Robin Goodfellow

Literacy, literacies and the digital in higher education

This paper is a critical review of some recent literature around the ‘literacies of the digital’ in schools and higher education. It discusses the question: ‘what does the conjoining of the terms “digital” and “literacy” add to our understanding of teaching and learning in higher education’? It explores the continuing role of critical literacy in relation to the idea that digital literacies are transformative for pedagogy in this sector.

Opportunity and e‐quality: Intercultural and linguistic issues in global online learning

In this paper we investigate some of the ways that cultural and linguistic differences manifest themselves in global online learning environments. We start from the position that the providers of educational opportunity across national and geographic boundaries have a responsibility to consider how their materials and practices can help to promote cross‐cultural understanding. We discuss some of the negative implications of taking a ‘centre and periphery’ view of participants in an internationally‐marketed online MA program, but offer some data on student performance to justify using that perspective to initiate a more in‐depth investigation of their experience of cross‐cultural interaction during the courses. We present some of the outcomes of a qualitative study of student talk about these issues, and identify the topics of ‘cultural otherness’, ‘perceptions of globality’, ‘linguistic difference’, and ‘academic convention’ as focal constructs around which their experiences could be recounted. We discuss how to interpret these narratives, in terms of our aim of promoting cross‐cultural understanding through online education, and also in terms of action needed to address perceived inequalities in the educational opportunity offered by the courses as they stand.

Online literacies and learning: Operational, cultural and critical dimensions

This paper addresses the nature of literacy practices in online distance learning environments, specifically those involved in text-based collaborative discussion at post-compulsory level. A three-dimensional framework, relating operational, cultural and critical aspects of linguistic interaction online, is used to argue that research in this field needs to take account of wider institutional and social contexts if it is to address issues of student resistance to socialisation into virtual learning communities. Some methodologies for research of this kind are discussed, and sample analyses of participant interaction on UK Open University Masters courses are presented.

Reconceptualising Culture in Virtual Learning Environments: From an ‘Essentialist’ to a ‘Negotiated’ Perspective

The notion of ‘culture’ as an essential attribute of individuals and groups, owed to national or ethnic background, is critiqued in this article as unhelpful to the project of understanding how diverse participants in virtual learning environments (VLEs) individually and jointly construct a culture of interaction. An alternative conceptualisation of culture in VLEs is proposed, which views online discussion as just one of the sites in which the culture of a VLE is negotiated. Other sites are to be found in institutional practices of teaching and learning at a distance, and in the wider cultural narratives of the Internet. Examples from two online masters courses in online and distance education are used to contextualise this concept of culture, exploring the differences in patterns of participation that are produced by contrasting institutional cultures, even though such participation is explicitly valorised as the means and the subject of the learning that goes on in both these courses. Some implications for the understanding and management of student diversity in these environments are considered, in particular the need for emerging cultural narratives around VLEs to reflect all aspects of student engagement in distance education, not just those which relate to online interaction.

Assessing learners’ writing using lexical frequency

In this work we set out to investigate the feasibility of applying measures of lexical frequency to the assessment of the writing of learners of French. A system developed for analysing the lexical knowledge of learners, according to their productive use of high and low frequency words (Laufer and Nation 1995), was adapted for French and used to analyse learners’ texts from an Open University French course. Whilst we found that this analysis could not be said to reflect the state of the learners’ vocabulary knowledge in the same way that Laufer and Nation’s study did, elements of the system’s output did correlate significantly with scores awarded by human markers for vocabulary use in these texts. This suggests that the approach could be used for self-assessment. However, the feedback that can be given to learners on the basis of the current analysis is very limited. Nevertheless, the approach has the potential for refinement and when enhanced with information derived from successive cohorts of learners performing similar writing tasks, could be a first step in the development of a viable aid for learners evaluating their own writing.

Supporting Writing for Assessment in Online Learning.

This article explores some specific issues involved in online learning and assessment. It draws on data from a postgraduate course for professional educators, delivered globally online, and highlights the relationship between students’ online discussion and their written assessed work, arguing that we need to focus on both of these in terms of the writing demands they make on students. In so doing it utilizes a theoretical framework which conceptualizes writing as contextualized social practice. The paper illustrates the complexity of the rhetorical demands being made on students in these new environments of teaching and learning and, in focusing on writing, complements present approaches to online learning which have, to date, tended towards collaborative and constructivist perspectives. The article highlights the relationship between pedagogy, technology and assessment. It concludes with a discussion of the design of an online writing resource to support student writers on this particular masters programme.

Virtuality and the Shaping of Educational Communities

Abstract This paper considers the relation between educational institutions, the learning communities that ‘inhabit’ them and the virtual spaces into which many of these communities are currently expanding. It explores, through a review of the literature on virtual community and its implementation in a variety of educational contexts, the idea that the practices of virtual communication and the social practices that give rise to learning communities are involved in a reciprocally shaping relationship which is not always acknowledged in the discourses of online learning. It argues that educationists should study the social practices of virtual learning communities, as well as the interactions of their participants, in order to ensure that communities are properly inclusive. It proposes that situated and virtual activities and events should both be viewed as textually mediated literacies, so as to enable their mutual shaping to be described.

Learning to learn a language – at home and on the Web

This paper reports on work at the Open Universitys Centre for Modern Languages (CML) and Institute of Educational Technology (IET), on the use of technology to support language learners working at home and in virtual groups via the Internet. We describe the Lexica On-Line project, which created a learning environment for Open University students of French, incorporating computer-based lexical tools to De used at home, an on-line discussion forum, and guided access to the Francophone Web. We report on some of the outcomes of this project, and discuss the effectiveness of such a configuration for the promotion of reflective language-learning practices.