Little is known about the impact of university-situated science mentoring programs on the affect of high achieving high school students, and few science mentorship programs have been described. This study describes a university-based summer science mentorship program designed to offer participants a challenging science research experience and identifies issues that influence the affective outcomes for participants. Interview data was collected from eight participants at the 2nd and 6th weeks of

It can be argued that multimodal digital literacy practices promote the development of literacy skills needed for today’s world without being constrained to one mode of learning. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the employment of multimodal practices during instruction within EFL classrooms in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is minimal and fraught with obstacles to its effective utilization. It is, therefore, essential to determine whether this is the case and, if so, to develop strategies that would ameliorate this situation. This study, therefore, sought to identify KSA postsecondary EFL instructors’ self-reporting of their use of various types of technology, computer software, and online software; the different teaching/learning and assessment strategies that they employ; the obstacles they face with the use of technology in their classrooms; and their beliefs about the use of multimodal digital literacy practices for teaching and learning. The study, which was based on the premises of social semiotic theory, utilized a mixed-methods design from which survey and focus group interview data were triangulated. The findings demonstrated that while most postsecondary EFL instructors have a strong positive attitude towards multimodal digital literacy practices and make robust use of specific types of technology and software programs, obstacles prevent these practices from being more widely and frequently deployed in the KSA. Suggestions for how to make a transformation to a more pronounced use of multimodal practices happen, and the limitations to the study are also presented.

Dr. Joseph Engemann is a member of the Department of Graduate and Undergraduate Studies in Education at Brock University. He specializes in research on classroom assessment and evaluation, teacher induction and mentoring, and aboriginal science education.Dr. Tiffany Gallagher is a member of the Department of Pre-service Education at Brock University. Her current research interests include literacy assessment, reading and writing strategy instruction, teachers with learning disabilities, and the role of the in-school resource teacher.

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