My master’s thesis deals with pragmatism as it appears in a series of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century novels. I argued, pretty successfully, that Jamesian pragmatism was already a feature of American novels before James himself became famous for endorsing pragmatism as a life philosophy. Since then, I’ve been affected by James’ writings in my teaching and my research, always believing that I was engaged in a very pragmatic practice: teaching others to improve their writing so that they could move on in their classroom and work-related careers. But a conversation with my dissertation chair, Fred Kemp, has made me question that assumption of pragmatism. Pragmatism is an approach to valuing a theory or situation so as to find whether it benefits the individual. A pragmatic approach to education would involve a student choosing a major and then taking classes that fit his or her interpretation of that major’s value to the individual. A history major might focus in on nineteenth century America and classes that would aid in teaching that history to high school students.
But Fred pointed out that TC service courses are a response, not a homegrown initiative. Those classes are a response to a need identified by others, and our response is to create and offer a class based on those needs. It’s a backwards sort of pragmatism, one that responds to someone else’s pragmatic desires. A department which offered such courses could do so in a pragmatic matter, being sure to make money and intercampus social capital, provide teachers with an outlet for their well-honed pedagogical skills, and creating a curriculum that meets the needs of the department while also serving the students and client departments. But that’s almost never what happens. In fact, I’d argue that it never happens except there may be some golden campus where service courses benefit everyone. In practice, those classes tend to make servants of the undertrained instructors who are paid blue collar wages for university-level teaching, and the students are frequently not served by those courses due to the courses’ generality and lack of theoretical and practical rigor.
So in practice, TC service courses are the opposite of pragmatic. They’re some sort of perverse altruism where the best of intentions help few, if any, attain their goals.
Joanna Wolfe (2009) points out that textbooks for introductory TC service courses actually fail to serve a huge chunk of their clientele: engineering and science students whose rhetorical and epistemological approach do not mesh with those of the humanities scholars who produce the textbooks. To be fair, there are textbooks written by engineers or by humanities scholars who work closely for engineers. Hillary Hart’s Engineering Communication is such a book, created by a humanities scholar whose position and experience aligns her with an engineering college. But those books are few and far between, and their level of adoption does not even begin to approach those of the humanities-driven textbooks.
Part of the disjuncture between writing for the humanities (and thus the approach that humanities-based textbooks take) and writing in the scientific and engineering fields has to do with the mission of technical communication itself: clarity reigns supreme. Over and over, engineers are taught (rightly so) that clarity is the goal of all good writing. The humanities, though, often approach writing as an art in itself, and that freewriting and rough drafting and the very act of writing is worth taking noting. And as with the engineers who argue the opposite, the humanities scholars are indeed correct. Two approaches, both utterly logical, and both somewhat incompatible in teaching and in practice.
The contrast between what engineers and employers seem to want can be seen in Blyler’s (1995) article in which she argues for a pedagogy of social action, urging teachers and students to take a rhetorical approach to the construction of power in both textual and graphical narratives. Blyler (1993) takes a humanities-based stance when arguing against a “formulaic” view of genre and purpose for business communication courses. But formulaic is exactly what the engineers would like, and is often exactly the approach needed for effective engineering communication. In the humanities, we argue that texts are social artifacts constructed to meet the needs and expectations of (frequently) tightly-knit groups with a level of discourse contingent upon their workplace activities and needs. But Blyer’s argument suggests otherwise. We should not train students to write genres within such a specific space and place. No doubt helping students recognize their rhetorical circumstances, taking a broad approach to audience analysis and textual production, would help them think more globally about writing and perhaps more critically about the purposes of genre. But that means we’re not responding to the needs, the stated needs, of our client departments and are in fact working more pragmatically according to our own “cash value” when it comes to our service courses.
Perhaps pragmatism has failed me at last, in that a pragmatic view of the TC service course will result in classes that do not address the specific needs of the intended audience. Furthermore, if we deliberately create courses that do not address those specific needs, we may be failing to follow our own stated goals for effective technical communication. If the class fails, perhaps the class author is the one to blame.
Bushnell (1999) argues that preparing students simply for their future jobs, based on expectations provided solely by employers, undermines the role of the university in producing writers who “shape knowledge” and acknowledge bias rather than avoid it. However, for students in technical majors who take the service course as part of a communication requirement, the expectation to “shape knowledge” may be too great a leap: engineering students, for example, are taught to create knowledge (conduct tests) and then to report it. To introduce the idea of shaping knowledge in the form of a one-semester course, or to encourage students to take a rhetorically-bound epistemological stance, may be asking too much. It’s also important to note that Bushnell’s take on university education is dated: we no longer (always) aim to broaden minds and further intellectual horizons. Instead, the more common goal is to train students for specific professions, which more and more commonly require even further specialization after college. What careers exist for which (a) a university degree is required, and (b) require no further specialization or continuing education?
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
I'm Back in the Datacloud Again, and It's Fixin' to Rain
TC luminaries like George Hayhoe sometimes espouse an industry focus which emphasizes the value created outside the classroom by TC professionals and subject-matter experts. Hayhoe writes, “Academics need to work with our practitioner colleagues to identify in detail the body of knowledge and skills that technical communicators need to be competitive and effective on the job. We must then revise our curricula to focus on that knowledge and those skills to prepare future students” (266).
However, if our mission is to teach rather than train, as Johnson-Eilola puts it (and Stanley Fish, too, in a recent column entitled “The Last Professor”), then we cannot allow ourselves to simply follow industry, meeting only current expectations rather than exploring new ideas and creating knowledge within the classroom. Hayhoe also notes that “discipline-standard processes and criteria for evaluating work products are other hallmarks of a profession” (p. 266). Standardization, if indeed desirable, would come most effectively after a sturdy partnership exists between industry and academia. That partnership, though, comes at the cost of re-evaluating our research methods not merely in terms of how to gather data, but also as a way of creating communities of knowledge. Research, knowledge, practice, and education cannot exist as separate cultures if TC is to grow into a mature discipline. In my writings and readings this week on technography, I think I’m beginning to identify a useful construct, or theoretical stance, in keeping us in touch with our research agenda while keeping us grounded in the workaday experience of using tools to create and collaborate.
Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s Datacloud discusses technical communication in terms of “remixing”: just as a dj remixes music, symbolic-analytical workers (Robert Reich’s terms, borrowed for the book and for this discussion) re-mix information for different audiences, taking complex, sometimes very technical data and turning it into a prospectus for investors, marketing materials for potential customers, an operations manual, and a series of graphics for an online advertising campaign. We’re like conductors assembling the evening’s program from our repertoire of rarefied musicology. In the end, the audience should be satisfied that we’ve presented them with a meaningful experience, even if some of them only listened to the timpanist.
Johnson-Eilola’s version of a datacloud is one in which huge chunks of data are presented and re-presented by trained professionals interacting with their audience, their tools, and their colleagues. Kien’s view of a technography, as I wrote yesterday, seems more interested in the experience of the individual within the group (no matter his example of a group modifying a document—his vignettes from personal life focus almost exclusively on his own subjective experience awash in connectivity). For my money, the current rein-holder of technography should focus in on the group experiences of technology in which the tool itself plays a pivotal role. As a technical communicator, I’m currently most interested in document production, and the process of revision is my (again, current) area of interest. But I think Johndan’s version of the datacloud provides a wealth of opportunity for researchers interested in performing a technography.
