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My wife is a legal transcriptionist. She spends her day transcribing court files from digital files produced in the court system. This work will eventually disappear as technology changes and this type of work will become automated, however for now she produces verbatim transcripts on a great variety of legal topics from these digital court records. The work is fascinating, gruesome, and sad all at the same time. Think of murder, family violence, corporate challenges, medical mishaps, and traffic tickets all rolled into one job. The challenge for her is to be able to correctly hear what is being said and transcribe it word-for-word. Misspellings can alter a case after the fact for many reasons, not the least are things like transcripts being used as precedents for future cases and therefore it is these after-the-fact documents that become the official record. My wife is expected to do her own research when it comes to terminology and spellings. Consider First Nations names and their territories that use multi-consonant words that are difficult to pronounce let alone appreciate as place names. Consider individuals from other cultures who speak English with an accent and who pronounce words in very different ways or even cases using very specific technical terminology. The transcriptionist is responsible for the accuracy of their work.
This is piece-meal self-employment although all of the work comes via a central contractor. The central contractor has attempted to provide an electronic clearinghouse and set of tools to assist the transcriptionists. This contractor provides links to resources as well as a central archive of case law and common word spellings. The central contractor has purchased access to most of the online legal resources and repositories (case-law etc) for the transcribers to use. There are virtual spaces for transcribers to share ideas and comments about cases or issues and there are spelling lists for any given trial as well as places for transcribers to indicate where or how they arrived at a particular spelling. These resources are intended to be dynamic and permanent. The online environment is closed to only those who have business with the main contractor yet the environment is inviting, it has several less formal social spaces for side conversations, and the owners of the main business (the contractor) actively reach out to the transcriptionists to share ideas on how the space can be improved over time.
There is an enormous archive within this environment and being that my wife has lived through my research and my doctoral process these past number of years she understands her virtual workspace as a world quite similar to what I have looked at here in the Landing. She expresses her frustration over the fact that her transcriptionist peers do not use the space effectively and thus make it difficult for others. Some willingly share their case-by-case struggles while others are silent or invisible despite the fact that a number of them may be working on different aspects of the same court case. There are struggles with such a massive archive that is at times difficult to work within because case law and different aspects of court cases get recycled time and time again and the more efficient way to begin a new job (using cases from the past) is to get access to the past resources and not have to reinvent things all over again. If a judge cites aspects of case law why type what the judge has to say when you can quickly go find the case and just copy and paste it or when there is a complex but very obscure set of references in a medical case why start the research from scratch when you know these terms were already researched and are clearly sitting in a file in the archive.
This is real-world stuff and what I hear are frustrations, concerns, and challenges little different from what we see in our networked social learning environments. Are there lessons to be learned? Are there models and processes and structures that might permit these environments to work better or in the end will they always be good ideas except for the fact that we are dealing with humans who will or won’t use them effectively? Is there a perception that worlds such as these are beyond some of us and maybe this outside group might more comfortably just stick to what is currently known? The Landing exists in different forms beyond what we have today and we need to find ways to use these rich resources to enhance our daily lives in teaching and learning as well as in our daily business worlds. Thoughts?
Comments
I take the position that the frustrations, concerns and challenges can be somewhat (no silver bullets) reduced with design of the structures and relationships which while having different values in the different systems (court system versus networked landing) still have common attributes. (@Jon I think judgements form an excellent example of the multidimensional network where data becomes an actor, but there are still social based clusters that form the heterogenous network and therefore the optimum is both multidimensional and heterogeneous). From these common ideas a pattern can be designed, repeated and observed which can lead to strategies and tactics to increase the rate of adoption. Not sure Everett Rogers (Diffusion of Innovations) intended the adopter categories to be used in this way but I like to think of the curve as something that can be influenced by the five attributes of adoption so that you can speed adoption provided disruption or replacement does not shift the curve.
@Stuart can you descript three to five types of social groupings that might occur on the central contractor's electronic clearinghouse. In the case of the Landing similar groupings might be a course, a topic of interest (eg. Copyright), an organizational initiative such as the branding group or an organizational unit such as a school or centre.
Thank you Eric for your response. I think that your first points are a key part of this discussion “design of the structures and relationships”. These aspects of structures are not only key but I would suggest that the nature of the industry and the audience would determine the nature of the design and what could be expected from the relationships. I find it interesting that the Landing appears (perception) to have a greater student population of graduate students – if my assumption is correct does this create an environment that precludes those who are not? Is the academic world of an undergraduate student so very different from that of a graduate student? I know that there are certain social and hierarchical perceptions in the student academic community that could take on a private club air but couldn’t the Landing become the great equalizer?
You ask about my wife’s virtual work environment. The general contractor provides quite a fascinating environment for the sub-contractor: the transcribers. There appears to be both as rich a work-focussed environment as there is a social/fun-focussed environment. On the social side there is a place for photos (family, friends and otherwise), birthdays (there is a card feature attached so that you can note a birthday and send a e-card from a selection available), and there are a variety of contests and recipe database in different spaces on the site. On the work related side there is a very large spelling database listing everything from street names to hospitals, schools, police-person’s names in police detachments as well as lawyer and judge names, common criminal phrases, types of airplanes and airplane parts along with a database of religious names and phrases from most of the world religions. (there is much I have not mentioned) There is a complete sample database of all of the types of documents that one might be expected to produce along with grammar and punctuation lists, and links to legislation and statutes that a transcriber might be required to reference. Finally there is a cool feature called a “Grrr” button that allows a transcriber to comment about something very specific on the file they are working with. For example if there is something not up to an expected standard in the digital sound file or the technology in the courtroom. The neat part about this is that the various courthouses have access to this Grr file and can find out if there is something wrong with the technology in their jurisdiction. The Grr file acts like a fairly current feedback loop for the contractor and the main organization that provides access to the work.
