ALT Open Access Repository

Hanaway, Cleo

OpenJoyce: a great field was to be opened up in the line of opening up

Deepwell, Maren

 
Registered Charity No: 1063519  Chief Executive: Maren Deepwell 
Central Executive Committee: Haydn Blackey, Alastair Clark, James Clay, Claire Donlan, Shirley Evans,  Registered address:  
Douglas Gowan, Diana Laurillard, Matt Lingard, Dick Moore, Martin Oliver, Norbert Pachler, Vanessa Pittard.  Gipsy Lane   
  Headington 
   Oxford OX3 0BP, UK 
ALT Ambassadors*: Dame Wendy Hall DBE FREng FRS, Professor of Computer Science at the  Phone: + 44 (0)1865 484125        
University of Southampton; Terry Mayes, Emeritus Professor at Glasgow Caledonian University; Jane Williams,  Fax: + 44 (0)1865 484165  
past Principal of City of Wolverhampton College and Executive Director for FE, Skills and Regeneration of Becta.  Email: admin@alt.ac.uk 
* Ambassadors provide informal advice to ALT on matters within their area of interest, and act as advocates for ALT.  http://www.alt.ac.uk 
 
The House of Lords Science and Technology Select 
Committee Short Inquiry into Open Access 
A response from the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) 
 
"The kind of organization we wish to aim at is one where all relevant information should be 
available to each research worker and in amplitude in proportion to its degree of relevance. 
Further, that not only should the information be available, but that it should be to a large extent put 
at the disposal of the research worker without his having to take any special steps to get hold of it."  
- JD Bernal, writing in 19391 
ALT  
1. The Association for Learning Technology (ALT) is the UK’s leading membership organisation in 
the learning technology field2. We are a professional body with over 1000 individual members, and 
over 200 organisational and sponsoring members (including most of the UK’s universities, a 
substantial number of colleges, government bodies such as BIS, and large and small UK and 
international IT companies). We run a peer-reviewed journal Research in Learning Technology 
(RLT). We hold a very successful 3-day annual international conference. We run a competence-
based accreditation scheme for learning technologists that is used internationally. We are a 
nominating body for members of Research Excellence Framework panels.3 We respond to policy 
and other consultations such as this one.
4  
 
2. Our field of discourse allows us to have a view in this area from a number of sometimes 
conflicting standpoints. We have academic authors in our membership who receive royalties for 
their works. We have links to publishers. We are a professional and learned body that publishes a 
peer-reviewed journal. However, we are also a body committed to wide availability of information 
through Open Access to resources. We are keen that students at UK learning establishments 
enjoy the benefits that technology brings. We are keen to see the power of the Internet exploited to 
the benefit of society at large and worldwide, with information a common good rather than the 
basis of restricted practices. What follows is therefore the result of balanced consideration and is 
informed by our own data arising from the experience of our own journal.   
   
                                               
1
 Quoted in “Information Science in 2003: A Critique” by Sheila Webber, Journal of Information Science 2003; 29; 311, 
DOI: 10.1177/01655515030294007. 
2
 ALT defines Learning Technology as “the broad range of communication, information and related technologies that can 
be used to support learning, teaching, and assessment”. 
3
 For the 2014 REF individuals we nominated to the Education and to the Computer Science sub-panels were each 
appointed. 
4
 Our recent policy consultation responses can be found on the ALT web site. 
 
A copy of this response is available at http://repository.alt.ac.uk/2242/  
 
Page 2 
Our starting point 
3. The Internet and the World Wide Web change many aspects of cultural and scientific production, 
along with the way in which knowledge is shared and mediated. Just as the music and newspaper 
industries have changed, so the publishing industry is changing, as is the role of libraries.  
 
4. Although it has changed greatly in the sense that articles are now available online to those with 
access rights, scholarly publishing has so far remained relatively unscathed by the “Internet 
revolution”, mainly because: 
● the business-model is typically subscription-based, under which usage of scholarly articles 
is not paid for at the point of use;  
● subscribing libraries need to keep a back-catalogue and therefore there is a tendency 
towards lock-in; 
● publishing contracts are complicated and slow to get changed, especially for smaller 
learned societies, many of whom lack the muscle and experience to deal effectively with 
large publishing companies; 
● the industry is dominated by a four main businesses (Wiley, Springer, Elsevier, and Taylor 
and Francis), as the diagram below indicates. 
 