For instance, in “Relocating the Value of Work,” Johnson-Eilola mentions the potential power of networked technologies. One use of networked technologies is, of course, distance education. But another, more activity-oriented implementation of networked technologies might include reaching outside the classroom and into the workplace, reducing the isolation of students and mentors (an isolation which Johnson-Eilola argues against) and increasing contact with the workplace. A network as an “environment for learning,” as he puts it, can be implemented by combining human networks such as classrooms and teachers, along with mentors and peers outside the classroom, and then adding computer networks to gather and reflect upon knowledge gained from the interaction of the human networks.
Here’s how he says it:
“Perhaps more importantly, we must move beyond the idea that the network is a medium for transmitting knowledge. A more radical notion is that the network is also an environment for learning, working, and living. Put in a different way, we need to think about new formations for knowledge that rely on network organization, metaknowledge and metawork that act at a level above current knowledge structures. This is another way of saying we need to redefine technical communication in broader terms than functional skills: we should be teaching rather than training” (p. 264-5, emphasis in original).
Bringing the discussion back to technography, I re-read a passage in Johnson-Eilola’s Datacloud this morning in which he not only echoes, but I would say presages Kien’s remarks on technography:
“In analyzing these continued processes of articulation and rearticulation, we begin to see a recursive development in which the computer absorbs social actions, fragments and flattens them, only to have those actions and spaces reabsorbed into culture in various ways. However, I want to avoid the idea that the computer interface somehow autonomously causes broad social changes. Instead I want to suggest that the computer participates in broad social changes. In a recursive and contingent process (or set of processes), particular forms of interface tend to influence how people work” (34, emphasis in original).
Clearly, this is a good sign for me and my current fascination with all things technographic. Here’s a well-known TC researcher indicating that yes, the technology we use participates alongside us in social change. Again, as with Kien, I’m a little uncomfortable assigning any hint of volition on the part of a tool or any sort; however, it’s worth noting that tools and techniques are little is not the reflection of desires on our part. The desire to work and produce drives our desire to tools that aid in that work, and thus our tools are manifestations of our desires. In that sense, we could certainly argue that our desires participate, as parts of us, alongside us and within us, and the tools we use are physical symbols of that participation. So perhaps I’ve quieted my own doubts concerning Kien’s anthropomorphism (animism is what it reads like) by bringing my own thoughts about technology out of the theoretical, abstract realm and back into the day-to-day experience of working with tools.
However, if our mission is to teach rather than train, as Johnson-Eilola puts it (and Stanley Fish, too, in a recent column entitled “The Last Professor”), then we cannot allow ourselves to simply follow industry, meeting only current expectations rather than exploring new ideas and creating knowledge within the classroom. Hayhoe also notes that “discipline-standard processes and criteria for evaluating work products are other hallmarks of a profession” (p. 266). Standardization, if indeed desirable, would come most effectively after a sturdy partnership exists between industry and academia. That partnership, though, comes at the cost of re-evaluating our research methods not merely in terms of how to gather data, but also as a way of creating communities of knowledge. Research, knowledge, practice, and education cannot exist as separate cultures if TC is to grow into a mature discipline. In my writings and readings this week on technography, I think I’m beginning to identify a useful construct, or theoretical stance, in keeping us in touch with our research agenda while keeping us grounded in the workaday experience of using tools to create and collaborate.
Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s Datacloud discusses technical communication in terms of “remixing”: just as a dj remixes music, symbolic-analytical workers (Robert Reich’s terms, borrowed for the book and for this discussion) re-mix information for different audiences, taking complex, sometimes very technical data and turning it into a prospectus for investors, marketing materials for potential customers, an operations manual, and a series of graphics for an online advertising campaign. We’re like conductors assembling the evening’s program from our repertoire of rarefied musicology. In the end, the audience should be satisfied that we’ve presented them with a meaningful experience, even if some of them only listened to the timpanist.
Johnson-Eilola’s version of a datacloud is one in which huge chunks of data are presented and re-presented by trained professionals interacting with their audience, their tools, and their colleagues. Kien’s view of a technography, as I wrote yesterday, seems more interested in the experience of the individual within the group (no matter his example of a group modifying a document—his vignettes from personal life focus almost exclusively on his own subjective experience awash in connectivity). For my money, the current rein-holder of technography should focus in on the group experiences of technology in which the tool itself plays a pivotal role. As a technical communicator, I’m currently most interested in document production, and the process of revision is my (again, current) area of interest. But I think Johndan’s version of the datacloud provides a wealth of opportunity for researchers interested in performing a technography.
For instance, in “Relocating the Value of Work,” Johnson-Eilola mentions the potential power of networked technologies. One use of networked technologies is, of course, distance education. But another, more activity-oriented implementation of networked technologies might include reaching outside the classroom and into the workplace, reducing the isolation of students and mentors (an isolation which Johnson-Eilola argues against) and increasing contact with the workplace. A network as an “environment for learning,” as he puts it, can be implemented by combining human networks such as classrooms and teachers, along with mentors and peers outside the classroom, and then adding computer networks to gather and reflect upon knowledge gained from the interaction of the human networks.
Here’s how he says it:
“Perhaps more importantly, we must move beyond the idea that the network is a medium for transmitting knowledge. A more radical notion is that the network is also an environment for learning, working, and living. Put in a different way, we need to think about new formations for knowledge that rely on network organization, metaknowledge and metawork that act at a level above current knowledge structures. This is another way of saying we need to redefine technical communication in broader terms than functional skills: we should be teaching rather than training” (p. 264-5, emphasis in original).
Bringing the discussion back to technography, I re-read a passage in Johnson-Eilola’s Datacloud this morning in which he not only echoes, but I would say presages Kien’s remarks on technography:
“In analyzing these continued processes of articulation and rearticulation, we begin to see a recursive development in which the computer absorbs social actions, fragments and flattens them, only to have those actions and spaces reabsorbed into culture in various ways. However, I want to avoid the idea that the computer interface somehow autonomously causes broad social changes. Instead I want to suggest that the computer participates in broad social changes. In a recursive and contingent process (or set of processes), particular forms of interface tend to influence how people work” (34, emphasis in original).
Clearly, this is a good sign for me and my current fascination with all things technographic. Here’s a well-known TC researcher indicating that yes, the technology we use participates alongside us in social change. Again, as with Kien, I’m a little uncomfortable assigning any hint of volition on the part of a tool or any sort; however, it’s worth noting that tools and techniques are little is not the reflection of desires on our part. The desire to work and produce drives our desire to tools that aid in that work, and thus our tools are manifestations of our desires. In that sense, we could certainly argue that our desires participate, as parts of us, alongside us and within us, and the tools we use are physical symbols of that participation. So perhaps I’ve quieted my own doubts concerning Kien’s anthropomorphism (animism is what it reads like) by bringing my own thoughts about technology out of the theoretical, abstract realm and back into the day-to-day experience of working with tools.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Robert Johnson vs. Kien's Technography
Robert Johnson’s User-Centered Technology is a favorite work among technical communicators. In it, Johnson proposes “that the end of technology be refigured as in the user: those humans (virtually all of us) who interact with various technologies (large corporate and governmental systems or small, stand-alone devices; simple hand tools or complex electronic networks; discursively created or materially constructed artifacts) on a daily basis in our public and personal lives” (21). Johnson contrasts his view with how he perceives other theories of technology, those that largely subordinate the user of the technology to the tool, or system, which the user is using.
