Introduction
In his book titled Orality & Literacy: The Technologizing of the World (1982), Walter J. Ong describes a great cultural shift which he claims creates more than a new form of communication; it reshapes consciousness and cognition. Ong asserts that writing, as a technological shift, restructures “thought processes” and, therefore, “without writing, the literate mind would not and could not think as it does...More than any other single invention, writing has transformed human consciousness” (Ong 78). In its time, Ong’s notion of reshaping cognition through widespread textual literacy challenged us to think critically and deeply about the impact that a cultural communication shift has in the foundation of our thoughts and how we understand and view the world. Since this time, a new cultural shift has taken place; the widespread use of digital technology. It is indisputable that this shift has also created numerous changes in how we communicate personally, professionally, and educationally. Over the last fifty years, there has been an outpouring of academic writing and research in English studies centered on the effects of technology on definitions of literacy, scholarly recognition in digital contexts, and uses of digital technology in the classroom. My interest lies, however, in examining how this shift towards greater use of digital technology in learning changes the ways students are using memory and how that, in turn, impacts transfer of learning through changes in the cognitive processes activated during such episodes of learning.
The Digital Classroom
This study began as a result of the mounting concerns I had for students’ increasing use of technology in learning. While it is undeniable that technology offers students numerous benefits in research, with knowledge readily accessible at their fingertips, I questioned the potential drawbacks of the use of technology in learning and specifically in composition courses. Mirroring Plato’s concerns in the Phaedrus, I considered the potential loss of memory, intelligence, and transfer caused by increasing digital technology. In this information-age, technology is reshaping the composition classroom. Students arrive fully connected to their electronic devices and it is often difficult to get them to un-plug and participate in class. While this intense draw to electronics and information could be viewed as a pedagogical tool for engaging this tech-savvy generation, technology used as external memory storage has the potential to act as a barrier to traditional notions of transfer. The accessibility of knowledge through technology, and aides for storing memory, makes students less likely to rely on, use, and develop their own memory.
Prior to the communicatory shift from speech communication to literacy, memory played a critical role in public communication and culture. In the ancient study of rhetoric, orators relied heavily upon stored memory to draw out arguments and practiced material during public orations. The master rhetorician Cicero explained the necessity for having a strong memory in his work titled “De Oratore” when he asserts,
Consequently only people with a powerful memory know what they are going to say and for how long they are going to speak and in what style, what points they have already answered and what still remains; and they also can remember from other cases many arguments which they have previously advanced and many which they have heard from other people. (Cicero 469.356)
For ancient and early rhetoricians, memory was a critical part of composition and oration. Classical pedagogy positioned memory as one of the 5 canons of rhetoric which was considered an art in itself through the use of the method of loci and other mnemonic devices. However, as writing became a common communicatory practice, there was a decreased need to rely on only personal, internal memory stores since one could simply refer to the written word. This trend has continued into today’s digital learning environment. Modern students learn to use and rely on digital stores for memory storage and information. However, with digital stores so readily accessible, has external memory storage changed how students think?
Researchers Sparrow, Liu, and Wegner, found in their study, “Google effects on memory,” that “people forget items they think will be available externally and remember items they think will not be available” (778). In other words, when students believe that they will be able to find the information later online, or saved on digital devices, they are less likely to remember the information itself, but may remember cues for accessing external information. These cues of access to external memory drives act as tools used to facilitate a new sort of learning transfer; one less dependent upon internally stored knowledge and more dependent upon digital accessibility. It is no longer what you know that counts, but, rather, how connected and capable you are at navigating digital spaces. In other words, this sort of transfer can only occur when the student remains connected to the digital drives he or she relies on. Reliance upon external memory sources can interfere with a student’s ability to understand, synthesize, and make connections between course material and prior knowledge, which are critical steps in facilitating the transfer of learning.
Transfer in the University
Inability to transfer learning is especially problematic in general education courses, such as first and second year composition, which operate on the assumption that students will walk away with knowledge that will be useful in future classes and professional pursuits. General education courses are intended to help prepare students to succeed in the university. However, if content, process, and experiential knowledge from these courses is not stored in memory domains, then education is redefined. Instead of viewing education as an accumulation of knowledge that connects, transforms, and builds individual prior knowledge and experiences into new contexts, education becomes a series of unconnected and quickly forgotten concepts without future relevance. Without the opportunity to “recall” prior knowledge, lost by a decline in stored memory, students may find that educational “growth” is not possible without interventions. However, through my examination of the challenges that technology may pose for synthesized learning, it seems that writing, while abreast with new technological challenges, may also be the solution prompting students to break down the barriers arising from increasing use of digital technology.
