1. The document discusses a PhD research project that aims to explore how engagements with open educational resources (OER) can help negotiate social and digital literacies. 2. The researcher worked with students and lecturers at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) in South Africa to use a writing OER tool to facilitate writing and engage with social issues. 3. Evaluations of student and educator experiences using the tool found that it helped improve writing and sparked reflection on social debates, with the goal of developing an expanded OER writing tool for NMMU.

1. Negotiating Social And Digital Literacies
Through EngagementsWith
Open Educational Resources (OER)
Gino Fransman
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
(NMMU)
South Africa
Negotiating SocialAnd Digital Literacies Through Engagements With Open Educational Resources (OER)
byGino Fransman is licensed under a CreativeCommons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

2. 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

3. #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.”
InSA, tensions run high, a current example

4. The burning question at the heart
of this research project:
Can engagements with
OER contribute to
negotiating social and
digital literacies?

5. At the heart: http://bit.ly/1ymeRZQ

6. 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’
(BeverleyThaver, 2009):

7. 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

8. 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…

9. Synergising OER and NMMUsVision2020.
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?

10. • 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

11. 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&L
opportunities at NMMU?

12. 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)

13. 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

14. Negotiation
Social and
Digital
Literacies
OER

15. Advocating for Open with
GO_GN and NMMU
Open EducationWeek 2015
#AllAboutOpen
Radio Support on Mondays -
Introducing OERs forYou
@Madibaz_Radio
Bringing Open to students at NMMU

16. Practicing Open with staff and students at NMMU

17. 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)

18. 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:

19. “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.

20. ...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)

21. …means for creative and social expression, a host of new
technical skills
... inseparable from social communication
Media Literacy
Youth, Identity, and Digital Media
https://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.

22. to use aWriting 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 revised
and expandedWritingOER tool at NMMU
What/Why/ How/ When

23. Open Educational Resources:
Practical Engagement for StudentWriting
Getting Practical

24. Advocating for Open at NMMU
Selected a Primary tool to approach writing challenges and exploreOER
potential at NMMU
A writing OER: an open tool viaOERcommons/ LoC

25. 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

26. …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

27. …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

28. 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 WritingTool 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

29. To summarise:
What?
1. Document Analysis:
Establishing InstructionalTerms 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 WritingTool
3. Evaluating Experiences of Using the WritingTool

30. Who and When?
Students and Lecturers in the following modules or programmes at NMMU:
• Chemical ProcessTechnologies (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?

31. 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 LiteraciesThrough Practice

32. 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

33. Email
gino.fransman@nmmu.ac.za
ginofransman@gmail.com
Twitter: @ginofransman
ThankYou
Negotiating Social And Digital Literacies Through Engagements With Open Educational
Resources (OER) by Gino Fransman is licensed under a
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