http://tc.eserver.org/authors/Doumont,_Jean-luc A bibliography of works by Doumont, Jean luc in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Doumont,_Jean-luc http://tc.eserver.org/31761.html http://tc.eserver.org/31761.html The key methods you can employ to create effective presentation slides. http://tc.eserver.org/31678.html http://tc.eserver.org/31678.html An illustrated to Jean-luc Doumont's theory of high-context and low-context cultures and the contrast between their visual rhetorics. http://tc.eserver.org/25244.html http://tc.eserver.org/25244.html This article first reviews three shortcomings in Tufte’s argument, then summarizes the booklet’s well-taken points, before offering guidelines for effective slides, no matter the tool. These guidelines and some of the analysis are based on more than 150 in-depth discussions of slides I have conducted with engineers, scientists, executives, and other professionals at workshops. http://tc.eserver.org/24200.html http://tc.eserver.org/24200.html Students learn by actively interacting with the material, and by interacting with each other along the way. http://tc.eserver.org/19706.html http://tc.eserver.org/19706.html Technical communication courses and training programs often benefit from peer review or group critique. To encourage learning, these activities require a constructive climate: Students must listen to one another, be receptive to feedback, and refrain from reproaches, interpretations, and judgments. Such a positive group spirit is not a given, especially if the school or corporate environment encourages competition more than collaboration. Teachers must foster an appropriate environment if they want their collaborative learning activities to be successful. http://tc.eserver.org/19664.html http://tc.eserver.org/19664.html Feedback is central to learning. Practice makes perfect, as the saying goes, but practice without feedback does not allow students or training participants to improve. http://tc.eserver.org/19676.html http://tc.eserver.org/19676.html Many teachers and instructors now recognize the importance of interaction. They know that their students learn from interacting with the material, with each other, and with them. Moving away from ex cathedra lecturing, instructors increasingly build their courses on hands-on practice, group exercises, and discussion sessions. Surprisingly, this change in methodology is not reflected in the classroom layout. Teachers often take their assigned rooms as they come, and while schools rush to fit classrooms with the latest technology, they seldom invest similar effort in designing more flexible or useful classroom layouts. By and large, the classic classroom is still setting the rules. http://tc.eserver.org/15138.html http://tc.eserver.org/15138.html Offers suggestions on how teachers of technical communication and reviewers of coworkers' documents can offer constructive criticism of others' writing. http://tc.eserver.org/15175.html http://tc.eserver.org/15175.html Describes how teachers can begin their courses on a positive note by properly introducing students to the course material and to each other. http://tc.eserver.org/13762.html http://tc.eserver.org/13762.html When it comes to graphing data, most professionals show little method or creativity. They typically limit themselves to a small repertoire of graph types and select from it on the basis of habit, if not sheer ease of production. Similarly, the many books on graphing devote much attention to graphical integrity and readability, but little or none to graph selection. We developed a methodology to help engineers, scientists, and managers choose the “right graph” on the basis of three criteria: the structure of the data set in terms of number and type of variables, the intended use of the graph, and the research question or intended message. The first and third criteria allow one to construct an effective two-entry selection table. http://tc.eserver.org/13758.html http://tc.eserver.org/13758.html George Miller’s “magical number seven, plus or minus two” is poorly understood and, consequently, blindly applied to professional communication. As an example, I have heard speakers explicitly allow themselves up to seven items of up to seven words on each visual aid, in addition to the title. Any such slide would fail any real-life test of effectiveness, such as briefly showing the slide while going on talking, then asking the audience what was on it. Such misconceptions endure. http://tc.eserver.org/13533.html http://tc.eserver.org/13533.html A picture is worth a thousand words, or so the saying goes—a saying debated by some but accepted pragmatically by most. Do we not all remember some little drawing or other that came in handy to clarify an otherwise plainly unintelligible discourse? Professionally, experienced technical communicators know the benefit of adding illustrations to the text of their technical publications. With increasingly better tools available for their production, pictures seem to have a bright future indeed.