 
Source - 2012 talk by MIT Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Hal Abelson at SIGCSE 2012 on 2 March 
2012 in Raleigh, North Carolina: http://www.sigcse.org/sigcse2012/downloads/ha_sigcseTalk.pdf  
 
5. We note and strongly welcome and support the opening remarks made by Lord Krebs (just prior 
to Dame Janet Finch’s 15 January evidence session) that the Committee will not be questioning 
the overall Open Access agenda, which it takes as a given. For this reason we have not sought in 
this note to justify the push towards Open Access, which we fully support. 
Research in Learning Technology (RLT) 
6. Our peer reviewed journal has been published since 1993, initially as a conventionally published 
journal. In 2009 ALT established an ePrints based Open Access Repository – 
http://repository.alt.ac.uk – into which, by agreement with Taylor and Francis, RLT articles were 
 
A copy of this response is available at http://repository.alt.ac.uk/2242/  
 
Page 3 
placed after an 18 month embargo period. In December 2010, following a competitive tendering 
process, our Trustees decided to change the publishing model for RLT from conventional to Open 
Access, with effect from 1 January 2012. The change involved a change of publisher from Taylor 
and Francis (one of the “big four”) to Co-Action Publishing (a small specialist Open Access 
publisher based in Sweden). RLT is now a “Gold” Open Access journal, published under a Creative 
Commons Attribution BY 3.0 licence, with currently no Article Processing Charges (APCs), and 
with a SPARC Europe Seal for Open Access Journals5. We made the transition to Open Access 
without introducing APCs, whilst at the same time managing a small reduction in our organisational 
membership fees. For the moment we continue to make RLT available in print. The most recent 
Issue of RLT is a Special Issue on Digital Inclusion and Learning, guest edited by Professor 
William Dutton (Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University) and Professor Jane Seale (Graduate 
School of Education, University of Exeter).6 
The effect of openness 
7. Switching to Open Access has sharply increased the use made of RLT’s content. During April 
2011 Taylor and Francis made RLT freely but temporarily available (along with the content of many 
of its other education journals). This resulted in a six-fold increase in the number of full text 
downloads. Since switching to Open Access in January 2012, the number of full text downloads 
per month for the top 10 most downloaded of RLT’s articles increased on average by a factor of 
8.1 (range 6.2 to 11.5). The average number of abstract views recorded per month increased by a 
factor of 4.6 on the average monthly 2011 level, to nearly 18,000. The average number of full text 
downloads recorded per month increased by a factor of 9.6 on the average monthly 2011 level, to 
nearly 17,000.  
 
8. It is important to note here that, as soon as articles are made available as Open Access content, 
especially under the most open CC-BY licence (which RLT uses), there is nothing to stop multiple 
versions of articles being posted anywhere on the Internet. As a result the traditional concept of 
“full text download” from a journal’s own primary publishing platform has even less meaning than 
under conventional publishing arrangements. For obvious reasons it is far too early to say whether 
the switch to Open Access will change the esteem, influence and impact of RLT overall, or whether 
it will have any influence on citation rates. 
 
9. Overall we have been very pleased by our move although it was not without significant financial 
risk. It has been part of thinking through our changing role, activities and income streams in a 
changing world.  
Our observations on the implementation of the Finch report 
10. As a learned society that successfully made its journal “Gold” Open Access of its own accord, 
we fully support the move to Gold that the Finch report and now the Government, the funding 
councils and the major UK research funders are supporting. We concur with RCUK’s Mark Thorley 
that Gold will make the outputs of research “accessible at the highest quality to the widest number 
of people, to do the widest range of stuff with, with the least restrictions”7. 
                                               
