Putting aside Maslow's Hammer: multimodal pedagogies in the arts and humanities

Drawing on data from a recent mixed-methods study [Andrew 2025. “Exploring Digital Multimodal Approaches to Teaching, Learning, and Assessment through the Perspectives of English Lecturers in Higher Education.” PhD diss., University of Leicester], we discuss multimodal literacies as an alternative to traditional essay-based pedagogies in arts and humanities education. Although the original research focused on textual studies at UK universities, we argue its implications are relevant and urgent across a range of disciplines and at every level of teaching and learning. Multimodal work requires the arrangement of complementary semiotic modes (images, sound, text, etc.) to produce artefacts such as short films, websites and videogames. Thus, it activates a broad range of literacies in both its creators and its readers. Thanks to digital technologies, such tasks are now realistic options for teaching, learning and assessment. We explore interview responses from academics who have introduced multimodal production to their pedagogy, and discuss in detail three examples of such tasks: video essay, film poem and podcast. Finally, we identify real-world obstacles to the introduction of multimodal pedagogies, and propose some responses.