In contrast, Kien’s Global Technography seems to argue more in favor of viewing humans and technology as an interconnected system, claiming that “ubiquitous mediation is the norm” (14) and that “the props, backdrops, and containers of our interactions practice everyday life right along with us” (16). While this statement certainly teases my imagination, and makes for interesting research ideas, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with Kien’s casual anthropomorphizing of technology. In short, I’m not sure that tools “practice” anything, much less “life.” That the presence of the tool, or system, affects my performance of everyday life is not in question. What is at the heart of my discomfort is whether one can assign agency to technology.
In response, we might point to Johnson’s argument that “the system-centered view holds that the technology, the humans, and the context within which they reside are perceived as constituting one system that operates in a rational manner toward the achievement of predetermined goals” (25). But here we can see that Kien moves away from Johnson’s condemnation of “predetermined goals” by side-stepping the issue of determinism altogether and getting into the messiness, the unpredictability, of everyday life. Kien’s “global,” as it were, argument is that because our human interactions are constantly mediated via technological interface, we need to create a methodological affordance, a stance, which accounts for our interactions with technology (as those interactions pass through that technology on their way to the intended human audience). Kien argues that this “ever-changing vicinity of the device itself thus becomes the defining parameter of the field of study” (16). Kien seems to be talking mostly about communications technology, and his book is full of anecdotes describing the changes in behavior and interpersonal relations that occur due to our modern existence being almost entirely circumscribed by technological connectivity. And not just any technologies, but wireless communications technologies: devices specifically made to allow for interactions between people, thus also made specifically to mediate the interface that exists between two people. That interface is at once made possible, as well as changed by, the phone (for example).
Where Kien and Johnson seem to agree is on the user’s technological awareness. Johnson argues that “users know about technology and the experiences they have with it are always located in a certain time and place that changes from minute to minute, day to day, era to era” (9). Kien keeps talking about “eruptions” of change and an ongoing “epiphany” of insight into how communications technology affects our performance of culture, life, and learning. For me, an eruption or an epiphany carries connotations or either the unpredictable natural world (erupting around us) or divine interference (epiphany); either way, the user experiences life by way of accident, or lack of control, and is not aware of his or her performative relationship to technology. I don’t think this is an accurate characterization for all users, at the very least because I feel there are a great many users out there who are thinking actively about their relationships and performances with regard to technology. By way of example, I point to all the poignant criticism of Apple’s just-announced iPad. Many of my friends on Twitter and Facebook, along with professional reviewers at Wired and CNN, are pointing out shortcomings of the device, and actively critiquing whether this new device, neither laptop nor phone, can (or should) be fit into our lives. I think these reactions to a device not yet publicly released contradict Kien’s descriptions, his sort of non-teleological lens through which our interactions with technology change and reproduce unpredictably.
Back to my own study, wherein workplace writing review is examined in terms of how technology changes that process, I think a researcher would deliberately look for work groups who actively consider their technological aids to document production. If not, if the participants are of the sort hinted at by Kien, who simply react to technology rather than think and plan and theorize it, then their descriptions of how technology changes their revision process will be worthless, and ultimately, impossible to reproduce in the classroom.
But I think my own criticism of Kien’s theories is really only in how he writes about them, treats them, and not with the base idea: an ethnography, which measures and describes human activity within a particular cultural and spatial context, can be channeled into a technography, a description of human activity with a particular cultural and technological context (I’m tempted to write “virtual spatial context,” but the term “virtual” to describe electronic interactions is annoying to me). Kien indicates that our interactions with communications—and it’s only fair to note that he’s talking about global connectivity--technology seem to throw traditional narrative and theories of knowledge out the window, but I don’t see that at all. Instead, I see technography as a way of performing a particular kind of ethnography (even though an anthropologist might not see it as ethnography at all). So I’ll be more specific: a technography, for me, is any study that focuses on how technology alters a human activity, and which tries to account for that change by way of gathering data from the people who use (a) while they’re using it, and (b) in the contexts in which they use it. Thus, disruptive though technology may be, and disruptive to our data-gathering methods, no doubt, methodologically speaking a technography is simply a more narrowly focused application of ethnographic methods.
Not sure I’m comfortable with that, but it’s time to start working what I’ve written into a usable format.
In contrast, Kien’s Global Technography seems to argue more in favor of viewing humans and technology as an interconnected system, claiming that “ubiquitous mediation is the norm” (14) and that “the props, backdrops, and containers of our interactions practice everyday life right along with us” (16). While this statement certainly teases my imagination, and makes for interesting research ideas, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with Kien’s casual anthropomorphizing of technology. In short, I’m not sure that tools “practice” anything, much less “life.” That the presence of the tool, or system, affects my performance of everyday life is not in question. What is at the heart of my discomfort is whether one can assign agency to technology.
In response, we might point to Johnson’s argument that “the system-centered view holds that the technology, the humans, and the context within which they reside are perceived as constituting one system that operates in a rational manner toward the achievement of predetermined goals” (25). But here we can see that Kien moves away from Johnson’s condemnation of “predetermined goals” by side-stepping the issue of determinism altogether and getting into the messiness, the unpredictability, of everyday life. Kien’s “global,” as it were, argument is that because our human interactions are constantly mediated via technological interface, we need to create a methodological affordance, a stance, which accounts for our interactions with technology (as those interactions pass through that technology on their way to the intended human audience). Kien argues that this “ever-changing vicinity of the device itself thus becomes the defining parameter of the field of study” (16). Kien seems to be talking mostly about communications technology, and his book is full of anecdotes describing the changes in behavior and interpersonal relations that occur due to our modern existence being almost entirely circumscribed by technological connectivity. And not just any technologies, but wireless communications technologies: devices specifically made to allow for interactions between people, thus also made specifically to mediate the interface that exists between two people. That interface is at once made possible, as well as changed by, the phone (for example).
Where Kien and Johnson seem to agree is on the user’s technological awareness. Johnson argues that “users know about technology and the experiences they have with it are always located in a certain time and place that changes from minute to minute, day to day, era to era” (9). Kien keeps talking about “eruptions” of change and an ongoing “epiphany” of insight into how communications technology affects our performance of culture, life, and learning. For me, an eruption or an epiphany carries connotations or either the unpredictable natural world (erupting around us) or divine interference (epiphany); either way, the user experiences life by way of accident, or lack of control, and is not aware of his or her performative relationship to technology. I don’t think this is an accurate characterization for all users, at the very least because I feel there are a great many users out there who are thinking actively about their relationships and performances with regard to technology. By way of example, I point to all the poignant criticism of Apple’s just-announced iPad. Many of my friends on Twitter and Facebook, along with professional reviewers at Wired and CNN, are pointing out shortcomings of the device, and actively critiquing whether this new device, neither laptop nor phone, can (or should) be fit into our lives. I think these reactions to a device not yet publicly released contradict Kien’s descriptions, his sort of non-teleological lens through which our interactions with technology change and reproduce unpredictably.
Back to my own study, wherein workplace writing review is examined in terms of how technology changes that process, I think a researcher would deliberately look for work groups who actively consider their technological aids to document production. If not, if the participants are of the sort hinted at by Kien, who simply react to technology rather than think and plan and theorize it, then their descriptions of how technology changes their revision process will be worthless, and ultimately, impossible to reproduce in the classroom.
