Behind the Cameras: 10 Non-Instructional Issues to Consider When Coordinating a Distance Education Program with Other Institutions

When she learned that I would be teaching a course in her department, the department secretary made a mailbox for me and made sure that I received a copy of every memo and announcement distributed to the rest of the faculty. Other part-time faculty appreciated this service, so it became a part of the secretary's standard operating procedures. But I never received the mail because the mailbox was in Crookston, Minnesota and I taught the course by instructional television (ITV) from St. Paul, Minnesota, approximately 350 miles away.

Carliner, Saul. Saul Carliner Studio (2003). Articles>Education>Online>Collaboration

Bringing Literature Teachers and Writing Teachers Closer Together

Many traditional college English departments now find themselves in an unpalatable predicament. Pressure from the marketplace and from other college disciplines has made clear that students need more than basic composition skills. They need skills to communicate effectively in business, research, and industrial environments. While enrollments in traditional literature courses have continued to decline, English departments are asked to staff and teach an increasing number of courses in various types of technical writing. These two trends have produced a less than harmonious climate within many English departments. Technical writing courses are often viewed by literature teachers as alien intruders unrelated both to the established goals of an English department and to the attempt to encourage and preserve the study of humanities and aesthetics. Many teachers see technical writing as intellectually arid, controlled only by format and mechanical approaches to clarity. Many more consider it antiliterature, unsympathetic to the methods used to teach literary analysis and appreciation.

Kroitor, Harry P. and Elizabeth Tebeaux. ADE Bulletin (1984). Articles>Education>Collaboration

Building and Maintaining Student Chapters  

Developing a strong student STC chapter is a challenging and rewarding experience. Those of us who are involved in this process can certainly benefit from sharing our ideas in a directed workshop atmosphere. Participants will exchange ideas and formulate working strategies for the development, maintenance, and growth of a student chapter.

Fink, Bonnie L. and William O. Coggin. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Collaboration>Education>STC

Building Group Spirit  

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.

Doumont, Jean-luc. Intercom (2003). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Collaboration

Can Academic Partnerships in Technical Communication Work?: Lessons from Minnesota  

Interuniversity partnerships are widely encouraged as a way for public universities to pool increasingly scarce resources, to minimize duplication of academic programs, and to cooperate rather than compete. Joint programs in technical communication have not been widely studied, but they seem especially logical for several reasons.

Black, Suzanne. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Management>Collaboration

Changing the Center of Gravity: Collaborative Writing Program Administration in Large Universities    

Technical communication practices have been changed dramatically by the increasingly ubiquitous nature of digital technologies. Yet, while those who work in the profession have been living through this dramatic change, our academic discipline has been moving at a slower pace, at times appearing quite unsure about how to proceed. This article focuses on the following three areas of opportunity for change in our discipline in relation to digital technologies: access and expectations, scholarship and community building, and accountability and partnering.

Johnson-Sheehan, Richard D. and Charles Paine. Technical Communication Quarterly (2004). Articles>Education>Writing>Collaboration

Collaborative Projects in a Technical Writing Class: A Cost/Benefit Analysis    

With the shift in writing pedagogy from product to process, from emphasizing the individual writing--in a vacuum--to emphasizing the social context and social nature of writing, collaboration of some sort has found a place in most writing classes. The inclusion of collaborative projects in technical writing courses has a second, practical justification: the idea that these courses should prepare students for writing on the job, where collaborative writing is common.

Brumberger, Eva R. NCTE TETYC (1999). Articles>Education>Collaboration

Combining Interpersonal and Technical Communication Courses to Improve How Teams Function  

Research indicates that teams are more effective when they satisfy the social goals of their members. Therefore, teams that focus on interpersonal communication (the internal performance process) as well as the team's objective (the external product) improve their chances for success. It follows, then, that classroom instructors can enhance team success by adding interpersonal communication components to courses that use teams. This paper shows how we used this research to design an innovative NSF program. The program incorporated an interpersonal communication component to motivate student teams to succeed.

Barchilon, Marian G. and Donald G. Kelley. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Education>Collaboration

Communication Patterns Between Organizations: Implications for the Classroom  

Because many corporations now outsource significant portions of their business to external companies, it is important to study and understand the role of writing and, more generally, differing communication structures between organizations. In my experience, this is not a topic that is discussed in most technical communication classrooms.

McCord, Michael. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Communication>Collaboration

The Effect of Rater Training On Reducing Social Style Bias in Peer Evaluation    

This study employed a quasiexperimental control group design in a university setting to test the effect of a rater-training program on reducing social style bias in intragroup peer evaluations after controlling for ability based on GPA. Comparison of rating scores of the test group to the control group indicated minimal social style rating bias in the test group, whereas significant bias was exhibited in the control group. Implications for college instructors who use peer evaluations for grading in team projects are discussed.

May, Gary L. Business Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Education>Collaboration

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

Introducing Engineering Students to Intellectual Teamwork: The Teaching and Practice of Peer Feedback in the Professional Communication Classroom    

A rich discussion of collaboration as integral to writing in academia and the workplace has been on-going for some time among writing instructors and researchers. The outcomes of this discussion have convinced some writing instructors to promote peer feedback as one of the forms of collaborative writing in the classroom. In this paper we report on the preliminary stages of a longitudinal study of the role and place of peer feedback in the development of students' writing.

