Together with Technology: Writing Review, Enculturation, and Technological Mediation [Paperback]

This book examines the complex roles that texts serve as parts of an organizational cognitive infrastructure. Texts make knowledge and experience tangible and durable. They help shape interactions between people. As professions have become more writing-centered in recent decades, many organizations have instituted writing review practices to help newcomers produce better writing and thus become more effective organizational citizens.Dr. Swarts examines those writing review practices and questions whether available supportive technologies adequately prepare professional writers and professionals who write to appreciate the complex functions their texts serve. He reports on a study of the impact of two technologies (paper text and textual replay) on writing review. Unlike paper, which presents texts in a static form, textual replay presents texts as the products of writing practices. Textual replay records onscreen writing activity and creates a video that writers and reviewers use to supplement their discussion of revisions.

Introduction

Chapter 1: Texts and Knowledge Work
Discusses texts and their importance to organizations. Texts make knowledge tangible, promote learning, support adaptation, encourage coordination, and support cognitive tasks.

Chapter 2: Writing Review and Mediation
Discusses the dual purpose for writing review: to produce better texts and better writers. Considers how this work is offloaded to people and technologies.

Chapter 3: Affordances of Texts and Textual Technologies
Discusses the socio-cognitive affordances of texts in paper and electronic form. Questions the suitability of paper text for writing review, instead promoting textual replay.

Chapter 4: Study Design and Data Analysis
Discusses the design of a study to test whether paper or textual replay helps writers produce better writing and better organization-specific writlÓ)