University of Liverpool, United Kingdom
About the Speaker
Professor Kay O’Halloran is Chair Professor, Head of the Department of Communication and Media (2019–present) and Co-Director of the Digital Media & Society Institute (2023—present) at the University of Liverpool. Her research area is multimodal analysis involving the study of language, images and other resources in texts, interactions and events. She has a specific interest in multimodal and visual literacies, particularly in mathematical and scientific discourse. Over the past two decades, she has focused on the development and use of digital tools and techniques for multimodal analysis and mixed methods approaches to big data analytics of digital communications. Her current research involves context-based information fusion approaches for analysing online and social media.
About the Talk
Multimodal Approach to Language Education and the Challenges of Generative AI
The multimodal approach has significance for language education in terms of understanding how language is a tool for constructing reality, and how it differs to images, scientific symbolism and other modalities. Drawing upon accessible conceptual frameworks, it is possible to study how linguistic choices interact with images and other resources to create meaning in multimodal texts. The approach is therefore useful for enhancing students’ capacities for interpreting and producing texts that employ and integrate a range of modalities and developing pedagogical practices that facilitate these competencies in different contexts. The multimodal approach is particularly relevant given recent advances in Generative AI (GenAI) which include large multimodal models that are designed to process and generate combinations of text, images, audio and videos. The ease with which students can readily access and use GenAI and multimodal tools (e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, DeepSeek) has created an environment where there is even greater urgency for critical approaches to multimodality to be integrated into language education, given the unique challenges in this field with its focus on language and multimodal proficiency. From this perspective, multimodal pedagogy has become essential for leveraging the benefits and mitigating the risks of GenAI technologies in language education.