Key to this line of argument is to consider why transfer is important in writing and why writing is important in transfer, now, in this digital age. Questions, I believe, that can be best examined through the lens of cognitive science and the study of working memory. Researcher Thierry Olive credits working memory as “the place where writing processes are activated and coordinated and where the writer’s representation of the text is constructed and updated” (Past, Present, and Future 485). A writer is, therefore, reliant upon the limited storage capacity of working memory or must be able to engage in the process of transfer and access stores of knowledge through long-term memory. During writing, working memory acts as a meeting space for the processes of writing and the processes of transfer. Both rely on the functions of working memory (central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and episodic buffer) to navigate through the complexities of long-term stored knowledge, new information, and making something useful from the synthesis of both (Baddeley and Hitch 1974, updated 2000). Transfer, as a cognitive process, is important to writing because it allows working memory access to stores of prior knowledge and experiences from which to draw upon when writing and synthesizing new information. Access to long-term memory stores prevents the writer from being limited solely to the capacity of working memory. Studies have found that expert writers have greater access to long-term stores of knowledge and novice writers are more restricted to the limited capacity of storage found within working memory because they do not possess the long-term knowledge domain relevant to the composition (McCutchen 15). Such domains may often be built with genre knowledge and rely on genre cues for access. As Rebecca Nowacek says, “Genre is not the only cue for transfer, but it is a powerful and underappreciated cue” (17). Without stores of genre and other knowledge, novice writers may struggle in composition. Thus, being able to access and use prior knowledge (a function of transfer) is necessary for improving writing in students.
Writing within the constraints of limited capacity are problematic because, as Olive asserts, “writers’ working memory content has to be very frequently updated with new content in order to support current processing” (492). Without updating information (from long-term stores or external stimuli), writers may struggle to produce enough content and engage more deeply than “surface-level thought.” But just as students rely on the processes of transfer to write, writing acts as the impetus for initiating transfer. Writing assignments ask students to call upon thinking capacities which promote transfer (and, in turn, better writing). Capacities such as analysis, retrieval, comparison, and reflection strengthen synaptic connectivity, thereby making the information more accessible and usable in future contexts. Similarities between writing and transfer have also been noted by Nowacek who asserts that “transfer is a rhetorical act.” This interdependency that exists between transfer, writing, and working memory, in the context of the digital age, positions the re-emergence of memoria in the classroom through activities in writing as an effective solution for engaging memory in student composition.
Solutions in Writing
Walter J. Ong positions writing as a key component of studying. In Orality and Literacy, he writes, “All thought, including that in primary oral cultures, is to some degree analytic: it breaks its materials into various components. But abstractly sequential, explanatory examination of phenomena or of stated truths is impossible without writing and reading” (Ong p. 8, 1982). To Ong, writing and reading facilitate complex and critical thinking. Modern research has found that this sort of deeper-level engagement in thinking may also play a role in transfer. Researchers of cognitive psychology from Washington University have confirmed that greater effort expended in learning amounts to improved retrieval of prior knowledge and by extension greater occurrences of transfer (Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel 101). According to this view, students relying on technology in learning may benefit exceedingly by more frequent opportunities to think effortfully. Teachers can promote this type of critical effort through assignments designed with transfer in mind. Writing assignments that cause students to enter into the cognitive processes associated with transfer, such as reflective and expressive writing (Klein and Boals), can act as an impetus to transfer by providing a working space where stored memory can meet with digitally stored knowledge. Writing exercises that draw upon and build memory pathways can help to situate knowledge in the first place, making the “recall”, and by extension transfer, of core concepts easier later (Brown, Roediger, McDainel 76). Reflective, connective, and reconstructive activities may initiate the cognitive processes of transfer, thereby triggering actual transfer of learning (Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel 27). While increasing use of digital technology may bring with it new barriers to transfer, exercises of memoria using certain forms of writing may counteract these barriers and improve transfer while often embracing technology.
However, this argument does not come without complications. While transfer is reliant upon internal memory storage, as well as internal and external memory cues, to make the necessary connections between prior and new experiences, memory can also create barriers to transfer. Research suggests that memories can hinder transfer by getting in the way of positive identity development (Beaufort, Anson & Forsberg, and Russell). Many composition instructors can attest to the difficulty of helping students overcome the five-paragraph essay format they memorized in high school or consoling students whose emotional experiences and lack of confidence in writing impedes their ability to grow or even complete an assignment. Inaccurate, rigid, or emotionally-charged memories create difficulty in a student’s ability to transfer. In fact, cognitive research supports the conclusion that emotional (Derakshan and Eysenck 2010) or sociocognitive interferences (Beilock, Rydell, and McConnell 2007) can affect the mediation of memory capacity. These studies found that memory capacity is further limited by the occurrence of cognitive dissonance.