5
 RLT’s TOC page on the Directory of Open Access Journals can be viewed here: 
http://www.webcitation.org/6B4crCug7. 
6
 http://www.researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt  
7
 http://blogs.rcuk.ac.uk/2012/10/24/rcuk-open-access-policy-our-preference-for-gold/ 24 October 2012 
 
A copy of this response is available at http://repository.alt.ac.uk/2242/  
 
Page 4 
 
11. A switch to Open Access, funded by learned societies as part of their charitable endeavour (as 
in the case of RLT and many of the other "no-fee" Open Access journals8), or by Article Processing 
Charges (as in the case of PLOS) is probably the only realistic way to drive down the costs of 
scholarly publishing (other than very widespread and systematic adoption of Green Open Access) 
because it exposes the economics of publication much more clearly than is the case under a 
subscription model, where, perversely, the more successful a journal is, the more valuable it is to 
individual libraries, and thus the more can be charged per subscription, thereby driving up the net 
income to the publisher per individual article.  
 
12. However, we believe that the approach to implementation flowing from the Finch report could 
be further improved.  
 
13. The “elephant in the room” is the role and position of the big publishing companies, which have 
as we indicate above have so far remained largely unscathed (in comparison to the music, film, 
and newspaper industries) by the “Internet revolution”.  
 
 
Source - 2012 talk by MIT Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Hal Abelson at SIGCSE 2012 on 2 March 
2012 in Raleigh, North Carolina: http://www.sigcse.org/sigcse2012/downloads/ha_sigcseTalk.pdf  
 
14. The chart above highlights the key problem, which is that the cost to universities and hence 
essentially to the state of providing staff and students with access to scholarly output has risen 
steeply throughout the period in which the Internet revolution was driving down hard the costs of 
digital content more generally. There has been a feeling that somehow this part of the university 
system should be protected from market forces and this has been fostered by some in universities 
as well as by the major publishing beneficiaries. 
 
                                               
8
 Here is a recently published list of "no-fee" Open Access Journals 
http://www.eigenfactor.org/openaccess/fullfree.php (last accessed 18 January 2013) 
 
A copy of this response is available at http://repository.alt.ac.uk/2242/  
 
Page 5 
15. The Finch recommendations, and plans for implementation, thus seem to have been written 
with one eye on protecting the revenues of the journal publishing industry (and perhaps also of 
those learned societies who have become reliant on these revenues for their perfectly justified and 
valuable field-sustaining and field-developing activities) rather than on putting the incumbent 
publishers under firm pressure to reduce their prices - in effect to make less money from scholarly 
publishing than is presently the case - whilst at the same time encouraging the widening of access 
that is made possible by the Internet revolution. 
 
16. There is a further problem that parts of the Finch report seem to have differentiated 
insufficiently between STEM and the Humanities / Social Sciences, putting forward an approach 
that undoubtedly makes greater sense for STEM than it may do for some other fields9. A possible 
explanation for this problem is that the learned society world is extremely diverse: the two learned 
society representatives on the Finch Committee (from the Society for Biology and from the Royal 
Geographical Society) will have had the unenviable and arguably impossible job of representing 
the very varied perspectives and situations of the UK’s learned societies. 
 
17. Learned societies, who make a very significant contribution to promoting disciplines as well as 
research outcomes in the UK and internationally, have thus been caught in the crossfire. Some of 
them have traditionally had their income artificially protected either by the pricing policies of the big 
publishers, or by having been able themselves to publish in the “rain-shadow” of the big publishers’ 
pricing policies. Thus learned societies’ mixed reactions to Finch may stem in part from an entirely 
understandable wish to keep things - that is their income and its current sources - as they are, and 
partly from overestimating the scale and impact of the current proposals.  As with membership 
organisations more generally, such bodies worldwide are having to look at their future business 
models and revenue streams: publishing is not the only traditional source of revenue under threat 
from changing processes. Those with a “license to practice” element, typically but by no means all 
in the STEM area, and those whose members perceive them as doing much more than mainly 
publishing, have considerable inbuilt resilience. Others are less well placed.   
 
