From Courseware Cosmetics to Human Cognetics: A Pragmatic, Innovative Pedagogy for Distributed Learning Design and Development  

Commercial courseware management systems efficiently distribute expository instructional shovelware without regarding how adults actually construct knowledge or develop practical skills. Critical, unaddressed instructional problems increasingly face the commercial and academic distributed learning community and require thoughtful, boldly pragmatic instructional design solutions to this salient issue. Alternative, innovative pedagogical approaches more appropriate for 21st century communications technologies need to be systematically explored, developed, validated, and creatively implemented. One promising perspective is to focus emerging technology systems on the design of cognitive learning environments based upon what we know and what we are discovering about how people actually learn, develop performance skills and heuristic competencies, and construct meaningful, transferable knowledge throughout their lifetimes.

Lasnik, Vincent E. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Online

From Monologue to Dialog to Chorus: The Place of Instrumental Discourse in English Studies and Technical Communication    

One way to resolve some of the conflict in English studies and technical communication over their diminishing cultural capital is to recognize the place of instrumental discourse in communication studies. Instrumental discourse is individually verified social agreements to coordinate and control physical actions. One purpose of literary works is to voice new concerns about social inequities. A purpose of rhetoric is to persuade others of the validity of those concerns. Instrumental discourse registers agreements about those concerns and brings them to temporary closure in laws, instructions, contracts, and constitutions. Instrumental discourse is the culmination of a process that often begins with a literary monolog, is continued in many rhetorical dialogs, and ends, for a while, in a chorus of approval. Each phase of this communication process--monolog, dialog, and chorus--has a place in English studies. If more English studies faculty would recognize the need to study the communications that promote dissensus and consensus, then they might contribute more to global discussions about social justice, cooperation, and sustainability, and they might gain more cultural capital and social influence.

Moore, Patrick. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2006). Articles>Education>TC>Workplace

From Page to Stage: How Theories of Genre and Situated Learning Help Introduce Engineering Students to Discipline-Specific Communication      

This article describes a discipline-specific communication course for engineering students offered by a Canadian university. The pedagogy of this course is based on North American theories of genre and theories of situated learning. In keeping with these theories, the course provides a context in which students acquire rhetorical skills and strategies necessary to integrate into a discipline-specific discourse community. The authors argue that such a pedagogical approach can be used to design communication courses tailored to the needs of any discipline if the following three key conditions are met: assignments are connected to subject matter courses, a dialogic environment is provided, and the nature of assignments allows students to build on their learning experiences in the course.

Artemeva, Natasha, Susan Logie and Jennie St-Martin. Technical Communication Quarterly (1999). Articles>Education>Engineering>Writing

From Writer to Trainer: Designing an Effective Technical Training Class  

You spend six months working side by side with the designers and engineers, learning every nuance of the new system. You then spend another six months writing a complete set of training and reference manuals. Face it, you know this system inside and out. So it should come as no surprise when your boss decides you are the perfect person to conduct the training class.

Michaels, Dana. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Software

Fulfilling the Promise of Open Content

Unfortunately, the movement to use open educational resources in higher education hasn’t yet realized the full impact that its founders anticipated. Open content is still in its infancy and faces some technical and cultural challenges that affect its widespread adoption.

Petrides, Lisa. Inside Higher Ed (2008). Articles>Education>Online>Open Source

Functionalism in TC Training

Analyses of users, functions, situations, risks and cost/benefit, together with functional testing which guarantees that needs are met, provide the basis for the real-life projects which the students of technical communication perform at Karlstad University in Sweden. Tutor support throughout is vital. This article gives examples of such projects from the latest academic year. They show that the students can often demonstrate that technical information is highly worthwhile, as is the value of having a holistic approach to the tasks.

Andersson, Ulf-L. TC-FORUM (2001). Articles>Education

Gauging the Value of Online Grade Posting: An Inquiry into Full Disclosure  

With the continued development of the Internet, distance learning initiatives and Web-based mechanisms designed to support traditional classroom pedagogies are here to stay, and traditional notions of teaching are forever changed. Online colleges and universities like the University of Phoenix already boast burgeoning enrollments, as students flock to a curriculum that will gladly meet them on their own terms and in their own homes and offices. On the Web, teaching moves from brick and mortar classrooms with thirty students entering and leaving every hour, on the hour, to a compendium of synchronous and asynchronous experiences characterized by bulletin board posts, downloads, real-time chats, file transfers, and video and audio files. Web-based approaches to teaching writing and rhetoric are, generally speaking, multivalent, offering new and important capacities that surpass some of the dimensional and practical constraints of the traditional written page. Moreover, many of the practices common in Web-based pedagogy are well supported by theories of dialogism and negotiated learning, and those in the computers and composition community have long trumpeted these benefits.

Knievel, Michael. Kairos (2001). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

Gender Differences in Employees’ and Students’ Knowledge of Office Politics  

Office politics goes on in most work environments. Learning the rules of office politics helps employees of both genders reap the rewards to which they are entitled. As future employees, students must become knowledgeable about office politics to be successful in the world of work.

