Abstract

This chapter examines the multimodal ways in which teachers gain visual and haptic access to the students’ digital devices to solve problems encountered by them. The setting is a digital skills course aimed at the elderly. Depending on the nature of the problem, and the teacher’s epistemic status, the problems were resolved in two possible ways: (1) through instructional demonstrations (2) through problem-solving. Demonstrations were utilized when the encountered problem was treated as a learnable, while problem-solving was engaged when the problem was treated as a solvable. In cases of learnables, the teachers first sought to resolve the issue via multiple modalities which would allow the student to remain in control of the device. If these modalities proved unsuccessful, the teachers would resolve the issue through an instructional demonstration and accompanied rapport-building turns at talk. Solvables were resolved in a more direct way by the teacher taking immediate control of the device.