Instructions for Giving Instructions: Creating Effective Documentation  

Increasingly technical communicators are being asked not only to write documentation and instructions, but to also teach subject matter experts how to write their own process explanations. While writing good documentation is an art, there are also formulas and templates that help guide effective process explanation. Whether instructions appear in written, verbal or digital formats, they should all observe basic conventions for graphics, layout, content organization, overviews, development of ideas, ample warnings and cautions, trouble shooting and tool lists.

Stern, Caroline M. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Documentation>Writing>Technical Writing

Needle - Haystack + You: How Undergraduates Search and Use the Internet  

This paper considers the current trends in information literacy in higher education and presents some of the results of a survey of in-coming college freshmen that sought to measure their information literacy in the area of Internet use. The twenty-question survey gathered responses from 1,184 students in a total population of 2,345. The data sought to determine students’ patterns of Internet use, their attitudes toward the reliability of information that they found via the Internet, and their competencies in structuring an Internet search and evaluating the data retrieved. The complete results and their implications are still being analyzed. Preliminary data analysis demonstrates that although many students self-report that they are advanced in their Internet expertise, they could benefit from systematic and cumulative information literacy instruction and be tutored in the important difference between research in a traditional library and research on the Internet.

Stern, Caroline M. STC Proceedings (2002). Articles>Education>Search>Online

The New Literacies of the Digital Age  

Text is no longer privileged as the solitary literacy of the educated, nor is it a more sophisticated form of communication than pictures. Alphabetic literacy closely intertwines with visual literacy in the Digital Age to become the foundation of the multiple literacies required by the information explosion. Hence, effective communication must be synesthetic, employing as many senses as is possible in the given medium. Audience aware authors must carefully consider all the literacies that the reader employs when he or she interfaces with a message.

Stern, Caroline M. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Cyberculture

Tidbits for Teaching Information Architecture  

Technical writing classes can be excellent launch pads for students to begin the journey of discovering what IA is and how it works. Following instructional design principles, educators must first determine what students know about IA and guide learners to what they need to know. This journey can begin by defining IA using the rich resources that exist in print and on the web. Following this, students are introduced to IA authorities, many of whom have tutorials posted on the web. The learning culminates in case histories that ask students to learn IA principles and apply them as part of a written critical analysis of web sites that is also part of an oral presentation.

Stern, Caroline M. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Education>Information Design