Webinar for EDM122 (Digital Literacies and Open Practice), MA in Academic Practice, City, University of London. 11 January 2019

1. Critical
digital literacies
data literacies
& open practices
Catherine Cronin
@catherinecronin
National Forum for the Enhancement ofTeaching
and Learning in Higher Education
11 January 2019
Image: CC0 Oliver Cole

2. This webinar is a contribution to
Digital Literacy and Open Practice,
a module in City, University of London’s
MA in Academic Practice.
Thank you, Jane Secker, for the invitation.
Participants in the module have been exploring
digital literacies and openness this term, so I’ll
focus on a few key ideas and resources re:
critical approaches to openness and
critical digital/data literacies.

3. ABSTRACT
As educators in an increasingly digital, networked culture, we
are called upon to do a herculean range of things: manage our
digital identities, assess a never-ending range of digital tools
(and master at least some of them), understand copyright and
open licensing, publish openly, share openly, and not least,
manage the continually evolving risks of all of these activities.
And we support our students in doing the same.
Open educational practices can provide powerful ways for us to
improve educational access, enhance learning, and empower
learners — but openness is not a panacea. The heart of all
approaches to open education and open practices should be to
develop critical digital (and data) literacies and to foster agency
on the part of all learners and educators regarding whether,
how, and in what contexts they choose to be open.

4. Not universally experienced
Complex & contextual
Requires digital capability & agency
Both descriptive & aspirational
Critical discourse is essential
“Move from access to equity & justice”
Tressie McMillan Cottom (2015)
open

5. critical approaches
to openness & open education
critical disposition
“criticism of what exists,
restoring what is being lost,
pointing towards possible
futures; and sometimes…
being criticized ourselves”
(Michael Apple, 1990)
critical theory
a focus on the concrete
operations of power and a
rejection of all forms of
oppression, injustice,
and inequality
(as in critical pedagogy)

6.  Who defines openness?
 Who is included and who is excluded when education is ‘opened’,
and in what ways?
 In what contexts and ways do open education initiatives achieve
their aims (e.g. increasing access, fostering inclusivity, enhancing
learning, developing capacity and agency, empowering
individuals, groups, and communities), if at all?
 Could open education initiatives, in practice, do the opposite of
what they are intended to do? What does that look like?
 What does emancipatory open education look like?
Critical approaches to openness

7. 4 dimensions shared by open educators
inner circle
(2 dimensions)
Networked
Individuals
both circles
(4 dimensions)
Networked
Educators
Cronin (2017)

8. The role of higher education, and educators, is to
work on nurturing digital literacies across the
curriculum, taking into account the inequalities
of access to opportunities to develop digital
literacies before and outside of higher education,
and keeping in mind the intersectionality of
incoming students and how their priorities within
digital literacies will differ.
Maha Bali (2016)
In Alexander, et al. Digital literacy in higher education, Part II,
NMC Horizon Project
“

9. We define radical digital citizenship as a
process by which individuals and groups committed to
social justice critically analyse the social, political and
economic consequences of digital technologies in
everyday life and collectively deliberate and take action
to build alternative and emancipatory technologies and
technological practices.
… the cornerstone is the insistence that citizenship is a
process of becoming – that it is an active and
reflective state for individual and collective thinking and
practice for collective action for the common good.
Akwugo Emejulu & Callum McGregor (2016)
“

10. www.technologyreview.com/s/611806/how-social-media-took-us-from-tahrir-square-to-donald-trump/
Zeynep Tufekci @zeynep

11. Internet Health Report (Mozilla): https://internethealthreport.org/

12. The digital divide is a noun; it is the consequence of
many forces. In contrast, digital redlining is a verb,
the “doing” of difference, a “doing” whose consequences
reinforce existing class structures. In one era, redlining
created differences in physical access to schools,
libraries, and home ownership. In my classes, we work
to recognize how digital redlining is integrated into
technologies, and especially education technologies,
and is producing similar kinds of discriminatory results.
Chris Gilliard (2017)
“

13. http://unboundeq.creativitycourse.org
Equity Unbound
Exploring digital literacies with an equity and intercultural learning focus,
in an open and connected learning environment.
“The only way to make borders meaningless is to keep insisting on crossing them.”
(Lina Mounzer)

14. wrapping up…
Image: CC0 Kira auf der Heide

15. Engaging in open practice is:
Complex
Personal
Contextual
Continually negotiated
Cronin (2017)

16. open
The heart of all approaches to open practices…
to develop critical digital and data literacies
and to foster agency on the part of all
learners and educators regarding whether, how,
and in what contexts they choose to be open.

17. #oer19

18. Le spectre de la rose Jerome Robbins Dance Division
from the New York Public Library (public domain)
To hope is to give
yourself to the future,
and that commitment
to the future
makes the present
inhabitable.
Rebecca Solnit (2004)
Hope in the Dark
“

19. Thank You!
Catherine Cronin
@catherinecronin
catherinecronin.net
Le spectre de la rose Jerome Robbins Dance Division
from the New York Public Library (public domain)