18. Alongside this in some cases, there seems to have been a wilful misunderstanding of the 
interplay of Open Access and APCs with factors such as copyright, Creative Commons licensing, 
moral rights, journal impact, and academic freedom. Finally, a substantial proportion of scholarly 
output outside of STEM is not grant-funded except through HEFCE, or if it is fully or partly funded 
by grants, the grants are significantly smaller than in STEM, so that APCs quite properly loom 
larger in the minds of individual researchers than is the case in STEM.  
Steps that could be taken 
 
19. Given the above analysis and our own experiences we believe that the following should be 
considered. 
   
1 Reduce the maximum contribution to APCs that funders will cover to, say, £750 (or less) so 
as to push universities and scholars into being more discriminating in their choice of 
                                               
9
 This month’s President’s Letter to Fellows and Members of the Royal Historical Society, whilst we do not agree with all 
of it, encapsulates clearly a number of these issues: http://www.royalhistoricalsociety.org/RHSPresidentE-
letterJanuary2013.pdf  
 
A copy of this response is available at http://repository.alt.ac.uk/2242/  
 
Page 6 
journals, and thereby push publishers into reducing their APCs. The focus here needs to be 
on growing the proportion of PLOS-style Gold Open Access journals across all fields. 
2 Examine the scope to make a functioning link at the level of individual journals or individual  
publishers, between the proportion of income raised through APCs and journal subscription 
rates, so that publishers are actively prevented from so-called “double dipping” - that is: 
increasing income on hybrid journals by generating APC income without reducing 
subscription rates. 
3 Put greater effort into “winning hearts and minds” for Open Access more generally and 
ensure consistency in the information published about its implementation by different 
agencies (HEFCE and RCUK, for example). 
4 Shift the balance somewhat towards Green Open Access by making it clear in funder 
mandates that even when a Gold option is offered by a publisher, author self archiving is an 
acceptable means of making an article Open Access, if, for example, funds are not 
available to (fully) cover APCs.10 
5 Channel transitional funds to those learned societies who undertake to change their or their 
journals’ publishing models from toll-access to Open Access, as well as to universities for 
the payment of APCs. The former will accelerate the structural changes that are needed, 
whilst temporarily cushioning learned societies’ valuable field- and discipline-developing 
activities; whereas the latter will, rather unhelpfully, tend to cement a dysfunctional and 
inefficient hybrid “half-way house”. 
6 Accelerate the timetable for HEFCE to decide and implement a policy on Open Access for 
articles arising from HEFCE funded research, on the assumption that HEFCE’s policy 
should be consistent with RCUK’s (they need to work in lockstep). 
7 Actively promote comparable policies in Europe and in other jurisdictions, in particular in 
the USA, and be seen to be so doing. 
Conclusion 
20. We are grateful for the opportunity to respond to the Committee’s call for evidence, and we 
would be happy to speak directly to members of the Committee, or to clarify points in writing if that 
would be helpful. 
 
 
 
 
Maren Deepwell PhD 
Chief Executive  
Association for Learning Technology (ALT) 
17 January 2013 
 
 
                                               
10
 A trenchant expression of this approach is given by Stevan Harnad here: 
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/932-RCUK-Policy-In-Direct-Contradiction-With-BOAI-10-
Recommendations-for-Institutions.html  


English

ALT response to the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee Short Inquiry into Open Access

Wodecki, Andrzej

The role of openness in educational innovation, universities in tsunami of changes

Barker, Phil

New approaches to describing and discovering open educational resources

Forsyth, Pete

Writing Wikipedia articles with Communicate OER

This document gives the ALT response to the current consultation on OA policy for the REF post 2014. The consultation document can be found at http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2013/201316/name,82765,en.html



HEFCE had previously consulted on the wording of the consultation. Most of ALT’s suggestions have been taken on board. 



Overall our message is one of general approval for the direction and most of the detail. We suggest strongly however that any exceptions should be case by case rather than having percentage targets for each discipline/ set of disciplines. This would mean more work for the funders initially but should lead to a cleaner result faster.  We also suggest that having large quantities of non-available work should have an effect on impact funds in a formulaic way

ALT, ALT

Consultation on open access in the post-2014 Research 
Excellence Framework 
 
Introduction: 
 
This document gives the ALT response to the current consultation on OA policy for the REF 
post 2014. The consultation document can be found at 
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2013/201316/name,82765,en.html 
 
 
HEFCE had previously consulted on the wording of the consultation. Most of ALT’s 
suggestions have been taken on board.  
 
