Defining Writing In A Modern World

Abstract:
There is a significant amount of different forms of writing that are actually considered
writing. In our White Paper Collaboration, we asked students of Sinclair Community College
What Qualifies As Writing To You?. Our group made a survey consisting of a list of genres of
writing that they could check mark saying what ones qualify as writing to them individually. All
four of us went around campus and surveyed random students inside and outside the building.
We also asked for gender, age, and major for a more specific result. We sent out surveys on
Survey Monkey through email to Sinclair Community College students for more results. A total
of 78 Survey Monkey surveys were answered. For a specific total we used 22 random paper
surveys to get a grand total of 100 surveys altogether. Our results concluded that school papers,
work documents, and email were to top three types of writing that actually qualified as writing to
Students at Sinclair Community College.

Keywords: (Tags and Labels)

1. Writing Evolution
2. Writing
3. Writing Definition
4. Is Texting Writing?
5. Students Definition
6. Students Definition of Writing
7. Sinclair Community College
8. Survey on Writing
9. Is Social Media Writing?
10. Writing Definition As Defined By Students
11. Modern Writing
12. Different Writing Forms

Based on A WIDE Survey and Whitepaper conducted in September of 2010, the study
showed that students attending two-year universities stated that text messages, emails, and
lecture notes were their top three most frequently used forms of writing. Based on that
information, we were inspired to determine what our own community college students defined as
writing. It is fair to say the method of writing has changed over the course of time and will

continue to change, so this paper serves to record how students at Sinclair Community College
view and define writing today, compared to the information recovered in 2010. To retrieve
information, we surveyed students face-to-face about what they qualified as writing. To further
reach across the student body and generate more responses, we electronically sought out
information through an online version of our survey, which were passed out to students enrolled
in English courses throughout Sinclair.
Our hope in producing this research paper and gathering results is to provide anyone and
especially professors with information about what college students think is considered writing.
Hopefully through these results we can begin to offer a wider variety of writing opportunities or
we can begin to combat the current definition of writing and redefine it. Did you know that four
out of five students are not proficient writers? This is incredibly concerning. Part of our desire in
collecting these results is based on helping individuals to understand how and why the definition
of writing is evolving. When our definition of writing begins to change it means that our
proficiency can certainly be impacted.
The majority of our desire in collecting these results is to see if the results from the A
WIDE Survey and Whitepaper are legitimate and if those same results hold true for Sinclair
Community College students. The results from the WIDE paper concluded that students deemed
texting, emailing, and lecture notes as the most common forms of writing. Therefore, they
defined texting and emailing as writing forms.
By the very end of this paper we hope to have presented you, the reader, with quality
information that will help you determine how and why students are defining writing in new and
evolving ways. Additionally we will be presenting you with potentially conflicting data results
from the original WIDE paper.
We hope you enjoy taking a look through our collected data that helps us clearly
understand what the students of Sinclair Community College define as writing.

The Methods of Our Madness:

The methods that we used to collect our data for the White Paper research paper were a
variety of different ways of collecting data research. We started our journey inquiring about what
kinds of writing students defined as true writing. Our group determined our questions based on
some of the data we found from the A WIDE Survey and White Paper. The questions we decided
to ask were as followed:

What qualifies as writing to the students of Sinclair Community College?

-The options included under this section were: Text, Email, School Papers,
Social Media, Work Documents, and Other.
What is your major?
What gender are you?
What is your age?

We asked the last three questions because we wanted to know what the
background/demographic was for each individual that answered the questions. Even though we
were asked to make observations before we gather our results for the survey we realized (unlike
other groups) that we could not actually observe the basic function of our survey question with
our own eyes. Instead we would need to simply start asking the questions and let the results flow
in. Our professor, Dr. Cassel required us to meet up for a conference session in order to
determine if our group would be successful in gathering the information we wished to gain.
Before we attended the conference we discussed and determined what questions we
would ask to the student body. We designated sections of the student campus and assigned a
group member to each section so that we would get a diverse amount of student feedback and
students who were from many different disciplines and majors. The group members were
supposed to stand in each of the assigned buildings and also outside to collect data on the paper
table that we created. After we decided the questions, made the table survey, printed the table
survey out, and assigned group members to different sections we were ready to meet with Dr.
Cassel for our conference.

Explanation Of The Paper Survey Portion:

Our group used a paper survey (the one shown below) to accumulate data for the
questions shown above. Each person out of a group of four, surveyed 30 people to get a total of
120 paper surveys. We surveyed random Sinclair Community College students from the
cafeteria, the library, building 14 and those who were roaming the college campus from outside.
What Qualifies as Writing to the Students of Sinclair Community College?

