Photo by Robo Wunderkind: Flat-lay photograph of brightly colored toys on a white tabletop, and a child's hands touching an iPad.

Multimodal learning engages learners, makes learning more effective, and also improves accessibility. Any educator would be glad to offer these advantages to their students. But, incorporating multimodal learning into courseware or making use of it in the classroom isn’t always straightforward. There are many possible ways to use multimodal learning, and not all of them guarantee the best outcomes. 

To help instructional designers and other education professionals, we’ve put together 5 tips to support multimodal learning when designing courses, curriculum materials, or planning for its use in the classroom: 

Description: A woman in a green turtleneck and glasses sits at a wooden table, smiling down at a colorful laptop.

As recently as twenty years ago, university and ongoing education courses relied on lectures and textbooks alone. Today’s students immerse themselves in course material through a wide range of multimedia resources and interactive courseware. 

A multimedia or multimodal approach to learning is not only more interesting for students but also brings learning benefits. Multimedia tools and resources can help bring abstract concepts to life, boost student motivation and interest, and introduce large amounts of information efficiently, among other advantages.

As a courseware or instructional designer, you naturally want to bring all of these benefits to your students. Here are five practical ways to create a multimodal environment in your courseware:

Photo by Yarenci Hdz

Which would be more memorable for you, reading a section of a textbook about an event in history, or watching a musical that depicts that same historical event? 

If you answered “watching a musical,” then you know the power of multimodal learning. When building effective, engaging lessons, teachers and instructional designers know that you can’t just give students reading materials and expect them to understand the content. Multimodal learning helps boost engagement, build connections, and improve learning overall. 

Yet, what exactly is multimodal learning, what are some examples of its use, and how does it benefit learners?