 
Overall our message is one of general approval for the direction and most of the detail. We 
suggest strongly however that any exceptions should be case by case rather than having 
percentage targets for each discipline/ set of disciplines. This would mean more work for the 
funders initially but should lead to a cleaner result faster.  We also suggest that having large 
quantities of non-available work should have an effect on impact funds in a formulaic way.  
 
Question 1 
Do you agree that the criteria for open access are appropriate (subject to clarification on 
whether accessibility should follow immediately on acceptance or on publication)? 
Yes 
Comments: 
The proposal overall is good and when implemented properly and fully should work well. 
As noted below it is best if the wording of the overall policy specifically refers to the 
accepted version of article. This should be time stamped with the date of acceptance, perhaps 
with some supporting evidence for that acceptance. (This will be of use to readers through the 
repository as well as the funders doing an audit). 
 
Question 2 
Do you agree with the role outlined for institutional repositories, subject to further work on 
technical feasibility? 
Yes. 
Should the criteria require outputs to be made accessible through institutional repositories at 
the point of acceptance or the point of publication? 
Deposit should be required at point of acceptance. 
Comments: 
Many institutions already have institutional repositories, many of which are used for REF 
submission purposes that will do what is required including the ability to handle embargos, 
usually by offering a print version for cost.  
Proper use of such a repository will make putting together a REF submission relatively easy 
thus reducing burden and indeed will allow institutions to have a “running REF” during the 
period of a REF cycle. 
The point of acceptance is clearly defined at a time of some electronic journals moving to a 
continuous publication model but with issues defined (in which case the publication date is 
not always well defined). 
The author and institution may not know the publication date when the paper is accepted. 
This means that sometimes things planned for a REF cycle may have to be abandoned if 
publication date is used. Acceptance is thus fairer for those planning their work between 
cycles. 
There is however an initialisation problem which needs to be handled through the first REF 
post 2014. There is a danger that some things were accepted in 2013  but not published then 
and known not to be, which then take over 2 years to be published. These could potentially 
count in no REF cycle (see below). 
Putting things into repositories early would help with impact, make material available earlier 
to others and is a good model to follow (not just for the funders). 
Deposit should be made as soon after acceptance as is possible.  
 
Question 3 
Do you agree that the proposed embargo periods should apply by REF main panel, as outlined 
above? 
Yes. 
Do you agree with the proposed requirements for appropriate licences? 
Yes. 
Comments: 
It makes sense to vary the embargo period by REF main panel, provided that the deposit 
takes place  as soon after acceptance as is reasonable and that there are other methods of 
getting access relatively quickly, albeit at cost. It would be good if such access could be 
initiated/ provided through the repository.  
The license requirements do need to be sorted out as outlined. There could be some 
differences between main REF panels here too as for instance practice on repurposing may 
vary.  
Detailed licensing should not become a “showstopper” for starting. Open Access itself 
implies a lot of attributes of the license. Some of the notice period can be used for the 
necessary discussions and decisions. 
 
 
Question 4 
Do you agree that the criteria for open access should apply only to journal articles and 
conference proceedings for the post-2014 REF? 
Yes. 
Comments: 
The proposal takes a pragmatic and workable approach of starting with the main area where 
open access will bring rewards. While other things may come subsequently, the initial thrust 
has to be reviewed journal and conference articles.  
Monograms are not always written primarily for research purposes and big data brings with it 
too many difficult issues which need to be settled before proceeding.  
The problems with other types of artefact such as computer software are potentially even 
greater. 
 