Essentially, working memory capacity can become filled with dissonant thoughts associated with the emotionally or socially charged phenomena resulting in limited memory space available to work with the writing task at hand. Phenomena such as these demonstrate that affective dimensions of memory can also have a negative impact on transfer since it may restrict space in memory capacity for prior or new knowledge to engage. However, a physiological understanding of how the brain works can reveal important insights that are useful for helping students move forward in writing (learning). For example, understanding that students rely heavily upon working memory capacity for writing (and transfer) and that cognitive dissonance limits that capacity can help us to put measures into practice which combat this interference in writing and transfer. Klein and Boals (2001) found that by asking students to write expressively prior to starting a new assignment, memory capacity became available. In this case, expressive writing aided further composition and transfer by literally freeing dissonant thoughts from memory space (520-533). A deeper understanding of how memory works physiologically (as in this case) can assist teachers in designing approaches and relying on certain forms of writing that make composition more effective.
To date, much of the research on transfer in writing studies has focused on theoretical and experiential understandings of transfer. However, laced within the contemporary rhetoric of transfer is the underlying awareness that when we talk about transfer, we are really talking about memory function and use. Considering this, it seems clear that understanding transfer as a process occurring on the neurological level could uncover important insights which could prove valuable in addressing the changes in modern memory usage and students interactions with technology. Modern scanning devices have supplied researchers with new understandings in how the human brain works and processes learning. While neuroscientists are just beginning to uncover the full capabilities of these devices, new data on how the brain works during writing and transfer are becoming more available and can offer helpful insights for establishing effective teaching and transfer.
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between memory and transfer while exposing barriers to learning that accompany students’ increasing use of digital technology in learning. Using a cognitive learning definition of transfer, I will show how digital technology can create barriers to traditional notions of transfer while simultaneously creating opportunities to facilitate transfer through a memoria-based composition pedagogy designed to simulate cognitive learning processes. While increasing dependence on digital memory drives may position traditional notions of transfer as less successful in future contexts, memoria pedagogy that includes writing and other composing activities, can counteract the effects of a shift toward external memory. If so, this may broaden the shape of transfer studies, from determining how to access prior internal knowledge and use it, to devising best practices for teaching writing to help preserve memory, expand working memory capacity, and increase instances of transfer in learning. A writing pedagogy centered on the return to memoria can help students maximize opportunities for transfer and work within the greater shift toward digital external memory.
Begin the journey here to learn about transfer in composition studies.
The Digital Classroom
This study began as a result of the mounting concerns I had for students’ increasing use of technology in learning. While it is undeniable that technology offers students numerous benefits in research, with knowledge readily accessible at their fingertips, I questioned the potential drawbacks of the use of technology in learning and specifically in composition courses. Mirroring Plato’s concerns in the Phaedrus, I considered the potential loss of memory, intelligence, and transfer caused by increasing digital technology. In this information-age, technology is reshaping the composition classroom. Students arrive fully connected to their electronic devices and it is often difficult to get them to un-plug and participate in class. While this intense draw to electronics and information could be viewed as a pedagogical tool for engaging this tech-savvy generation, technology used as external memory storage has the potential to act as a barrier to traditional notions of transfer. The accessibility of knowledge through technology, and aides for storing memory, makes students less likely to rely on, use, and develop their own memory.
Prior to the communicatory shift from speech communication to literacy, memory played a critical role in public communication and culture. In the ancient study of rhetoric, orators relied heavily upon stored memory to draw out arguments and practiced material during public orations. The master rhetorician Cicero explained the necessity for having a strong memory in his work titled “De Oratore” when he asserts,
Consequently only people with a powerful memory know what they are going to say and for how long they are going to speak and in what style, what points they have already answered and what still remains; and they also can remember from other cases many arguments which they have previously advanced and many which they have heard from other people. (Cicero 469.356)
For ancient and early rhetoricians, memory was a critical part of composition and oration. Classical pedagogy positioned memory as one of the 5 canons of rhetoric which was considered an art in itself through the use of the method of loci and other mnemonic devices. However, as writing became a common communicatory practice, there was a decreased need to rely on only personal, internal memory stores since one could simply refer to the written word. This trend has continued into today’s digital learning environment. Modern students learn to use and rely on digital stores for memory storage and information. However, with digital stores so readily accessible, has external memory storage changed how students think?
