Multimodal Writing Creative Use Cases for Higher Ed Educators with Adobe Express

Overview: Why Multimodal Writing?

Research papers, essays, and critical narratives are so familiar and common in college because they are so well-suited for the purpose of higher education, which is to develop and share knowledge. Compared to most social media, which are light, “snackable,” and designed to be quickly consumed, long-form academic work is meant to be detailed, evidence-based, thorough, and thoughtful. A Tik-Tok video is a largely emotional experience that is browsed and digested in a minute or less. An academic report is meant to be intellectual and studied closely over an extended time.

However, academic work no longer needs to be constrained by the singular modality of text-on-paper. The webpage feature in Adobe Express makes it easy to develop and share long-form writing and research because even novices can weave together writing, images, graphics, video, podcasts, and data in just a couple clicks. There are dozens of ways to create lightweight social media, but there is nothing as powerful, easy-to-use, and professional as a multimodal academic project made in Adobe Express with Firefly AI.

As you read through the instructions and study the inspirational multimodal sample in this module, consider the wide range of long-form multimodal projects you could create using Adobe Express. Research projects across all disciplines and methodologies can be comfortably captured using the webpage feature. The dreaded 5-paragraph essay can become so much more engaging for the author and the reader when there’s a dynamic relationship between text and image. Stories of all kinds, especially reflection narratives, become more dimensional when you offer a visual narrative to complement your writing.

Multimodal reports, essays, and narratives can now leverage the power of digital media to amplify your college research, analysis, and stories. Multimodal work can be so engaging because it’s designed to be shared, not gather dust on a shelf. That’s why the + button in Adobe Express is so simple but powerful, especially when it leads you to also clicking the Share button to showcase your work.