Question 5 
Do you agree that a notice period of two years from the date of the policy announcement is 
appropriate to allow for the publication cycle of journal articles and conference proceedings? 
Probably           
Comments: 
There are, as noted above, some initialisation problems arising from articles that were 
accepted before the end of 2013 but published subsequently. Unfortunately two years may 
not cover all of these (but will cover most).There are further problems with things submitted 
before the end of 2013 but not accepted for a very long time. Again these will be few in 
number and should be handled through special case regulations rather than holding up the 
process. 
There is a separate problem of institutions setting up the necessary infrastructure of 
repositories and other infrastructure. Finally there is the problem of journals changing and of 
individual authors adapting to the new rules and in some cases perhaps shifting their 
publishing habits.  
Given the current state of institutional repositories the infrastructure should be capable of 
being sorted in well under 2 years - perhaps 12 months or at most 18. Jisc could have a role in 
helping those institutions who are deficient for compliance through making available support 
and guidance and perhaps deals for specific products. 
Journals are moving at a considerable rate and firm action now would help with that process 
in the UK. Similar things are happening in other countries including the USA. 
Moving individual academics into a culture of Open Access could happen quickly if there is 
an incentive in doing it. This may be an area in which principles will disappear rapidly given 
a small financial gain. 
The initialisation factors are best handled through the case by case exception mechanism. If 
one knew that for instance an article was submitted in 2011 but only accepted in 2017 then 
that would presumably be a good reason for successful special pleading.  Thus no notice 
period is required for this. 
Thus a shorter notice period could be made to work but no shorter than 12 months for 
everything except changing the habits of journals and authors. The speed of this will depend 
on other actions (see below) but is more likely to happen slowly in some disciplines. 
Whatever period is chosen there will be special cases and complaints. 
Thus while a shorter period would be preferable, there is logic in starting at the beginning of 
a calendar year say 2016. However that date needs to be announced soon and fixed as a date, 
rather than be a function of when any detailed argument stops.  In any case those institutions 
and academics who are able to move early should be encouraged by some form of 
incentivisation. 
 
Question 6 
Do you agree that criteria for open access should apply only to those outputs listing a UK HEI 
in the output’s ‘address’ field for the post-2014 REF? 
Not entirely 
Some problems arise essentially because in this part of the REF the institution is rewarded 
but the individual assessed - it would be much cleaner in this area to assess precisely the 
output of the institution over the period. This however is a much bigger issue than this 
consultation. 
Thus, given algorithm used (“goals move with players”), while one wants to agree with this 
question in the way it is expressed, there are resultant problems of game playing and 
unforeseen consequences which need thinking through.  
For example, does it mean that a joint addressed author can avoid the OA requirement if (s)he 
choose to publish under the non UK address?  If so will it harm the fraction of world research 
attributed to the UK in a given discipline? Thus, while the single address field may be easiest 
to search, more work is necessary to avoid the game playing. 
One way of avoiding too much game playing is to use an algorithm to discount the impact 
fund for the institution or subject area in the light of the percentage of publications not 
sourced at the institution.  
The underlying problem is how to address fairly the case of authors genuinely moving 
between countries and in/out UK academia. The best way to deal with this is may be to use 
the exception mechanism. In principle one wants each researcher in a UK institution 
depositing the output in the relevant repository when it is accepted. An arriving author could 
deposit anything that is permitted in the repository and this could be covered by “as soon as 
possible after acceptance” (for that repository), with an arrival date and the acceptance date 
noted. This might also address the problems of those moving within the UK leaving the 
original institution with no incentive to maintain the repository entries effectively. 
 
Question 7 
Which approach to allowing exceptions is preferable? 
If option b) (percentages of exceptions) are the percentages appropriate? 
If option b) should percentages to be absolute or by main panel area? 
 
Option a (Case by case exceptions rather than a fixed percentage) 
Percentages ( typically 70%) far too low 
Subject area. 
 
