1 Academic literacies in the digital university Mary Lea & Robin Goodfellow Institute of...

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Academic literacies in the digital university

Mary Lea & Robin Goodfellow

Institute of Educational Technology

Open University

Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009

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Outline of the talk

• The Academic Literacies perspective

• Focus on ‘the digital’

• Evidence from the Digital Literacies in Higher Education project

• Methodological issues

• Discussion

Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009

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The Academic Literacies perspective

• Literacies as social and cultural practice

• Focus on texts in academic settings

• Digital communication as textual practice

Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009

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Discourses of the digital

• The digital native/net generation

• Learning 2.0

• The ‘unbundled’ university

Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009

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Digital Literacies in Higher Educationhttp://digital-literacies.open.ac.uk/home.cfm

• Ethnographic-style

• Drawing on academic literacies research

• 3 institutions – diverse HE contexts

• 45-32 students

• Smalltown (14) Northcity (11) Centrecity (7)

• Data includes: interview transcripts, field notes, web pages (social/ curriculum based), personal development plans, students own work (group and individual), photos

• Rich, diverse, hybrid, across media, multimodal

Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009

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A case study• Texts, technologies and digital literacy

practices

• Digital literacies and the institutional context

• Diversity of resources for knowledge making

Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009

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Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009

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Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009

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Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009

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Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009

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Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009

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Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009

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Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009

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The presence of ‘the academic’ in digital literacy practices

• Tasks represented as genres of writing

• Knowledge represented as critical, analytical, argumentative

• Researching the relation between ‘the institution’, ‘the academic’, and ‘the learner’ in digital contexts

Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009

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Methodological Issues

• What counts as observation in ‘virtual ethnography’?

• What counts as data? Where does collection end and analysis begin?

• Issues of anonymity, ethics and representation

Seminar 1 Edinburgh University October 16 2009