But I think my own criticism of Kien’s theories is really only in how he writes about them, treats them, and not with the base idea: an ethnography, which measures and describes human activity within a particular cultural and spatial context, can be channeled into a technography, a description of human activity with a particular cultural and technological context (I’m tempted to write “virtual spatial context,” but the term “virtual” to describe electronic interactions is annoying to me). Kien indicates that our interactions with communications—and it’s only fair to note that he’s talking about global connectivity--technology seem to throw traditional narrative and theories of knowledge out the window, but I don’t see that at all. Instead, I see technography as a way of performing a particular kind of ethnography (even though an anthropologist might not see it as ethnography at all). So I’ll be more specific: a technography, for me, is any study that focuses on how technology alters a human activity, and which tries to account for that change by way of gathering data from the people who use (a) while they’re using it, and (b) in the contexts in which they use it. Thus, disruptive though technology may be, and disruptive to our data-gathering methods, no doubt, methodologically speaking a technography is simply a more narrowly focused application of ethnographic methods.
Not sure I’m comfortable with that, but it’s time to start working what I’ve written into a usable format.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Technography as Methodology
Thinking still about technography and its possibilities for research methodology as well as methods. I find that I can pretty easily come up with an application and call it “technography”; however, I find that I can also come up with ideas for new animals and call all of them “horses. It’s the methodology, the justification, that I’m finding problematic. Kien refers repeatedly to the “role that technology” plays, and that in order to conduct a technography the researcher would need to observe technology as though it were a human participant. I’m not sure I can pull that off, but I do feel he’s on to something. What I’m going to write about today deals more with eking out a space in which technography might exist, and then seeing if I can fit some scenarios into it.
As opposed to an ethnography, which functions within a physical space, a technography uses technology as part of its spatial constraint. If a group of people all sitting around a monitor and working on the same document is a technography, then we’d need to identify that monitor as part of our technographic space. The OED gives us “technography: the description of the arts, forming the preliminary stage of technology.” Certainly, it would be easy enough to describe a technology, but I suspect that without at least a partial delving into technique that that description would be weak. A diagram of parts, no more. So identifying the monitor in our example as part of the technographic space only gives us, again, part of that space. The other space would need to be identified as well: what software is used? Are there multiple physical points of input (is each person using a keyboard) and allowances for simultaneous input (are all those keyboards inputting at the same time)? How was that software chosen—by group consensus or individual recommendation? Or simply to keep up with the Joneses?
Technography also deals, at least in part, with the role that a tool plays as a member of a working group. In technical communication terms, that role might be filled or demarcated by the affordances of the technology itself: a wiki allows for rapid page creation but no spell checking, and Word allows for rapid spell checking but difficulty in rendering HTML. The constraints, then, of the tool mark off the physical space of the technography: whereas ethnography is often limited to physical spaces (an urban elementary school, or a medieval monastery), a technography is limited by the interactions facilitated and disallowed by the tool in question.
For a study on workplace revision, a technography might take into account the following things:
• The number of users who could interact with the document simultaneously
• The ways in which users interact with each other while interacting with the document (do they talk, communicate via text, or is the document itself the interface of their communications?)
• How accessible the document is (are permissions required, or can anyone on the network modify it, or can anyone in the world modify it?)
• The location of the file (on a proprietary server, a third-party provider, a single user’s desktop, a portable device)
• The ways in which interaction and revision are presented within the software. Are revisions always in red, or do they appear in little balloons, or is there some way in which revisions can be hidden from all but the person who wrote them?
• The ways in which users characterize their interactions with the document (not sure what I mean here, but I feel somehow that asking the users how they feel about working together on a single document is important). This might lead to being able to categorize users as deterministic, user-centered, or some other sort of technological school of thought.
That last point is giving me some mental reservations. It seems obvious that in order for a technography to be a legitimate methodology then we’d need to include some description of how the participants view the tools they’re using for the prescribed task. For the purposes of collection, this could be done via an interview. But what purpose those descriptions would fulfill is elusive to me. Collecting the thoughts of people who use technology to accomplish a task is nothing new. I suspect that Roman officers along Hadrian’s wall occasionally asked the enlisted men how they felt about how the wall was working. But for a technography, could we argue that that description is a logical step in trying to account for how the tool is used to accomplish a goal? The interview need not focus upon romantic or far-flung thoughts: instead, the interview could simply contain commentary by the user on whether the tool in question worked well for the task at hand.
But I imagine that, if a necessary part of the definition of a technography is that it has group interaction at its core, then interviewing the group as a group would be far more fruitful. It might be easier to “get a sense of the room,” as it were, if asking the group about their interactions with the monitor (to refer back to the earlier example) were substituted for interviews of individuals.
If my target group is engineers, as it will be, then interactions with technology may be something they’re more than happy to describe, engineers being the technological folks they are. The question remains, though, whether technography can be validated as a methodological approach rather than simply an interesting catchword.
Last shot for today: if a methodology is an explanation of why a method is useful, or necessary, and if methodology has to do with attitudes towards the making of knowledge, then technography could be defined as group interactions through a technological interface. In my own specialized case, the group interaction would be workplace writing review and the interface would be whatever technology the group uses in order to accomplish the goal of review. The assumption that that technology is as important as the task—that the choice of technology teaches us as much about the activity as the rhetorical content of the document—is a technographic mindset.
Regardless of the particular workings of a technography, the point (as I see it) is to perform a study in which human activity is measured along with how that activity is shaped by the tools used by the participants. If interactions between participants can be measured, then surely how the participants use the technology in question can also be measured. I suspect it can be done empirically; I doubt whether that data is quantifiable.
As opposed to an ethnography, which functions within a physical space, a technography uses technology as part of its spatial constraint. If a group of people all sitting around a monitor and working on the same document is a technography, then we’d need to identify that monitor as part of our technographic space. The OED gives us “technography: the description of the arts, forming the preliminary stage of technology.” Certainly, it would be easy enough to describe a technology, but I suspect that without at least a partial delving into technique that that description would be weak. A diagram of parts, no more. So identifying the monitor in our example as part of the technographic space only gives us, again, part of that space. The other space would need to be identified as well: what software is used? Are there multiple physical points of input (is each person using a keyboard) and allowances for simultaneous input (are all those keyboards inputting at the same time)? How was that software chosen—by group consensus or individual recommendation? Or simply to keep up with the Joneses?
Technography also deals, at least in part, with the role that a tool plays as a member of a working group. In technical communication terms, that role might be filled or demarcated by the affordances of the technology itself: a wiki allows for rapid page creation but no spell checking, and Word allows for rapid spell checking but difficulty in rendering HTML. The constraints, then, of the tool mark off the physical space of the technography: whereas ethnography is often limited to physical spaces (an urban elementary school, or a medieval monastery), a technography is limited by the interactions facilitated and disallowed by the tool in question.
For a study on workplace revision, a technography might take into account the following things:
• The number of users who could interact with the document simultaneously
• The ways in which users interact with each other while interacting with the document (do they talk, communicate via text, or is the document itself the interface of their communications?)
• How accessible the document is (are permissions required, or can anyone on the network modify it, or can anyone in the world modify it?)
• The location of the file (on a proprietary server, a third-party provider, a single user’s desktop, a portable device)
• The ways in which interaction and revision are presented within the software. Are revisions always in red, or do they appear in little balloons, or is there some way in which revisions can be hidden from all but the person who wrote them?
