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

Reflections of a GTA on the Teaching of Technical Writing

Though I have a degree in technical communication and have worked as a technical writer for four years, I still had no idea what should be taught in a technical writing classroom, or how one should go about teaching it. Before I ventured into the arena as an instructor, I wanted to find out what goes on in a technical writing classroom. Two types of practical research that I thought would provide some insight into technical writing instruction were: an observation of different technical communication classrooms; and a survey of various textbooks available for technical communication courses.

Anderson, Ginger. Michigan Tech University (1998). Articles>Education>TC>Technical Writing

Reinventing Invention: Writing Across the Curriculum without WAC      

Work for this essay began with a problem that will sound all too familiar to most of us in higher education: It has recently dawned upon administrators and faculty in many departments across our university's curriculum that our students can't write. Or more accurately, enough of our students write poorly enough that we have cause for concern. This concern is usually expressed in the uneqresolution that something ought to be done.

Odell, Lee and Burt Swersey. LLAD (2002). Articles>Education>Writing

Remarks on Composition to the Yale English Department

What can I say about composition that will be useful to the Yale English department in setting up a good writing program? It's clear to me that I won't need to say anything about special teaching methods that are tailor-made for the Yale scene. Yale's admissions policy guarantees that entering freshmen are going to be very diverse in their backgrounds and in their writing skills, and Yale will want to adapt to this diversity by using methods that are flexible and eclectic. Even if Yale did try to create a novel program that could serve as a model for the rest of the nation, it's doubtful that the elements of the program could be new or that the human mind could devise more methods and programs than have already been tried out. The problem will be to choose methods intelligently and to apply them well; and in order to do this, the one thing needful is not machinery but motivation—professorial motivation.

Hirsch, E.D., Jr. ADE Bulletin (1979). Articles>Education>Graduate>Writing

Remediation, Genre, and Motivation: Key Concepts for Teaching with Weblogs

The concept of genre, as developed in the work of rhetoric and composition scholars like Carolyn Miller, Charles Bazerman, and Richard Coe, offers a key to understanding both formal features and motivations for weblogging, and their view of genres as dynamic and evolving complements Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s theory of new media: remediation. Our goal in this paper is to bring some greater specificity to, and advance the understanding of, weblogs as educational tools relevant to any class that takes writing and reading seriously.

Brooks, Kevin, Cindy Nichols and Sybil Priebe. Into the Blogosphere (2004). Articles>Education>Writing>Blogging

Report on the 1984–85 Survey of the English Sample: General Education Requirements in English and the English Major

The 1984–85 survey of the English sample represents the second phase of the survey series the MLA launched in 1983–84. Using a stratified random Sample of institutions, these surveys attempt to provide the profession with statistical information useful for assessing trends and planning for change. 1 The 1984–85 survey sought information about three topics: faculty salaries, institutional general education requirements in English, and the English major. The findings on salaries were published in the Fall 1987 ADE Bulletin (Huber, “English Salaries”). The results of the inquiries into general education requirements and the English major are presented here.

Huber, Bettina J. and David Laurence. ADE Bulletin (1989). Articles>Education>Writing

Research on Writing-Intensive Instruction

These books provide helpful instruction on a number of communication topics such as memos, letters, proposals, reports, resume and cover letters, rhetorical principles, and research in writing.

University of Minnesota (2004). Articles>Education>Writing

Responding to Technical Writing in an Introductory Engineering Class: The Role of Genre and Discipline      

A case study of an experienced professor's comments on a design report in a first-year engineering class was conducted over the period of an academic year. When compared with the commenting styles of technical writing teachers, the engineering professor's comments were found to be highly directive, and thus at odds with the preference for facilitative comments that prevails in composition studies. However, differences in genre conventions explain much of the discrepancy.

Miller, Paul, Jaye Bausser and Audeen Fentiman. Technical Communication Quarterly (1998). Articles>Education>Engineering>Technical Writing

Reviewing the Graduate Curriculum: Opportunities and Obligations

Increasingly, graduate programs are reflecting new critical approaches and making provision for their students to acquire skills in areas outside of literature. A number of departments offer alternate tracks, especially at the Master's level, for students interested in high school and community college teaching, in English as a second language, in creative writing, and so on. There are currently about 150 Ph.D. programs in English in this country; and, while it would be a gross exaggeration to say that each is unique, the differences among them are remarkable.

Worth, George J. ADE Bulletin (1978). Articles>Education>Graduate>Writing

Reviving Technical Writing at a Liberal Arts College: Writing a "Non-Technical" Technical Writing Course Description  

I am asking my program to incorporate more of the liberal arts into the course's title and course description to better appeal to (and serve) students in a liberal arts college. The course will have one or two new sophomore level iterations: as a technical/research writing course in which students complete a semester long service project, researching and writing a final report while focusing on writing, research, and mathematical skills, and/or as a technical writing/document design class where students focus on the document design and writing skills needed to produce items such as a resume, flyers, brochures, posters, and more.

Sehmel, Heather. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Writing>Technical Writing

Rhetorical Community: The Cultural Basis of Genre    

Our understanding of genre as social action afflicts the typical first-year college writing program in the United States. It turns what should be a practical art of achieving social ends into a productive art of making texts that fit certain formal requirements.

Miller, Carolyn R. North Carolina State University (1994). Articles>Education>Writing>Rhetoric

A Rhetorical Tool and a Link to Composition: The Appeals of Narrative in Professional Writing Pedagogy  

Narrative is a valuable genre to use in composition classes to help students understand their own identity, develop writing skills, including understanding how to structure and use personal experience with a rhetorical purpose in an essay or argument. Once they get to upper division writing courses, however, students are exposed to writing that places less emphasis on that personalized, subjective genre and moves toward the impersonal. Such writing limits the use of narrative, which is generally perceived as highly personal and subjective because it generally conveys only the narrator’s perspective. Narrative includes precise details of an event that occurred in the past which are reported in the same order in which they occurred, as well as an observation or evaluation of the information by the narrator.

