Personal Expression and Digital Expertise: Exploring Malaysian Students’ Multi-Modal Aspirations Through the Use of ArcGIS Story Maps

The lived reality for young people in a highly urbanized environment is a challenge that previous generations did not have to face. Young people not only experience the transformation of their physical environment, but also the reworkings of values, family, education, and the economy that are now different. Within this constant flux of a changing landscape, engaging with young people for research purposes is also an endeavour that needs to be dynamic. This paper looks at how the aspirations of young people can be documented, as they desire to bring sustainable change to their quotidian life. Assessing their aspirations qualitatively is thus problematized; older, more established methods may not be able to capture their true intentions. This paper is based on an experimental study with undergraduate university students who express their ideals for a sustainable future through the ArcGIS Story Maps platform. The use of this tool enables a display of multiple texts - written essays, reports, photo essays, embedded videos, survey polls, maps, historical documents, visual pictures, case studies and even layout designs - as a demonstration of how young people can express their multi-modal views qualitatively. The main research technique used is the multimodal discourse analysis. Although this study is only exploratory, findings reveal that urban youth today are very willing to express their aspirations, although they do so in more creative ways. This experimental study hopes to raise pertinent questions for qualitative researchers: are researchers ready to study responses that incorporate multimodality? And are researchers ready to include the use of digitalised tools as a means of expression? It is hoped that this pilot study will challenge researchers to shift gears; to study young people’s lives differently, and to incorporate more dynamic means of qualitative assessments to research findings.