Critiquing Critiques: A Genre Analysis of Feedback Across Novice to Expert Design Studios    

In the discipline of design, the most common presentation genre is the critique, and the most central aspect of this genre is the feedback. Using a qualitative framework, this article identifies a typology of feedback, compares the frequencies of feedback types between different levels of design studios ranging from novice to expert, and explores what the feedback reflects about the social and educational context of these design studios. Results suggest that the feedback socialized students into egalitarian relationships and autonomous decision-making identities that were perhaps more reflective of academic developmental stages or idealized workplace contexts than of actual professional settings--therefore potentially complicating the preprofessional goals of the critique.

Dannels, Deanna P. and Kelly Norris Martin. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Editing>Collaboration

Learning to Be Professional: Technical Classroom Discourse, Practice, and Professional Identity Construction    

Instruction in the technical and scientific disciplines gives students the technical skills necessary to succeed in industry. However, these disciplines also focus on socializing students into professional identities. This study examines one exemplar discipline, mechanical engineering, to see how classroom discourse and practice constructs professional identities for students (as future engineers) and their customers. Results suggest that although students' conceptions of the customer provided glimpses of professional identity, design processes in these classrooms were ultimately driven and shaped by academic communicative practices, audiences, and goals. Given this, instructional interventions are provided to integrate professionalization processes within classrooms where situated learning is apparent.

Dannels, Deanna P. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (1999). Articles>Education>Professionalism

Features of Success in Engineering Design Presentations: A Call for Relational Genre Knowledge    

This study explores design presentations that were graded by engineering faculty in order to assess the distinguishing features of those that were successful. Using a thematic analysis of 17 videotaped, final presentations from a capstone chemical engineering (CHE) course, it explores the rhetorical strategies, oral styles, and organizational structures that differentiate successful and unsuccessful team presentations. The results suggest that successful presenters used rhetorical strategies, oral styles, and organizational structures that illustrated students’ ability to negotiate the real and simulated relational and identity nuances of the design presentation genre—in short, they illustrated students’ relational genre knowledge.

Dannels, Deanna P. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2009). Articles>Presentations>Engineering>Genre