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All the attention, all the time: How first-year students experience writing in a horizontal digital ecosystem
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Boredom is unpleasant, with people going to great lengths to avoid it. One way to escape boredom and increase stimulation is to consume digital media, for example watching short videos on YouTube or TikTok. One common way that people watch these videos is to switch between videos and fast-forward through them, a form of viewing we call digital switching. Here, we hypothesize that people consume media this way to avoid boredom, but this behavior paradoxically intensifies boredom. Across seven experiments (total N = 1,223; six preregistered), we found a bidirectional, causal relationship between boredom and digital switching. When participants were bored, they switched (Study 1), and they believed that switching would help them avoid boredom (Study 2). Switching between videos (Study 3) and within video (Study 4), however, led not to less boredom but more boredom; it also reduced satisfaction, reduced attention, and lowered meaning. Even when participants had the freedom to watch videos of personal choice and interest on YouTube, digital switching still intensified boredom (Study 5). However, when examining digital switching with online articles and with nonuniversity samples, the findings were less conclusive (Study 6), potentially due to factors such as opportunity cost (Study 7). Overall, our findings suggest that attempts to avoid boredom through digital switching may sometimes inadvertently exacerbate it. When watching videos, enjoyment likely comes from immersing oneself in the videos rather than swiping through them.
Recently, a new wave of materialist writing scholarship has sought to trace how technological change is impacting writing processes. This article suggests that such efforts can benefit from viewing writing as act of extended mind. Formulated by philosophers, but rooted in cognitive science, extended mind reconceives cognition as embodied action. Seen through such a lens, writing is spatially and temporally distributed, yet composed of discrete material elements. Tools emerge as more than items of mere use. After discussing what writing as extended mind holds and how it connects with (and challenges) current practice, I reinterpret data from two recent articles in Computers and Composition, showing how this provocative theoretical frame might supplement both writing research and pedagogy.
The present study revisits writing retreat participants who have spontaneously formed writing groups before or after attending a retreat hosted by the Unit for Academic Language at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. All in all, 11 doctoral students and 1 post doc were interviewed using a semi-structured interview model. The answers were thematically analysed based on Murray’s (2014) concept of coherence in writing groups as well as parts of Aitchison and Lee’s (2006) key characteristics of writing groups. The two main research questions posed concern (i) whether the informants have changed their writing practice and/or the way they think and feel about writing since joining a writing group, and (ii) whether possible changes have aided the development of their identity as academic writers. Results show that the informants have indeed changed central aspects of their writing practice and that this in turn has positively influenced how they now think and feel about writing. This has to some extent contributed to the informants’ development of their writer identity; however, the present study also sheds light on the fact that more needs to be done at departmental levels across the university to make academic writing visible.
Media multitasking, using two or more medias concurrently, prevails among adolescents and emerging adults. The inherent mental habits of media multitasking—dividing attention, switching attention, and maintaining multiple trains of thought— have significant implications and consequences for students’ academic performance. The goal of this review is to synthesize research on the impacts of media multitasking on academic performance. The research indicates that media multitasking interferes with attention and working memory, negatively affecting GPA, test performance, recall, reading comprehension, note-taking, self-regulation, and efficiency. These effects have been demonstrated during in- class activities (largely lectures) and while students are studying. In addition, students struggle to accurately assess the impact media multitasking will have on their academic performance. Further research should attend to understanding effects of media multitasking in more diverse instructional contexts and for varied academic tasks. Fostering students’ self-regulation around media multitasking is a promising area for future efforts towards improving academic performance of college students.
This article considers the influence of algorithmic attention systems on writing and human interaction within digital environments. Building on existing scholarship in writing studies on rhetorical strategies and critical literacies for algorithmic contexts, the author discusses how algorithmic attention systems and the conventions of writing-as-content reinforce a particular view of human attention. This approach to attention is especially problematic within forms of social media that involve interpersonal communication. The article discusses the possible future directions for writing teachers and researchers to continue conversations about the ethics of algorithmic attention systems and alternatives to thinking of writing as content.
This article reports on how a group of students describe their use of smartphones in writing classrooms. Based on 143 survey responses and 10 interviews, this study found that students often described their smartphone use as a reflection of their classroom environment. When motivated in class, these students used mobile devices as conduits for participation, accessing course materials, learning more about discussion topics, or writing notes. But when instructors failed to make course content relatable, understandable, or engaging, the students turned to their smartphones as sources of distraction. These findings encourage composition instructors to view smartphone use as, in part, a reflection of teaching methods and the course environments, rather than universal indications of students’ distraction or disinterest. And while many researchers have advocated for new course designs or assignments that account for the proliferation of networked composing technologies in university students’ lives (e.g., Yancey, 2009, Clark, 2010, Dryer et al., 2014), these findings call for further research to address how students’ access to networked mobile devices may require composition instructors to shift teaching methods and models, rather than solely course content.
Accessing social media is common and although concerns have been raised regarding the impact of social media on academic success, research in this area is sparse and inconsistent. Survey responses were collected from 659 undergraduate and graduate students to determine the relationship between social media usage and overall academic performance, as well as explore if this relationship is moderated by attention (regulation of time/study environment) and motivation (effort regulation). Both predictors, social media usage and attention, significantly predicted academic performance. Likewise, when motivation was considered as a predictor, it significantly predicted academic performance above and beyond social media usage. No moderation was found between the three variables. Implications of these relationships are discussed.
