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Lessons from personal photography: the digital disruption

of selectivity and reflection

Tim Fawns

Digital Education, University of Edinburgh

[email protected]

0131 242 6536

University of Edinburgh

49 Little France Crescent

Chancellor's Building, GU315

Edinburgh, EH16 4SB

Keywords: digital media, distributed cognition, memory, multimodal

assessment, photography, reflection, selectivity

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Running head: LESSONS FROM PERSONAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Abstract

Recent technological, cultural and economic factors have shifted the balance between

recalling and reconstructing internalised information and accessing externalised information.

While digital artefacts constitute an enormous and valuable set of resources, human

engagement and reflection are important to the meaningful synthesis and application of

knowledge in specific contexts. This is particularly clear in the case of personal photography,

where recordings of life events are used to cue not just the facts and details of what happened,

but associated subjective, sensory and emotional memory. This paper draws on research into

personal photography to highlight contrasting drivers of engagement and detachment with

digital media, and applies these to students’ use of digital media within education. The posing

of complex, situated problems that require the use of technology to construct creative,

collaborative, multimodal projects is suggested as a way of cultivating social obligation and

encouraging selectivity, engagement and reflection with digital media.

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Introduction

Consider that, if asked “do you know the time,” people will often reply in the

affirmative before they look at a watch or other timekeeping device. To Andy Clark (2003),

in his book “Natural Born Cyborgs,” this is part of a human capacity to incorporate external

objects into our thinking, one that can lead us to consider externally-held information to be

our own knowledge. The notion that cognition can be distributed - beyond the body and to

the environment - is supported by evidence such as that produced by Betsy Sparrow and

colleagues (2011), who found that if students expected to have easy access to information in

the future, they were less likely to remember it. Rather than retaining knowledge itself, their

efforts were directed at remembering how to access information.

In a similar vein, Linda Henkel (2013) has recently shown that photographing objects,

rather than simply observing them, impairs subsequent recall of their details unless those

photographs are reviewed. In other words, recording on our cameras comes at a cost to

encoding in our memories. In this sense, photography is not just a way of remembering, but

also of forgetting. Indeed, it is possible that we are slowly becoming dependent on

photographs for remembering life events just as many of us seem to have become dependent

on calculators for calculating and spellcheckers for spelling (Fawns, 2013). Even if this is the

case, rather than being inherently bad, it would be an efficient use of mental resources that

should, under most circumstances, enable us to perform effectively. After all, calculators

allow most people to solve much more difficult problems and spellcheckers help us to

conform to general rules of spelling (Fischer & Konomi, 2007). In the same way,

photographs give us the potential to remember more about what we have experienced

(Koutstaal et al., 1999). There are, however, potential risks with this particular adaptive

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function of our minds. In this paper, I consider some challenges – highlighted through the

study of personal photography - that digital media present for engaging with information.

To begin with, the way we engage with information has implications for the meaning

we take from it. For example, photographs can increase the perceived precision of our

memories by providing evidence of the details of past experience (Henkel, 2011), just as

other kinds of documents can be used to verify - or substitute - cognitive recall. However,

meaningfulness (or perceived significance to our identity or situation) and usefulness

(influence on our goal-systems and decision-making) are also part of the value of memory

(Fawns, 2013). While it may seem that more information should lead to more meaning and

more utility, it can also, in some cases, reduce the necessity and, therefore, the incentive for

reflection and interpretation (Sellen & Whittaker, 2010). In their critique of lifelogging (the

continuous attempt to record as many images and elements of lived experience as possible),

Sellen and Whittaker raise concerns that creating a comprehensive archive of representations

of experience is at odds with the primary function of memory in supporting reminiscence or

reflection. Personalised construction of memory, they argue, involves selection, effort and

attention. A similar issue exists for education, where a balance is needed between accessing

comprehensive archives of information and meaningfully constructing personalised

knowledge in relation to the learner’s perspective and experience.