Comments: 
It is best for the UK and the public interest to have mechanisms that cause institutions to 
maximise the material available through the repository mechanism. Given that embargo 
periods are allowed, there is little reason to have many exceptions that cannot be handled on a 
case by case basis. 
Suitable choice of words for the definition of when something is deposited may make the 
main body of exceptions, those arising from mobility, fairly standard or non- exceptional. 
The percentages proposed for the alternative scheme b) are in any case exceptionally low 
given that many outputs are already not covered and presumably they would be outside the 
percentages as they conform to the policy ( monograms etc.). If it were adopted, option b) 
potentially encourages institutions to play down to the limit in a variety of ways, many of 
them undesirable for the UK as a whole. It also fails to recognise the possibility of a 
distinctive institution in a given area. There will thus still need to be special cases. 
One way to handle this might be to use the percentage achieved in some way to potentially 
affect the funding that an institution might get following the REF (the percentage as a crude 
multiplier of impact funds would have a strong effect). This would reflect a lower impact as a 
result of not informing the public etc.  
It is probably sufficient to say that funding councils may consider such things when it comes 
to funding decisions. This technique might also be used to minimise special cases thus 
reducing load on the funders.  


Consultation on open access in the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework

Gourlay, Lesley

Hamilton, Mary

Lea, Mary

 
 
 
Textual Practices in the New Media 
Digital Landscape:  
Messing with Digital Literacies 
 
  
Lesley Gourlay, Mary Hamilton and Mary R. Lea  
 
to appear in Special issue of the Journal of 
Research in Learning Technology on ‘Digital 
Literacies’ 
 
 
Outline for today’s webinar: Linking 
literacies, learning and technologies 
 
 New Literacy Studies (NLS) and the digital 
landscape for learning  
 Theory and Pragmatics in educational research 
and practice  
 Academic literacies, learning and technologies 
 Talking past one other?  
 Digital Literacies’: ambiguous and infinitely 
elastic?   
 Implications and future directions – a new 
approach? 
 
What is meant by “The New Literacy 
Studies”  
 asserts that multiple literacies exist 
 has an historical sensibility 
 emphasises informal learning in everyday 
practices embedded in networks of support 
  attends to the textual and semiotic aspects of 
learning 
 uses ethnographic methodologies 
 takes an ecological approach 
 
 
Limitations of the  New Literacy Studies 
approach 
 strongly rooted in linguistics and social 
semiotics 
 a tendency to ‘bracket off’ materiality 
 tends to pay less attention to the virtual spaces 
of digital media than to practices involving 
printed texts 
 
 
 
Theory And Pragmatics In 
Educational Research And Practice 
 
The fields of literacy and of learning technology both  
exist in a policy climate that places high value upon 
more pragmatic orientations towards knowledge and 
learning. In many respects this orientation contrasts 
markedly with critical approaches such as that of the 
NLS with its concern with power and authority around 
textual practice. 
Academic Literacies, & Learning 
Technologies 
  
 Emergence at particular historical moments 
 
 Connections and Overlaps 
 
 Contrasts and Contradictions 
Talking past one another 
 Academic literacies slow to respond to digital 
landscape 
 
 Learning technologies lack of recognition of 
the importance of textual practice 
Implications And Future Directions 
Do We Need A New Approach? 
 
Has the concept of  ‘literacies’ lost its 
ethnographic and disruptive edge through its 
complex re-emergence and co-option in the 
messy term ‘digital literacies?  
 
Digital literacies frameworks  
 Qualities, skills, attributes? 
 The idealised ‘user’  
 Need to return to situated practice  
 Danger of deficit models  
Actor-network theory  
 
 Compatible with NLS 
 Posthumanism 
 Nonhuman actors  
 Away from individual social actors  
 
A comparative media studies   
 
 how digital and print traditions of 
communication intersect in practice (e.g. 
Hayles) 
 dispersed alliances of people, machines, texts 
and software tools configured by learning 
institutions (Orlikowski)  
 
 
 
In conclusion …… 
    It is important to find spaces to make 
visible the embedded and implicit 
understandings, assumptions and 
ideological positions that are carried 
by terms such as literacy/ digital/ 
network.   


Jisc Digital Literacy Webinar: Textual Practices in the New Media Digital Landscape

Rosell-Aguilar, Fernando

Personalising the stranger: developing a learner profile of the iTunes U user

Connolly, Teresa

A small project and a big venture: sharing practices between two different scale OER developments

Ford, Alan

Welcome speech

Association for Learning Technology

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