#27702
Look Who's Talking: Teaching and Learning Using the Genre of Medical Case Presentations 
In a pediatric teaching hospital, the authors examined 16 novice medical case presentations that were classified as instances of a hybrid apprenticeship genre. In contrast to strict school and workplace genres, an apprenticeship genre results from the sometimes competing activity systems of student education and patient care. The authors examined these novice case presentations for the amount and patterns of time devoted to student learning and expert teaching, the difficulties created for participants, the sometimes misunderstood implicit messages delivered by experts, and the opportunities to address educational objectives. This study offers professional communication researchers a model that combines quantitative and qualitative methodologies to assess the effects of competing activity systems in the development of communication expertise.
Spafford, M.M., Schryer, C. F., Mian, M. and Lingard, L. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2006). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Case Studies
#29241
This article argues that technical communicators are uniquely poised to function as public intellectuals. To demonstrate this point, the author offers the example of her work on a major AIDS prevention program report. Situating this work within the history of technical communication, the current discussion of rhetorics of risk, and the writing classroom, the author argues that technical writers don't have simply the opportunity to engage in textual activism; in many cases they have no alternative.
Bowdon, Melody. Technical Communication Quarterly (2004). Articles>Scientific Communication>Biomedical>Case Studies
