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.
Showing posts with label digital research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label digital research. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
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.
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