plastic material that is open and flexible. Depending on the modes it ”mimics”, it assumes corresponding properties and brings the equivalent possibilities, hindrances, and epistemological framing in communication. The project is funded by The Swedish National Heritage Board and will run for three years, 2023-2025.

La comunicación multimedial y multimodal despierta interés en muchos campos de investigación hoy en día. En comparación, se presta poca atención a la multimodalidad en relación con los diseños para el aprendizaje, en especial, en lo referente a las representaciones del conocimiento a nivel agregado. Al analizar tres textos multimodales sobre la Edad Media, que incluyen un libro de texto, una serie de películas y una exposición en un museo, este artículo proporciona información sobre el papel de los diseños multimodales para el aprendizaje en un contexto escolar.

This research report presents the results from the project Connecting digital and analog literacy: The potential of the digital pencil for text creation in schools (DigiPen). Digital pencils are used for writing, drawing, and pointing on tablet or laptop screens. So far, they have not been used to any larger extent in Swedish schools. Two studies of uses of digital pencils in Swedish compulsory schools are presented. One was carried out in a fourth-grade class and one in an eighth-grade class. The report describes the potentials of digital pencils as tools in schools for writing by hand, drawing, and thinking, as well as for performing tasks other than those that are possible with analog pencils. A number of detailed recommendations are presented, based on the empirical findings of the studies. The recommendations are directed toward teachers, teacher students, school management, and educational policymakers, as well as representatives of the hardware and software industry.

The digitalization of schools in Sweden is extensive, with approximately one laptop or tablet per learner in compulsory school (years 1- 9) (Skolverket, 2022: 42-43). These laptops and tablets offer great opportunities for exploring, learning and making meaning. However, in combination with discourses which construe these activities as either digital or analog, interconnections between digital and analog tools are at risk of being downplayed. More precisely, classroom practices are presented and enacted as either digital or analog, making either analog or digital tools relevant (cf.

Schrey, 2014). While in some cases relevant in relation to issues of a technological nature, the educational practices of thoroughly digitalized environments may be at risk of downplaying skills and practices primarily connected to the analog world: creating, shaping and writing by hand. We argue that a dichotomization of the resources used for teaching, learning, and meaning-making as either digital or analog may result in a simplified – and sometimes counter-productive – division of such processes.

However, there are material artefacts with the potential of traversing the digital and analog spheres, thus offering potential to also connect them. One such artefact is the digital pencil: a specific analog tool for digital free-hand shaping and inscription used in relation to an iPad, a computer or a drawing tablet together with compatible apps or software. The pencil has a long educational history, symbolizing the virtues of schooling through its key role in handwriting, calculation and drawing. Henry Petroski writes that ‘although the pencil has been indispensable, or perhaps because of that, its function is beyond comment and directions for its use are unwritten’ (1988: preface). However, in an era where shaping and writing by hand must find a way into digitalized schools, the (digital) pencil and its affordances (Gibson, 1979; Kress, 2010; Lindstrand, 2022) for meaning-making and learning can no longer remain ‘beyond comment’, but need attention from, for instance, literacy studies and educational research. Beyond the stricter technical research (e.g. Park et al., 2012; Hammond et al., 2019; Hochhauser et al., 2021), digital pencils – just like their analog counterparts – have received scant attention from researchers in these fields. Recent research also points to the many advantages of shaping by hand, both in terms of cognitive and embodied learning (e.g. Mangen et al., 2015; Askvik et al., 2020), which further motivates thorough analysis of pencils used in digital learning environments.

The aim of this chapter is to explore the semiotic potentials and learning potentials of digital pencils in Swedish middle school, specifically in a fourth-grade class. Three research questions are addressed:

1.    Which affordances of digital pencils are picked up and which are left untapped when fourth-grade learners are equipped with digital pencils and explore their potentials in an eight-week history project?

2.    To what extent can digital pencils index (Silverstein, 2003) and recontextualize (Linell, 1998) potentials of other sociocultural resources for the freehand creation of shapes and letters?

3.    What are the implications for teachers when designing learning activities in the classroom involving digital pencils?

The chapter draws on data collected during a pilot study in which learners and their teachers were equipped with digital pencils to use with their iPads.

Research topic/aim Inspired by the question How can we as researchers and teachers bring about learning and teaching adventures? we will turn to a recent pilot study regarding possibilities and challenges in students’ production of multimodal degree theses within our teacher education in visual arts. When a group of students approached us with the question whether they could produce multimodal theses, instead of written ones, we said yes. Their idea coincided with our interest in developing approaches to knowledge production and knowledge representation that acknowledge, and take advantage of, the visual as a valid mode and of epistemological qualities in transductive and transformative processes (e.g. Kress, 2003; 2010; Huang & Archer, 2017; Selander & Kress, 2021).  