Selectivity – the process of making decisions about what information should be

engaged with - is made more difficult by the ease with which digital media can be collected

or produced. Shirky (2008) describes barriers such as effort, time, money or storage capacity

as important filters that can prevent information overload and cautions against the erosion of

these filters that is often produced by technological advancement. In the case of pre-digital

photography, it was common to wait days for rolls of film exposures to be professionally

developed. This expense in terms of time, money and convenience curtailed the number of

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photographs produced. The evolution of digital technology has led to a significant decrease in

the barriers to producing and storing images and, consequently, to an exponential increase in

personal photography (Mayer-Schönberger, 2009). Some recent studies (e.g. Van House,

2009; Whittaker, Bergman & Clough, 2010; Whittaker et al., 2012) suggest that there is now

a trend of producing large photograph collections which are subsequently neglected,

highlighting the potential for people to be overwhelmed by information even when it is of

personal significance.

The phenomenon of encountering more information than can be engaged with is not

new. In 1525, for example, Erasmus (2001, p.145) complained of the printing press: “is there

anywhere on earth exempt from these swarms of new books?” The situation became even

more intolerable during the subsequent print “explosion” of the 1550s, leading some scholars

to adopt strategies of “skimming” and “superficial reading” (Rosenberg, 2003). Now, the

expansion of digital archives is an extension of this situation that allows exponentially larger

amounts of information to be collected but not understood in depth.

In education, a compulsion to collect may come about from an accompanying feeling

that progress is being achieved despite minimal effort. Discussing the sort of automatic, non-

reflective thinking that is associated with information skimming, Norman (1993, p. 17)

warned that its enjoyment “…is also its danger. It seduces the participant into confusing

action for thought. One can have new experiences in this manner, but not new ideas, new

concepts, advances in human understanding. For these, we need the effort of reflection.” This

notion that effortful reflection is key to advancing understanding is supported by a number of

scholars. Gibbs (1988, p. 9) claimed that “it is not sufficient simply to have an experience in

order to learn. Without reflecting upon this experience it may quickly be forgotten, or its

learning potential lost.” Likewise, Kolb’s (1984) influential model features reflection and

abstraction as crucial processes in the cycle of learning from experience. Dewey (1933)

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claimed that reflection is necessary for making mental connections between ideas and focuses

not on gathering information but on reprocessing what is already known to arrive at new

conclusions. Indeed, what we do when we reflect might be more accurately conceived as

refraction: generating new ways of seeing by examining information through different lenses

or, as we will consider later, exploring its characteristics and possibilities via the properties of

different media.

A need for complex problems

Despite his awareness of the risks of experiential (non-reflective) thinking, Norman

(1993, p. 25) claimed that “…the use of external aids facilitates the reflective process by

acting as external memory storage, allowing deeper chains of reasoning over longer periods

of time than is possible without aids.” Storing information externally frees up cognitive load,

allowing mental resources to be directed toward reflection on the information that is

accessed. However, there is evidence from psychology (e.g. Kahneman, 2011) and

neuroscience (e.g. Doidge, 2009) that our minds tend to choose the path of least resistance

when solving a problem. If we can find a solution by accessing external information, we may

prefer to do so rather than go to the effort of recalling internalised information (as in the case

of Sparrow et al.’s 2011 study described earlier) or constructing new meaning. Thus, to

encourage reflection, we need a complex problem to solve, one which involves an

advancement in our thinking. As Moon (2001, p. 1) argues: “we do not reflect on a simple

addition sum – or the route to the corner shop. We reflect on things for which there is not an

obvious or immediate solution.”

