On the trail of actors who write: a study of two digital collaborative writing cases in a Norwegian secondary school class
En praktisk implikasjon fra studien blir derfor å styrke ungdomsskoleelevers kritiske tilnærming og forhandlingsevne i møte med slike digitale aktører, slik at de kan gjøre flere selvstendige valg når de skriver tekster med bruk av digital teknologi.
Jon Olav Sørhaug
PhD Candidate
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Jon Olav Sørhaug of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the University of Agder has submitted his thesis entitled «På sporet av aktørar som skriv. Ein studie av to digitale samskrivingskasus i ein ungdomsskoleklasse» ("On the trail of actors who write: a study of two digital collaborative writing cases in a Norwegian secondary school class") and will defend the thesis for the PhD-degree Thursday 15 December 2022.
He has followed the PhD programme at the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the University of Agder, with Spesialisation in linguistics.
Read the summary of the thesis by Jon Olav Sørhaug:
On the trail of actors who write: a study of two digital collaborative writing cases in a Norwegian secondary school class
On the Trail of Actors Who Write is a study of two digital cases of collaborative writing in a Norwegian lower secondary school class. The study maps, analyzes and discusses the writing process in two collaborative writing groups, consisting of six students – in close collaboration with software, texts from the Internet and other digital actors, during three double lessons in February 2020.
The study applies socio-material theory to writing in school contexts. The conceptual framework is based on actor-network theory (ANT), theories of linguistic materiality, visual network analysis (VNA) and case study methodology. The collected material in the study consists of both quantitative and qualitative data: student texts and source texts, video and screen recordings, and also interviews with the teacher and students participating in the project.
Central to the study is the question of how human and digital actors interact while writing, and which role technology plays in this process. The study reveals that the student texts are produced through a number of negotiations and trials of strength between students, search engines, digital source texts and writing software. Search engines greatly influence the planning processes in that they select, prioritize and promote other actors' texts, and indeed specific parts of these texts. The source texts affect the composition of student texts by circulating, replicating and, in some cases, mutating the linguistic material into their texts. Writing software affects students' spelling through writing suggestions and corrective interruptions in the digital environment. The production of the student texts can thus be seen as transformations of linguistic material originating in the digital actors that participate in the writing process, and to some extent originating in the students themselves.
In several of the situations observed in these two collaborative writing cases, it is the digital actors that seem to have the greatest power of negotiation and impact. A practical implication for writing education can therefore be to strengthen lower secondary school students' critical approach and ability to negotiate with digital actors, so that students can make more independent choices while writing, also when collaboratively writing with each other and through digital technology.
Disputation facts:
The trial lecture and the public defence will take place in Campus Kristiansand and online via the Zoom conferencing app - registration link below.
Prodean for research, Professor Gunhild Kvåle, Faculty of Humanities and Education, University of Agder, will chair the disputation.
The trial lecture Thursday15 December at 10:00 hours
Public defense Thursday15 December at kl 12:00 hours
Given topic for trial lecture: «Drøft aktuelle norskfaglige perspektiv på digital samskriving» ((In English: «Discuss digital co-authoring from current L1 didactic perspectives”)
Thesis Title: «På sporet av aktørar som skriv. Ein studie av to digitale samskrivingskasus i ein ungdomsskoleklasse» (In English: "On the trail of actors who write: a study of two digital collaborative writing cases in a Norwegian secondary school class")
Search for the thesis in AURA - Agder University Research Archive, a digital archive of scientific papers, theses and dissertations from the academic staff and students at the University of Agder.
The thesis is available here:
https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3035826
The Candidate: Jon Olav Sørhaug (1981, Sandnessjøen – grown up in Trondheim) Intermediate level subject in Nordic, Høgskolen i Agder (Agder University College) (2004), Masters degree in Nordic linguistics and literature, Høgskolen i Agder (Agder University College) (2006). Master thesis: «Fjernare og stadig nærmare: nærvær og fråvær i Jon Fosses lyrikk» ("More distant and ever closer: presence and absence in the poetry of Jon Fosse"). Present position: Assistant Professor at the Department of Nordic and Media Studies at the University of Agder.
Opponents:
First opponent: Professor Nikolaj Elf, PhD, Department for the Study of Culture, Centre for Primary and Lower Secondary Education Research, University of Southern Denmark
Second opponent: Professor Gustaf Skar, The Norwegian Centre for Writing Education and Research (The Writing Centre), Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences, NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Professor Emerita Elise Seip Tønnessen, Department of Nordic and Media Studies, Faculty of Humanities and Education, University of Agder, is appointed as the administrator for the assessment committee.
Supervisor in the doctoral work was Professor Anne Løvland, University of Agder.
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Opponent ex auditorio:
The chair invites members of the public to pose questions ex auditorio in the introduction to the public defense. Deadline is during the break between the two opponents. The person asking questions should have read the thesis. For online audience the Contact Persons e-mail are available in the chat function during the Public Defense, and questions ex auditorio can be submitted to Lise Moss on e-mail lise.moss@uia.no