Overview
To study digital literacy practices among students for my Writing and Literacy class, I interviewed a student that will be named Allison that is a student at the College of Charleston that studies English. Allison is studying English with Graphic Design as her minor to focus on her chosen career path of being a technical writer. Allison’s areas of study gave me some insight into the fact that she is more than likely very adept in her digital literacy practices and has had a lot of instruction on developing her literacy skills.
I started the interview by asking Allison questions using some of the prior knowledge I knew from literacy journal posts we used to develop questions. The two questions of the journal posts were: journal post two asking about a significant memory regarding digital literacy and journal post three asking about literacy practices used in an academic or not academic setting.
To start out the interview I developed my first set of questions about literacy journal post two and her most significant digital literacy memory about the drawing software she used when she was younger called ‘Sumopaint.’ I asked Allison about her progression through learning different drawing/editing softwares that stemmed from her interest and usage of ‘Sumopaint’ and how the softwares were alike or different.
I was interested in her progression of learning different softwares because it lets me know she has built up upon her previous knowledge and expanded her digital literacy skills. I was also interested in her progression through learning the different softwares and whether or not they had their own learning curve or were relatively easy for her to learn as she was familiar with similar softwares. Allison explained that she felt very comfortable with computers and learning new softwares because of the time she spent using them as well as the similarities between drawing/editing softwares.
The second half of my set of questions were centered around her literacy journal post three and her literacy practices used in an academic or not setting. In literacy journal post three Allison said that the major differences between the literacy practices used in the two fields were scheduling and genre that are influenced by social contexts. Allison said that in her academic writing she follows more of a strict schedule and set of rules that are associated with genres that are academic in nature. In her literacy not in an academic setting she said that she was less inclined to follow a schedule as well as a set of rules and more likely to be more sporadic.
Allison pointed out that social contexts were very important for her to determine when to code switch between using academic language as well as literacy and when to not use those practices. Allison pointed out that within the genre of texting she is less likely to be more formal when she is texting friends or and more likely to be more formal when she is texting elders. She explained that,
“I think it’s both the social context and the genre like if I were texting like a teacher and my mom I might be more inclined to use a period but I also might not because it’s still a text. I think the rules, I don’t know, like it’s hard to consciously define them but you know when it feels very wrong so like if a professor was like text me here like the voice of my head would go ‘uh, no. I’m not doing that or not texting you that makes me uncomfy.’”
I asked her if she thinks these practices of code switching between formal and informal language were taught to her and she told me that she believed it was both taught to her and self taught at the same time. She explained that teachers taught her how to write papers as well as be more formal and it was within herself that she had to pick up when to apply different types of literacies.
I found the interview and the information I gathered to be interesting because it shows both the progression of digital literacy as well as the application of different literacies. I found that the common themes of the interview were learning literacies as well as genres and how social contexts can shape when to use them.
Transcript
Olivia: What was the first software you used after Sumopaint?
Allison: After sumopaint I think I moved on to Gimp next which is, think of it like a free version of Photoshop. a lot of them I was learning at the same time but they comment I’m just playing with them and then the rest I kind of learned like in a class one after the other.
Olivia: So, were any of the features that are found on Sumopaint found on the new softwares you learned?
Allison: Yeah, yeah for sure! A lot of those paint/Photoshop/drawing programs have very similar interfaces that have the same kind of tool menus on the side and it’s drawing menu in the center and a lot of the commands are the same, so it definitely did translate over a lot.
Olivia: Nice, so do you think that Sumopaint prepared you for facing other softwares that comes with a lot of features–some challenging–or was your experience on each software different with its own learning curve?
Allison: I would definitely say that the ones I learned later were a lot more advanced but I think that it did help me a lot, like I did feel more prepared going into it than some of my peers but there was still somewhat of a learning curve.
Olivia: So you said that you spent a lot of time on computers/Sumopaint, do you think that ease with softwares/computers is because of the amount of time you’ve spent with computers or the amount of trial and error you’ve experienced when learning new softwares? Or both?
