Writing Technology:
Studies on the
Materiality of Literacy
By Christina Haas
Chapter 4
Materiality and Thinking:
Effects of Computer Technology on Writer's Planning
Having reported results of her studies into computer users' problems
with on-screen reading and revising, Haas next tackles problems with
planning that writers experienced when composing on the computer. In a
think-aloud protocol study conducted at a technological university in
the 1980s, Haas randomly selected 10 experienced and 10 student writers
and had them compose essays in each of three conditions --
pen-and-paper, word processing alone, and a combination of the two.
In designing this study, Haas was extremely thorough, taking pains, for
example, to exclude confounding variables by conducting pretests of the
users' expertise with the text processing program and by training
subjects in protocol methods. This study yielded four results:
- Less planning with computers - writers in the study planned
significantly less when using word processing than in the pen-and-paper
condition. Haas also reports significant differences in the percent of
planning before writers started producing text, with computer writers
moving much faster toward text production.
- Less conceptual
planning, but more sequential planning with
computers - Haas
believes these results support earlier reports,
such as Bridwell-Bowles
et al., (1987), that word processing
encourages "an over-attendance to
low level concerns, tidying up and
fiddling at a local word or sentence
level" (p. 96).
- Effects
of writing media similar for both
experienced and student writers
- the decreased conceptual planning
and increased sequential planning
mentioned above was the same for both
types of writers in the study.
- Vast differences in how writers
used materials in the combined
condition - in the condition where
writers were allowed to use both
computers and pen-and-paper, Haas
reported varied results, with some
users using only the computer, while
one writer wrote out the entire
essay in pen and then retyped it into
the computer. No subject,
however, used only pen-and-paper in the
combined choice
condition.
Haas believes that results of this study on planning
should provide
little surprise to writers who have used both computers
and
pen-and-paper. What is surprising to her, however, is that
current
composition theory fails to predict such results because it
generally
sidesteps the relationship between material tools and mental
processes.
In ignoring this relationship, composition theory has
implicitly bought
into the myth of technological transparency: "an
assumption that the
technologies of writing have no impact on the
mental processes or
cultural functions of writing and that writing is
writing is writing,
regardless of the writing medium" (p.
114).
Haas believes that the computer system used in her study
specifically
supported certain kinds of writing processes, such as the
production of
text, but failed to support others, such as the
"creation of
diagrammatic, conceptual notes" that writers often made
with pen and
paper. Such criticisms are valid for most word processing
programs on
the market, but Haas takes little notice of how other
writing
technologies support "mapping" and other traditional
heuristic
techniques of planning. Nowhere in her discussion does she
mention how
hypertext-based systems might support such planning. One
such system is
the
UNC
Collaboratory's Writing Environment , which allows
authors
to map their evolving text in hypertextual nodes, but still
supports
linear representation of the final text (see Smith, 1994). Still,
most
word processing programs today fail to support such planning
activities,
and until they do, pen and paper may be the best medium
for many writers
to discover their topic and plan out their writing
task.
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