Text

Email

School
Papers

Social
Media

Work
Documents

Other

Major

Gender

Age

During our conference session with Dr. Cassel we decided to also send our survey out via
an online service called Survey Monkey. Our Survey Monkey survey asked all of the same
questions as the paper survey. However, we did endeavor to make some of the questions a bit
clearer on the online survey especially because we would not be there in person to help describe
or explain anything about the survey. We did receive feedback from a few members of our
English 2 class who took the online survey first before we sent it out to the public. That helped
us include some explanations with the questions. Otherwise we did not change anything between
our original and the opportunity for revision.
Survey Monkey has a built in results section for the data information. It includes a bar
graph with percentages based on the results collected from the individuals. After we gathered all
of the paper results we then started adding those results to the percentages. We wanted to achieve
a 100 person participation survey result. Since we received well over 60 responses from the
online survey and had collected 120 from the paper survey we did not need to use all the of the
responses we received. Therefore, we used a random generator to help choose what paper survey
responses we would add into the data that had been collected online through Survey Monkey.
The end results were a mix of paper responses (22 randomly picked) and online survey responses
(78 total collected) that totaled to 100 survey responses.

Another part of our research was to interview individuals based on the research project
we were conducting. Dr. Cassel asked each member of our team to interview someone and ask
them questions that related to our research project (survey). We decided as a team that we would
interview professors who either currently taught at Sinclair or who were students themselves of
Sinclair Community College. Below are the names of each team member and their explanation
of why they chose to interview each specific professor:
Violet Johnston: I chose to interview Dr. Robin McLaughlin. He has numerous degrees
and has worked within academia and in the workforce for a number of years. Dr. McLaughlin

also represents the adjunct faculty of Sinclair. He is a professor for marketing and management.
Since he is within the business department he represents an entirely different perspective on
writing than any other professor within another disciplinary field. Interviewing Dr. McLaughlin
helped to provide diversity and allowed us to have additional content for our research paper.
Mariah England : I chose to interview Mr. Howard Jordan; my policing teacher. Mr.
Jordan is a older gentleman that works as a police officer for the Dayton Police Department but
also he teaches the policing course and a few other criminal justice courses at sinclair. In the Law
enforcement field, there is a lot paperwork and reports a person has to write; so having excellent
writing skills plays a big role in the field. Mr. Jordan has years of experience in the law
enforcement , therefore Mr. Jordan brings law enforcement perspective on writing.
Tori Willis: For my interview, I chose to interview Bill Prater. Bill was my French teacher
during high school. I wanted to interview Bill because not only is he a French teacher, but he
also instructs the Middletown High School forensics team. The forensics team is a team that
participates in acting competitions across the United States. This includes improvisational acting,
reciting monologues, debating, and giving speeches. He is also a student working towards his
Masters Degree. I believe with his background in teaching, culture, communications, and as well
as being a student qualifies him to share his insight for our research.
Alyssa Wysong: I chose to interview my Anatomy and Physiology teacher, Mr,
McNichol. He is 38 years old and is very wise for his age. Not only does he teach Anatomy and
Physiology, but he also teaches the lab for that course. He knows a lot about his area of teaching
and made a great contribution to our paper.
During the process of writing and gathering data for this research paper we were asked to find
relevant articles or data that might help support our project or at least add a greater depth and
clarity to our own work. Each person within or team was asked to look up a separate article
within Sinclair Community Library database.
Violet Johnston: I looked up articles about texting and its relation to writing. The article I
found was entitled "New Writing Practices-Text Messaging". The main thrust of the article
evaluates the usage of texting as modern communication and it further solidifies texting as a
form of writing. The article also explores the effects of text messaging on students writing skills.
Interestingly enough the article also discusses the history and emergence of the new writing
medium.
Mariah England: The article I chose was "Faculty Define The Role Of Writing In The
Social Sciences Of Agriculture, which is written about the faculty who teach writing-intensive
courses in the study of social science of agriculture at Texas A&M University and what they
personally define as writing. In the article it says the faculty defines writing using four different

themes; which are writing in agriculture, characteristics of effective writing, teaching writing,
and writing factors. One of the faculty members that the researcher interviewed said writing is
a window into the brain in terms of how people think, how they make and support arguments,
and how they problem solve and use resources. Writing makes students struggle with their
personal ideas and put those personal ideas on paper in an organized way. Understanding how
students become effective writers and what writing factors contribute to their writing
development would provide administrators and faculty with an in-depth description of how to
make writing instruction more effective. Exploring different points of view will develop a strong
foundation and baseline of what writing instruction should include for retention and transfer of
knowledge in the social sciences of agriculture.
Tori Willis: The article Necessary Smilies & Useless Periods by Naomi S. Baron focused on how
communication is occurring more frequently through online and mobile platforms and whether
or not these forms of writing were considered written or spoken language. That alone made me
consider if students were choosing (or not choosing) suggestions based upon whether they
considered writing in those particular contexts to be based upon the verb of writing or the noun
for written work. For an example, students may choose texting as writing because it is something
you write, but other students may not consider it writing because it is not a written piece of work.
Alyssa Wysong: The article "Writing For the Instant Messaging and Text Messaging
Generation: Using New Literacies to Support Writing Instruction" by Sheelah M. Sweeny talks
about how we are in the digital era. We can communicate so easily with the outside world and
from people all around the world. Forty years can make a big difference when it comes to
technology. This article discusses how texting and instant messaging can be used for class
assignments amongst students and even teachers. Students use texting as more of a tool instead
of a learning experience. They can get distracted a lot easier than many other technologies or
literacies that can be used. This article talks about all of the new literacies that are recent and
from the older years that are used by teenagers and college students, especially texting and social
media instant messaging.
The interviewing and articles helped our team discover additional information and attain
a clearer understanding of how our language and the definitions that we shape really do
contribute to the quality of our work and the frequency. Therefore, we were more determined
than ever to explore what Sinclair students defined as writing.

