http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Education A listing of the most recently indexed works about Education in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Education http://tc.eserver.org/35840.html http://tc.eserver.org/35840.html This article makes a case for why design research is important to contemporary design practice and the deepening of the design disciplines, especially at this point in our history. It identifies the pressures on knowledge generation exerted by the shift from a mechanical, object-centered paradigm for design practice to one characterized by systems that: evolve and behave organically; transfer control from designers to users or participants; emphasize the importance of community; acknowledge media convergence; and require work by interdisciplinary teams to address the complexity of contemporary problems. http://tc.eserver.org/35760.html http://tc.eserver.org/35760.html Today, marketing students also need to know basic HTML, design software such as the Adobe Suite, how to run a Google adwords campaign, how to optimize a Web site for search engines, how to analyze Web analytics data, develop a keyword strategy, and manage e-mail marketing campaigns. A basic knowledge of how social media including sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Twitter can be used to leverage a marketing message isn't optional—it's a requirement. http://tc.eserver.org/35765.html http://tc.eserver.org/35765.html Let’s examine a few trends and remember that Apple beat its competitors in the education market twenty years ago by having a rabid fan base along with compelling intuitive software. Microsoft Live’s community had 60 million users last time I checked. Working within the existing Live framework will be critical for any Learning Management Systems (LMS) play that Microsoft chooses to do in the future. http://tc.eserver.org/35776.html http://tc.eserver.org/35776.html One of the main reasons I chose to dedicate so much of my professional time on SharePoint is because it gave me the possibility to own the very site where I post and work. As a knowledge manager and trainer I have the constant need to keep materials updated. I also need to keep my end user engaged. Working within the constraints of enterprise learning and publishing structures means you have to send materials out to teams that then in turn publish the materials out, not always swiftly. http://tc.eserver.org/35723.html http://tc.eserver.org/35723.html CEOs and other executives often find themselves in the role of company spokesperson. More often than not, they have neither the background nor the proper training to be effective. As the communication professional responsible for media relations at your company, there are several things you can do to help prepare your executive for the interviews to come. http://tc.eserver.org/35724.html http://tc.eserver.org/35724.html There is a significant risk of being quoted out of context during media interviews. This risk can fall anywhere along a spectrum that ranges from mild to severe. Mild risk occurs when the information included in a media story appears to be less than accurate. If you’ve ever heard a spokesperson complain that reporters never get it right, you’ve probably witnessed this type of risk firsthand. Severe risk occurs when a portion of what the spokesperson says is twisted or turned, then included in a story to deliberately fan the flames of a smoldering fire. If this occurs, an organization may need to exercise damage control, and there may be significant risk to its reputation. http://tc.eserver.org/35697.html http://tc.eserver.org/35697.html You've always wanted to learn how to build software yourself—or just whip up an occasional script—but never knew where to start. Luckily, the web is full of free resources that can turn you into a programmer in no time. If you're curious about how to become a programmer, you can get off to a running start using tons of great free web-based tutorials and resources. http://tc.eserver.org/35700.html http://tc.eserver.org/35700.html Over the years I have spent many hours testing content and trying various different Learning Management Systems, and have even done some LMS (like) design work with Articulate Online. Over that time period I have had the opportunity to learn a lot about what does work well, and what doesn’t work well in a lot of systems, so based on my knowledge on the subject, here is my list 10 things to consider before choosing in an LMS. http://tc.eserver.org/35626.html http://tc.eserver.org/35626.html The problem with choosing a grad school is that it's basically a blind date based on an online dating profile. On paper, the compatibility seems obvious. But reality is often much more complex. And you actually have to work at it. The problem is that your advisor is going to be far less committed to working at the relationship than you as a student are going to want them to be. So there's going to be a lot of accommodation on your part. Again, not always a bad thing. Lots to learn, lots to learn. http://tc.eserver.org/35583.html http://tc.eserver.org/35583.html I’m in my third year of college now, and by this point I have the hang of determining what constitutes a good class and a bad class. In a good class, I have fun and learn a lot; in a bad class, I don’t have a good time and don’t learn very much. http://tc.eserver.org/35585.html http://tc.eserver.org/35585.html When you set yourself up as a grammar expert it's better than being an expert on plastics. To be an expert on plastics you actually have to know something about plastics. With grammar the analogous thing doesn't hold. Nobody asks, nobody