Researchers Sparrow, Liu, and Wegner, found in their study, “Google effects on memory,” that “people forget items they think will be available externally and remember items they think will not be available” (778). In other words, when students believe that they will be able to find the information later online, or saved on digital devices, they are less likely to remember the information itself, but may remember cues for accessing external information. These cues of access to external memory drives act as tools used to facilitate a new sort of learning transfer; one less dependent upon internally stored knowledge and more dependent upon digital accessibility. It is no longer what you know that counts, but, rather, how connected and capable you are at navigating digital spaces. In other words, this sort of transfer can only occur when the student remains connected to the digital drives he or she relies on. Reliance upon external memory sources can interfere with a student’s ability to understand, synthesize, and make connections between course material and prior knowledge, which are critical steps in facilitating the transfer of learning.
Transfer in the University
Inability to transfer learning is especially problematic in general education courses, such as first and second year composition, which operate on the assumption that students will walk away with knowledge that will be useful in future classes and professional pursuits. General education courses are intended to help prepare students to succeed in the university. However, if content, process, and experiential knowledge from these courses is not stored in memory domains, then education is redefined. Instead of viewing education as an accumulation of knowledge that connects, transforms, and builds individual prior knowledge and experiences into new contexts, education becomes a series of unconnected and quickly forgotten concepts without future relevance. Without the opportunity to “recall” prior knowledge, lost by a decline in stored memory, students may find that educational “growth” is not possible without interventions. However, through my examination of the challenges that technology may pose for synthesized learning, it seems that writing, while abreast with new technological challenges, may also be the solution prompting students to break down the barriers arising from increasing use of digital technology.
Key to this line of argument is to consider why transfer is important in writing and why writing is important in transfer, now, in this digital age. Questions, I believe, that can be best examined through the lens of cognitive science and the study of working memory. Researcher Thierry Olive credits working memory as “the place where writing processes are activated and coordinated and where the writer’s representation of the text is constructed and updated” (Past, Present, and Future 485). A writer is, therefore, reliant upon the limited storage capacity of working memory or must be able to engage in the process of transfer and access stores of knowledge through long-term memory. During writing, working memory acts as a meeting space for the processes of writing and the processes of transfer. Both rely on the functions of working memory (central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and episodic buffer) to navigate through the complexities of long-term stored knowledge, new information, and making something useful from the synthesis of both (Baddeley and Hitch 1974, updated 2000). Transfer, as a cognitive process, is important to writing because it allows working memory access to stores of prior knowledge and experiences from which to draw upon when writing and synthesizing new information. Access to long-term memory stores prevents the writer from being limited solely to the capacity of working memory. Studies have found that expert writers have greater access to long-term stores of knowledge and novice writers are more restricted to the limited capacity of storage found within working memory because they do not possess the long-term knowledge domain relevant to the composition (McCutchen 15). Such domains may often be built with genre knowledge and rely on genre cues for access. As Rebecca Nowacek says, “Genre is not the only cue for transfer, but it is a powerful and underappreciated cue” (17). Without stores of genre and other knowledge, novice writers may struggle in composition. Thus, being able to access and use prior knowledge (a function of transfer) is necessary for improving writing in students.
Writing within the constraints of limited capacity are problematic because, as Olive asserts, “writers’ working memory content has to be very frequently updated with new content in order to support current processing” (492). Without updating information (from long-term stores or external stimuli), writers may struggle to produce enough content and engage more deeply than “surface-level thought.” But just as students rely on the processes of transfer to write, writing acts as the impetus for initiating transfer. Writing assignments ask students to call upon thinking capacities which promote transfer (and, in turn, better writing). Capacities such as analysis, retrieval, comparison, and reflection strengthen synaptic connectivity, thereby making the information more accessible and usable in future contexts. Similarities between writing and transfer have also been noted by Nowacek who asserts that “transfer is a rhetorical act.” This interdependency that exists between transfer, writing, and working memory, in the context of the digital age, positions the re-emergence of memoria in the classroom through activities in writing as an effective solution for engaging memory in student composition.
