Page to Screen

Taking Literacy into the Electronic Era

Ilana Snyder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780415174657
• eBook ISBN: 9781136858369
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Lingüística

Hypertext, e-mail, word processing: electronic technologies have revolutionized textual practices. How does language on screen work differently from language on the page? What new literacy skills are needed and how do we teach them?
Page to Screen collects some of the best contemporary thinkers in the field of technology and literacy. They analyze the potential of the new forms of text, the increased emphasis on visual communication, new forms of rhetoric, learning in the age of global communication networks and new approaches to storytelling.
Page to Screen is compelling reading for anyone interested in Literacy Education, Language Studies, English, Library Studies, Multimedia and Communication Studies.
International contributors include Gunther Kress, Cynthia Selfe, Gail E. Hawisher and Colin Lankshear.

1

Reflections on Computers and Composition Studies at the Century’s End

GAIL E. HAWISHER AND
CYNTHIA L. SELFE¹

Although computers can be found in great numbers in schools at every academic level, a good deal of controversy continues to accompany their entry into educational settings. On the one hand, they are greeted as revolutionary tools that will cure the ills of outmoded educational approaches and, on the other, they are viewed as expensive instructional delivery systems that have the potential to destroy the human element in education. Clearly both views are extreme. Yet, increasingly, the new technologies have become the focus for hotly contested debates, characterised by complex economic, political, ideological, and historical issues. Vying for position in such disputes are not only educators but also publishers, commercial hardware and software producers, parents, governments, and the telecommunications players of the corporate world. Given the number of contesting forces in the new electronic landscapes and the range of education and language interests, those of us working in the field of computers and composition are beginning to recognise just how dramatically the values of democratic education and literacy will be played out in the next few years. For these reasons, the history, the present, and the future of technology studies within educational contexts are important intellectual spaces for educators and students of technology to map.

Our chapter focuses on the need to explore the history of research in computers and composition studies in order to understand more fully the present and future of this rapidly changing discipline. Given the importance of this intellectual, cultural, and educational territory—given the challenges educators face in the coming century—these years at the century’s end are an appropriate time for the profession to pause and recover its histories of the research in the field. In this chapter we present a synopsis of the research in literacy and technology which has preceded us and then turn to some fruitful points of departure for literacy educators who teach with computers and who hope to contribute to educational change in positive ways. Our chapter attempts to historicise the research literature on the uses of word processing, electronic networks, and hypertext and hypermedia as they relate to writing and writing instruction.² Framed by the kinds of questions researchers ask about the study of computers and literacy education, the review also discusses the research methodologies employed in that study. Each section concludes with an overview of the findings that have emerged over the past several years. We then turn to the kinds of studies that we believe could support democratic educational goals and practices.

For over fifteen years literacy educators have tried to assess how the use of computers affects student writers at every level of education. Technological changes since the first fully assembled microcomputers in 1977 sparked a spate of studies that now number well into the hundreds. One of the earliest, Richard Collier’s study (1983) of four nursing students, set the stage for the kinds of questions that would drive subsequent research. Collier asked how the use of a computer application (in this case, a mainframe text editor) would influence the student nurses’ writing processes (in this case, revision) as well as the quality of the texts they produced. And although he saw no improvement in quality, he found that the writers he studied revised more and produced longer texts with word processing than with conventional tools. Since Collier’s early study, educational researchers have continued to probe the relationship among writers and various kinds of computer applications, aiming much of the research at school-based writing and often with an eye toward examining how the teaching of writing might benefit from the use of the new technologies. In recent years, moreover, researchers have extended their study to the newer technologies of electronic communication networks and to hypertext and hypermedia. Yet despite the considerable attention that research in computers and composition studies has received over the years, only a few studies have looked at how the use of computers affects students’ interactions with their cultural context or their learning environment.³ In other words, little systematic attention has been paid to the kinds of research that could inform fundamental changes in education—changes which must be realistically played out within current social, political, economic, and ideological contexts.

