Academic Digital Literacy trajectories of online senior undergraduate ELT students in Mexico

Abstract

Online learning environments have been acknowledged as a promising option in higher education (Altbach, Reisberg and Rumbley, 2010; Kim and Bonk, 2006; Simpson, 2018). However, a major drawback in virtual communties is dropping out (Kim et al., 2017; Wladis, Conway and Hachey, 2017). The pressure of writing a dissertation in L2 to obtain a degree may increase this possibility of dropout. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to investigate the experiences of online students navigating academic writing practices in L2, especially when these determine if they complete their Higher Education studies or not. The present qualitative case study explores the academic digital literacy (ADL) trajectories of a group of three students of an online BA in English Language Teaching (ELT) as they write a research paper in L2 to obtain their degree in one major Mexican state university.
The study approaches students’ writing from an Academic Literacies Framework (Lea and Street, 1998; Lillis et al., 2015), which involves understanding literacy as a social practice (Barton and Hamilton, 2000), digital literacies also as a social practice (Mutta et al., 2014), and, to some extent, the concept of multiliteracies as embracing new challenges and affordances in reading and writing due to the virtual environment (Cope and Kalantzis, 2000; Street, 2000). By drawing on a virtual literacy ethnography and narrative inquiry in order to construct the students’ stories of their experiences in their research writing journey, the study brings together data from a wide variety of sources, such as digital academic records, informal talks with BA facilitators, online activity in the institutional platform, interaction with their Research seminar facilitator, supervisors and the researcher, artefacts (drafts and final versions), written feedback from facilitator, supervisors and examiners, and interviews.
Findings challenge the celebratory discourses around e-learning by shedding light on the complexities of the ADL practices that the students engage in while writing a dissertation in L2 and on how they experience them, validating their choices. Emotions emerged as more significant dimension in the pedagogical field than it already is. The study also demonstrates that, despite the great challenge they pose, dissertation writing practices remain highly significant in online undergraduate programmes. Empirically, the study highlights the value of narrative inquiry and reflexivity in linguistic ethnographic research.

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ORCID for Adriana Patino: orcid.org/0000-0003-1950-3954

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