Green, Catherine G. and Lillian H. Chaney. Association for Business Communication (2008). Articles>Education>Business Communication>Collaboration

A Gendered World: Students and Instructional Technologies  

Gender has become a significant issue in the various discussions related to the use of computers and instructional technologies (IT) in higher education. Are gender differences relevant in the students' learning process and their use of technological components in their courses? Is gender significant in determining the use of IT by students in colleges and universities? Does the study of how gender influences students' use of software and presentation formats, throw light on other general behavioural aspects of academic computer-users? This study uses surveys, both direct and online, of students in universities and colleges to explore whether gender is a critical variable in understanding what is labelled as user-friendly computer instruction and learning, Internet searches, and presentation software tools. It also seeks to explore whether and if so why, women students, as distinct from the men, do or do not embrace IT in their learning endeavors or use the new technological tools in handling their courses.

Rajagopal, Indhu and Nis Bojin. First Monday (2003). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Gender

The Genre System of the Harvard Case Method    

Focusing on the case write-up within the Harvard case method of instruction, this study provides historical and empirical evidence for the theory of genre systems. The Harvard case literature and interviews at a case-based business school in the Harvard tradition show that the purpose of this largely ignored written genre is to prepare students to participate in the primary genre, oral classroom discussion of the case. The case genre system provides highly conventionalized conductor-choreographer roles for instructors and blunt, detached consultant roles for student writers/speakers who repeatedly enact decisive, adversarial personae affirming practices and values of the business school.

Forman, Janis and Jone Rymer. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (1999). Articles>Education>Business Communication

Genre Theory, Engineering Education, and Circumventing Internet Bandwidth Problems  

A growing body of empirical research has implied that media seem to make little difference in education. In contrast, in the article “Distance Education Horror Stories Worthy of Halloween,” David Hailey, et al. argue that Internet-based education can be dangerous to the point that it can “sometimes threaten a teacher's career.” Although this might seem troublesome for researchers who maintain that media make no difference, we believe that it points to a different issue. The problems we found stem from genre rather than media choices. The point in this paper is that while media choices may matter little, genre choices are critical – substituting an essay for a lecture or an instruction set for a demonstration can have pedagogical consequences that can improve or disrupt learning.

Hailey, David E. and Christine E. Hailey. Frontiers in Education (2002). Articles>Education>Online

German Academic Programs In Technical Communication    

While research in international technical communication has flourished during the last 10 years, there has been little published on technical communication programs outside the United States. This article addresses this need by describing 12 representative academic technical communication programs in Germany, including Germany's first master's degree program. While there are no statistics on the number of technical communicators working in Germany, tekom (Gesellschaft für technische Kommunikation), the German professional society for technical communication, estimates roughly 4,400 members. While German academic programs in technical communication share many features with their counterparts in the United States, German academic programs do stress internships, foreign language study, and study abroad exchange programs more than technical communication programs in the United States.

Smith, Herb J. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2004). Articles>Education>Regional>Germany

Global E-Quality: Rethinking ICTs in Africa, Asia and Latin America

Overview of the Internet in Latin America, Report with qualitative and quantitative results, conclusions and recommendations on the uses of Internet by academics in Brazil and Chile. This report is part of a project that includes similar research in Africa and Asia, for comparative results. The reports were presented in the March 2002 international conference Re-thinking ICTs; the new Global E-Quality network on ICTs and knowledge era will continue the research activities in 2003.

Diocaretz, Myriam. Infonomics Online (2002). Articles>Internet>Education

Global Perspectives 2001: An Interdisciplinary Course that Prepares Students for Issues Related to Power and Communication in the 21st Century  

Global Perspectives 2001 was an interdisciplinary course that introduced students to global issues both from the perspective of power relationships and through an understanding of intercultural communication. The course assignments required students to do field research, use technology, and work as part of teams. Students learned to think critically about key global issues. The team project required students to do extensive research using technology, interviews, and other types of field research in addition to more traditional library research. Collaboration with any other discipline can help students see the broader implications of what they learn in technical communication courses.

Flammia, Madelyn. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Education>International

Global Thinking, or the Utility of Trivia    

The constant emphasis on specialization produces university graduates who do not or cannot look at problems broadly. As a result, engineers, scientists and executives indeed graduates in all fields including the supposedly broad-based humanities often cannot solve problems that require knowledge outside of their specializations. Or their narrowness causes them to commit embarrassing blunders that could be avoided if they took a broader view. The case of the British Westland Lysander P12 Ground Strafer aircraft illustrates the problem of narrow thinking. Very little direct information is available on this ingenious but obscure prototype airplane, but by examining many peripheral matters we can determine not only why the P12 was built but also how it was built. Further, we can also determine why it failed. Had the initial designers approached the problem in a broad way, and using information that was then available, they would have seen in advance that the project would fail. The case is instructive as an industrial problem, but it also demonstrates the value of global thinking methodology.

