Emerging Literacies in Online Learning

Abstract

Online learning is becoming integral to the experience of increasing numbers of students in higher education. This can range from courses delivered entirely online through to different manifestations of e-learning where students study part of their course electronically, or to simple e-mail exchanges between tutors and students. Despite the written nature of the texts produced in these learning environments, to date little attention has been paid to them as writing. In response, this paper is concerned with the written construction of meaning making in online learning. Building on the perspective that literacies are central to the learning experience, it draws on data from student messages, to each other, in an online postgraduate course in professional education and argues that we should approach these online textual interactions as sites of academic writing. The paper highlights evidence of ‘intertextuality’, ‘metadiscourse’ and ‘epistemic modality’ in students’ message postings. It suggests that in foregrounding these textual features it is possible to unpack the nature of the writing and emerging literacies in online learning. It concludes that student messages are institutionally significant spaces for the negotiation of ownership and authority in the meaning making process