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Negotiating Social And Digital Literacies Through Engagements With Open Educational Resources (OER)
Gino FransmanNelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU)South Africa
Negotiating Social And Digital Literacies Through Engagements With Open Educational Resources (OER)by Gino Fransman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
1. Introduction
2. The PhD
2.1 Illustrating (part) of the problem
2.2 Research Question/ Gap/ Aims
2.3 Method
3. Sharing and Advocating Open at NMMU 2014/5
Student and Staff Experiences
What/ Who/ When/ Where/ How/ Why
Presentation Format
#RhodesMustFall
#RhodesSoWhite http://goo.gl/8tQphx
‘The Rhodes to Introspection’- PIERRE DE VOS http://goo.gl/6hk3v
“...ask hard questions about the inherent mediocrity that results from uncritically trying to imitate the modes of thought developed elsewhere in response to different problems.
But to do so we first have to admit that it is not possible to draw a sharp line between the Apartheid past and the post-Apartheid present.”
In SA, tensions run high, a current example
The burning question at the heart of this research project:
Can engagements with OER contribute to negotiating social and digital literacies?
Survey looking at SA HE institutional culture asked–
• What is institutional culture: ‘a dominant, unspoken culture into which one needs to be assimilated— a white, male, middle-class, Eurocentric culture…’
• Alternate voice to lack of transformation issues: (but) What about my rights?
• …silence around the notion of citizenship and what this means: Does the Black academic have to work harder in order to be recognized? Does the Black academic have to assimilate into the White culture?
…abilities in English seen an important cultural attribute…
Reality: most significant challenge facing learners in SA
‘Transforming the Culture of Higher Education in South Africa’ (Beverley Thaver, 2009):
These are just some ‘issues’ to contend with in South Africa today
This project looks at using a language development tool as primary vehicle for
negotiating change
Literacy –‘basic’
/
expected
/
assumed
Voice/ Agency
/
power
/
class
/
entitlement
/
expectation
etc
Education –access
Vs
inaccessibility
Support –
do as we want,
do as we say,
do as we do,
do how we say it
Legislature & Literacy
-Govt. Wants?
-NDP
- HESA
-Vision 2030
-NMMUs Vision 2020
‘gaps’ in efforts to
realising some of these
strategic aims in education
These issues are made more complex by other factors, such as…
Synergising OER and NMMUs Vision2020.OER fits in HOW?
NMMU Values
Consider Vision2020s suggested Graduate Profile
How could we apply an OER in context in order to explore, enable or
practically approach the graduate profile as proposed in NMMUs
Vision2020?
• Well rounded, capable of success anywhere in the world
• Committed to: • Social Justice
• Equality
• Civic Consciousness
• Adaptable
• Technology savvy• Supportive of Green
Initiatives
Vision 2020’s proposed graduate profile at NMMU
How can we use engagements with OER to contribute to negotiating social and digital literacies at NMMU?
Then: how could we explore and build similar engagements in T&Lopportunities at NMMU?
Mouton, N., Louw, G. P., and Strydom, G. L. Present-Day Dilemmas And Challenges Of The South African Tertiary System. International Business & Economics Research Journal – March 2013, Volume 12, Number 3. The Clute Institute.
Consider a strategy where:With active learning as the primary
mode of instruction, not as a supplement to the lecture,
such learning will lead to permanent high-level cognitive development
(Naidoo, 2011)
Using and remixing/ repurposing (an) OER to contribute to negotiating
Social and Digital Literacies
• Student Perspectives
• Educator & T&L Support Perspectives
Work role/ Research
Teaching Perspectives (educators)
PhD study
PhD Focus
Negotiation
Social and Digital
Literacies
OER
Advocating for Open with GO_GN and NMMU
Open Education Week 2015#AllAboutOpen
Radio Support on Mondays -Introducing OERs for You @Madibaz_Radio
Bringing Open to students at NMMU
Practicing Open with staff and students at NMMU
OER: NOT presented as panacea for educational ills, not at NMMU, not in
SA, nor elsewhere
Rather: … making an OER available and applicable to
a range of students and T&L Development
Opportunities.
Open Educational Resources (OER)
USING: a writing-based form of OER, to explore
contributions to negotiating social and digital (and perhaps
identifying other) literacies?
SHARING: specific writing OER tools with students and
educators, collaborate/ facilitate, and cross-evaluate
the experiences
REMIXING/ REPURPOSING: evolving tool into NEW OER
REDISTRIBUTING: SHARING OPENLY
Perceived ‘gap’ in the NMMU/ SA context:
“We ought to be much less interested in creating a ‘new science’ than in creating a new society,” (Gee, 2008:89)
...a comment on literacy...