• The ways in which users characterize their interactions with the document (not sure what I mean here, but I feel somehow that asking the users how they feel about working together on a single document is important). This might lead to being able to categorize users as deterministic, user-centered, or some other sort of technological school of thought.
That last point is giving me some mental reservations. It seems obvious that in order for a technography to be a legitimate methodology then we’d need to include some description of how the participants view the tools they’re using for the prescribed task. For the purposes of collection, this could be done via an interview. But what purpose those descriptions would fulfill is elusive to me. Collecting the thoughts of people who use technology to accomplish a task is nothing new. I suspect that Roman officers along Hadrian’s wall occasionally asked the enlisted men how they felt about how the wall was working. But for a technography, could we argue that that description is a logical step in trying to account for how the tool is used to accomplish a goal? The interview need not focus upon romantic or far-flung thoughts: instead, the interview could simply contain commentary by the user on whether the tool in question worked well for the task at hand.
But I imagine that, if a necessary part of the definition of a technography is that it has group interaction at its core, then interviewing the group as a group would be far more fruitful. It might be easier to “get a sense of the room,” as it were, if asking the group about their interactions with the monitor (to refer back to the earlier example) were substituted for interviews of individuals.
If my target group is engineers, as it will be, then interactions with technology may be something they’re more than happy to describe, engineers being the technological folks they are. The question remains, though, whether technography can be validated as a methodological approach rather than simply an interesting catchword.
Last shot for today: if a methodology is an explanation of why a method is useful, or necessary, and if methodology has to do with attitudes towards the making of knowledge, then technography could be defined as group interactions through a technological interface. In my own specialized case, the group interaction would be workplace writing review and the interface would be whatever technology the group uses in order to accomplish the goal of review. The assumption that that technology is as important as the task—that the choice of technology teaches us as much about the activity as the rhetorical content of the document—is a technographic mindset.
Regardless of the particular workings of a technography, the point (as I see it) is to perform a study in which human activity is measured along with how that activity is shaped by the tools used by the participants. If interactions between participants can be measured, then surely how the participants use the technology in question can also be measured. I suspect it can be done empirically; I doubt whether that data is quantifiable.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
How would a Technography Work?
Many, though by no means all, of the major workplace writing studies in the past twenty years or so have relied on ethnographic research methods, and in my opinion we’ve learned a great deal. For instance, individual authorship is much different in the classroom than in the office space, and writing review is often an act of socialization rather than simply correcting and improving a text. My gut feeling, though, is that the tools with which writing review is conducted have changed to the point wherein we need to start thinking of technography rather than ethnography. A technography is an ethnography wherein the human activity in question is observed and recorded via technology. That single definition isn’t a stretch from a more traditional ethnography: certainly, an ethnographer takes notes and transcribes them using technology, and can observe in person how people use technologies to carry out their daily activities.
But, having read through a couple of Kien’s works, I’m beginning to revise that definition to something more like: a technography is a study in which technology is regarded as an active participant among a pool of other participants. According to Kien, “industry uses the word technography to define real-time, multiuser document production. In this scenario, many users network and interface with the technology directly to produce a common text, much like having a group of individuals each equipped with chalk and eraser gathered at a blackboard to produce a text” (Qualitative Inquiry, 14:7: 1102). This particular example is so much in line with how I suspect workplace writing review takes place that I think it’s worth beginning to think of technography as a useful way of theorizing that activity. Within individual engineers in particular, the drive to write is usually missing entirely, and because the engineering profession requires substantial amounts of writing they normally only write in teams. From an ethnographic research perspective, the individual fades into the background as the rhetoric of engineering takes over via many hands and keyboards.
A true technographic study would look at the performative aspects of both the participants and the technologies in question. But if I’m looking at workplace writing revision, how is it technographic? How would I describe the role the technologies play in aiding the revision? The first step is to discover what kinds of tools engineers use for workplace revision, and that can be done pretty quickly. Regardless of the particular tool in question, a technographic approach allows for analysis of how that tool is used—and uses—the writers. For instance, MS Word will make spelling and grammatical suggestions, and my experience with students engineers suggests that those suggestions are almost always followed. Thus, MS Word makes suggestions during the revision process, and those suggestions are followed. An ethnography would make note of the humans’ response to the software while potentially overlooking the software’s role. This seems to be technography’s value, not that an ethnographer would ignore technology—there is too much evidence that that is simply not the case—but that we need a theory to account for the technological actor.
A technographic outlook also allows us to insert the workplace into the classroom via the dynamic nature of digital workspaces. In other words, since work isn’t necessarily performed in the cubicle anymore, those digital workspaces can be accessed from the classroom, thus allowing students and instructors (and researchers) a peek inside while treating the black box that makes it all possible as an active participant.
I’ve searched the EBSCO Communication and Mass Media Complete database for references to “technography,” but found only two sources, both by Kien. My guess is that while actor-network theory, which seems to serve as a foundation for how technography is theorized in communications studies, is well known amongst TC researchers, technography is not.
My concern, and it’s minor, is that “technography” is simply another way of saying something else, which of course is built upon something else, and which all comes back to something (ever) else. But such is the nature of all theories, that they are based upon the metaphors and analogies of others, and that while the current theories of a generation work well, they will inevitably be supplanted by others. But my sense is that the value, to me, to TC, of technography is that it allows for a greater latitude in interpreting the writing actions of groups within a technological framework that accounts for that framework as an actor. I’ll have to do additional reading to find out how technography, stated as such or not, is represented within the literature.
For now I think the next step is to determine which revision tools engineers typically use for writing/reviewing in teams. Team working (I’m deliberately avoiding the overused “teamwork”) is a key component of technography, and engineers from students and recent graduated to older, more experienced PEs work in teams almost constantly. So the team aspect of this particular technography, dealing as it does with writing review, might need to begin with a couple of pilot studies (really just informal asking around). The first should be something like:
“When you review written documents in teams, what kinds of technology do you use?”
The next would need to begin focusing in on a particular action, or rhetorical situation, in which the engineers work in teams in order to revise a document. My question at that point is whether an ethnographic approach (direct observation) might work better than simply seeing a record of the revision process (the “before” document, an “in-process” snapshot,” and then the “final,” marked-up document)? I think both, just to be safe.
Another possibility might be to install screencasting software to capture the revision as it happens within the team and then simply review the recording and make a transcript. Of course, that might be dependent upon whether I could reassure my participants that I wouldn’t show their work to anyone else. Engineers rely upon their ideas and designs for income, and it wouldn’t be fair to share that work.
OK, next step: identify what kinds of workplace revision take place at engineering firms.
But, having read through a couple of Kien’s works, I’m beginning to revise that definition to something more like: a technography is a study in which technology is regarded as an active participant among a pool of other participants. According to Kien, “industry uses the word technography to define real-time, multiuser document production. In this scenario, many users network and interface with the technology directly to produce a common text, much like having a group of individuals each equipped with chalk and eraser gathered at a blackboard to produce a text” (Qualitative Inquiry, 14:7: 1102). This particular example is so much in line with how I suspect workplace writing review takes place that I think it’s worth beginning to think of technography as a useful way of theorizing that activity. Within individual engineers in particular, the drive to write is usually missing entirely, and because the engineering profession requires substantial amounts of writing they normally only write in teams. From an ethnographic research perspective, the individual fades into the background as the rhetoric of engineering takes over via many hands and keyboards.
