Affect: How people experience andrespond to change

in the digital environment

Presented by David Barton

LONDON JAN 2017

Activity:

• What annoys you about your work?

• What annoys you about technology?

• Does this involve writing?

• Are you stressed?

How are digital communications technologies shaping academics’

writing practices?

• Including differences across universities, and disciplines and individual academics – History, Marketing and Maths.

Changes over time

• 2009 Exploratory study: Interviews with 9 academics in social sciences and humanities,

• Pre-impact agenda in England, and fewer changes in academics’ lives

We found:

• Very wide range of types of writing.

• People mentioned the role of technologies extensively

• People had strong likes and hates

Transformations in tools and resourcesin the academic workplace

– Virtual learning environments (VLEs)

– File sharing and other tools for collaborative work

– Online library resources

– Smartphones and portable devices

– Social media, and everyday software

Every aspect of academic practice is changing

Wide range of digital tools and platforms used in writing

• Diane S: Writes in Word; uses Skype often and screenshares documents; uses shared Dropbox for version control.

• Gareth W: writes using Word and LaTeX, sending documents back and forth using LaTeX which his student compiles, uses email, but not VLE much

• Rebecca A: digital camera revolutionised collection of archive material; but still likes to hand write notes about manuscripts

Affect and ‘Stance-taking’

• Stance-taking in sociolinguistics and discourse refers to:

– 'taking up a position with respect to the form or the content of one's utterance'(Jaffe, 2009, p.3)

• Major kinds of stance: – Epistemic (e.g. I believe English is better…)

– Affective (e.g. I like DropBox because…)etc.

Affect: Likes and hates

• Charles C: “I hate Skype. […] I find it’s a simplistic thing, the dislocation between eye contact..”

– Prefers meeting face to face, spending the day with people, having coffee breaks and dividing work tasks.

Different paths to common goals:The example of Powerpoint

1. ‘I prefer Prezi.’ v ‘Prezi’ makes me vomit.’

2. ‘PowerPoint… for images not texts.’

3. ‘…make it sound as if it wasn’t being read.’

4. ‘my foundation point for a lecture used to be a text, now it’s a PowerPoint.’

5. ‘…then we look at it together over Skype and sort of change whilst we’re discussing it.’

Negative affect:The ‘always-on’ problem

• Implicit expectation of being constantly in contact using digital devices

• Extension of responsibilities to students

• Including blended learning for on-campus students

‘Always-on’

–Rebecca A: “We’re expected to be on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

–Diane S: “It’s like every time you sit down to do some writing, an email comes in that takes you away from it.”

–Charles C: “…the last thing I do at night is check my emails. The first thing I do in the morning is check my emails.”

Positive affect: Collaboration facilitated by digital tools

• Diane S pleased with large international collaborative research bid, 13 universities in 6 countries, writing crucial.

Bid depended on combination of distant collaboration facilitated by both digital tools, and face to face meetings and happened very quickly

Conflicted Stance

• ‘I love Twitter… I hate Twitter…’

• ‘I like…’

• ‘I like…. but…’

New technologies:

- Encourage new forms of collaboration

- Encourage the mobile scholar

- Reflect individual histories

- Need to be discussed in the context of other social changes.

- Reflect other online issues