Theoretical framework Offering students the opportunity to explore forms of knowledge production and representation other than those traditionally found in an academic context, also introduce moments of risk and uncertainty (Biesta 2013). Together, we open up adventurous spaces of possibility that are more or less unexplored, e.g. regarding how students are thereby (re)positioned as active learning subjects. Performative theories about the various forms of knowledge, about the making of the student subject are also borrowed from Denzin (2003) and Dewsbury (2000) and are here put in relation to the various affordances and cultures of recognition (Selander & Kress, 2021) that students encounter.

Methodological design The data consists of five multimodal and digitally disseminated degree theses (using Research Catalogue as a platform) and conversations with the five students who produced them.  Expected conclusions/findings Preliminary findings suggest a number of positive effects, e.g. in relation to academic literacy, understanding of subject matter; while also implying some challenges in terms of workload and construing cohesion in the multimodal text. However, as a means to invite students to work from within their own desires, offering an understanding of differences (between forms of knowledge) as productive, and the courage to encounter unpredictability, we find this pilot project promising.  

Relevance to Nordic educational research The approach applied in this project appears as a possible first step towards a wider recognition of multimodal forms of knowledge representation in academia, while also indicating some issues that need further consideration. 

The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet, VR), has funded the National Graduate School in Visual Arts and Sloyd Education, FoBoS) (Sw. Nationella forskarskolan i bildpedagogik och slöjdpedagogik). This graduate school is a collaboration between Gothenburg University, Stockholm University and Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design. The work with the Graduate school began in 2019 and the first PhD students for Degree of Licentiate started in January 2020. FoBoS have contributed to practice-based research and quality in higher education in the subjects Visual Art and Sloyd Education and in this way contributed to establishing the subjects on postgraduate level by producing new researchers.

There is an urgent need to do more research in Sloyd and Visual Arts Education in Sweden. The current situation in these minor school subjects is limited. Lack of research programs as well as doctoral positions means that these studies seldom can build an autonomous research environment with advisors which can support the subject’s specific inquiries, theories and methods. There is also a lack of educators in Swedish universities in subject didactics in general (The Research Council, 2023).

FoBoS has been part of the strategic investment in graduate schools that has been important for “the supply of skills and to further strengthen the field of educational science as well as the scientific basis of teacher education and the school” (The Research Council, 2023 p. 6). Secure resources for career paths for new researchers and building excellent research environments as a result of the national research schools, subject didactic research, research on learning processes, on professions and professional training. Collaborative doctoral students are important as there is still a "weak connection between research on teaching and the teachers' everyday school life, as well as insufficient conditions to use knowledge from research and proven experience in the activities" (The Research Council, 2023 p. 14).

In this Roundtable discussion we in the steering group of FoBoS share our experiences of our work with the graduate school, in particular challenges in supporting the development of research in this area. Some of these challenges relate to structural conditions and how support for research and graduate schools is organized. Other challenges are how to create possibilities for continued trajectories from licentiate studies to doctoral studies, as well as onwards towards post-doctoral positions. What does the future look like for postgraduate education in the subjects and in higher education? What are the conditions for producing more researchers, career opportunities and postdocs? Despite an increased number of PhD:s in educational science, there is a great shortage of researchers for teacher training, even in the aesthetic subjects "to meet the societal challenges that characterize schools and higher education today" (The Research Council, 2023 p. 6). We in the steering group for FoBoS are interested in discussing how to create new opportunities for more research and researchers in Sloyd and Visual Arts. We invite you in our Roundtable discussion.

References

The Research Council [Vetenskapsrådet] (2023). Forskningsöversikt 2023. Utbildningsvetenskap. Stockholm.

Practices of teaching, learning, and meaning making along with the genres that they actualize are often construed as either ‘digital’ or ‘traditional’/’analog’. Our presentation addresses this dichotomy and digitalization more broadly through the lens of the pencil – an artefact that perhaps more than any other symbolizes the virtues of schooling through its key role for handwriting, calculation and drawing. More specifically, the potentials of the digital pencil for connecting ‘analog’ genres to ‘digital’ ones in the subjects of Swedish and Visual arts in middle school are analyzed. Results from a pilot study carried out during four months in a school in the greater Stockholm area will be presented. A middle school is chosen because children at that age have experience of a number of genres of handwriting and drawing, but most of them have not used digital pencils in school. The following research questions will be addressed:

To what extent can digital pencils resemiotize specific potentials of typically analog genres into digital environments, when used by middle school learners?

And which are the limitations of the digital pencils in this respect?