Artemeva, Natasha and Susan Logie. LLAD (2002). Articles>Education>Engineering>Collaboration

Online Education Horror Stories Worthy of Halloween: A Short List of Problems and Solutions in Online Instruction    

This article examines many surprising problems that arise in the process of distance education using the Internet and describes ways in which instructors and administrators can solve these problems. The information in the article is based largely on the experience of educators at Utah State University who have been exploring distance education for the past six years by teaching a wide range of online courses via the Internet. As a result of this varied online teaching, we have encountered a broad spectrum of challenges to which we have tried to respond and from which we have tried to learn. The solutions described are generalizable to other programs using online delivery for instruction.

Hailey, David E., Keith Grant-Davie, Christine A. Hult. Computers and Composition (2001). Articles>Education>Online>Collaboration

Out of the Trenches and into the Field: Leaves of Absence for Writing Teachers

Those who teach mainly writing have a particular need for avenues of career growth because their tasks are especially repetitive and personally draining. One such avenue can be a year's leave of absence in industry.

Pfeiffer, William S. ADE Bulletin (1987). Articles>Education>Collaboration

Planning a Community: The Value of Online Learning Communities in Technical Communication  

Businesspeople, faculty, and students can participate in learning communities in a variety of ways. Online learning communities provide benefits to individuals and the group, even if a community uses only low-tech communication tools. Learning communities are important because they create a human connection often missing in our Internet communication and allow people from diverse locations and backgrounds to share information and experiences. Effective learning communities celebrate diversity and create a supportive environment for members working toward a common goal.

Porter, Lynnette R. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Education>Communication>Collaboration

Plural Authorship and the Thesis: What Graduate Students Tell Us About Collaborative Writing  

Most graduate students at the Air Force Institute of Technology's School of Logistics and Acquisition Management write their theses as a team project. However, the Institute has gathered no systematic information about how students manage their collaborative thesis-writing processes. This research gathers descriptive quantitative and qualitative data from 1992 graduates concerning how they composed the teem-authored thesis. In addition, this research extends the collective vocabulary concerning collaborative writing, particularly when applied in academic settings.

Rice, Rodney P. and John T. Huguley, Jr. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Education>Writing>Collaboration

Preparing Students to Work with Technical Staff  

Technical communication programs should help students prepare to work with technical staff as well as develop writing, analysis, and communication skills. This presentation identifies assignments faculty can use to help students prepare to work effectively with technical staff: learning about what the writing technical staff do; learning about working in technical settings; interviewing faculty and staff; writing about science and technology for different audiences; editing a research article manuscript; learning about data networking; shadowing a technical professional; publishing a newsletter incorporating graduates’ observations and suggestions; having technical staff as well as technical communicators as guest speakers; and participating in STC.

Samson, Donald C., Jr. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Education>TC>Collaboration

Publications on On-Line Collaboration and Educational Technology

On-line collaboration enriches the educational experience, especially if instructors use software environments that support group-generated projects, products, case studies, and other kinds of academic deliverables. Such activities are not supported well by the standard 'threaded topic' discussion formats of e-mail and message-based conferencing systems.

Klemm, William. Texas A and M University (1998). Articles>Education>Collaboration>Online

Running Group Critique  

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.

Doumont, Jean-luc. Intercom (2003). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Collaboration

Student Collaboration: The Ups and Downs of a Real Life Project  

Many people disagree on whether collaboration is an effective tool in the workplace. Pros and cons exist on either side of the argument. This paper does not attempt to solve the argument or to suggest that every situation calls for the same solution. Instead, it relates the ups and downs of a real life project and the valuable lessons those involved have learned.

Beheler, Tiffany M. and Jill Malar. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Education>Collaboration

Teaching a Visual Subject and Facilitating Interaction  

This panel segment focuses on facilitating interactivity and teaching a visual subject matter in a distance (satellite) learning environment.

Keyes, Elizabeth. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Education>Visual Rhetoric>Collaboration

Teaching and Practicing Teamwork in Industry and Academia  

The purpose of this paper is to help educators and trainers design realistic working environments for team writing assignments and, thus, to prepare students to function on high-performance teams in the workplace. This paper describes differences and similarities between academic and industrial team working environments. It focuses on the kinds of tasks teams are asked to perform, the time and other constraints under which teams operate, the types of considerations that go into selecting people to participate in a team, the members' expectations about teamwork, the rewards used to recognize effective teamwork, and the role of the manager or course instructor. This paper offers suggestions to address some of the key challenges.

Kleid, Naomi A. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Education>Collaboration>Workplace

Teaching Online Workspace Collaboration  

This article provides a review and analysis of asynchronous chat sessions used by students to produce a collaborative formal proposal in an undergraduate technical communication service course at Bowling Green State University. The author/investigator reviewed archived chat sessions of the two most successful student groups and compared their experience to the conclusions drawn by a previous study on collaborative writing in the virtual classroom. The current study represents an initial exploratory attempt to replicate and/or refute the results of the prior study.

Edminster, Jude R. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Education>Collaboration>Online

Teaching Students the Persuasive Message Through Small Group Activity    

Teaching students to write persuasive messages is a critical feature of any undergraduate business communications course. For the persuasive writing module in my course, students write a persuasive message on the basis of the four-part indirect pattern often used for sales or fund-raising messages. The course text I use identifies these four components by their rhetorical functions: gain attention, build interest, reduce resistance, and motivate action.

Creelman, Valerie. Business Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Education>Rhetoric>Collaboration

Teaching Students to Work Together  

Successful classroom collaboration requires teaching students about collaboration, having them read articles on collaboration, assigning project managers and guiding their management, and having all students evaluate and report on their teams and the collaborative experience.

Deming, Lynn H. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Education>Collaboration