Abstract
This article explores academics’ writing practices, focusing on the ways in which they use digital platforms in their processes of collaborative learning. It draws on interview data from a research project that has involved working closely with academics across different disciplines and institutions to explore their writing practices, understanding academic literacies as situated social practices. The article outlines the characteristics of academics’ ongoing professional learning, demonstrating the importance of collaborations on specific projects in generating learning in relation to using digital platforms and for sharing and collaborating on scholarly writing. A very wide range of digital platforms have been identified by these academics, enabling new kinds of collaboration across time and space on writing and research; but challenges around online learning are also identified, particularly the dangers of engaging in learning in public, the pressures of ‘always-on’-ness and the different values systems around publishing in different forums. Published: 14 November 2017 Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2017, 25 : 1958 - http://dx.doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v25.1958
Highlights
This article draws on academics’ accounts of their writing practices to show the importance of informal networked learning in academics’ professional lives, and to highlight some of the characteristics of this learning
We demonstrate the importance of informal learning with colleagues, collaborators and students in academics’ trajectories of learning writing practices
We discuss four main characteristics of academics’ networked learning highlighted by our analysis, namely, the ways academics learn about digital platforms, the collaborative writing these facilitated, the nature of learning via specific projects and the risks and challenges academics perceived in connection with writing on digital platforms
Summary
This article draws on academics’ accounts of their writing practices to show the importance of informal networked learning in academics’ professional lives, and to highlight some of the characteristics of this learning. 1), we define networked learning as: Learning in which information and communications technology (ICT) is used to promote connections: between one learner and other learners, between learners and tutors, and between a learning community and its learning resources. Our focus in this article is on the collaborative and co-operative connections which develop between academics in their scholarly, teaching and administrative communities. McCulloch et al Research in Learning Technology is the journal of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT), a UK-based professional and scholarly society and membership organisation.
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