ABSTRACT
The move to digital learning technologies together with globalised higher education provides opportunities to explore how digital resources can mediate teaching and learning in complex cross-cultural or transcultural environments. A transcultural space is one in which different peoples and cultures meet. This paper draws on the idea of ‘placed’ resource as a socially situated resource which is best studied by examining local effects (Prinsloo, 2005). Prinsloo argues that, despite a digital resource being designed for a specific situation, educators cannot assume that the technology will transfer meaning to its users, or that potential users will engage with opportunities afforded by the resource. Furthermore, Prinsloo and Rowsell (2012) explain how a resource is shaped by context and place, including specificity, limits of place, social site and historical and cultural practices. This chapter adds to the concept of placed resource by discussing the shaping of a specific digital resource in and across a global and local context. It discusses a digital resource designed by Australian university academics to teach academic writing to computer science students in Hong Kong, specifically, the resource embedded academic literacies within a third-year computer science course in which students had not been succeeding in meeting assessment expectations.
