Competent readers' online multimodal reading strategies use

Abstract

As literacy and reading evolve, it is important to identify and describe the strategies and skills used in constructing meaning. This study examines online multimodal reading (OMR) strategies: those used in constructing meaning from multimodal information sources (e.g., images, audio, written words) on the Internet. Participants read online multimodal texts from a laptop screen and provided verbal reports of their reading processes as they read multimodal texts on the Internet to learn a scientific topic. I collected and analyzed think-aloud data, using verbal protocol analysis. I cataloged and described their multimodal reading comprehension strategies. The verbal report data were complemented with retrospective interviews focused on participants’ accounts of how they read, reader-computer interaction captured in the screen-recording video, and written pre- and post-reading knowledge reports focused on what is learned from OMR. OMR strategies they used were coded and categorized to provide insights into the nature of the competent readers’ strategic online multimodal reading. I used the integrated data to create a taxonomy of OMR reading strategies as a key outcome of this study. The results of this study may inform theoretical models of online multimodal reading, as well as instruction intended to foster student learning.