Limited Spaces and Research Identity

     Before I begin discussing "Limited Spaces and Research Identity" by James P. Purdy and Joyce R. Walker, I want to comment on the Hypthes.is tool we used this week to annotate.  I LOVED IT! As a student in my undergrad, I loved communicating with a text via writing in the margins. I felt that by interacting this way I was able to better comprehend both the text and my feelings with it.  Even as a teacher, and with my district pushing technology and going paperless, most teachers have been grading using online tools. While I tried some of these, such as commenting on Google Docs, I felt disengaged from their work. I felt that I was an ineffective grader and therefore my students were missing out. I then stopped using these online tools and forced my students to print out their papers, telling myself it was teaching them responsibility, when it was really me shying away from stepping outside of my comfort zone. 

     In addition to grading online, my students are trained in how to annotate a text. I try to make it sound "cool" and "fun" to have a thoroughly marked up text; however, sometimes I'm met with students who simply highlight or color in the margins.  I was discussing this issue with a colleague the week before the semester started and we were saying that we wished we could have our students annotate online and be able to do so in groups. I was thrilled when we were introduced to Hypothes.is thinking this could very well be the tool we use! And it is! I shared it with her and she loved it. I told her that we used it this week when reading an article, and I was able to make even deeper meaning of the text by forming my ideas based off of the reading, but also my classmates comments. Seeing that other classmates felt the same way I did gave me validation, and seeing ones with differing opinions challenged me. I felt like Hypothes.is gave me a safe place to experiment with my opinions. 

     

     This week we used Hypothes.is to explore the article "Limited Spaces and Research Identity" by James P. Purdy and Joyce R. Walker. I was a bit intimidated when I sat down to read, but then I remembered that Stephanie read it by accident the week before, and I heard her talk about how she had to spend time looking up the vocabulary and researching extra to better understand the article. This made me feel loads better, especially as I began to read and thought, "OMG WHAT IS ALL THIS?" 

     As I was reading this article, I had mixed emotions. At the start, the idea of liminality made sense: that inbetween stage of learning or coming to terms with our ideas. I thought that this article would be about coming to terms with yourself as a researcher, but at times it felt like a put down to students who want to be researchers, and truthfully I felt a bit discouraged reading this. The article states, "Being a “good” academic researcher, according to these texts,  requires  students  to  leave  behind  their  existing  identities  as  online researchers. The texts we analyzed imply that for students to succeed as college researchers, they need, in a sense, to abandon their current practices and admit that they do not know how to do research." When I read this I wanted to scream out, "SAYS WHO?" If I was an undergraduate walking into my first composition or research class, and I was told this, I'd walk out crying. I felt this statement was disrespectful and discredited all the hard work I've done to learn how to research. That being said, I can see how people abuse researching on the web, and see it as the easy way out. So maybe instead of abandoning all previous ideas and personas, we can ask ourselves and our classmates to be open to new ways of learning, and be willing to dispose of some of our older ideas.
I was also taken aback, by how adamant this article was against digital research, but nowhere did they discuss how to TEACH using these digital resources. The article seemed to preach more about not using these resources then educating students on HOW to use them. We live in a digital age, and the reality is that as long as the internet is at our finger tips, students are going to use it. The second reality, is that like children, if you tell someone not to do something, the likelihood of them doing it is greater. That being said, let's adopt a stance of teaching digital literacies and common sense. How about giving the students some credit? We are growing up as scholars in this digital age, and the majority of us have grown up using it since we were little kids, so how about you let us grow in this arena?