ROLE: Research in Online Literacy Education, A GSOLE Publication

Editor's Note

along with President's Welcome

by Michael Greer and Beth Hewett

Publication Details

OLOR Series:	Research in Online Literacy Education
Author(s):	Michael Greer and Beth Hewett
Original Publication Date:	15 August 2018
Permalink:	<gsole.org/olor/vol3.iss1.note>

Abstract

Opening comments from the Editor of ROLE and welcome message from the President of GSOLE.

Media, Figures, Tables

N/A

Resource Contents

1. President's Welcome

[1] Welcome to the first issue of Research in Online Literacy Education (ROLE), one of two journals sponsored by the Global Society of Online Literacy Education (GSOLE). Along with the Online Literacy Open Resource (OLOR), ROLE exists to support, aggregate, and communicate online literacy education research, praxis, and information.

[2] Editor Michael Greer has worked for nearly two years to develop the journal’s vision and to coordinate a fine editorial team responsible for this inaugural issue. Together, the editorial team plans three issues per year, and each issue is open access to capitalize on GSOLE’s belief that research and effective practices in online literacy education should be available to all.

[3] Please join me in congratulating the ROLE editorial team on this inaugural issue. Under Michael’s leadership and with your contributions, we expect the journal to develop into one of the finest online journals available.

[4] We look forward to publishing your own research in ROLE and effective practices in OLOR!

--Beth L. Hewett

President, GSOLE

2. Editor's Note

[5] Why does the world need another journal? I posed this question to everyone who expressed an interest in joining the editorial board for our new journal. Strikingly, I received a version of the same answer each time: Because we are working in separate silos, and it is time to bring together a more inclusive, interdisciplinary conversation around teaching and learning literacy online.

[6] Research in Online Literacy Education aims to provide a space for this wider, more capacious conversation. Here, literacy will be defined broadly, as a convergence of writing, reading, composing, interpreting, and designing texts that are alphabetic, multimodal, oral, visual, and digital. We seek to bring together conversations around teaching and learning online, bringing voices from reading, writing studies, technical communication, composition, writing centers, writing across the disciplines, digital humanities, cultural studies, and beyond.

[7] Research in Online Literacy Education also aims to complicate the theory-practice binary. We often find, as in many of the pieces in this first issue, that practice interrupts and de-centers theory, as much as theory informs practice. Practice is no simple application of abstract principles; it is, rather, the environment in which theory can be constructed in the making of new knowledge. Teacher-research and reflective practice is a foundation of our work. We are committed to strategic pedagogy, where theory and practice engage and question one another.

[8] Above all, we want to provide a venue for new voices to speak and be heard. Literacy online, with its complex mix of technology, discourse, talk, text, image, and play, requires new, hybrid approaches and practices. Our goal is to be not just another journal, but another kind of journal. Thank you for joining the conversation.

--Michael Greer

Editor, ROLE

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