How do we, then, 1) measure and 2) bridge the inevitable gap between employer expectations and the knowledge, skills and dispositions taught in TC service courses such that schools can better keep up with changing needs and emerging trends in industry?
This question is the one that’s occupied me for the last couple of years. It’s a noble quest, to be sure, trying to keep a practical, service-oriented course on track with employers’ expectations. It’s the basic requirement of an education: teach me to do something, or to think something, that will better me (or, in this case, make me more employable). But over time, the base question (“How do we. . .?”) has become more rhetorical than anything else. How, in fact, do we keep classes current with industry, assuming that we should do so in the first place?
And is it possible to keep a course which serves an entire undergraduate university population, composed of 90-some-odd majors, relevant to the writing practices of each student’s intended career path such that those students will come out of the course actually writing and understanding the documents of a particular profession better and more effectively than when they went into the course? No, probably not. But it’s worth looking into.
William James might argue that the “cash value” of the larger question, the “How do we” question, is to serve as a touchstone or a frame, but not the actual endeavor itself. Rather, it lays philosophical ground for me in that it keeps the focus on the practicality of the TC service course.
So back to the question, I’ve been refining it in my head for some time now. If the question lends itself to broadness, to lack of specific focus such that it really does become more rhetorical than an actual request for information, then I can at least refine my approach to the question. The question of “How do we. . .” then becomes a guiding philosophy rather than something I have to answer directly. I’ve considered questions like:
1. If more authentic writing situations make for more effective learning, then how can a technographic study help capture workplace writing practices for inclusion into the classroom?
In order to answer this question, I’d need to make clear the value and validity of a technographic study (which, in all fairness, I’d need to do in any study that uses the word “technographic”).
The study design would have to take into account other study designs and their findings in order to make that final comparison, the “how can a” part of the question, make sense. And that’s a sticking point, seems to me, since another ethnographic study (not technographic in nature) would of course have examined different things in the first place; thus, comparing results wouldn’t work too well without some serious rhetorical gymnastics.
2. How can ethnographic observation methods, traditionally used in writing studies to record information on the production of texts as well as the interactions of writers, be shifted in order to take into account the participation of technological artifacts in the writing process?
I like this question a bit more than the first because it allows for a simple critique of past studies and an opportunity to justify a different approach (the technographic lens, if you will). That’s a valuable piece of real estate, but I think it would work better as an article rather than as a full-length dissertation project. Must make a note.
3. If, as a number of researchers assert, technology “participates” with us in the creation of both artifacts and activities, how can we measure the extent and influence of that participation?
This question works well, too, and in fact may be the winner of this group. First, I’d need to line up some theorists and researchers who assert that technology participates alongside us (Johnson-Eilola and Kien I already have, but I’m wondering if there aren’t some other techno-heavy hitters like Marcuse and Ellul who could be worked in?). So, assuming I’d gotten the theoretical basis squared away, next would come the study. And the study itself would be the primary benefit to this question over the previous: the previous question could be answered entirely using deductive reasoning, or at least an answer could be roughed out of the raw material. But with this third question, I’m allowing for the inclusion of a decent empirical study. My diss chair will argue that it’s going to be difficult to quantify the word “participation” empirically, but I’m not sure that’s the hard part. I think a good study design would adapt ethnographic methods such as direct observation and interviews, with focus groups where we focused on the technology itself and got the group to provide some feedback, some sense of how they fit the technology into their daily work.
But there’s a host of what I’ll call on-the-ground problems with that one, starting with who I’d be using as participants and why, and how to get them to talk about technology without leading them (technology is notoriously transparent—just think about the last time you really thought about how helpful shoes are) into saying what I think. So that’s just two good problems to deal with. I’m sure there are more.
But one of the more serious, I think, problems is that I might just uncover disciplinary differences in the group inclusion of technology that point to the dissolution of TC service courses, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea.
Let me back up: let’s say I use two participant pools, one from a human resources firm and one from a civil engineering firm. What if I find that the use of language, the production of written artifacts, and the inclusion (and subsequent participation) of technology into both spoken and written communication is so very specific to each firm (and really, to each field) that, in fact, there’s no way to include both approaches in a single class? Would that point to an overall condemnation of the idea that we can train future professionals to produce technical documents in a single, one-size-fits-all course?
Honestly, though, that potential conclusion doesn’t worry me. It’s getting there—the problems on the ground, as it were—that are the real obstacles. If those can be addressed such that a replicable, empirical study can be carried out and the results recorded in a usable fashion, then the results may fall where they may. I imagine chapter five will be full of all kinds of speculations about application anyhow.
Showing posts with label technography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technography. Show all posts
Thursday, February 11, 2010
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)