Gee, J. P. J. (2008) Social Linguistics and Literacies. Ideology in Discourse. Third Edition, Routledge, London and NY.
...language of deficits – cultural backgrounds, embarrassing gaps in knowledge, measured failure to achieve (and teachers to impart) some aspect of their functional, essayistic or cultural literacy
...literate actions emerge out of a constructive cognitive process that transforms knowledge in purposeful ways...
... literate act may be a process of negotiation, in which individual readers and writers must juggle conflicting demands and chart a path amongst alternate goals, constraints and possibilities
...literacy & negotiation...
Flower, L. (1994)
…means for creative and social expression, a host of new
technical skills
... inseparable from social communication
Media Literacy
Youth, Identity, and Digital Mediahttps://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/titles/free_download/9780262524834_Youth_Identity_and_Digital_Media.pdf
Citation: Ito, Mizuko et al. “Foreword." Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Edited by David Buckingham. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series
on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. vii–ix. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.vii Copyright: c 2008 Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Published under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works Unported 3.0 license.
to use a Writing OER (via OERCommons/ Library of Congress) to facilitate student writing
to engage students in larger social debates/ discourses
facilitate written engagements with social themes, establish an academic writing process to structure input
evaluate the student and educator experiences of using or applying the tool,
to collaborate with both students and academic and support staff in the creation of a writing support tool for Open release, in order to create a revisedand expanded Writing OER tool at NMMU
What/ Why/ How/ When
Open Educational Resources:Practical Engagement for Student Writing
Getting Practical
Advocating for Open at NMMU
Selected a Primary tool to approach writing challenges and explore OERpotential at NMMU
A writing OER: an open tool via OERcommons/ LoC
no devices
copies of excerpt/ text to engage with in hardcopy
hand written, supported writing artefacts
for immediate review, for groupwork, for developing in association with academic support units
…the steps are essential and handy in writing a good piece…
…when answering the questions, I realised that I was not specific, my statements were vague…
…It got me to reflect on a question and critically think about what I am writing…
student reflections…using the OER
…learnt not to be so ignorant of the things happening around me…
…very insightful, I’d like to see more…
…I’m going to share what I learnt here today, it might help quite a few people that I know…
student reflections:engaging social issues via OER
#RhodesMustFall
#RhodesSoWhite
About yesterday’s presentation, a welcome eye-opener to all of us; it also
puts the Writing Centre in a more “modern” light. OER: thumbs up!*
Motivational, interesting, you caught and kept our attention, eye-opener and a nice exercise in class; the Rhodes topic interesting and stimulating
I definitely see potential for using the OER Writing Tool in my T&L. To make it more meaningful and practical, I would like us to spend more time on the actual OER searching part in class, this could then be enforced and followed up by means of an assignment
Lecturer reflections
*Response after Intro to Open & OER, instigating further interactions, several emails, and ongoing and future engagements
To summarise:
What?
1. Document Analysis:
Establishing Instructional Terms currently and previously used in four distinct curricular offerings, analysing five varying NMMU modules, academic expectations, and direct T&L support as provided
DEFINE, DESCRIBE, DISCUSS (Possible Instructional Terms to be selected, based on document analysis of lecturer materials, assignments and assessments)
2. Engaging with the Writing Tool
3. Evaluating Experiences of Using the Writing Tool
Who and When?
Students and Lecturers in the following modules or programmes at NMMU:
• Chemical Process Technologies (SCIENCE) – 9 April 2015
• Introduction to Law 1x1/ 1x2 (LAW) – May 2015
• Nursing Education (HEALTH SCIENCES) -Ongoing since 2015 (Jan – Nov)
• 2 x Education Honours Programmes (EDUCATION FACULTY) May – Nov 2015
Where? During Introduction and Follow-Up workshops on
Academic Literacies and Graduate Attribute Development
Introduction to OER, &
Writing Using an OER
Who, When and Where?
HOW:- awareness-raising intervention in-class,introduction to OER for discipline and career
- facilitating the use of an OER for writing within the discipline (online and face to face)
- evaluating student and educator perspectives on their use of a Writing OER
- focus group interviews and analysis of feedback, in order to develop an OER Writing tool modelled on the LOC/ OERCommons tool
Exploring Literacies Through Practice
Why?
To contribute to negotiating social & digital literacies
To develop a writing tool for use in SA HE
To engage national challenges in language competence
To approach new ways to negotiate a rapidly escalating social crisis in our new democracy
This PhD
Twitter: @ginofransman
Thank You
Negotiating Social And Digital Literacies Through Engagements With Open Educational Resources (OER) by Gino Fransman is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
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