Academic Writing as Aesthetics Applied: Creative Use of Technology to Support Multisensory Learning

The chapter describes a pilot project which sought to offer a student-centred and culturally-sensitive alternative to the traditional, didactic approaches to the pedagogy of academic writing. To this end, the study draws on the neurological theory of aesthetic experience proposed by Ramachandran and Hirstein (1999). Based on this theory, it develops and tests a methodology designed to provide students with tools to evaluate the communicative impact of the meaning-making patterns in relation to which they organise their texts. The cross-disciplinary nature of the project resulted in the development of an approach which (a) provides students with new lenses for examining factors that impact on and interact with text production, and (b) does so in ways that allow students to engage critically with the genre of academic writing and, in so doing, account for their personal and cultural styles.