Scrivener and Writing

One of the things that has surprised me most about my journey through digital tools this semester is how many tools I'm already using can be repurposed for qualitative research. Scrivener is one such tool. I started using Scrivener as a fan-fiction(!) writer because I liked how I could map out several chapters at a time and block out all of the distractions on my screen. Once I lost time and interest in writing fanfic, I started using it to plan blog posts for my teaching blog. I also used it to transcribe an interview once. I liked that I could split the screen between the audio file and the transcript, and I could use short cuts to pause/play the audio. There's also a feature that automatically rewinds an amount you set when you pause the audio, so you can re-listen to the last few words to check your transcript before you type the next section. It was a good solution for transcription at the time, but I suspect I will use other transcription tools like InqScribe in the future. InqScribe just seems to have better features like inserting timestamps and linking them to the audio.

Still, I haven't played around with Scrivener for a few months, so I'm intrigued to get back to it. I can definitely see how it would be useful for academic writing. I could import many research articles that I've already annotated and map out dissertation chapters or article sections using the tool. And I could certainly use a return the distraction-free mode (I say as I have 14 tabs open on my web browser...). I think the biggest barrier to my more frequent use was portability. I frequently shift between devices (desktop, laptop, and iPad), and I have a hard time remembering to shift my work with me. I think all of the cloud technologies like Google Drive have spoiled me that way. So I would have to get into a better habit with saving and transporting (or commit to a device for writing) before I could really use Scrivener seriously.

My questions about Scrivener are:

• Are there any plans for a mobile version of the app?
• What are the best ways to handle moving projects between devices -- especially when the user frequently switches from one computer to another?

As a long-time blogger and someone who plans to write a dissertation centered on teacher blogger practices, I was a big fan of the Powell, Jacob, & Chapman (2012) reading this week. Some parts that stood out for me:

The lines between platforms are blurring. At least among teacher-bloggers, it's not enough to have a presence through a blog alone; bloggers often have to branch out to all of the other major social media platforms, and significant strategizing goes into maintaining presence on those platforms. Whenever I write a blog post for my teaching blog, for example, I immediately schedule posts promoting the blog on Twitter and Facebook and share pictures from the blog on Pinterest and Instagram. It's necessary to increase and maintain readership, and it means that bloggers need to learn about PR skills in order to be successful. I imagine in academia, this is a real shift. Writing and making your research accessible for a global audience requires different skills than just writing for scholarly peers, but it seems that such skills could have a lot of value for universities. Social media like blogs can draw attention to research and invite broader conversations and potentially more funding as people become interested in the research content. 

There's a delicate balance to be had between scholarship and popularity. In my experience, blogs need to be either very useful substantively or highly entertaining (or ideally both) in order for me to read them regularly. If a blog is too "scholarly," it would probably lose readers because it would seem more like journal articles. But at the same time, it's important not to sacrifice credibility and evidence for the sake of becoming more popular. I was reminded of this this morning when I was reading a Gawker article about "Food Babe," a blogger who investigates food ingredients and reports on health issues and hidden toxins. Food Babe is not a scholar by any means, but she has definitely leveraged her blog to become popular, and as the scathing criticism in the Gawker article reveals, she doesn't back up many of her claims with credible scientific evidence. Researchers have to be particularly careful not to be blinded by the prospect of becoming popular at the expense of maintaining credibility for their research. It's a delicate balance for sure, especially once a blog starts to gain readers outside of the academic community, but I think heading toward more effective use of blogging and social media could be very beneficial for academics and the public as a whole. 

Waiting on the World to Change

This morning, I woke up at an ungodly early time to work on grading my students' writing pieces. As I sat down to start the task, I had the thought, "Wouldn't it be nice if there was a tool I could use that would let me just click a few buttons for their writing rubrics and send them their results?" A Google search later, I found two new tools: Doctopus and Goobric. Doctopus compiles all of my students' writing pieces from Google Docs into one spreadsheet. Then Goobric takes a rubric you've created in a Google Spreadsheet and applies it to the document. You'll see a split-screen with the rubric on top and the student's writing below, and you can just click the box of the descriptor that applies. You can even record audio feedback for your student!

When  you're done, you click "Submit," and that's where the real magic happens. It will automatically paste the appropriately shaded rubric with a link to your audio comments at the bottom of your student's document, AND it will input the rubric scores on your Doctopus spreadsheet. It's amazing, and it made the quality of my feedback far better in much less time than it would normally take me to grade essays.

All because I did a quick Google search to try and solve a problem this morning.

When I then started reading the Markle, West, & Rich (2011) article, I quickly came down from my technology-empowered high and settled back to the real world. The fact that they provided the video clips along with the conversation analysis did so much to emphasize the inadequacy of CA as a stand-alone method, and yet, CA and other types of transcription are standard practices. The tools exist to make the practice better, so that's not the barrier; it's the researchers and gatekeepers who are standing in the way.

Just as I was able to find tools to improve my grading process, so, too, could researchers improve their data process. I know those tools exist. For example, iBooks Author (Mac) allows you to write and publish text with embedded multimedia files. Magazines are moving toward a similar format for their digital editions where they add slideshows, videos, and playlists to enhance the content. Our class readings this week suggested many other tools as well. Scholars could still write traditional texts for hard copy books and journals, but they could have the enhanced digital version available online. In addition, if researchers were concerned about privacy issues for their research subjects, Markle, West, & Rich (2011) suggest that there are tools that could be used to edit the files to protect subjects. The pitch of a subject's voice could be raised or lowered to make it less identifiable to others, and video could be edited to mask a person's face. As long as the researcher was transparent to both the subjects and the research audience about using these tools to alter the data and justified it based on privacy concerns, I don't think it would be a problem. We could at least start heading in that direction.

Markle, West, & Rich (2011) make two arguments that I think are home runs for the move toward multimedia enhanced writing:

1) It frees up writing space so that the research quality improves. When researchers are constrained by word count limits, it's unfortunate to have to dedicate some of those precious words to transcripts that don't even reflect the conversation as authentically as the audio file itself would. The field would improve by more thorough analysis of the interview rather than a transcribed account of it.

2) It improves the teaching of novice researchers. It takes the research process from an abstract concept to a concrete, hands-on experience. Researchers would enter the field better equipped to conduct powerful research, and the quality of research would improve as a result.

These seem like two major benefits that would outweigh any disadvantages advanced by resistors.

But people still need to want to make the shift, and I'm not sure how to convince them to do it. I face this challenge constantly when I find new teaching tools like Doctopus and Goobric that I want my colleagues to try, but they resist for reasons that don't always make sense to me. Exposing the ways that technology improves the process or product is one way to help, which is why I'm grateful that we have this class. Articles like the one by Markle, West, & Rich (2011) are helpful, too, but I always wonder if the people who need to be reading those articles actually are. The fact that their article is being published in FQS over a more traditional research journal makes me wonder if they're already preaching to the choir.

So I guess I'm leaving this week's readings a little bit frustrated because the world is not changing as quickly as I'd like it to. The benefits of using these technology tools seem overwhelming and obvious to me, but I feel like I'm in the minority on that front. I think things will get better as younger people move into academia, but that's still a long time to wait.

And I'm impatient.