Conclusions

​

 

The Coding Was the Least Complicated Part

 

Although some students expressed concern at the beginning of the assignment about their technical abilities, all groups were able to complete their projects using Tracery Generative Grammar and Cheap Bots, Done Quick! The coding did not act as a barrier to digital composition; however, the computational thinking required for the medium did alter students' writing experience.

 

 

Writing Like a Jigsaw Puzzle

 

Students commented on the unfamiliarity of the bot-composing process—creating writing that could be read by computers and humans alike.

 

One student compared this activity to solving a puzzle:

 

“Writing a script for a Twitterbot was different from the writing I do for school or in my daily life because I needed to make sure my writing could be arranged and delivered in several different ways. In a sense, writing a script was like a writing a jigsaw puzzle, which was entirely new to me. 

 

Another emphasized the “small chunks” of information that needed to be variously rearranged:

 

“I think that we provided an interesting and unique way to learn... While such a thing could have been done using books or files, there’s no reason not to use technology to make learning more palatable. We are able to introduce information in small chunks that are just variable enough to stay interesting where, in a book or pdf, the information would stay exactly the same.”

 

Other metaphors used to describe this style of writing include ordering variables in a mathematical formula and searching for synonyms when you’ve used one word too many times in an essay.

 

 

On Sounding Human

 

This new writing format yielded some humorous observations, such as this comment about sounding human:

 

“I don’t normally have to think about how writing needs to sound human… I am confident that my writing will always sound human or will at least seem like a human wrote it. But, with the bot, I had to think about how people tweet—like how does an average twitter user speak. Which might be something I do subconsciously on a regular basis but this was an odd experience where the tone of being a human had to be on the forefront of my mind.”

 

​

Benefits and Drawbacks of Writing with Bots

 

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised at students’ critical take on the medium, identifying the benefits for their informational aim and acknowledging the limits of bot composing.

 

“The medium of a Twitterbot allowed my group the opportunity to easily connect with our intended audience at no cost. Further, because Twitter is a more informal medium, we were able to use humor and personalize our bot.” 

 

“This Twitterbot allowed us to interact with Cal Poly students and faculty in a light-hearted yet educational manner. While this can be replicated to an extent in one-on-one interactions, the ease that comes with reading a tweet made the communication barrier not only easier to pass, but more efficient.”

 

“The medium really allowed for quick continued content coming out without added work on our part. The fact that our twitter bot posts regularly means that we don't have to worry about losing our audience due to lack of content. On another hand, the medium doesn't cater to deeper engagement with each job we tweet about, so something like a blog or column might be a better way to post regular engaged content that does more than scratch the surface on English major jobs. But, the twitter bot is a whole lot less work. I think it serves as a good supplement to an already established medium like a blog or video series. One can scratch the surface and get people interested (the bot) and the other can go more in-depth.” 

 

 

More Confidence in Technical Abilities and Curiosity of Future Co-Authoring with a Computer

 

“It's definitely given me a lot more confidence with coding and writing a script. It's actually kind of fun now. The project has allowed me to see the cool and different ways we can work with computers in our writing.”

 

“I can see how easy twitter bots are to make and have a better grasp on how they work; they aren’t really amorphous blobs on the periphery of my consciousness, but something tangible. As for writing, I’ve become more inclined to test out new avenues of technical literacy, as I believe that I can use it to further my writing abilities.”

 

Similar to the other projects we have completed in this class, I was surprised by the accessibility of the project. At the beginning of the class, I was intimidated by knowing I would have to create a Twitterbot, and even more so by the short timespan to learn how to do so; however, it was far more accessible than I had previously thought. This solidified a newfound belief that if you simply devote the time to a practice, you are capable of far more than you originally thought. 

 

“I have never done writing like this before that I can remember. I don't know if I will ever be required to write like this again, but I think I may want to. It is innovative and an interesting addition to my language toolkit.”