A true technographic study would look at the performative aspects of both the participants and the technologies in question. But if I’m looking at workplace writing revision, how is it technographic? How would I describe the role the technologies play in aiding the revision? The first step is to discover what kinds of tools engineers use for workplace revision, and that can be done pretty quickly. Regardless of the particular tool in question, a technographic approach allows for analysis of how that tool is used—and uses—the writers. For instance, MS Word will make spelling and grammatical suggestions, and my experience with students engineers suggests that those suggestions are almost always followed. Thus, MS Word makes suggestions during the revision process, and those suggestions are followed. An ethnography would make note of the humans’ response to the software while potentially overlooking the software’s role. This seems to be technography’s value, not that an ethnographer would ignore technology—there is too much evidence that that is simply not the case—but that we need a theory to account for the technological actor.
A technographic outlook also allows us to insert the workplace into the classroom via the dynamic nature of digital workspaces. In other words, since work isn’t necessarily performed in the cubicle anymore, those digital workspaces can be accessed from the classroom, thus allowing students and instructors (and researchers) a peek inside while treating the black box that makes it all possible as an active participant.
I’ve searched the EBSCO Communication and Mass Media Complete database for references to “technography,” but found only two sources, both by Kien. My guess is that while actor-network theory, which seems to serve as a foundation for how technography is theorized in communications studies, is well known amongst TC researchers, technography is not.
My concern, and it’s minor, is that “technography” is simply another way of saying something else, which of course is built upon something else, and which all comes back to something (ever) else. But such is the nature of all theories, that they are based upon the metaphors and analogies of others, and that while the current theories of a generation work well, they will inevitably be supplanted by others. But my sense is that the value, to me, to TC, of technography is that it allows for a greater latitude in interpreting the writing actions of groups within a technological framework that accounts for that framework as an actor. I’ll have to do additional reading to find out how technography, stated as such or not, is represented within the literature.
For now I think the next step is to determine which revision tools engineers typically use for writing/reviewing in teams. Team working (I’m deliberately avoiding the overused “teamwork”) is a key component of technography, and engineers from students and recent graduated to older, more experienced PEs work in teams almost constantly. So the team aspect of this particular technography, dealing as it does with writing review, might need to begin with a couple of pilot studies (really just informal asking around). The first should be something like:
“When you review written documents in teams, what kinds of technology do you use?”
The next would need to begin focusing in on a particular action, or rhetorical situation, in which the engineers work in teams in order to revise a document. My question at that point is whether an ethnographic approach (direct observation) might work better than simply seeing a record of the revision process (the “before” document, an “in-process” snapshot,” and then the “final,” marked-up document)? I think both, just to be safe.
Another possibility might be to install screencasting software to capture the revision as it happens within the team and then simply review the recording and make a transcript. Of course, that might be dependent upon whether I could reassure my participants that I wouldn’t show their work to anyone else. Engineers rely upon their ideas and designs for income, and it wouldn’t be fair to share that work.
OK, next step: identify what kinds of workplace revision take place at engineering firms.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Technography as Method
Is it possible to use digital methods to replicate the results of ethnographic studies on workplace writing review?
The reason this question is important is because there is loads—and I mean loads—of evidence that novice writers only become advanced writers when they begin to associate themselves with the discourse, and thus the communities formed by that discourse, used by their chosen discipline. Thus, a newly-graduated engineer will start to incorporate characteristics of the professional discourse he or she sees and experiences in the engineering workplace. Technical communication and composition researchers assure me this is true. It’s a fact proven by empirical research. I’ve read that research, and it sure seems solid.
But it begs a couple of questions:
1. Why bother with writing courses in colleges if we’re not able to reproduce the circumstances of a professional writing environment (whether that’s for the law, accounting, marketing, engineering, etc.)?
2. If we can replicate those circumstances, and thus begin graduating students who are already professional writers in terms of their chosen field, how can we keep those circumstances both (a) updated, and (b) specific enough to help each student?
3. Surveys of employers consistently indicate that communication skills are at the top, or near the top, of the list of things those employers look for in a new employee. But if those communication skills are only learned once the novice communicator (writer) begins working within the professional workplace, how can our students hope to get jobs since, as students, they will always be novice writers?
I think working on #2 is our best hope, and, like Princess Leia recording the secret message in R2D2’s innards, we can only beseech the Obi-Kenobi’s of the professional world to help us out. So how do we go about replicating the circumstances of a professional writing environment? As always, that’s my central question.
Working with my genius wife, I’ve sketched out what I think is a preliminary plan for testing whether workplace revision processes, what Katz called “writing review,” can be duplicated within the classroom so long as we have some online contact with professionals. As I’ve lamented before, the way this has been researched in the past is to use a sort of pseudo-ethnography: the researcher gets permission to follow people around and watch what they do. But that’s time consuming. The researcher needs special training, the researcher has to follow folks around for long enough to get a good idea of what they’re doing, and then the researcher winds up with reams of field data that has to somehow be coded.
There has got to be a way around that. I don’t know if it’s intellectual curiosity or an intense case of laziness, but I feel as though we have enough digital tools laying around such that we can learn what we need without leaving the office. But what I need to know first is whether folks in the workplace are using digital tools for writing review, like Word’s track changes and commenting features, or Google Docs or even wikis. If they are, then we’ve got a start, because those are tools we can use for classroom assignments, and they are also the petard through which can hang ethnography.
Here’s the study, based on the premise that I can find three or four engineering firms that use Word’s track changes/commenting feature in their writing review process.
Two groups of students write a document of a professional genre, such as a Statement of Qualifications (SOQ).
That document is reviewed by two groups of professional engineers using MS Word’s track changes/commenting feature. One group of students knows that the reviewers are professional engineers; the other group of students does not.
The students see the reviewed document and are allowed to incorporate or not incorporate the suggested revisions. In interviews, the students asked to justify why and how they used the suggested revisions.
After the students make use (or don’t) of the revisions, the first draft, suggested revisions, and final draft is then reviewed by another group of professional engineers as well as by a group of writing instructors. The two groups (engineers and writing instructors) are asked to evaluate whether the students made effective choices when including or not including the professional feedback.
If the findings are positive: in other words, if the final evaluators indicate that yes, the students did make good use of the professional feedback, then we can argue that gathering feedback in this way, rather than ethnography, is a viable method of beginning the professional rhetorical assimilation of the students. We can also begin to encourage instructors to begin incorporating this method of feedback into their classes. Many professional schools, such as engineering and law, have close ties to the professional community; thus, finding participants to provide occasional feedback shouldn’t be impossible. We could also theorize that digital research methods are a possible alternative to direct data collection via ethnography, thus opening the door to more effective writing instruction within professional disciplines.
If the findings are negative, in other words, if the final evaluators indicate that no, the students not make good use of the professional feedback, then we can argue that perhaps ethnographic data collection is still the way to go when researching workplace writing review practices for inclusion in the classroom. We can also argue that writing revision is more than the written form of feedback: that there is socialization that takes place (as I believe Katz and others have argued) that cannot be recorded in the written word. We could also argue that, contrary to widespread belief, the “digital generation” is still pretty heavily reliant on face-to-face communication, or at least communication that’s not written.