Allison: I think both, it really does have to do with time spent like as a kid growing up with technology and the fact that I would look forward to coming home after school and then playing video games on the computer and stuff so it kind of always has been in my life and I think I take a lot easier to it now just because of that just because that familiarity and those hours spent.
Olivia: I noticed from your literacy journal posts that you are heavily involved in graphic design, I’m guessing that you do both graphic design in class and on your own time, right?
Allison: So, um, I’m not actually a graphic designer. No, I want to do technical writing but I have taken some classes in graphic design to kind of compliment that because I think it is kind of important to understand components that will go into that content.
Olivia: Oh, yeah. So do you have any personal projects that you do that are complementary to graphic design or is it all for your classes?
Allison: So, it’s mostly for class but a lot of the time it does transfer over so coming to graphic design classes I’m using coding languages to create shapes colors images and then I’m using similar coding programs to run actual programs. It’s all kind of interconnected but yeah I have made infographics, I have designed newsletters that I have produced some graphic designs that are made to work with text and I also have played with it on my own time.
Olivia: So for your journal post 3 the way you went about academics and not academics in writing you found that in academics you were more inclined to have a schedule than not academic writing. Do you notice the difference in doing graphic design in your own time than in your classes like you do with your writing literacy?
Allison: I would say definitely, if I’m working for a class I’m a lot more likely to sit down and do a project start to finish or at least make sure I get to like a good stopping point or whatever before I finish. It’s just kind of internal feeling of whether I’ve done enough to be on pace versus am I feeling this am I having fun with it if no, then I’ll probably stop and pick it up again later or never. So, yeah I would say it’s a little different.
Olivia: In your literacy journal 3 post, which was about our literacy in academic and not academic settings, I noticed that the major difference between your academic and not academic writing was that you followed more of a schedule and a set of rules. Do you think you recognized when/where to use academic literacies and when/where to not use them on your own or do you think they were taught to you?
Allison: I think part of that is just kind of implicit. I don’t think I think part of it’s like something that people don’t exactly tell you as you’re reading. It’s like this is a good paper in this good paper uses a lot of this like were taught academic jargon so you are okay this is what good writing looks like but I think a lot of it is explicit like your teachers telling you you don’t use that and don’t do that. I think there’s a lot of that and academic writing. I would say it’s both learning, I learned like actively and then something that like possibly I just kind of observed and imitated I don’t know that I think that’s something that like was taught as more of a concrete rule before college and part of college is learning to break that and code switch and it’s becoming a little less clearly defined now. I think the scheduling thing just kind of happens naturally by default because you know if I have a deadline I have a deadline I can’t exactly sit around and wait for inspiration to strike when it’s due tomorrow that’s not really a good way to do it.
Olivia: Yeah, I mean in your journal post three you said how you don’t end a sentence with a period whenever you’re texting with your friends because you don’t want to come off as serious or angry and I do that too. So, do you think that these conventions like putting a period at the end of a sentence is put in place to make texting seem less formal or because you’re not in an academic setting where you feel pressured to follow conventions we were taught.
Allison: I think it’s both the social context and the genre like if I were texting like a teacher and my mom I might be more inclined to use a period but I also might not because where it’s still a text. I think the rules, I don’t know, like it’s hard to consciously define them but you know when it feels very wrong so like if a professor was like text me here like the voice of my head would go “uh, no. I’m not doing that or not texting you that makes me uncomfy.” it’s like those ones that walking to class to me like hey call me Alan I’m like I will not absolutely not it’s it feels like that it feels foreign it feels uncomfortable so I know I would say that it’s both the genre and then the social contacts working together as well because if I’m texting a potential employer–which does happen sometimes–I probably will use correct grammar. Although, if it were an email even to a friend I definitely would use correct grammar and punctuation so I think it really really depends on both, both factors.