Solutions in Writing
Walter J. Ong positions writing as a key component of studying. In Orality and Literacy, he writes, “All thought, including that in primary oral cultures, is to some degree analytic: it breaks its materials into various components. But abstractly sequential, explanatory examination of phenomena or of stated truths is impossible without writing and reading” (Ong p. 8, 1982). To Ong, writing and reading facilitate complex and critical thinking. Modern research has found that this sort of deeper-level engagement in thinking may also play a role in transfer. Researchers of cognitive psychology from Washington University have confirmed that greater effort expended in learning amounts to improved retrieval of prior knowledge and by extension greater occurrences of transfer (Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel 101). According to this view, students relying on technology in learning may benefit exceedingly by more frequent opportunities to think effortfully. Teachers can promote this type of critical effort through assignments designed with transfer in mind. Writing assignments that cause students to enter into the cognitive processes associated with transfer, such as reflective and expressive writing (Klein and Boals), can act as an impetus to transfer by providing a working space where stored memory can meet with digitally stored knowledge. Writing exercises that draw upon and build memory pathways can help to situate knowledge in the first place, making the “recall”, and by extension transfer, of core concepts easier later (Brown, Roediger, McDainel 76). Reflective, connective, and reconstructive activities may initiate the cognitive processes of transfer, thereby triggering actual transfer of learning (Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel 27). While increasing use of digital technology may bring with it new barriers to transfer, exercises of memoria using certain forms of writing may counteract these barriers and improve transfer while often embracing technology.
However, this argument does not come without complications. While transfer is reliant upon internal memory storage, as well as internal and external memory cues, to make the necessary connections between prior and new experiences, memory can also create barriers to transfer. Research suggests that memories can hinder transfer by getting in the way of positive identity development (Beaufort, Anson & Forsberg, and Russell). Many composition instructors can attest to the difficulty of helping students overcome the five-paragraph essay format they memorized in high school or consoling students whose emotional experiences and lack of confidence in writing impedes their ability to grow or even complete an assignment. Inaccurate, rigid, or emotionally-charged memories create difficulty in a student’s ability to transfer. In fact, cognitive research supports the conclusion that emotional (Derakshan and Eysenck 2010) or sociocognitive interferences (Beilock, Rydell, and McConnell 2007) can affect the mediation of memory capacity. These studies found that memory capacity is further limited by the occurrence of cognitive dissonance.
Essentially, working memory capacity can become filled with dissonant thoughts associated with the emotionally or socially charged phenomena resulting in limited memory space available to work with the writing task at hand. Phenomena such as these demonstrate that affective dimensions of memory can also have a negative impact on transfer since it may restrict space in memory capacity for prior or new knowledge to engage. However, a physiological understanding of how the brain works can reveal important insights that are useful for helping students move forward in writing (learning). For example, understanding that students rely heavily upon working memory capacity for writing (and transfer) and that cognitive dissonance limits that capacity can help us to put measures into practice which combat this interference in writing and transfer. Klein and Boals (2001) found that by asking students to write expressively prior to starting a new assignment, memory capacity became available. In this case, expressive writing aided further composition and transfer by literally freeing dissonant thoughts from memory space (520-533). A deeper understanding of how memory works physiologically (as in this case) can assist teachers in designing approaches and relying on certain forms of writing that make composition more effective.
To date, much of the research on transfer in writing studies has focused on theoretical and experiential understandings of transfer. However, laced within the contemporary rhetoric of transfer is the underlying awareness that when we talk about transfer, we are really talking about memory function and use. Considering this, it seems clear that understanding transfer as a process occurring on the neurological level could uncover important insights which could prove valuable in addressing the changes in modern memory usage and students interactions with technology. Modern scanning devices have supplied researchers with new understandings in how the human brain works and processes learning. While neuroscientists are just beginning to uncover the full capabilities of these devices, new data on how the brain works during writing and transfer are becoming more available and can offer helpful insights for establishing effective teaching and transfer.
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between memory and transfer while exposing barriers to learning that accompany students’ increasing use of digital technology in learning. Using a cognitive learning definition of transfer, I will show how digital technology can create barriers to traditional notions of transfer while simultaneously creating opportunities to facilitate transfer through a memoria-based composition pedagogy designed to simulate cognitive learning processes. While increasing dependence on digital memory drives may position traditional notions of transfer as less successful in future contexts, memoria pedagogy that includes writing and other composing activities, can counteract the effects of a shift toward external memory. If so, this may broaden the shape of transfer studies, from determining how to access prior internal knowledge and use it, to devising best practices for teaching writing to help preserve memory, expand working memory capacity, and increase instances of transfer in learning. A writing pedagogy centered on the return to memoria can help students maximize opportunities for transfer and work within the greater shift toward digital external memory.
Begin the journey here to learn about transfer in composition studies.