checks, nobody knows enough to get suspicious. You are free as a bird to publish any garbage you might want to type out. http://tc.eserver.org/35502.html http://tc.eserver.org/35502.html Ainsworth’s (2006) DeFT framework posits that different representations may lead learners to use different strategies. We wanted to investigate whether students use different strategies, and more broadly, different cognitive activities in diagrams versus in running text. In order to do so, we collected think-aloud protocol and other measures from 91 beginning biology majors reading an 8-page passage from their own textbook which included 7 complex diagrams. We coded the protocols for a wide range of cognitive activities, including strategy use, inference, background knowledge, vocabulary, and word reading. Comparisons of verbalizations while reading running text vs. reading diagrams showed that high-level cognitive activities—inferences and high-level strategy use—were used a higher proportion of the time when comprehending diagrams compared to when reading text. However, in running text vs. diagrams participants used a wider range of different individual cognitive activities (e.g., more different types of inferences). Our results suggest that instructors might consider teaching students how to draw inferences in both text and diagrams. They also show an interesting paradox that warrants further research—students often skipped over or superficially skimmed diagrams, but when they did read the diagrams they engaged in more high-level cognitive activity. http://tc.eserver.org/35488.html http://tc.eserver.org/35488.html "Content-rich" is not enough. Most websites are not learner-friendly. As an industry, we haven’t done our best to make our content-rich websites suitable for learning and exploration. Learners require more from us than keywords and killer headlines. They need an environment that is narrative, interactive, and discoverable. Amber Simmons tells how to begin creating rich content sites that invite and repay exploration and discovery. http://tc.eserver.org/35497.html http://tc.eserver.org/35497.html This article addresses previous arguments that call for increased emphasis on research in technical communication programs. Focusing on the value of scholarly-based research at the undergraduate level, we present New Mexico Tech's thesis model as an example of helping students develop familiarity with research skills and methods. This two-semester sequence serves as a capstone experience for students' writing, designing, editing, and presentation skills. It also involves members of our corporate advisory board and provides an opportunity to teach students to understand and apply research methods to unique projects, skills we argue will benefit students no matter what environments they enter upon graduation. http://tc.eserver.org/35449.html http://tc.eserver.org/35449.html You, as the instructional designer, are starting to panic — you know that you have limited time and resources to create this training, and the more content you put in, the less you are able to do with it. If it’s e-Learning, it will turn into the Dreaded Page-Turner, because you just don’t have time to create the 17 different problem-based scenarios to account for all of the different exceptions she’s describing. It turns into a battle, where you keep trying to cut things, and she keeps saying “but they need to know this!” So who’s right? Well, you both are, depending on your perspective. http://tc.eserver.org/35383.html http://tc.eserver.org/35383.html Almost two years ago, I posted a rough note here about teaching my intro to technical communication course using the TC Library as a supplement to the textbook. Here's a more detailed essay on the method, which is working quite well so far. http://tc.eserver.org/35360.html http://tc.eserver.org/35360.html Reports on the current state of curriculum in 84 Master's programs. Answers questions about program location, degree names, course requirements, internships, and cumulative experiences. Suggests additional research areas to provide more information on how well academic programs are meeting the needs of students and other stakeholders. http://tc.eserver.org/35361.html http://tc.eserver.org/35361.html Provides extensive guidance on applying to Master's and PhD programs for practitioners. Provides tips on applying for current students. Provides tables listing current graduate programs in technical communication, organized by state. http://tc.eserver.org/35362.html http://tc.eserver.org/35362.html Describes the activities of a university “directed research group,” highlighting interesting tensions that emerged therein. Asserts that actively exploring such tensions with students creates a rich learning environment. http://tc.eserver.org/35363.html http://tc.eserver.org/35363.html Discusses the potential of goal-based scenarios as an approach to designing online learning environments. Explores practical applications of goal-based scenarios for online training. Presents a procedural approach to designing a goal-based scenario. http://tc.eserver.org/35324.html http://tc.eserver.org/35324.html This article examines the construction of the pedagogical missions of professional and technical communication (PTC) programs, focusing on two forms of professional discourse. Specifi- cally, I look first at discussions and debates about our pedagogical missions in the internally directed or private conversations of scholarly journals. Then, I examine the externally directed or public discourse of 123 PTC program websites. To compare these two discourses, I frame their differences in terms of the doxa, or unspoken beliefs, upon