Studies in Word Processing

Studies in word processing, by far the most prolific area of research in computers and composition, continue to abound in the research literature. Since the early 1980s writing researchers and teachers alike have wanted to know whether computers could be used in ways that improve students’ writing abilities. Unfortunately, the question has often been framed too simplistically as: ’What is the effect of computers on writing quality?’ which attributes far too much power to computers rather than to how writers or literacy teachers might use computers. Today the quality question seems somewhat naive and beside the point; word processing has become the writing technology of choice in school and workplace settings. And, just as English professionals no longer ask whether typewriters improve students’ writing, many regard the quality question in relation to word processing as wrongheaded. As word processing becomes increasingly accepted as essential for student and professional writers alike, other research questions must be formulated. Yet a review of dissertation studies reveals that researchers are still asking whether the use of word processing will enhance writing abilities.

Studies in word processing can be divided into two categories: those that employ primarily quantitative methods of inquiry and those that rely on qualitative techniques. Most studies are quantitative or comparative studies, with writers divided into experimental and control groups and the use of word processing established as the primary variable that distinguishes the groups. Questions driving the research include how word processing in combination with process-oriented teaching influences writers’ processes—planning, drafting, revising, editing—and products—quality, syntax, length, and number of mechanical errors. Researchers have also been interested in whether students tend to enjoy writing at computers and whether the technology is more appropriate for one group of writers than for another. Among the various groups of writers studied so far are students at all levels, from first grade through graduate school, and professional writers, both technical and creative.

The results of the research are many and varied. Students report positive attitudes toward writing and word processing after working with computers; student writers often exhibit finished products that have fewer mechanical errors than those written with traditional tools; and many writers produce longer texts with word processing than with traditional methods (Hawisher 1988). Conflicting results emerge around the variables of revision and writing quality. As many studies find an increase in revision as those that do not, and only a few studies claim that writing quality improves. In fact, regardless of which group of writers is the focus of the research and whether the research is school-based or otherwise, investigations of writing quality continue to yield conflicting results. (For a meta-analysis of word processing in writing instruction see Bangert-Drowns 1993.)

The qualitative research—case studies and ethnographic research—asks somewhat different questions than the quantitative studies do. It asks how writers adapt their strategies to computer writing, whether their composing habits change with the technology, and how the introduction of computers influences the cultural context into which they are introduced. A general theme drawn from these studies is similar to one from the comparative studies: that is, a writer’s or student’s particular habits and strategies for composing take precedence over the influence of the computers. Writers bring their routines and patterns of writing with them. If they are not extensive revisers before word processing, they probably will not become so with computers, even when revision strategies are part of the instruction (Bridwell, Sirc & Brooke 1985). (It is interesting to speculate on how this might change with our youngest students, some who are likely to have learned most of their writing processes on computers.)

The few ethnographic studies that have been conducted also contribute new knowledge that the comparative studies cannot reveal. They suggest that while students often do their paperand-pencil writing silently and privately at their desks, writing at a computer in elementary school settings, for example, may in fact transform school-based writing from a private to public activity as students gather around the computers to read and talk about their writings (Dickinson 1986). In seeking to elucidate the subtle influences of computers in social interactions among students and teachers, the qualitative research (case studies and ethnographies) suggests the importance of the cultural context in shaping writers’ work and learning with word processing.

Research on Electronic Networks

A major difference between research aimed at word processing and the early research on the discourse of the nets, more accurately called electronic networked discourse, is its cross-disciplinary emphasis. Unlike studies of word processing, only a few studies on electronic networks have been conducted in writing classes. For a more complete picture, English professionals must look at studies in distance education, communication research, linguistics, social psychology, and organisational behaviour, to mention a few of the fields studying computer-mediated communication (e.g., Mason 8c Kaye 1989; Jones 1995; Ferrara, Brunner, tk Whittemore 1991; Lea 1992; Sproull & Kiesler 1991).

Since the research is cross-disciplinary, it is somewhat surprising that studies have converged on similar issues, asking similar research questions. The questions focus first on identifying the characteristics of electronic discourse, examining how participants respond to the discourse, and, then, for those working in educational settings, exploring its potential for teaching and learning. Many initial findings are more in the spirit of observations gleaned from experience in working with the medium, not unlike early exploratory studies in word processing. But regardless of whether the research is conducted within or outside educational settings, common questions, findings, and observations emerge.

