Research Project: LiteracyCorps Michigan: Documenting Living Stories of Community and Access

Shared by Julie Lindquist on Mar 23, 2008. Last Updated on Mar 23, 2008.

Principal Investigator(s): Bump Halbritter and Julie Lindquist

For More Information: lindquist11@msu.edu

Keywords: literacy, digital, first-year students, community, access, technology, social class, narrative inquiry, documentary, video

Permission to Cite: Yes

Abstract/Summary: LiteracyCorps Michigan is a documentary research project that inquires into the past and present practices of reading, writing, and composing of members of the "digital generation" across Michigan communities. Its primary objective is to address emerging questions about literacy, technology, and access to social, educational, and technological infrastructures at the start of the 21st century. LCM collects narrative data via videotaped interviews with first-year writers at MSU that emerge from two guiding questions of critical importance to literacy researchers and educators: 1) What experiences and practices of mediation define the literacies of what has come to be known as the "digital generation?"; and 2) In looking at how these practices vary across communities, what we can learn about how students experience access to social and technological infrastructures? LCM aims to yield much-needed educational products, research models, and scholarly resources. Documentary products generated from LCM data will have pedagogical value to educational institutions across the state and across the country. LCM's research methodology will not only create documentary products that inform the delivery of literacy instruction at MSU, but will also serve as a model for similar research efforts in other locations.

Project Background: Builds on collaborate research on composition and literacy with Bill Hart-Davidson and Jeff Grabill at the WIDE (Writing in Digital Environments) research center at Michigan State University

Time Frame: 2007-

Research Question or Hypothesis: 1) What experiences and practices of mediation define the literacies of what has come to be known as the "digital generation?"; and 2) In looking at how these practices vary across communities, what we can learn about how students experience access to social and technological infrastructures? 3) What are the affordance of digital video in methodologies of narrative inquiry?

General Research Approach: Qualitative

Participants and Setting: Students enrolled in first-year writing classes at MSU, representing various (urban, suburban, rural) Michigan communities. We are especially interested in recruiting first-generation students.

Research Methods: narrative inquiry: life story/active interviews, case study, grounded theory (inductive theory-building)

Data / Information Sources: digital video recordings, demographic information, narrated/observed practices and interviews in local scenes

Design Comments: LiteracyCorps Michigan is epistemologically/procedurally inductive, building theory about what literacy "is" from narrated accounts of history and practice.

Funding: Internal funding/research center support (College of Arts and Letters at MSU; Literacy Achievement Research Center at MSU

Support: Video/sound equipment, graduate and undergraduate research assistants

Intended Audience: Literacy researchers and teachers; writing program adminstrators

Data Available: Request data by contacting drbump@msu.edu