This study examines the experiences and perceptions of writers who composed text using “distraction-free” writing tools that stand as alternatives to standard word processing programs. The purpose of this research was to develop a clearer understanding of how digital writing tools may shape the activities and practices of writers, as well as what writing with unfamiliar tools and technologies might reveal about writing processes. Analysis of study participants’ reflective narratives of their composing experience suggests the extent to which writing tools and technologies influence routine practices, assist writers as they try to direct their attention (and avoid distraction), motivate writing, and impact writers’ “text sense” as they compose. Moreover, findings indicate how different tools and technologies may be viewed as more or less useful for different writing tasks. This article ends with a call for writing researchers, writing teachers, and software developers to attend more critically to the ways writing technologies shape the practices of writers.
Personal computers allow multitasking among a greater variety of content than has ever been possible on a single device. We logged all switches made for 4 days for 30 people on personal computers used in natural environments. The median time before a switch occurred was 11 sec, shorter than previously observed. We also measured individual differences in appetitive versus defensive motivations to switch. Those people high on both motivations (Coactives) had the most switches per session. Risk takers had the shortest content segment lengths; risk avoiders and inactives were lower on the number of switches and anticipated arousal. Different patterns of content selection, in addition to switching behavior, were also observed for the different motivation activation groups. Results highlight how threads of experience that mix radically different short media segments may better define how people now search, process, and evaluate information. Implications in light of technological trends and individual differences are discussed.
Previous research in the field of written composition has mainly studied planning and revision. Nonetheless, the understanding of formulation is still poorly understood. This article elaborates the Writing roles model to elucidate challenges in digital writing in the research and pedagogy domains. Writing roles are based on empirical ethnographic data from Swedish lessons at upper secondary schools to create understandings of how digital writing and text processing in school affect students’ writing and the positions that they take as writers. The results show that the use of computers changes writing in school from individual projects to complex collective writing projects. Writing digital school texts thus becomes a literacy project in an ecology of communication with different levels of collaborative writing. Writing is linked to the relationships between students’ writing in interaction with reading, listening and talking, in addition to transitions to the school environment and how students position themselves and others in writing roles in relation to their use of computers. In the classroom, there is continuous negotiation and interplay through social media, both inside and outside the school. The capacity to participate in social activities is central for both giving and obtaining scaffolding in digital formulation processes.
Responding to danah boyd's 2014 study, It's Complicated, this article uses evidence from a sampling of 75 digital literacy narratives, produced within first-year composition courses, to show that college students often describe their embodied and virtual social experiences in bifurcated terms. Through analyzing a sample of digital literacy narratives using a corpus tool (VoyantTools), I captured word frequency and collocations to conclude that a significant percentage of undergraduate students in my sample largely differentiate their virtual and embodied activities in spite of the fact that ample evidence suggests that students move fluidly between online and offline spaces for both their school and social lives (Gee, 2003, Vie, 2008, Buck, 2012). This article works through four case studies from this corpus to explore how the perceived differences between virtual and embodied interactions get described. Through the trope of digital “addiction,” virtual interactions become pathologized and problematically create a bifurcated perception that does not reflect what we know about how twenty-first century writers work (Hawisher & Selfe, 2000). To demonstrate to students the complexity of digital literacy practices, this article concludes with a call to encourage instructors to model the fluidity of virtual and embodied interactions to undergraduate writing students.
“Smart phones are making my housemates and me become anti-social. We may be sociable in virtual social network, but virtual is virtual, and it's difficult to correlate with real life… Staring at my cell phone will estrange my friends from me. At the end, I just want to tell my dear friends, when spending time with people you care about, please put your smartphone away.”
- Excerpt from “Grace's” student digital literacy narrative, “Stop Phubbing”
This article details the material, locational, and time-use dimensions of student writing processes in two networked social spaces. Drawing on case examples, the findings show how composing habits grounded in the materiality of places can build persistence for learning in a mobile culture. Public social spaces support these habits, enabling some students to control social availability and manage proximity to resources.
This study measured arousal responses to multitasking by recording switches between content on personal computers over a day. Results showed that switches occurred every 19 seconds, more often than has been reported in previous research. Arousal was highest at the point of a switch with declines in skin conductance afterward. Switches were also preceded by a 12-second period of increasing skin conductance. 2 new methods were used, one an original application that recorded screen shots, and another that measured changes in skin conductance during the day using a wrist sensor. Results are discussed in light of increasing use of single devices displaying multiple types of content, rather than multitasking that occurs when attention is divided between content on multiple devices.
Devices and desires: A complicated narrative of mobile writing and device-driven ecologies
- A C Mapes
- A C Hea
Writing in the world: The New Orleans writing marathon
- Louth
Social media platforms need a health warning
- Murthy
Composing focus: Shaping temporal, social, media, social media, and attentional environments
- Fife
Bodies of knowledge: Definitions, delineations, and implications of embodied writing in the academy
- Knoblauch
Completing the dissertation and beyond: Writing centers and dissertation boot camps
- Lee
Teaching attention literacy: A case for mindfulness in the composition classroom
- Wenger