Remley, Dirk. Association for Business Communication (2008). Articles>Education>Writing>Rhetoric

Role of Technical Writers in Developing eLearning

Many companies are starting to use eLearning to train their workers, managers, customers and suppliers. Some of those companies want to use their internal technical writers or communicators to not only write the content, but also to develop the CBT or WBT.

Kurtus, Ron. School for Champions. Articles>Education>Online>Technical Writing

Selecting Communication-Intensive Assignments

Including communication-intensive assignments does not need to radically alter your course. The best source for ideas is your own original assignments. We recommend taking traditional writing assignments and simply enhancing them to address other communication concerns.

University of Minnesota. Articles>Education>Writing

The Service Course and Its Stretchable/Permeable Borders  

The smaller the program, the more stretchable/permeable the borders of the service course must become.

Patterson, Celia. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Writing

Service Learning in the Introductory Technical Writing Class: A Perfect Match?    

Teachers at all levels of college instruction use service learning, a popular pedagogical tool since the mid-eighties, to teach students both social consciousness and pragmatic, real-world writing skills. This article explores the concept of service learning as rhetorical action in the field of technical communication in general, and the question of whether service learning is appropriate in beginning level technical writing courses. Using my experience through two years of service learning instruction in community college classes, I respond to the charge that students in lower-division courses may lack the maturity to successfully enact service learning assignments. I also analyze the appropriateness of the community college as a catalyst for community-based writing projects.

Stone, Elisa. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2000). Articles>Education>Service Learning>Technical Writing

Shifting Models of the University: Academia Slouches toward the Millennium

Lack of faculty consensus has combined with a multiplication of university programs to convince the public that universities serve secular needs and that their priorities should be established by the marketplace. This view threatens to disenfranchise the faculty.

Davis, Charles G. ADE Bulletin (1994). Articles>Education>Writing

A Simple Recipe to Help Build a Goal-Oriented Training Program for Your Department  

Addressing a department's learning requirements is a tough call because of the different levels of complexities and challenges involved. With learning requirements poorly understood and sometimes even out of sync with department goals, a majority of training programs fail to achieve any major business objectives. What you need is the right approach to develop, monitor and standardize a cost-effective, people and result-oriented training program that works magic for you and your department.

Kudesia, Saurabh. STC Management SIG (2007). Articles>Education>Writing>Technical Writing

Some Speculations About Writing Programs in the Eighties

This decade is a very good time to be a writing teacher. Those of us who were foresighted or brash or lucky enough to have chosen this career five or ten years ago now find ourselves in the midst of a ferment of professional activity.

Hairston, Maxine. ADE Bulletin (1981). Articles>Education>Writing

Some Thoughts on Teaching Grammar to Improve Writing    

The conviction that writing can be improved with a knowledge of grammar has prevailed for quite a long time. But research has shown no correlation between grammatical knowledge and writing ability.

Baum, Bernard. CCC (1967). Articles>Education>Writing>Grammar

Stepping Lively: Reformatting the Gap Between Student Writing and Professional Writing    

Teachers of technical writing are urged to use computers not only for influencing the process of writing but also for designing and formatting the product of writing. Engineering students at a Midwestern university now submit final drafts of senior projects in commercial-style formats, thus increasing their range of skills in the act of preparing final written products and adopting some conventions of communicating in the workplace. Reformatting student writing to mimic commercial-quality writing not only increases the scope and responsibility of writing instruction, but also better prepares students to adapt to communication situations in the workplace.

Kumpf, Eric P. and Joseph T. Emanuel. Technical Communication Online (1996). Articles>Education>Writing

"Stepping Lively": Reformatting the Gap Between Student Writing and Professional Writing    

Teachers of technical writing are urged to use computers not only for influencing the process of writing but also for designing and formatting the product of writing. Engineering students at a Midwestern university now submit final drafts of senior projects in commercial-style formats, thus increasing their range of skills in the act of preparing final written products and adopting some conventions of communicating in the workplace. Reformatting student writing to mimic commercial-quality writing not only increases the scope and responsibility of writing instruction, but also better prepares students to adapt to communication situations in the workplace.

Kumpf, Eric P. and Joseph T. Emanuel. Technical Communication Online (1996). Articles>Education>Writing>Business Communication

Strategies for Teaching Online Documentation    

This workshop outlines the rationale for teaching college courses in online documentation, issues to consider, suggests a strategy for teaching the course (including topic sequence, exercises, and simulation), and demonstrates useful electronic resources.

Sammons, Martha C., Tabatha Dillon and Melinda Hoffbauer. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Education>Writing>Technical Writing

A Survey of Technical Writing Practitioners and Professors: Are We on the Same Page?   

Do technical writing professors teach what practitioners practice? Do practitioners practice what professors preach? We surveyed writers and teachers nationwide, asking each group to rate the importance of types of writing, writing skills, electronic communications, computer usage, and nonwriting topics, such as oral presentations and graphics. Teachers and writers agree that ethics, revision, and document design are important. However, writers focus on manuals, whereas professors teach reports and resumes. Writers emphasize grammar, punctuation, hypertext, and total quality management, whereas teachers emphasize passive voice and personalization. The two groups differ often and significantly.

Gerson, Sharon J. and Steven M. Gerson. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Education>Writing>Technical Writing