Opportunities for confronting these sorts of subjective, situated problems are

naturally-occurring within the personal and social identity construction that takes place

through reminiscence (e.g. Rathbone, Moulin and Conway, 2008). For example, family photo

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archives can be powerful cues to personal meaning-making and reflection (e.g. Chalfen,

1987; Musello, 1979; Slater, 1995). However, it seems that having the opportunity to engage

with personal images is not enough. For most people, reviewing or organising photographs

happens only in relation to social expectations, such as when they are to be shared with others

(van House, 2009). According to van House, sharing photographs with friends and family

facilitates the co-construction of memory narratives and aids an important part of the memory

consolidation process. In constructing such narratives, people are not simply recounting what

happened but are negotiating a subjective and selective account of past experience (Neisser,

1988). Through such processes, we are not only constructing stories of our past, we are also

progressing our present view (Conway, 2005). Yet, despite the best of intentions, without a

social trigger – and preferably one for which there is a specified date by which others expect

it to be done - photographs remain unorganised on cameras, phones and hard drives

(Whittaker, Bergman and Clough, 2010; van House, 2011).

In education, assessment functions as a powerful social trigger since it generally

involves repercussions and a sense of obligation to others (e.g. teachers, other students,

family and friends) (Rowntree, 1987). Assessments that require collaboration (such as in

group work) might create even stronger triggers because of the added social responsibility

and the increased requirement to present and negotiate work in progress (Davies, 2009).

Through collaborative assessment, we can not only pose engaging, complex problems for

students to solve by working together, we can also create social pressure to do so and set

parameters against which they can judge the quality, relevance and provenance of digital

media. While it may be difficult to stop students collecting too much information

(particularly where teachers are prone to this themselves), carefully designed assessments can

help them engage with and reflect on what they collect. Note that I am not advocating the

assessment of reflection - that discussion is outside of the scope of this article. I am, however,

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advocating assessments that require reflection to create a satisfactory solution, as well as the

demonstration of subjective understanding of what has been created, how it has been created

and its potential for situated meaning.

Effective assessment problems can highlight the difference between access to

information and knowledge, synthesis, meaning-making and application. They can

demonstrate that information held in digital artefacts is not understood until we do something

with it that connects our current context with already-held, relevant knowledge (Carroll,

2009). Alongside possibilities for unselective practices, new technologies open up

opportunities for effortful, creative acts that involve sustained attention to the content and

meaning of information. Turning once more to photography, an extreme example is Deb

Roy's (2011) algorithmic analysis of 3 years of home video. By recording the various rooms

of his house for 8-10 hours per day, totalling 90,000 hours of video, Roy and his colleagues

were able to observe normally inaccessible phenomena such as the processes involved in his

son's learning to say the word "water". Ethical concerns aside, this project facilitated

reflective, engaged meaning-making through the creative use of technology and digital

artefacts. Another example is the project of Jonathan Harris (2011), who forced himself to

take one photograph every day and post it on his blog. Harris grappled with issues of personal

representation and performance in a public setting and gained insight into how, through his

project, his life was increasingly constructed by photography. Even more mundane examples,

made easier by the affordances of digital media, such as creating photo books, collages, or

multimedia slideshows, require time, effort and the considered use of technology. Their

creators must select and organise a subset of images for a particular purpose and audience,

then judge their qualities against personal criteria and discuss these with others. In addition,

the projects described here involve the integration of different modes of information (or

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“multimodality”) to create interdependent meaning that is more than the sum of its parts

(Kress, 2009).

According to Bezemer and Kress (2008), we learn differently from different modes of

communication because they create alternative opportunities for expression. In other words,

modes cannot simply be substituted for one another to produce the same meaning but instead

allow us to draw new meaning from the same issue (Kress 2009). As such, a range of modes

together can make a richer meaning than a single mode by itself. Roy’s and Harris’ projects,

described above, produce a richness of meaning by combining images, audio, text and

dialogue. A simple example from education might include the adding of diagrams and

illustrations to an academic text to develop the understanding of the topic for both reader and

author (Bezemer and Kress, 2008).

The projects above also involve construction of complex, integrated multimedia.

Papert and Harel’s (1991) account of constructionism suggests that knowledge is particularly

effectively developed through the creation of objects, theories or artefacts, since in doing so,

the creators come to understand the workings and processes of the various components and

how they interact. Multimodal artefacts involve the construction of meaning between modes

(e.g. image, text, animation) and analysis of the message to be conveyed in relation to the

media used to convey it (Kress, 2009). Meaning constructed in this way is more ambiguous

than in standalone text because the reader must combine different elements so that “each not

only complements, but is dependent on, the others” (O’Shea and Fawns, 2014, p. 259).