Researchers agree that networked discourse employs a language that is somewhere on a continuum between spoken and written language. Indeed, researchers often refer to online communication as ’talk’ or ’dialogue’. Some participants write profusely on the networks; others seem terse, almost ’telegraphic’. Conventions of language and style are still evolving and will change as the email and conferencing programs become as easy to use as word processing. A number of researchers have noted that a writer’s relation to a screen and electronic communication seem different from a writer’s relation to a written letter or memorandum. In writing to a screen, writers may at times lose the sense of an audience and, with that, the constraints and inhibitions that the imagined audience provides. At its most dramatic, this difference produces what has been termed ’flaming’, or emotionally laden, hurtful language inappropriate for classroom settings. Some researchers contend that the more focused the task, the less likely flaming is to occur. In those studies, with goal-directed electronic activity and participants’ roles clearly defined, no flaming was reported (Hartman et al. 1991).

Research in various fields, moreover, has suggested that the lack of paralinguistic cues such as one’s appearance, tone of voice, and facial expression also invites participation on networks from those who do not normally speak frequently in face-to-face contexts. Sensitivity to the position of individuals in organisations, corporate or academic, tends to silence those who perceive themselves as having lower status. A study by Dubrovsky and his colleagues (1991) looked specifically at electronic discussion in four-person groups with first-year college students and MBA graduate students; the researchers confirmed what they call ’the equalisation phenomenon’, that is, those with ’lower status’, the first-year college students, asserted themselves more and had greater influence on the group than the first-year college students did in the face-to-face groups. Such studies can have important implications for literacy teachers who hope to encourage all students regardless of their class, race, or gender to participate, but the social science research should be scrutinised carefully before being applied to literacy classes (Eldred & Hawisher 1995).

Basing their claims on similar research in the social sciences, literacy educators often argue that electronic discussion can encourage students who are sometimes silenced because of their status to ’speak up’, to participate electronically in ways that they avoid in traditional class settings (e.g., Barker & Kemp 1990; Langston & Batson 1990). However, no empirical research in educational settings has so far supported or contradicted such claims. Note, however, that much of the social science research is conducted with participants who never meet face-to-face. For literacy teachers who use electronic networks mainly to supplement face-to-face class discussion, it is somewhat odd to foreground the network’s lack of social cues without acknowledging instructors’ and students’ many face-to-face interactions. (For a more complete early review of research on electronic networks, see Hawisher 1992.)

Research on Hypertext and Hypermedia

Researchers in literacy studies have begun to explore the implications of hypertext and hypermedia for writing and writing instruction. One of the problems they encounter, however, is that hypermedia, like networked discourse, is essentially a new medium existing only online, taking many forms; instruction comprises only one of its many applications. And, even when used for instruction, the kinds of applications differ radically. Hypermedia programs can be assembled to mimic old CAI (computer-assisted instruction) programs with their workbook-like structure and dull exercises, or they can take an interactive form where individuals choose their own paths through online text with print, graphics, sound, and sometimes video as part of the text. Moreover, to borrow Michael Joyce’s (1988) useful categories, hypertexts can be ’exploratory’ or ’constructive’, depending upon whether readers ’browse’ through a body of information already assembled or ’write’ their own texts, transforming prior knowledge by acting upon what they read and write.

For educational settings, the early research on hypermedia environments exists primarily outside literacy studies and often examines readers’ and writers’ navigational capabilities; that is, researchers look at how users move through large, complex nonlinear bodies of information without losing their sense of connection. Other research questions focus on the design of hypertext systems and ask how material can be presented to optimise learning. Researchers have also begun to ask whether particular kinds of pedagogical problems are more suited for some hypertext environments than for others. Rand Spiro and his colleagues (1990), for example, have designed a system on Citizen Kane, which is intended to foster ’advanced knowledge acquisition’ or learning beyond introductory material in any discipline. They base their approach, in part, on the notion that learners need not be subjected to the difficulties of navigating nonlinear and multidimensional textual environments to acquire knowledge that could be obtained easily in other ways. Spiro’s research suggests that certain hypertextual environments, in allowing instructors to represent knowledge in many different ways, can foster deeper understandings of difficult subject matter than traditional settings can.

Another approach to using hypermedia environments in educational settings is to encourage students to write their own hypertexts and then ask them to describe their experiences in working with the new medium. One exploratory study in a first-year writing class found that most students responded favourably to reading and writing hypertexts (Ka...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on contributors
• Page on Screen
• Section 1: The spaces of eletronic literacies
• Section 2: Emerging literacies
• Section 3: The problems and possibilities of hypertext
• Section 4: Changing the cultures of teaching and learning
• Index