This study explores student engagements with hybrid writing courses, revealing their experiences and perceptions of a modality that blends in-person and online instruction. Hybrid learning as a format is often overshadowed by its association with fully online instruction. After a number of writing courses on our campus were redesigned for hybrid delivery, we conducted interviews and focus groups with students taking those courses. What we found, among other things, was that students largely saw hybrid writing courses as striking a balance between the flexibility of online learning with opportunities for human contact and the social presence afforded by in-person class meetings. Even more intriguing, though, was how students talked about the purposes of—and relationships between—the online and in-person components of their hybrid courses. In other words, it was not just the case that students appreciated hybrid learning, but also that clear patterns emerged in the meanings and values they ascribed to the constituent elements of these courses and the perceived cohesiveness of instruction across the modes. This study ends with implications for the design and implementation of hybrid writing courses, and it emphasizes the need for further scholarship that recognizes the unique affordances and challenges of this instructional modality.

This article examines the potential uses—and limits—of so-called “distraction-free” writing software, especially in academic writing contexts. It does so by presenting findings from two different qualitative studies, one in which graduate students experimented with such tools and reflected on their experiences, and another study in which undergraduate students composed reflective essays about their writing processes. Taken together, these findings indicate that distraction-free writing may only prove useful within a relatively narrow band of composing activity. Moreover, they suggest that participants’ beliefs and understandings of what constitutes writing activity—and distraction from it—are both broader and more fluid than tacit assumptions embedded in distraction-free writing software. Ultimately, the point is not necessarily to critique this class of software, but instead to use it as an occasion to better understand phenomena related to composing processes, such as attention, distraction, and motivation.

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This study examines the experiences and perceptions of writers who composed text using “distraction-free” writing tools that stand as alternatives to standard word processing programs. The purpose of this research was to develop a clearer understanding of how digital writing tools may shape the activities and practices of writers, as well as what writing with unfamiliar tools and technologies might reveal about writing processes. Analysis of study participants’ reflective narratives of their composing experience suggests the extent to which writing tools and technologies influence routine practices, assist writers as they try to direct their attention (and avoid distraction), motivate writing, and impact writers’ “text sense” as they compose. Moreover, findings indicate how different tools and technologies may be viewed as more or less useful for different writing tasks. This article ends with a call for writing researchers, writing teachers, and software developers to attend more critically to the ways writing technologies shape the practices of writers.