Written Communication Oct 2001

The Academic Achievement Game: Designs of Undergraduates' Efforts to Get Grades

MICHAEL NEWMAN

Abstract

Using the notion of design developed as part of the New London Group's Multiliteracies Project, this qualitative multicase study examines undergraduate academic literacy as a multimodal achievement game. Retrospective interviews and textual analyses revealed a series of operations on course content that constituted moves in the game. The goal of the game was to find, move, and display content, including not only facts but also concepts and forms of situated knowledge that would gain the highest points on assessments. Better “players” were more aware than their lower achieving counterparts of the game as specific activity different from learning. They also had more nuanced and planned versions of the operations that began with what was expected on assessments and moved backwards toward sources. Findings support forms of preparing students for academic success through the multiliteracies pedagogy that combines consciousness raising through overt instruction with forms of immersion and critical analysis.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
2001-10-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088301018004003
CompPile
Open Access
Closed
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Citation context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Harwood et al. (2012)
    Performance in the Citing Behavior of Two Student Writers
    Written Communication

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