This way, the analysis will provide knowledge of the semiotic potentials, affordances and actual uses of digital pencils from a genre perspective, something which is lacking in previous research, with the exception of a few recent studies (e.g. Riche et al, 2017)

The methodological framework is Multimodal Ethnography (Author 1, 2012; Flewitt,

2011) which makes use of a number of tools and techniques from ethnography (cf. Green and Bloome, 1997) in combination with detailed semiotic analyses of artefacts (multimodal texts and the pencils themselves) as designed objects and as objects in use. The digital and analog pencils will be analyzed in terms of the semiotic potentials afforded (Hodge & Kress, 1988; van Leeuwen, 2005), their potentials as resources for learning (Selander, 2022; Säljö, 2010), but also as a resource for resemioitizing genres. In the latter case, we follow Miller (1984) who states that genres are ”typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations” (p. 159).

Our analysis focuses on how digital pencils can be used as tools for realizing communicative actions in texts and drawings in ways that draw on how this is done in typically analog genres. All students in the class studied work with iPads, but we have provided 4 of them with digital pencils. Their teachers have then designed tasks for the learners, that prioritize genres that are traditionally analog but now move into the realm of the digital. A typical example would be the illustrated story (a type of narrative), a common multimodal text in middle school that draws on analog genres that often require drawing by hand, which, in turn, tends to lead to the use of a (analog) pencil also for the accompanying words and sentences. The methodological tools employed in the pilot study are video-recorded, ethnographically inspired, observations (regarded as visual field notes) of situated meaning-making. Written field notes will also be taken, and texts and drawings created with digital as well as analog pencils will be collected and analyzed in order to locate generic connections.

The main results point to how the digital pencils can actually be used to draw on analog genres in processes of meaning making in the classroom. However, they also show how the digital pencils have other affordances (Kress, 2010; Author 2, 2022) than just functioning as “digital ink”: they are multifunctional in the sense that they can be used as tools for an array of tasks that analog pencils cannot: moving items, framing, using lasso functions, clicking and so on. Thus, our analysis confirms the findings of Riche et al (2017) in the sense that not only can the digital pencils be used to resemiotize analog genres; they also afford new ways of creating multimodal texts and genres.

A dichotomization of the resources used for contemporary teaching, learning, and meaningmaking may result in a simplified division of such processes as either ‘digital’ or ‘analogue’. Our presentation addresses this dichotomy, and our understanding of semiotic technologies more broadly, by analyzing the potential of the digital pencil for connecting ‘analogue’ meaning-making to ‘digital’ meaning-making in the subject of Swedish in middle school and high school.  Based on data from two pilot studies, each carried out for two months, our analysis focuses on how digital pencils can be used as tools for multimodal text creation in ways that draw on how this is typically done in analogue genres. This way, the analysis will provide knowledge of the semiotic potentials, affordances and actual uses of digital pencils in school, something which is lacking in previous research, with the exception of a few recent studies (e.g. Riche et al., 2017).  Two main results stand out. First, digital pencils can actually be effectively used to draw on analogue literacy practices in the classroom. Second, digital pencils have other affordances (Lindstrand, 2022) than just functioning as “digital ink”: they are multifunctional in the sense that they can be used as tools for an array of multimodal tasks that analogue pencils cannot. Thus, the analysis concludes that not only can digital pencils be used to resemiotize analogue practices, but they also afford new ways of creating texts.

While writing has been the dominant mode in academia for a long time, multimodal social semiotics (e.g. Kress, 2003; 2010; Huang & Archer, 2017) and designs for learning (e.g. Selander & Kress, 2021) provide arguments for approaching other modes as viable resources for meaning-making and knowledge production, even in higher education. This presentation introduces a recent pilot study regarding possibilities and challenges in students’ production of multimodal degree theses within the teacher education in visual arts. The project was motivated by an interest in developing approaches to knowledge production and knowledge representation that acknowledge, and take advantage of, the visual as a valid mode and of epistemological qualities in transductive and transformative processes, while also providing possibilities for inclusion in a wide sense. The data consists of five multimodal and digitally disseminated degree theses (using Research Catalogue as a platform) and conversations with the five students who produced them. The analytical framework stem from multimodal social semiotics and designs for learning, analyzing students’ multimodal knowledge production and -representation (conceptualized as designs in learning) and the educational contexts framing their work (i.e. designs for learning). Preliminary findings suggest a number of positive effects, e.g. in relation to academic literacy, understanding of subject matter, social inclusion and identity; while also implying some challenges in terms of workload and construing cohesion in the multimodal text. In conclusion, the approach applied in this project appears as a possible first step towards a wider recognition of multimodal forms of knowledge representation in academia, while also indicating some issues that need further consideration.