This master’s thesis investigates how to incorporate multimodal production in the subject Danish (L1) in Danish upper secondary education.

Traditionally Danish is associated with two main learning objectives concerning writing. Firstly, the subject should support the students’ literacy skills. Secondly, it should provide the students with the opportunity to develop their own voice in writing.
This study seeks to create a didactic design which supports both learning objectives in a multimodal perspective.

The methodology chosen to research this subject is a design experiment based on principles derived from Design-Based Research with an underlying pragmatic knowledge approach.

A theoretical integration of a social semiotic theory of communication and learning and Danish learning objectives leads to the creation of four design principles for a didactic design of multimodal, digital production in Danish.

The design principles are tested on upper secondary school students in connection with the study of digital poetry.
The analysis of the students’ experience with the didactic design shows that they identify with expressing themselves creatively through multimodal production in social media familiar to them. This, I argue, is a sign of the didactic design supporting the students’ opportunity to develop their own voice.
The analysis also finds that there are elements of the initial didactic design that stands in the way of the students’ identification with the digital, multimodal production.

On the basis of the analysis the design principles are refined to meet the pragmatic validation criteria to enhance their usefulness in didactic practice.