Keystroke logging methods offer important insights to writing processes and writing behaviours. This talk reports on results from keystroke-based studies of university student writing which captures some of the features of their writing processes and outlines an agenda for future work on student digital writing.
Approaches to student writing have dominantly been product-based even when revision is the focus. However, analysing the product will not give us insight into how a writer makes “the journey from the point of departure to the end result nor why that particular end result was chosen” (Hareide 2017:192). Keystroke logging (KSL) provides important insights into this journey (Spelman Miller & Sullivan 2006:1). As Hyland (2015:118) explains KSL shows what writers “focus on when composing, how they interact with online resources, the way they go about revising, how they develop content, and how their production processes develop over time”. Given that the vast majority of all writing by students is now digitally-mediated, we have yet to thoroughly investigate what it means to be a digital writer in the university context, nor have we considered what writing means for the digital student. For example, mode of production has been under-studied as has the impact of typing skill on writing. It is well established that cognitive resources are important for effective writing production, yet how student writers manage this resource remains an open question. Fontaine & Aldridge (2014) found that digital language can be disruptive to general language production processes, placing a relatively high cognitive demand on writing. Bowen (2016) found that student writers used revision primarily to add meanings but not to alter structure. Quinlan, Loncke, Leijten & Van Waes (2012) found that writers were significantly more successful in following the assigned task when subtasks were less cognitively demanding. Therefore, we need to ask whether students know how to reduce the cognitive demand when writing. This talk addresses these issues and reports on results from keystroke-based studies of university student writing which capture some of the features of their writing processes. It will also outline future work in this area.