One of the reasons, perhaps THE reason, this method holds so much fascination for me (other than the rampant laziness cited above) is because digital tools offer so many possibilities for recording human activity, and therefore also shaping human activity. It’s clear that we’ve changed some of our habits and work styles because of the Internet, and I think that it’s possible to begin re-shaping how we go about doing writing research, too. While loads of us certainly have done plenty of digital writing research, a great deal of that (think Kairos) deals with exploratory pedagogies and rather academic discussions of new media. I’m more interested in how folks use digital tools to get writing done in the cubicle, not in the classroom.
My wife proposed the word “technography” to mean a technological replacement for ethnography. I’ve just found a book in the A&M library that suggests the same, so that may be my hook: technography rather than ethnography. For me, technography suggests a digital observer rather than an in-person observer, and since so much of our work is digital, testing technography as a way of gathering data on workplace writing review seems like an obvious choice.
The reason this question is important is because there is loads—and I mean loads—of evidence that novice writers only become advanced writers when they begin to associate themselves with the discourse, and thus the communities formed by that discourse, used by their chosen discipline. Thus, a newly-graduated engineer will start to incorporate characteristics of the professional discourse he or she sees and experiences in the engineering workplace. Technical communication and composition researchers assure me this is true. It’s a fact proven by empirical research. I’ve read that research, and it sure seems solid.
But it begs a couple of questions:
1. Why bother with writing courses in colleges if we’re not able to reproduce the circumstances of a professional writing environment (whether that’s for the law, accounting, marketing, engineering, etc.)?
2. If we can replicate those circumstances, and thus begin graduating students who are already professional writers in terms of their chosen field, how can we keep those circumstances both (a) updated, and (b) specific enough to help each student?
3. Surveys of employers consistently indicate that communication skills are at the top, or near the top, of the list of things those employers look for in a new employee. But if those communication skills are only learned once the novice communicator (writer) begins working within the professional workplace, how can our students hope to get jobs since, as students, they will always be novice writers?
I think working on #2 is our best hope, and, like Princess Leia recording the secret message in R2D2’s innards, we can only beseech the Obi-Kenobi’s of the professional world to help us out. So how do we go about replicating the circumstances of a professional writing environment? As always, that’s my central question.
Working with my genius wife, I’ve sketched out what I think is a preliminary plan for testing whether workplace revision processes, what Katz called “writing review,” can be duplicated within the classroom so long as we have some online contact with professionals. As I’ve lamented before, the way this has been researched in the past is to use a sort of pseudo-ethnography: the researcher gets permission to follow people around and watch what they do. But that’s time consuming. The researcher needs special training, the researcher has to follow folks around for long enough to get a good idea of what they’re doing, and then the researcher winds up with reams of field data that has to somehow be coded.
There has got to be a way around that. I don’t know if it’s intellectual curiosity or an intense case of laziness, but I feel as though we have enough digital tools laying around such that we can learn what we need without leaving the office. But what I need to know first is whether folks in the workplace are using digital tools for writing review, like Word’s track changes and commenting features, or Google Docs or even wikis. If they are, then we’ve got a start, because those are tools we can use for classroom assignments, and they are also the petard through which can hang ethnography.
Here’s the study, based on the premise that I can find three or four engineering firms that use Word’s track changes/commenting feature in their writing review process.
Two groups of students write a document of a professional genre, such as a Statement of Qualifications (SOQ).
That document is reviewed by two groups of professional engineers using MS Word’s track changes/commenting feature. One group of students knows that the reviewers are professional engineers; the other group of students does not.
The students see the reviewed document and are allowed to incorporate or not incorporate the suggested revisions. In interviews, the students asked to justify why and how they used the suggested revisions.
After the students make use (or don’t) of the revisions, the first draft, suggested revisions, and final draft is then reviewed by another group of professional engineers as well as by a group of writing instructors. The two groups (engineers and writing instructors) are asked to evaluate whether the students made effective choices when including or not including the professional feedback.
If the findings are positive: in other words, if the final evaluators indicate that yes, the students did make good use of the professional feedback, then we can argue that gathering feedback in this way, rather than ethnography, is a viable method of beginning the professional rhetorical assimilation of the students. We can also begin to encourage instructors to begin incorporating this method of feedback into their classes. Many professional schools, such as engineering and law, have close ties to the professional community; thus, finding participants to provide occasional feedback shouldn’t be impossible. We could also theorize that digital research methods are a possible alternative to direct data collection via ethnography, thus opening the door to more effective writing instruction within professional disciplines.
If the findings are negative, in other words, if the final evaluators indicate that no, the students not make good use of the professional feedback, then we can argue that perhaps ethnographic data collection is still the way to go when researching workplace writing review practices for inclusion in the classroom. We can also argue that writing revision is more than the written form of feedback: that there is socialization that takes place (as I believe Katz and others have argued) that cannot be recorded in the written word. We could also argue that, contrary to widespread belief, the “digital generation” is still pretty heavily reliant on face-to-face communication, or at least communication that’s not written.
One of the reasons, perhaps THE reason, this method holds so much fascination for me (other than the rampant laziness cited above) is because digital tools offer so many possibilities for recording human activity, and therefore also shaping human activity. It’s clear that we’ve changed some of our habits and work styles because of the Internet, and I think that it’s possible to begin re-shaping how we go about doing writing research, too. While loads of us certainly have done plenty of digital writing research, a great deal of that (think Kairos) deals with exploratory pedagogies and rather academic discussions of new media. I’m more interested in how folks use digital tools to get writing done in the cubicle, not in the classroom.
My wife proposed the word “technography” to mean a technological replacement for ethnography. I’ve just found a book in the A&M library that suggests the same, so that may be my hook: technography rather than ethnography. For me, technography suggests a digital observer rather than an in-person observer, and since so much of our work is digital, testing technography as a way of gathering data on workplace writing review seems like an obvious choice.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Ramblings on Study Methods
So I’m trying to get together a study to study workplace revision practices, and I’m having some problems. My real goal is to study the research methods used to examine workplace revision practices: I’ve read a number of very well-done ethnographic studies, but I keep thinking there must be a faster, cheaper way to do workplace studies than ethnography. I also think there must be a research method that requires less training than ethnography.
But revision itself is a bugbear. Reading through the scholarly attempts (look at Haar, chapter 2 of Horning’s collection, to get an idea) at defining revision is like learning a whole new field. Loads of stuff. But what I noticed in particular, and this is significant, is that these definitions don’t seem to really contradict each other. Unlike other sets of scholarly definitions—like those for technology, or rhetoric—the definitions for revision don’t seem to really be at odds. Well, there’s some disagreement, like whether revision is simply writing or a separate process. But overall, it’s simply a struggle to find meaning: should we talk about revision in terms of the physical process (essentially proofreading) or revision as it falls on the schedule of things to do (it comes after a rough draft but before the final draft)? So really there’s less confusion in learning about revision than in studying other humanities-related subjects.
But to get back to research methods, I’ve been thinking that social media (think Facebook and Twitter) should offer some way of contacting the workplace and gathering data about the revision process within engineering firms (I work with engineers, so contacting engineering firms is the path of least resistance). But I think that Facebook and Twitter offer ways around some of the traditional problems associated with distributing a research instrument, such as a survey: social media allow for few barriers when it comes to distribution, and many connections to boot. For instance, if I want to survey Texas politicians about legal matters related to property ownership, the first few folks I contact may not know anything about it. But they’ll know someone—some real estate-lawyer-turned-politician—who can really comment on the matter. And she’ll, by nature of her job, know someone else, and social media allows for quick distribution: person A knows person B is an expert, and passes the survey along, and person B knows person C, and so on. And there are a number of engineering groups on Facebook, so that would work as a distribution method. I don’t have to spend time tracking down contact info for all those folks; instead, I can simply join a single Facebook group and initiate contact.