The Results and How We Got There:

When our class was originally given the assignment, our group decided to set out and get
100 different opinions on what qualified as writing. We decided on 100 because that is a
substantial number that would allow us to take our results and easily translate them into a

percentage. We were not yet far enough into the assignment to know that we would soon be
using Survey Monkey, a free online questionnaire website, to gather information, so our initial
thoughts were to set out on foot and meet face-to-face with Sinclair students. None of the
interactions between the students we surveyed were planned on both sides. They were simply
conducted by each member of our group in between classes and we asked anyone that was
nearby if they were 1) a Sinclair Community College student, and 2) if they would take a brief
survey. This method allowed us to avoid a margin of error when retrieving information and most
students were happy to help.

The original White Paper Collaboration conducted in September 2010 concluded that
texting was in the top three most frequently used forms of writing. However, our research shows
that many students, especially in younger generations, do not consider texting to be writing. In
fact, only 28% of students actually consider texting to be writing; this number is tied to the
number of students who also believe social media posts/correspondence to be writing, with the
other category not following too much behind with 23%. School papers (including academic and
research papers) with thought to be the most qualified form of writing leading with 90%. Work
documents were the second most qualified form of writing with 78%, while email was
considered the third most qualified form with 63%.
Below is a picture of our bar graph results from Survey Monkey that also includes the 22
survey responses that were manually entered from the paper survey.

This is what our online survey from Survey Monkey looked like:

Now that weve gathered all the data, interviewed various individuals, read additional
research from outside sources, and collaborated as a team weve come to a vastly different
conclusion than the original source we were studying: A WIDE Survey and Whitepaper. After
surveying the students of Sinclair Community College we discovered that students within our
institution consider and define the top three forms of writing as school papers, work documents
and emails. According to the original WIDE paper students considered texting as one of the top
three forms of writing. We were interested to see if the same would hold true for Sinclair
students. It turned out that the results were not the same across the board. When we were first
studying and reading the results of the WIDE paper our group was outraged that they would
make a blanket statement and conclude that all students considered texting as a new writing
form. So we set out to see if that was true in Dayton, Ohio. Although texting, social media, and
the other category were last on the list in our results we do have to give the WIDE paper some
credit and admit that times are changing and people are allowing their definition of writing to
rapidly change. Its clear to see that a majority of students, at least at Sinclair, still define writing
as predominantly longer, more academic or work related writings as the only true form of
writing. However, it is also slightly disturbing to see that social media and texting are even
considered options when it comes to writing. Our society has become high paced, convenience
oriented, and less interested in elaborate writing that takes time, skill, and hardwork. The
objective of this research paper was to provide you with information regarding Sinclair
Community College students and what they define as writing. We hope that weve shown you
just how important it is to accurately define words. Words and the way in which we choose to
define them shape the way we interact and that way we will continue to interact in the future.
Words certainly shape the world.

Works Cited:
"12 Data Points Detailing The Crisis Of Poor Writing In America." TeachThought. N.p., 06 Nov.
2012. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.
BOTINBRATU, Simona, and LuciaLarissa PALEA. "New Writing Practices Text
Messaging." Revista Academiei Fortelor Terestre 20.1 (2015): 42-46. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 30 Sept. 2015.
Leggette, H.R. "Faculty Define The Role Of Writing In The Social Sciences Of Agriculture."
NACTA Journal 2 (2015):104. Academic OneFile. Web. 1 Oct. 2015.
Huck, Geoffrey J. What Is Good Writing?. n.p.: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press,
[2015], 2015. Sinclair Library. Web. 30 Sept. 2015.
Baron, Naomi S., and Rich Ling. "Necessary Smileys & Useless Periods." Visible Language
45.1/2 (2011): 45-67. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 1 Oct. 2015.
Grabill, Jef et. all. The Writing Lives of College Students. N.p.: The Writing in Digital
Environments Research Center, 07 Sept. 2010. PDF.