which they ground their approaches to teaching students the techne, or principled practice, of PTC. The main conclusion of my study is that these differences reflect more than mere genre variations; they reflect important internal conflicts within the attitudes and perspectives on the role of PTC programs as sites of pedagogy. I conclude with the recommendation that we consciously resist the doxa that values pre-professionalism for its own sake by designing websites that refer directly to the topics and themes that arise in professional journals. http://tc.eserver.org/35325.html http://tc.eserver.org/35325.html In May 2007, the Department of English at Utah State University (USU) redesigned its computer lab to increase mobility and collaboration during writing projects. Our study shows that despite the Professional and Technical Communication (PTC) field's efforts to promote writing as a socially active, collaborative practice, many students view computer labs as spaces for conducting isolated, single-authored work. In this article, we discuss how a combination of movable furniture and mobile technology, including wireless access and laptops, can enhance student collaboration in group-based writing assignments. The lab included both desktop and laptop seating areas, so the authors created a modified worksite analysis designed to evaluate team collaboration in this new layout. These material changes in the lab allow students to configure the space according to their needs, offering them some measure of control over three crucial elements of successful collaboration: formality, presence, and confidentiality. http://tc.eserver.org/35329.html http://tc.eserver.org/35329.html Aside from Writing Program Administration, the WPA journal, very little scholarly work about—or interest in—the topic of academic program administration has been manifested in the rhetoric-related disciplines. We believe that a mutual mentoring approach is an effective way to develop our community’s sense of the importance of program administration work as a scholarly endeavor in its own right. http://tc.eserver.org/35330.html http://tc.eserver.org/35330.html Information design has traditionally focused on usability as measured by functionality and efficiency in the execution of user tasks. Newer approaches to experience design and new communication technologies such as the so-called Web 2.0 platform and its Ajax engine emphasize total user engagement with the technology and richer collaborations among users. These developments complicate traditional notions of agency by highlighting the role of technology as mediator between and among users. A project in Tech-Mediated Communication at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, funded by the Society for Technical Communication, illustrates how these developments impact the development of novel and creative information resources, with several experiments in cross-cultural, community-oriented, and educational systems design. This work also emphasizes the need to develop research agendas and programmatic initiatives that support interdisciplinary collaborative design activities and thus help technical communicators to meet their collective responsibility to influence and shape the mediating technologies of the future by creating more engaging and more collaborative total user experiences. http://tc.eserver.org/35331.html http://tc.eserver.org/35331.html The purpose of this article is to reflect upon the emergence of programs in rhetoric, technical, professional, and scientific communication (RTPSC) during the past twenty years through a personal narrative of experiences from graduate study to the present. Using a method of inquiry based in rhetorical meditation, the article presents a story of these experiences at Purdue University, Miami University-Ohio, and Michigan Tech University and then moves outward toward national concerns and, finally, suggests a selected “inventory” of challenges the RTPSC field faces in the coming years. http://tc.eserver.org/35332.html http://tc.eserver.org/35332.html Building on the 1996 retrospective by Pearsall and Warren, the authors examine the decade that followed for the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC). As the world became more closely knitted together through trade agreements and advancements in communication technology, CPTSC took up its mission in response as it helped promote program growth internationally. During this period, the organization added many more members beyond the United States, as it hosted a series of roundtables in Europe and Canada, working to diversify the ethnic make-up of its membership through scholarships. http://tc.eserver.org/35283.html http://tc.eserver.org/35283.html Despite the increasingly unified and multicultural consciousness of the world today, and the tendency of authors such as Hoft or Weiss, on the side of professional communication, and Nord or Risku, on the side of translation, to bridge the gap between professional communication and translation, these activities are still viewed as separate, requiring different competencies and educations. At most, one finds professional communicators being asked to be aware of the involvement of translators in their work processes and of the characteristics of translation, and translators being asked to be aware of localization and of the potential need to adapt their work to the characteristics of the receiving culture. This distinction corresponds greatly to the geographical divide between the United States and Europe, being actively promoted by the definition of translation, translation process, and translator competencies stated out in