But that really only speaks to the distribution side of research, the access to a pool of participants. While that’s certainly interesting, and likely to be a timesaver, it doesn’t have to do with the other side of the study. If research is hunting and gathering, then Facebook and Twitter only help with the hunting. There’s no gathering.
But an article I read the other day—Jones?—pointed out that some folks think applications like Google Docs constitute social networking, or at least social media. And that’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be interesting to set up a number of experiments using Google Docs?
For instance here’s one:
Two groups of five students post their rough drafts to Google Docs. Each group has two professional engineers assigned to it, but one group knows it and the other doesn’t. So Group A knows they’ll be getting some feedback from a professional engineer and Group B only knows they’ll be getting feedback from unidentified parties, other students for all they know.
If everything I read about the valuation of rhetoric as a part of becoming a member of a discourse community proves true, then both groups should pretty quickly identify the professional feedback regardless of whether they know for sure the other participants are professional engineers. Something about the way the pros offer their feedback should let the students know, clue them in, that they’re professionals.
Another experiment would be to simply watch, and record somehow, the revision process of two groups of professional engineers working on technical reports and using Google Docs (or something comparable onsite, such as a local wiki). Simultaneous group also using Google Docs (or some other software) but with students as participants. Then compare the results. Of course, I’d have to be looking for a construct of interest, some textual feature, such that if it appears within one group and not the other I’d have something to compare.
So what would that rhetorical feature be? It’s tempting to say that what’ll happen is that the novice writers—the students—would begin almost immediately to recognize the professional, more experienced discourse of the professional engineers due to word choice or some other feature. How they recognize that professional discourse isn’t the point here. What they do in reaction to it is, at least this time through. So my guess is that the sign they recognize the professional discourse will involve mimicking the style of the discourse, which means in order to judge whether the novice writers have recognized and begun to use a new style I’ll need to have some raters. Having raters opens a whole new can of worms, but it can be done. Perhaps in virtual teams.
Another option would be to interview the students after the exercise and see how they characterize what happened, and whether they recognize the shift in their own style. That shouldn’t be too hard. Make sure the questions are along the lines of “Do you think your writing improved?” or even simply “Do you think it changed?” or “How would you characterize the person providing feedback, and what was your reaction to that feedback?” I think any of those questions would work fairly well, particularly the last one. In fact, they might be delivered via survey.
So that last study would test a number of things, wouldn’t it? In short, they’d be:
Do novice writers recognize the discourse of their chosen profession simply by seeing it?
Do novice writers react differently to the professional engineers’ writing without knowing it’s a professional engineer supplying it?
Is collaborative writing technology a tool by which these changes can be recorded and observed? If so, can we get enough observational data to justify replacing an ethnography with observation of collaborative writing technology?
But revision itself is a bugbear. Reading through the scholarly attempts (look at Haar, chapter 2 of Horning’s collection, to get an idea) at defining revision is like learning a whole new field. Loads of stuff. But what I noticed in particular, and this is significant, is that these definitions don’t seem to really contradict each other. Unlike other sets of scholarly definitions—like those for technology, or rhetoric—the definitions for revision don’t seem to really be at odds. Well, there’s some disagreement, like whether revision is simply writing or a separate process. But overall, it’s simply a struggle to find meaning: should we talk about revision in terms of the physical process (essentially proofreading) or revision as it falls on the schedule of things to do (it comes after a rough draft but before the final draft)? So really there’s less confusion in learning about revision than in studying other humanities-related subjects.
But to get back to research methods, I’ve been thinking that social media (think Facebook and Twitter) should offer some way of contacting the workplace and gathering data about the revision process within engineering firms (I work with engineers, so contacting engineering firms is the path of least resistance). But I think that Facebook and Twitter offer ways around some of the traditional problems associated with distributing a research instrument, such as a survey: social media allow for few barriers when it comes to distribution, and many connections to boot. For instance, if I want to survey Texas politicians about legal matters related to property ownership, the first few folks I contact may not know anything about it. But they’ll know someone—some real estate-lawyer-turned-politician—who can really comment on the matter. And she’ll, by nature of her job, know someone else, and social media allows for quick distribution: person A knows person B is an expert, and passes the survey along, and person B knows person C, and so on. And there are a number of engineering groups on Facebook, so that would work as a distribution method. I don’t have to spend time tracking down contact info for all those folks; instead, I can simply join a single Facebook group and initiate contact.
But that really only speaks to the distribution side of research, the access to a pool of participants. While that’s certainly interesting, and likely to be a timesaver, it doesn’t have to do with the other side of the study. If research is hunting and gathering, then Facebook and Twitter only help with the hunting. There’s no gathering.
But an article I read the other day—Jones?—pointed out that some folks think applications like Google Docs constitute social networking, or at least social media. And that’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be interesting to set up a number of experiments using Google Docs?
For instance here’s one:
Two groups of five students post their rough drafts to Google Docs. Each group has two professional engineers assigned to it, but one group knows it and the other doesn’t. So Group A knows they’ll be getting some feedback from a professional engineer and Group B only knows they’ll be getting feedback from unidentified parties, other students for all they know.
If everything I read about the valuation of rhetoric as a part of becoming a member of a discourse community proves true, then both groups should pretty quickly identify the professional feedback regardless of whether they know for sure the other participants are professional engineers. Something about the way the pros offer their feedback should let the students know, clue them in, that they’re professionals.
Another experiment would be to simply watch, and record somehow, the revision process of two groups of professional engineers working on technical reports and using Google Docs (or something comparable onsite, such as a local wiki). Simultaneous group also using Google Docs (or some other software) but with students as participants. Then compare the results. Of course, I’d have to be looking for a construct of interest, some textual feature, such that if it appears within one group and not the other I’d have something to compare.
So what would that rhetorical feature be? It’s tempting to say that what’ll happen is that the novice writers—the students—would begin almost immediately to recognize the professional, more experienced discourse of the professional engineers due to word choice or some other feature. How they recognize that professional discourse isn’t the point here. What they do in reaction to it is, at least this time through. So my guess is that the sign they recognize the professional discourse will involve mimicking the style of the discourse, which means in order to judge whether the novice writers have recognized and begun to use a new style I’ll need to have some raters. Having raters opens a whole new can of worms, but it can be done. Perhaps in virtual teams.
Another option would be to interview the students after the exercise and see how they characterize what happened, and whether they recognize the shift in their own style. That shouldn’t be too hard. Make sure the questions are along the lines of “Do you think your writing improved?” or even simply “Do you think it changed?” or “How would you characterize the person providing feedback, and what was your reaction to that feedback?” I think any of those questions would work fairly well, particularly the last one. In fact, they might be delivered via survey.
So that last study would test a number of things, wouldn’t it? In short, they’d be:
Do novice writers recognize the discourse of their chosen profession simply by seeing it?
Do novice writers react differently to the professional engineers’ writing without knowing it’s a professional engineer supplying it?
Is collaborative writing technology a tool by which these changes can be recorded and observed? If so, can we get enough observational data to justify replacing an ethnography with observation of collaborative writing technology?
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