Transcribers, as self-employed persons, have the freedom to use whatever resources they deem appropriate to get the work done but it appears that the main contractor has provided a reasonably safe and inviting space for these disparate workers to come and share. As with distance education students, many of these virtual workers will never meet their peers in a face-to-face situation and in appears that in order to attract and retain new transcribers into this business the main contractor has had to create this virtual space. This comes back to your initial comment “design of the structures and relationships”. This is ever-so vital for all of our virtual worlds.
Stuart, this is probably a tangential question and I hope I am not distracting from what you want to talk about, but I would be very curious to know more about what resources your spouse and her colleagues use to deal with the emotional strain of transcribing the more difficult court cases -- do they discuss this on the contractor's forums, is there an Employee Assistance Plan or similar service, do they share tips or tangible resources? I ask out of curiousity about the working conditions of precarious (not employed in full-time, permanent positions) workers who are involved in responding to violence and trauma.
Hello Sarah – this is a great question and the short answer is there are no resources. Transcribers are really on their own. I made this posting public and my wife is “listening” to this conversation and in response to your comment she writes “I need to talk about it, but you can't listen ... I remember with [a previous contractor] we transcribers sometimes shared feelings about the jobs we were sharing, and the content, but I've never done that with [current contractor]” All transcribers sign a confidentiality agreement and are prohibited from talking about the cases or the content. As you can imagine a lot of this is protected behind publication bans and other legal prohibitions however how does one spend 6, 10, or more hours a day, in isolation, keying in content that would make the average person sick to their stomach. Imagine listening to and transcribing the minute and intimate details of the abuse and subsequent murder of a child the same age as yours. Or with any case involving individuals that you might somehow be able to relate to such as your children, spouse, friends, or family: how do you separate this as a job from the rest of your world?
I know when my wife has transcribed a very difficult case because her behaviours are different and I am challenged to find ways to take her away from these worlds. She says she always remembers the very first case she transcribed which involved the murder of a teenager the same age as her son and she said she cried all the way through just imagining this being her son: we are social beings how could one not? I don’t know how other transcribers deal with these issues (all are women) however in my wife’s case she enjoys reading the likes of Stephen King and other equally challenged writings as well as watch TV shows that contain very gruesome content. I think she does this in an attempt to create a fictional world that she works to enter into as she transcribes and if she can somehow fictionalize her daily work then it remains at a distance. I am guessing a bit here because I don’t read the same content nor will I watch the same shows. I have said to her that even if she could talk about her cases there are many stories I could not listen to because of the content. I do wonder at times if there is not a form of PTSD that touches her life and the lives of the other women as they spend their days or nights listening to and actively engaging these very real events in our communities. I use the words “actively engage” because I can’t help but believe that the act of focussed listening and then physically transcribing these events does not in some way bring the transcriber into contact with these difficult and challenging environments. Tangents are important.
Sarah -- on a similar topic. I have a 95 year-old cousin who worked at Bletchley Park during WW2. She had been recruited out of the London School of Economics and spent her war-days decoding German military traffic. For years I bugged her to tell me about her experiences and one day she told me a story and as a result of her story I never asked again. The decoding was live – they were assigned a particular geographic region and as the coded German messages came in via whatever means, the machines at Bletchley then provided the ability to decode on the spot. My cousin told me about a particular day when she was decoding traffic from a German U-boat in the Mediterranean who had been following a convoy of British ships and she had been scrambling to determine just what the U-boat was planning to do via his messages as this U-boat was fixing to torpedo the lead British Navy ship. She heard him get the go ahead to fire his torpedoes and she heard the U-boat send a subsequent signal of success. The ship was sunk with all hands lost.
What made this difficult to hear was that it became clear that my cousin knew she was listening live to the impending destruction of a ship full of her friends and countrymen. I say friends because it turned out that she knew that the love of her life was on this particular ship. She had great difficulty telling me this story this many years later. How could you sit there day-in-and-day-out listening to your enemy describe what they were about to do and know that neither you nor anyone else could or would stop whatever horrible thing was about to transpire? The story of Bletchley Park and the code breaking that took place during WW2 is a fascinating one but what kind of a psychological toll did it take on the individuals such as my cousin? She told me that many of her coding peers ended up in mental hospitals having broken down and not be able to do the job let alone live life - some even took their own lives. She indicated that their “masters” understood the challenges the job posed for them and did provide regular breaks at spa retreats in order to help them refresh and come back to the job with a clear head. Somehow we forget the lesson learned or there is perceived expediency in the apparent mundane work-life of what many do today. I continually want to turn these stories and lessons around and want to see if the work we do and/or are supported in (online teaching and learning using socially networked learning spaces) cannot somehow be used to help shape, in a positive way, our daily worlds.