Hence, in sharing multimodal constructions (e.g. with peers or assessors), learners

must strive to enable others to understand what they have done. Multimodal works (digital,

hypertextual ones in particular) problematise the position of author and audience in relation

to meaning making because the author’s purpose when creating an artefact is not always clear

in many contexts that draw more on the reader’s position. This is as true for me, reminiscing

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via a photograph that was originally taken to report the arrival of my child, as it is for the

reader of a 200-year-old quote included in a blog post on digital photography.

Yet this does not relinquish responsibility for meaning from the creator. Kirschner &

van Merriënboer (2013, p. 171) liken unselective digital practices to “…butterflies fluttering

across the information on the screen, touching or not touching pieces of information (i.e.,

hyperlinks), quickly fluttering to a next piece of information, unconscious to its value and

without a plan.” Such thoughtless positioning of elements of information in relation to each

other undermines the “convincingness” (Ross, 2012) of the resulting multimodal

constellation. In constructing a collection of digital artefacts, it is easy to be distracted from

reflection by the activity of superfluous information gathering and, subsequently, to struggle

to make sense of this information. Rather than being unreflective scatterings of disparate

entities, convincing multimodal works such as those of Roy and Harris comprise selections of

media organised such that they are conducive to creativity and experimentation in the

generation of meaningful new connections. Selectivity is important not just because it

prevents us from being overwhelmed but because it focuses our attention on what is

important. It involves reflective decision-making, an evaluation of information in relation to

its source and how it fits with other elements. Here, the concept of refraction - the

multifaceted potential for new perspectives - problematises source evaluation: the same

source can be viewed differently depending on what is being created.

These complexities are multiplied in multimodal group projects, where students must

discuss issues and processes of creation and collaboration, thereby reflecting on

metacognitive aspects of the related learning. It is, therefore, not just the artefact that is

important but also the dialogue and interaction that emerges around it and helps students to

form more questioning and sophisticated understandings of the interplay between contexts.

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Conclusion

While new technology makes it easy to access information, trends of unselectively

collecting and creating large archives of digital artefacts can distract us from thinking about

what is contained in them. Reflecting on what we collect, and making connections with what

we already know, is vital to the development of sophisticated understandings, new ideas and

solutions.

If we accept the importance of reflection in education, then we should design

challenges for students that cannot be solved by the regurgitation of information but instead

require the integrated application of multiple sources of information to specific situations. In

this way, access to media archives opens up opportunities to enhance reflective capacity by

solving problems through the meaningful connection of information to situated contexts.

Alongside the potential for unselective collection, digital media and technology

provide powerful opportunities for reflective thinking. By encouraging the construction of

multimodal artefacts within assessment, we can give students projects that use technology to

engage their creativity and that require them to reflect on different forms of information by

placing them in relation to a central message. This can be helped by adding social triggers,

such as the deadlines and social motivations that accompany collaborative projects, to

encourage students to work with information in effortful ways.

Of course, there are important differences in how we interact with digital media in

relation to personal photography and formal learning. For one thing, in a personal context,

shared understanding can be continuously developed over time, through ongoing dialogue,

whereas in multimodal assessment the scope for negotiating shared meaning is often limited

by the temporal boundaries of the course and the political boundaries of the teacher-student

relationship. However, just as creativity within personal photography can lead to new insights

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into identity, perspective and the place of the personal within society, the authoring of

multimodal content can be used in education to generate new understandings of complex

concepts (O’Shea and Fawns, 2014). The key message here is that the way we use

information is important, and carefully designed triggers can help students to maintain a

healthy balance between internally and externally-held information, between experiential and

reflective modes of thinking (Norman, 1993), and between the collection of new information

and reflection on what we have already acquired.

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