Do Computer Technology and Composition Mix?

Published by Susan Grover, adjunct faculty at Brigham Young University in Idaho, At the Crossroads: Portraits of Digital Pioneers, Digital Immigrants, and Digital Natives takes a look at whether composition and computer-technology really go hand-in-hand or not. Grover not only summarizes her dissertation here but also walks through the three-year process of writing the paper. Most of this article is in her words (marked by italicized print.)

As composition professors, we face decisions related to the phenomenon of computer-technology intersecting with our discipline. In this light, I heuristically sought to understand my feelings related to composition coming to a crossroads with computer-technology. To do so, I used a phenomenological study to inform my heuristic study. For the phenomenological study, I interviewed three composition professors who advocated for computer-technology and three who were skeptical of computer-technology. In both camps, I included a digital native, a digital immigrant, and a digital pioneer. Participants in each camp offered valid insights into their feelings and their lived experiences.

Opponents tended toward the following:

• Emphasize logical reasoning skills.
• Feel skeptical of aspects of technology.
• Resent pressure from society or administration to use computer-technology.

On the other hand, proponents tended toward the following:

• Individuate instruction.
• Value multi-modal media, popular culture, and the Internet.
• Focus on learner-centered educational constructs. (For example, they emphasized building community over teaching content.)
• Feel pedagogies of the past to be inadequate.
• Accept the risk of failure.

I wanted to interview teachers of varying ages who represented a dichotomy in feelings. To select participants, I used e-mail to contact members of English departments in 14 universities. I asked them to complete a survey based on Gordon’s (1961) Synectics approach which sought to uncover participants' emotional attitudes. In Synectics, participants connect new experiences metaphorically to familiar images and connect familiar experiences to new metaphoric descriptions (Gordon, 1961). Based on the delimitations I set, potential participants had to use computer-technology in their teaching for more than word processing, infrequent e-mailing, and digital record-keeping of student grades.

I divided the participants into three categories relative to my experience: (1) Those who may be considered digital pioneers. After they had taught for a significant length of time, these digital pioneers learned to use computer technologies, perhaps in the 1980s or early 1990s. This group would now be nearing retirement. (2) Digital immigrants like me. Those of us in this group would have begun our teaching careers in the 1980s or early 1990s. We did not learn to write as undergraduates with word processing or other computer technologies. (3) Digital natives who used word processing as students in their undergraduate composition classes. This group would have experienced computer technologies before they began their teaching careers which would have started later in the 1990s.

My study led me to believe we should move through this crossroads by examining our own feelings—our own heuristic assumptions. I found that I better understood my position from such an examination. I learned from others considering their past feelings to better understand my own hopes and fears for the future. Interior feelings shape heuristic assumptions by which we evaluate our students’ learning and our own teaching.

I selected this topic because I felt a conflict within myself as a digital immigrant in the face of composition intersecting with computer technology. I felt a love/hate relationship. One friend described me not as being on the cutting edge of technology but on the bleeding edge. To understand my professional self-identity, I began by looking at two authors who represented opposite feelings about technology and whose works influenced my early assumptions about teaching composition. One is Neal Postman who I set up at the head of the camp of those who question the logical legitimacy of technology in composition. The other is Janet Murphy who I set at the head of the camp of those who envision better exploration of ideas and ideals through the use of technology.

As part of my self-study—the heuristic side of my research—I kept a journal. One entry shows that I felt being a digital immigrant was a crucial part of my emerging professional self-definition. I wrote, “I feel damned if I do and damned if I don’t.” Colleagues my age seemed skeptical about technology, but the administration seemed to prefer the computer savvy of the up-and-coming generation. I was struggling to understand how I ought to and how I wanted to use technology in my teaching. I was struggling to understand my ambivalent feelings about what was happening to my professional self-definition at this crossroads.

Significant in my own self-discovery, I no longer consider it a liability to be a digital immigrant. Digital immigrants are uniquely situated to examine this crossroads—drawing on their experience in both worlds to influence the future of the discipline. I also became convinced that digital immigrants need to work at giving feedback to those who are creating current technologies in order to shape that future.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect to this whole process was coming across pieces of research that just didn’t seem to fit.  Grover marks these instances as, “mental road blocks” and only overcame them when she left her work alone for a little while.  Inevitably, I would often discover a resolution when I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night.

Working from a heuristic perspective while also collecting research, Grover stresses the need to understand her own assumptions and how they affect her perceptions.  With this understanding comes the ability to contain those perceptions in order to view incoming data objectively.  Really understanding how she felt about this topic combined with the objective research from other faculty helped Grover understand herself and her views better.