This dissertation investigates how students perceive of new writing technologies and the culture associated with them, especially as these technologies are being incorporated into composition classrooms. In order to assess technology and create pedagogical practices that facilitate the writing development of students, composition scholars need to explore the attitudes of students entering into computerized writing environments. This study solicits the input of students in order to assess their understandings of computer technologies and computer culture, and the impact these technologies have on their experience in writing classrooms. This provides a sense of their perspectives on questions of technology and therefore begins to present a fuller picture of the context within which we teach. The study also creates a model for research that involves students actively in the research process. In order to encourage the input of students, the project was composed of several parts including a survey of eight first-year composition courses and follow-up discussions with each of these classes. However, the bulk of the data comes from eleven students who participated in a specially designed course entitled “Writing and Technology” that invited students to participate in the research process. The results demonstrate that teachers need to be aware of students' various skill levels with computers and teach accordingly. Furthermore, the study indicates that economic class plays a large role in determining a student's competency and perspective on computers. Finally, the project suggests that students hold various opinions on technology and how gender, race, and class might mark it. It is important to bring issues relating to technology and computer culture to the forefront when we teach, rather than letting computers remain “invisible” and therefore neutral objects.

Digital stories—two- to five-minute videos consisting of a first-person voiceover set to a slideshow of personal photographs—combine personal reflection with digital technologies. The stories and the process of making them appeal to many organizations, particularly those with a mission of outreach or education. However, despite the inexpensive and fairly easy-to-use digital technologies involved, organizations have typically had difficulty implementing the practice. This dissertation presents a case study of one organization that hoped to implement digital storytelling, detailing the 15 months after its Writing Director completed a digital storytelling train-the-trainer workshop. The case study organization, Tech Year, is a one-year intensive college and job-readiness program for urban 18-24 year-olds. The case study aims for descriptive detail, and reflects 300+ hours of site visits, 29 interviews, and extensive document collection. Everett Rogers’ theory of organizational innovation is used to frame the case study description. Tech Year hoped to integrate digital storytelling into its Business Writing curriculum and imagined a number of other utilities for digital storytelling related to fundraising, recruiting, and student development. During the 15-month research period, a wide range of digital storytelling-related activity happened at Tech Year, including a pilot of digital storytelling in the Business Writing classroom. At the conclusion of the study, however, Tech Year had not settled on a sustainable organizational use or uses for digital storytelling, and organizational members were uncertain whether the practice would persist. Besides telling an implementation story, the study has a second major aim: to explore theoretically informed reflective tools that might be used by researchers and organizations to assess and direct ongoing digital storytelling implementation efforts. A novel methodology that examines digital storytelling pilots through the lens of North American genre theory, called genre-informed implementation analysis, is both described and applied to the case of Tech Year.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-172).