"Streaming video actually helps me do work, though I'm not really paying attention to the video it makes homework less tedious."--Anonymous FYW Student
"Requiring streamed video services as compared to course texts would be much more engaging/ a cheaper options for students." --Anonymous FYW Student
Many things compete for college students’ attention. Full-time students take 4 to 6 classes. Between these classes, these students are dealing with dozens of learning objectives. The class we (the blog contributors) teach in the Fall semester has 13 discrete learning objectives in four different categories (Critical Thinking, Rhetorical Knowledge, Processes and Conventions, and Research and Ethics). The class we teach in the Spring has the incrementally more manageable 12 learning objectives in three different categories (Knowledge of Literature, Processes and Convention, and Research Writing Skills). Between working toward fulfilling these objectives and working to complete more tangible assignments and sit exams, students have their academic attention pulled in many directions.
And that is as if students only have coursework to consider as they engage with the world as young adults, between staking out a life in relation to others, their communities, and the world, students have their plates full. It is a popular and academic commonplace that we moderns, and particularly the contemporary student, have filled our plates with information and technology.
Jones and Hafner put it well in their second chapter of Understanding Digital Literacies, "Information Everywhere," when they challenge this assumption that our contemporary world suffers from "information overload" (19) by clarifying the difference between information and data. Data is the "facts" of reality, including sensory input, and information is usable data, when information becomes usable, applicable, and actionable, it is knowledge (20).
Jones and Hafner put it well in their second chapter of Understanding Digital Literacies, "Information Everywhere," when they challenge this assumption that our contemporary world suffers from "information overload" (19) by clarifying the difference between information and data. Data is the "facts" of reality, including sensory input, and information is usable data, when information becomes usable, applicable, and actionable, it is knowledge (20).
Thus, technologies and pedagogies should enable us to sift through and use data, giving rise to information and knowledge. One means for sifting through the massive amount of data that we present in class, through lectures, PowerPoints, and the like, and that students generate together in class, through things like groupwork and writing activities, is offering clear course learning outcomes.
We hope that we achieve these learning outcomes and they become knowledge, and the syllabus is our way of making clear and supporting these objectives and the classroom practices we believe will best move students toward being able to use the information they discover and skills they achieve as knowledge.
We hope that we achieve these learning outcomes and they become knowledge, and the syllabus is our way of making clear and supporting these objectives and the classroom practices we believe will best move students toward being able to use the information they discover and skills they achieve as knowledge.
Sifting through syllabi to gain a better understanding of cost and material practices in the classroom to aid us in thinking about using digital texts as the main literary texts in the composition classroom, we noticed that course policies were far more likely to regulate the "attention economy" of the classroom, to borrow Jones and Hafner's term from their sixth chapter ("Attention Structures"), than they are to regulate the material economy of the classroom for its own sake.
Many syllabi do not make explicit whether the course requires print or web submission of papers, the vast majority of syllabi do not contain thorough technology policies. We found that it was extremely infrequent that course materials policies discussed the use of digital technology in the classroom for reading course texts (while all classes required significant reading), only two syllabi mention reading practices and digital technology. Many more syllabi mandated student printing of course readings, so print technologies of reading were more frequently mentioned and regulated. Several syllabi explicitly state that students must bring their course texts everyday and offer specific sanctions, but where the texts are purchased rather than printed from the course website, the course policies to not specify what forms of texts are acceptable (i.e. e-book policies are not made direct). When the course policies did mention digital technologies, it was to either permit their use for writing and note-taking, or as one syllabus referred to it as "educational use" of digital technologies, or to expressedly ban or regulate their use.
Many syllabi do not make explicit whether the course requires print or web submission of papers, the vast majority of syllabi do not contain thorough technology policies. We found that it was extremely infrequent that course materials policies discussed the use of digital technology in the classroom for reading course texts (while all classes required significant reading), only two syllabi mention reading practices and digital technology. Many more syllabi mandated student printing of course readings, so print technologies of reading were more frequently mentioned and regulated. Several syllabi explicitly state that students must bring their course texts everyday and offer specific sanctions, but where the texts are purchased rather than printed from the course website, the course policies to not specify what forms of texts are acceptable (i.e. e-book policies are not made direct). When the course policies did mention digital technologies, it was to either permit their use for writing and note-taking, or as one syllabus referred to it as "educational use" of digital technologies, or to expressedly ban or regulate their use.
