How Digital Text Is Changing Incoming Students' Reading, Writing, and Research Skills

        Some observations from recent undergraduate papers and discussions at Goucher College (feel free to email me your own examples!):

• papers whose paragraphs are not indented, but rather are run flush-left, with no line breaks between paragraphs
• lack of capital letters for proper nouns or beginnings of sentences, or capital letters used either randomly or for EMPHASIS.
• paragraphs that, in printed form, would run for three or more pages, and papers split arbitrarily into five "paragraph" units without regard for their actual logical structure
• papers turned in without titles, author's name, course title, date, or any other identifying information in their printed form
• papers turned in with in-text citations but no Works Cited section--it was in a separate file the student forgot to attach to the text it documented
• failure to use Italics or underscore to indicate book or periodical titles so that Hamlet and Hamlet and Hamlet are indistinguishable
• failure to use MS-Word's footnote/endnote insertion function (replaced by improvised inserted numbers on the line and notes at the end; simultaneous use of footnotes with endnotes and in-text parenthetical citations
• failure to number pages
• citing pages numbered "2" or "3" from a PDF version of an article published in a journal numbering pages serially from 325 to 398 (i.e., there could be no pages "2" or "3"
• students describing as "long" a web based biographical note that would print out on four pages
• online sources listed with no publication information other than a non-durable URL, OR, sources which clearly were accessed online but which were listed with only a page title, or an author name, or a web site name

        The shift from print text to digital has seriously destabilized incoming students' sense of how normal documents are constructed.  All the modern print-era conventions are coming apart, and instructors who grew up in a print-centered culture must now ask themselves unusual questions to understand the kinds of writing their students are producing.

What is a "page"?  What does a "page" look like and how should I interpret its parts?

What is a "document"?  How does it relate to an "article" or a "chapter" or a "book"?  how should I operate a "document" (or article, chapter, or book) and how should I interpret its parts?

What (or who) is a "source"?  How are sources created?  What makes a "good source"?  What do I have to do in order to "use a source"?

What do readers want from writing?  What do they value and what will they tend to ignore?  How long should writers expect their writing to last?  For what are writers responsible in their writing?

        Agee and Altarriba recently published a study of sixth- and seventh-graders' "new literacy" skills to compare their reading and writing in print and non-print media.  They found that students with advanced reading skills differed markedly in their use of new media (IM, email, and digital word processing) from students with average or below average skills.  Their conclusions suggest we may see more "two-tiered" classes in which the top students behave much differently from those at the bottom: "[The students'] ability to read and recall text influenced their overall literary practices including how they used computer technologies" (374-5).

Jane Agee and Jeanette Altarriba, "Changing Conceptions and Use of Computer Technologies in the Everyday Literacy Practices of Sixth and Seventh Graders," Research in Teaching English 43:4 (May 2009) 363-96.  (Click on the link to read paraphrases and quoted excerpts with implications for our composition teaching.)

Note: A copy of Agee and Altaribba is available from RTE at this URL if you are a subscriber

http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/RTE/0434-may09/RTE0434Changing.pdf

or you may read the PDF file on the Composition Program public folder under "English Department."