Researching academic literacies in a digital age:

issues of meaning making

m.r.lea@open.ac.uk

http://oro.open.ac.uk/21165/

What does academic literacies offer?

• Established theoretical and methodological frame• Foregrounds issues of meaning making• Offers framing for asking critical questions about learning

and technologies• Focus on textual encounters and significance for

participants• Sees texts and practices as central to construction of

knowledge• Importance of institutional context

Research approach

• Ethnographic-style• Drawing on academic literacies research• 3 institutions – diverse HE contexts• 45-32 students • Smalltown (14) Northcity (11) Centrecity (7)• Data included: 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

modes and mediational means

practices

participants

meaning making

Spheres for Meaning Making

ESSAY QUESTIONS TERM 1

Term I - essay deadline – Monday 3 December 2007

Choose one of the following:

1. What does the field archaeologist need to know about modern

scientific dating

techniques?

2. Using examples of methods and sites, evaluate the

contribution of geoarchaeological

studies to archaeology

3. Animal bone assemblages can provide information for a

variety of different questions that

archaeologists have about past societies. Discuss the kinds of

information they provide

and give examples in your answer.

4. Why is material culture so important in everyday life? In what

ways can material culture be

said to be ‘active’?

5. Graham Clark excavated Star Carr in the 1950s. Since then

numerous interpretations of the site

have been proposed based on: economic models,

social/environmental/ritual considerations, and

landscape/memory culture considerations. Compare and

evaluate interpretations proposed in

articles published before and after 2000.

Using Google Scholar

Because it searches within text so it searches for the words throughout everything, whereas the library one only searches on the title of the book or the title of the journal article so it’s really useful because if you’re wanting an article that’s about the political implications of phenomenology in a specific country or something like that, the title might not say that but it might talk about it in the actual book. If you can type in like political implications phenomenology then it will find someone talking about the political implications of… So it’s found something about feminists worrying about the political but it’s got phenomenology in it as well so you know, where you’ve founded things that is more relevant to what you want to know about.

Using wikipedia• I quite often look up the meaning of words, like I use Wikipedia for just

random questions. Like this morning I wanted to know what ubiquitous meant, so I just used that and it wasn’t anything to do with college that was just me wanting to know. So I quite often use it for things like that. I use Wikipedia a lot to answer questions about stuff like what year something happened or, you know you hear people say things sometimes and you just like what does that actually mean.

• …you’re technically not suppose to be using Wikipedia for college stuff because anyone can put whatever they want on it, that’s the idea. You can’t reference it, that’s the thing but yes I have to look at things like, just general things and get the general gist.

• I would be paying more attention if it was for university as to where the information was coming from and trying to keep track of that rather than like for stuff that I would known just for myself I probably wouldn’t pay much attention to where it’s from

Implications

• Changing status of knowledge institutionally driven• Redefinition of literacy in the university• Paying attention to integration of range of genres

• How can we find ways to harness these practices as

critical intellectual resource?