#24882
Designing Better Instructional Documents 
Demonstrates how principles of print design and visual literacy can improve the usability of course handouts.
Codone, Susan K. Intercom (2004). Articles>Education>Document Design
#26855
How Document Design Helps English Learners Master Science
Explores how basic, scaffolded technical-writing exercises can help ESL students gain cognitive maturity, practice science literacy, improve their note taking, and use text signals and science idioms more effectively.
Girill, T.R. ACM SIGDOC (2005). Articles>Education>Document Design>Language
#13311
Instruction-Writing Exercises (for High School)
These guidelines and 14 scaffolded exercises respond to the unmet need for a psychologically solid, work-relevant way to learn technical writing by students who are NOT facile writers already.
Girill, T.R. STC East Bay (2001). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Documentation
#14214
How do we support successful, lifelong learners and performers and help them competently respond to rapidly changing opportunities in the 21st century. The answer to this question lies in how well we understand audiences differentiated by key learning differences and consider how these differentiations influence winning learning and performance. Historically, cognitive-rich explanations have tended to underplay the dominant impact of affective and conative factors on thinking and learning. Recently, these dimensions have gained considerable importance as contemporary multidisciplinary research has begun to demonstrate how intentions and emotions can influence, guide, and, at times, override our thinking and other cognitive processes. More importantly, research suggests that intentions and emotions are a dominant, powerful influence on learner success.
Martinez, Margaret. Journal of Computer Documentation (2000). Articles>Documentation>Instructional Design>Education
#10319
Companies can improve customer satisfaction while reducing training time and product support costs by integrating online documentation with product training. Online documentation can be designed to be not only the reference at the point of use but also the primary instructional medium used during training. This use of the online documentation during training increases user acceptance of it and helps develop the required skills for its use. This expanded role for online documentation provides new opportunities for technical communicators to add value to their roles within their companies. This article defines reference-based instruction and outlines its benefits. It describes how reference-based instruction can be incorporated into an instructional system design (ISD) and provides specific examples of learning objectives and student exercises. It lists guidelines for how to structure usability tests for Help systems, and finally, it advises how technical communicators can use reference-based instruction to ex
Hughes, Michael A. Technical Communication Online (1997). Articles>Documentation>Instructional Design>Education
#30542
Producing Brochures in the Technical Writing Classroom
Producing brochures for real clients teaches college-level technical writing students about constraints of cost, time, and the availability of materials. Brochure writing also provides opportunities for learning more about editing, collaborative work, document design, and the problems which may occur during the production of real documents. Brochures of good quality can be produced by a class in approximately three weeks, or nine classroom hours. Grading brochures is expedited through the use of a simple heuristic.
Ryan, Charlton. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Education>Document Design>Technical Writing
#21532
QuarkXpress Training Tutorials
QuarkXpress has become recognised as the world's best Page Layout program. From home users, putting together their club newsletter to multinational publishing giants producing newspapers, magazines and books, QuarkXpress is the standard. This tutorial is geared towards helping first time users become familiar with Quark XPress.