The most frequent technology policy was to ban cellphone use in the classroom. Only two instructors mention cellphones to permit them for "educational use" while many expressly mention them to ban them. These statements are frequently accompanied with grade penalties, attention grabbing formatting, and possibilities like getting ejected from the classroom. It is clear that when policies are regulating cell phone use in the classroom with such fervor, they overgo material concerns and move into attempting to regulate student attention and where it is paid. Some policies mention practices that are banned (and we might ask ourselves after Foucault's repressive hypothesis if this is a good idea), like "browsing the Web" and "checking Facebook" and most often the dreaded "texting."
More than the concern that these restrictions might actually engender the behavior they attempt to repress, these policies show a marked preference for deep- over hyper-attentive methods. This is likely no surprise when we think about the training of most FYW teachers in humanistic methods and methodologies. N. Katherine Hayles notes in her piece "How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine" this focus on deep attention in literary studies is one of the factors and problems behind her observation that literary scholars have not been able to address our contemporary decline in reading skills. She writes "While literary studies continues to teach close reading to students, it does less well in exploiting the trend toward the digital. Students read incessantly in digital media and write in it as well, but only infrequently are they encouraged to do so in literature classes or in environments that encourage the transfer of print reading abilities to digital and vice versa. The two tracks, print and digital, run side by side, but messages from either track do not leap across to the other side" (63).
It seems that if we are to address what has been read as a contemporary decline in reading skills, one way that we might do so is by having candid conversations with our students about their reading practices. We can initiate these in our own course policies by justifying our choices of certain editions of texts and modes of reading or expressly allowing digital editions and modes of reading. We can have conversations about how we read and what students get out of close reading and deep attention.
Taking about what deep attention does and what we can get out of cultivating this kind of attention and our close reading skills appears to be a way that may help students understand the value of these course policies that centralize attention in course texts (implicitly print ones) and maybe even branch into conversations about negotiating and moving between deep and hyper attention, between close and hyper reading. These conversations should start with the syllabus.
Initiating these conversations may be a first step in moving students toward a place where they can use their hyper attentive skills to make deep reading more fun, or as the student quoted at the beginning of this piece might say, "less tedious." Clay Shirki (in his How Cognitive Surplus Will Change the World) believes that capitalizing on the cognitive surplus, for social and individual advancement, requires these generative activities to be fun. As teachers, we might ask ourselves how we can help our students thing about the cognitive activities required for our courses in this way.
More than the concern that these restrictions might actually engender the behavior they attempt to repress, these policies show a marked preference for deep- over hyper-attentive methods. This is likely no surprise when we think about the training of most FYW teachers in humanistic methods and methodologies. N. Katherine Hayles notes in her piece "How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine" this focus on deep attention in literary studies is one of the factors and problems behind her observation that literary scholars have not been able to address our contemporary decline in reading skills. She writes "While literary studies continues to teach close reading to students, it does less well in exploiting the trend toward the digital. Students read incessantly in digital media and write in it as well, but only infrequently are they encouraged to do so in literature classes or in environments that encourage the transfer of print reading abilities to digital and vice versa. The two tracks, print and digital, run side by side, but messages from either track do not leap across to the other side" (63).
It seems that if we are to address what has been read as a contemporary decline in reading skills, one way that we might do so is by having candid conversations with our students about their reading practices. We can initiate these in our own course policies by justifying our choices of certain editions of texts and modes of reading or expressly allowing digital editions and modes of reading. We can have conversations about how we read and what students get out of close reading and deep attention.
Taking about what deep attention does and what we can get out of cultivating this kind of attention and our close reading skills appears to be a way that may help students understand the value of these course policies that centralize attention in course texts (implicitly print ones) and maybe even branch into conversations about negotiating and moving between deep and hyper attention, between close and hyper reading. These conversations should start with the syllabus.
Initiating these conversations may be a first step in moving students toward a place where they can use their hyper attentive skills to make deep reading more fun, or as the student quoted at the beginning of this piece might say, "less tedious." Clay Shirki (in his How Cognitive Surplus Will Change the World) believes that capitalizing on the cognitive surplus, for social and individual advancement, requires these generative activities to be fun. As teachers, we might ask ourselves how we can help our students thing about the cognitive activities required for our courses in this way.
No comments:
Post a Comment