"Exploring the Benefits of Blog Use in First-Year Composition: A Pilot Study"
by Jennifer Hewerdine
Jennifer HewerdineJennifer M. Hewerdine recently earned her Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University - Carbondale. She currently works for the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee. Her research interests include multi- and eco-literacies, collaboration, and the development of ethos. Contents |
IntroductionAlthough some students may not have access to or experience with writing in digital environments, most of the current generation of students chooses to spend liberal amounts of time in online environments, indicating that they engage with the content, the platform, the versatility, the social dynamics, or some combination of features found in digital environments (see Garikapati et al., 2016). In “The Outcome Effort Gap,” Thomas Greene, Nathan Mari, and Kay McClenney (2008) define educational engagement as “the effort, both in time and energy, students commit to educationally purposeful activities” (p. 514). Engagement implies a sinking-in to an activity or an intense focus on a topic. In a definition offering a complementary view to Greene, Mari, and McClenney’s, Roz Ivanic (2009) suggests that engagement occurs when an individual opts to participate in an activity by choice, perhaps going beyond the minimum requirements of an assignment or activity (p. 107). Both definitions imply that students become mentally stimulated by and desire to participate in activities they find engaging and worth the time it takes to participate. Technology seems to enhance interest in activities for the current generation of students who may already find technology stimulating and part of everyday life (see Garikapati et al., 2016). In her research on student media practices, Deborah Brandt (2009) found that writing in digital environments is surpassing reading in digital environments; people are writing more than they are reading, a change from past reading-based literacy practices (66). Most of today’s college students “use [digital resources] as an extension of their brains […] this generation is accustomed to instantaneous hypertext, downloaded music, communication via cell phone and text messaging, and information from laptops,” according to Alison Black (2010), professor of education at SUNY-Oneonta (p. 95). Students’ literacy practices already include vast amounts of communication in a variety of formats, genres, and audience situations. Qualities of students’ extracurricular writing include:
Ivanic’s list of qualities suggests that students regularly engage in multimodal and digital writing, but that the writing is highly participatory and kairotic. Of course, context changes the way students view writing; students using multimodal composition for a classroom assignment do not approach writing in the same way they would in a social media setting. Furthermore, in the classroom students do not write by choice but for class requirements. When she began her research with multimodalities, Ivanic (2009) questioned whether “literacy practices which are located in one context could be mobilized to serve different purposes in another” (p. 111). In fact, the use of technology for tasks is so commonplace that Danielle DeVoss et al. (2006), in the article “Teaching Digital Rhetoric,” claim writing “primarily happens online” now and that this shift in location creates a change in the writing process because writers and readers communicate not only through the devices they use to write, but throughout the writing process (p. 234). Indeed, technology is more appealing to many digital natives because multimedia and digital text expand the definition of writing by including multimedia capabilities that appeal to different learning styles (Fishman and Reiff, 2008, p. 3). Given the intense interest many students have in multimodal and online writing, it may be possible that their engagement with technology can transfer into the writing classroom. |