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Articles Conference Reviews |
200792KarcherSession 9.2: Users and Losers: Labor, Technology, and the Student'
Kendall Leon, Stacey Pigg, Kristin Key (Michigan State University) I have often heard the time slot assigned to Sunday morning presentations as the ‘graveyard shift,’ implying that very few people will attend the panel because so many participants have already gone home. However this panel was very well attended, and the audience was well rewarded by the engaging and insightful results discovered as a result of the two research projects that were presented. Kendall Leon and Stacy Pigg, Michigan State University: “Reuse, Circulation, Substitution: Preparation, Genre, and Classroom Activity in Graduate Work” Pointing to the work of Stuart Selber, Leon and Pigg showed that research has been done on how students and teachers use technology, but that not much has been done on how Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs), who are both students and teachers, use technology. Leon and Pigg’s project was designed to look at how GTAs use technology to negotiate their roles as student, teacher, and emerging academic professional. Through such primary research tools as literacy activity diaries, screen captures, and follow-up questions, Leon and Pigg examined the ways in which three GTAs use technology, and how the GTAs tracked and valued the work/writing they did. Using the combined lenses of genre theory and activity theory, the researchers were able to identify a series of what they called ‘digital tactics of professionalization’ that were carried out by the GTAs; a series of ways that the GTAs were able to use informal and social methods of communication as spaces to develop and promote their identities as growing academic professionals. Leon and Pigg identified such tactics as using email accounts to store information and texts; using Facebook as a place to present themselves professionally; blogs as a space for academic experimentation; and social networks as a way to make themselves visible to the academic community and to seek and foster mentoring. Leon and Pigg ended their presentation by recognizing that further work needs to be done in regards to this blurring between personal and professional electronic writing, and encouraged others to continue research in this area. Kristin Key, Michigan State University: “Internet Abstinence: The Seduction of Online Activity” Key began her presentation by asking the very simple, but rather uncomfortable question, “can you live without the Internet?” She then pointed to research done showing that many people tend to use the Internet as a distraction, one that allows them to ‘get lost in cyberspace’, or as a tool to replace other media, for example television or radio. In her project, Key asked participants to refrain from using the Internet in any way for a period of 24 hours, and to then answer a series of survey questions about their experience. Her hypothesis was that people’s productivity would increase. Upon analyzing the results, Key discovered that people’s productivity did increase, but that what clouded the possible benefits of this increased productivity was that most participants found the experience very uncomfortable, and in some cases nearly impossible. Another interesting find was a discovery that for many of the participants, who were primarily undergraduate students, multitasking was for them not a distraction, but a skill, one that was underused when in an offline environment. Key ended her presentation by declaring her intent to continue and to expand upon, the work she had begun through this project. Bill Hart Davidson, Respondent: As a professor from the same department and institute as the three panelists, Davidson was familiar with both projects and was easily able to draw parallels between the two. He pointed out that both presentations contributed to the theories of learning, and that both dealt with issues of peripherality—the peripherality of the GTAs and the peripherality of those isolated for the Internet community. It was apparent that Davidson had several other remarks to make, however his remarks were cut short by the large number of questions and positive reactions from the audience.
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