Harris, John S. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2001). Articles>Education>International

Globalizing the Technical Communication Classroom  

In today’s global economy, knowing how to communicate in an international environment is more important than ever. The United States leads the world in the number of foreign students attending its educational institutions. The student body is becoming increasingly diverse. Instructors can no longer assume that all students have had the same experiences. Often, in an attempt to treat all students equally, instructors overlook or misunderstand the needs of international students. But if the teachers acknowledge and welcome cultural diversity in the classroom, students can become more aware of the varied audiences they will encounter in their future careers.

Sharpe, Victoria. Intercom (2003). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>International

Going the Distance: Online Teachers' Perspectives on the Usability and Sustainability of Teaching Writing Online  

Distance education research tends to focus on students' experiences in the online classroom because students are the bread-and-butter of distance learning programs.

Kitalong, Karla Saari. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Online

Graduate Program Perspectives and Perceptions  

The panelists agree that the primary reason to pursue an advanced degree is professional improvement. There are many graduate programs in technical and/or professional communication with focuses ranging from practical application to theoretical development. Because of individual and program differences, graduate students have different perceptions even within their respective programs. This panel focuses on the perceptions of graduate programs from three panel members perspectives.

Jeansonne, Jerold, Lynn A. Perry and George J. Vivrett. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Education>Graduate

Graduate Research in Technical Communication: Preparing Students to Use the National Information Infrastructure  

Graduate researchers in technical communication help prepare other students for using the National Information Infrastructure, known as the super information highway. Here graduate students report recent research on the importance of logical screen sequences in hypertext, eight types of information to include to make proposals persuasive, and a profile of surveyed university computersupported writing facilities to point out needs such facilities have.

Battle, Mary V. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Education>Graduate>Online

Graduate-Level Technical Communication Instruction in the United Kingdon   

This paper describes the results of a study of graduate technical communication programs in the United Kingdom begun in the Fall of 1998. The study intended to 1) describe the general structure of graduate instruction in technical communication, and 2) to analyze the field according to 3 key topics in technical education in the UK: What is the international orientation of programs? What are the subject-matter components of technical communication programs? What delivery methods and other classroom practices do the programs embody The formation in these four areas can be useful to a number of readers. Those in the education can benefit by comparing practices in the U. S. A. to those in the UK, especially comparing delivery methods and subject matter. Practitioners of technical communication seeking employment in the UK or European Union markets can benefit by learning the requirements of work in these areas. Members of professional societies such as the Society for Technical Communication can benefit by learning about the state of the profession of technical writing in the UK as it is supported by and reflected in the education of advanced practitioners.

Barker, Thomas and Anna Sallee. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Education>Regional>United Kingdom

The Great Instauration: Restoring Professional and Technical Writing to the Humanities    

If you wish to start an undergraduate professional and technical writing program at a small liberal arts college, you will find good arguments for your project in the educational writings of Sir Francis Bacon. Unlike other Renaissance Humanists, Bacon located the New Learning (what we now call the humanities) within the related contexts of scientific discovery and invention and professional training and development. His treatise, The Advancement of Learning, proposes to draw knowledge from and apply knowledge to the natural and social world. Bacon's curricular ideas can benefit emerging PTW programs in the humanities in three ways: They make a convincing apologia for most English departments and writing programs, wed humanistic education to public service, and provide a rich but practical theoretical framework for program development and administration.

Di Renzo, Anthony. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2002). Articles>Education>Professionalism>Technical Writing

Greater than the Sum of Parts: A Poetry/Science Collaboration    

Collaborations between disciplines in middle school usually occur between language arts and social studies, or between math and science; however, we found a collaboration between language arts and science to be a fruitful experience for our students in their learning both disciplines and in improving our own teaching.

Abrams, Nancy and Nadine Feiler. LLAD (2002). Articles>Education>Writing

Guided Surfing: A Multimethod Assessment of a Layered Hypermap WWW Interface  

A multi-level hypermap interface was created for the display of world wide web pages relevant to an undergraduate class in Sensation and Perception. Assessment of the interface consisted of two experiments. Results indicated that the guides encourage students to broaden the focus of their search. Further, the guides do not appear to be particularly effective for enhancing the acquisition of detailed-factual knowledge. Over all, students subjective reactions to the guides were positive. In particular, they perceived the guides as making the search project more efficient, and providing the learner with 'big picture', conceptual knowledge.

Hall, Richard H. and Eric L. Stocks. University of Missouri-Rolla (1998). Articles>Web Design>Education

Guided Surfing: Development and Assessment of a World Wide Web Interface for an Undergraduate Psychology Class  

Although the World Wide Web has great potential as an educational tool, and many educational practitioners have begun utilizing the Web in many ways (e.g., Dodge, 1995; Logan, 1996; Mounts, 1996; Weiler, 1996), as yet, there has not been much systematic, theory based, research aimed at examining these methods. The principal purpose of this experiment was to begin to address the issue of how best to structure an interface between learners and the vast jumble of resources at their disposal on the Web. The need for the development and investigation of such an interface is indicated by research, which has found that some degree of learner guidance is particularly important in effective web learning (Anderson & Joerg, 1996).

Hall, Richard H. University of Missouri-Rolla (1997). Articles>Web Design>Education>Usability