The challenges to delivering quality education range from family structure and support to schools environment that can handle the diversity of teaching strategies. Considering the fact students have different learning time and styles among them, it also turns out the process more peculiar.

As 21st-century society has changed in many ways, so has the knowledge representations. Traditional literacy used to be thought of as letters in words. Although such an idea has lasted a while, that phonemic awareness illustrates how outdated the literacy process that does not consider multimodal knowledge might be. Besides, hypermedia and multimedia conjunction can be used to cater for a wider variety of student learning styles. (Sankey et al, 2010).

VARK model. Image source: Kompas Muda

The VARK model proposed by Fleming (2001) stands for Visual (V), Aural (A), Read/Write (R), and Kinesthetic (K). The author analyzed the best artifacts of teaching according to the different learner styles. Aural learners, for instance, like to explain topics and discuss ideas, while Kinesthetic learners face field trips, trial, and error as more effective learning strategies. The author himself explains the definition of a multimodal learner on this YouTube link: https://youtu.be/DTSpCoYVpmo

The endorsement for the use of multimodal meaning goes through the fact it can feel nearly impossible for a school to find a curriculum that works for the entire system. The different channels of information, or modes, are then used on a collaborative way to deliver better learning experiences.

The impacts of this learn-by-style strategy can be seen in all scholar spectrum, which includes undergraduate students (Moayyeri, 2015).

The examples of multimodal strategies range from the use of multimodal texts (https://youtu.be/se3G8LV40gg) to reducing overload brought up by the many different inputs (texts, audio, images). Activities in this context may also vary and be adopted depending on the school's infrastructure resources, but normally use to consider:

1. education games;
2. think-pair-share;
3. case-based learning;
4. personalizer journal entries;
5. multimedia research projects.

As particular experiences I have two meaningful moments in terms of multimodal learning. The first occurrence was during an exam my students were taking. I asked them to solve a problem, and besides giving the instructions on a text format, and decided to add an image related to the context. The problem/image was about a classic cartoon they used to watch. I was afraid the image could be too distracting, but it end up more helpful. The second experience was during a computer architecture class. I was explaining a concept involving  hardware components. At the moment I took a motherboard circuit and pass to the students, they realize in a tactical way the meaning of the concept itself. 

References:

https://www.prodigygame.com/blog/multimodal-learning/

Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (2017). Conceptualizing e-learning. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (Eds), e-Learning Ecologies. New York: Routledge.

Fleming,N.D (2001).Teachingandlearningstyles:VARKstrategies.Christchurch,NewZealand:N.D.Fleming.

Moayyeri, H., 2015. The Impact of Undergraduate Students’ Learning Preferences (VARK Model) on Their Language Achievement. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 6(1), p.132.

 
Sankey, M., Birch, D., & Gardiner, M. (2010). Engaging students through multimodal learning environments: The journey continues. Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney10/procs/Sankey-full.pdf.