documents such as the recently adopted EN 15038 standard. http://tc.eserver.org/35263.html http://tc.eserver.org/35263.html The emergence of media-arts and digital cultural practices has provided a highly charged context for the development of interdisciplinary pedagogy, combining as it does, practices and traditions from historically, culturally and theoretically wildly divergent disciplines. This article addresses aspects of effective interdisciplinary educational process, attending to questions of pedagogy, theory and institutional pragmatics. In my analysis, the key components of such a project are: deep technical training and understanding; deep training in artmaking and cultural practice; deep theoretical and historical contextualization, and an open and rigorous interdisciplinary context which maximally facilitates the negotiation of these often divergent ways of thinking and making. In building such interdisciplinary practice in the context of a campus, one abruptly confronts the discontinuity between the rapidly changing fluidity of the contemporary moment and the relative stasis of institutionalized disciplines which have an investment in maintaining their identity in the face of such change. Implicit in the project then, is not simply the development of a context for deep interdisciplinary invention, but the formation of practitioners who are neither artists nor engineers, or who are equal parts both. In either case, this formation confounds the disciplines and creates a vacuum of institutional context, which has resounding implications for the survival and flourishing of such initiatives and their practitioners. http://tc.eserver.org/35264.html http://tc.eserver.org/35264.html Using content analysis and survey, this study examines how the teaching of thinking skills and that of technological skills have been balanced in US new media programs to produce both employable graduates and life-long learners. Findings show that most programs have balanced the two skill sets but that more effort should be made to integrate the teaching of both skill sets in individual courses to give students an expedited, holistic learning experience. http://tc.eserver.org/35209.html http://tc.eserver.org/35209.html This article examines the need for continuous learning and the challenges that working professionals must overcome to invest in learning. It also explores how experience makes us better learners, and analyzes the relative effectiveness of various learning techniques. http://tc.eserver.org/35132.html http://tc.eserver.org/35132.html Rensselaer’s Technical Writers' Institute, the first program of its kind, had a profound impact on technical communication. It enabled technical communicators without formal education in the field to gain important knowledge, provided a forum for communicators from different industries to meet in order to solve mutual problems, played a key role in defining the field and its needs, encouraged recruitment (including the hiring of more women), promoted professional societies and formal degree programs, and seriously affected industry training programs by enabling them to use institute teaching materials. Knowledge gained through the Technical Writers' Institute enabled Rensselaer to develop many other innovations. http://tc.eserver.org/35136.html http://tc.eserver.org/35136.html Can job references play an active role in shaping your career plans? Would you consider your references as part of your personal and professional network? Although most professionals may respond with a resounding 'Yes, of course!' to these questions, I realized that many of my students were skeptical about job references. To counter this, and to help improve their chances in the job market, I designed a multistep assignment that expanded students' understanding of job references and required them to identify persons who were potential job references and members of their career network. This article provides the details for the assignment. http://tc.eserver.org/35138.html http://tc.eserver.org/35138.html In working with business executives, engineers, and government officials to improve their writing, I learned that it is much easier to teach clarity than tone. To bolster lessons on tone, I now draw on theory and research from interpersonal communication and social psychology. In the following discussion, I describe one such approach: applying the concept of defensiveness to business and technical writing. http://tc.eserver.org/35139.html http://tc.eserver.org/35139.html My experience as a consultant has provided a wealth of information and ideas that I often share with my college students. Perhaps the most important skill I have honed has been the ability to negotiate deals and contracts. No other factor has had such a direct impact on the success of my consulting business. The art of negotiation is understood by few people or regularly utilized, and yet most people negotiate several times a day. Each time a person buys a product or service, an internal as well as external negotiation occurs. We barter professionally, personally, and psychologically with little or no thought of improving this much-needed skill. http://tc.eserver.org/35140.html http://tc.eserver.org/35140.html Studies have shown the importance of employment interview preparation in boosting the confidence and performance of students and jobseekers when they interview. This article reviews several techniques for preparing students for mock job interviews and, hence, actual job interviews. http://tc.eserver.org/35141.html http://tc.eserver.org/35141.html Teaching business communication while performing professional business consulting is the perfect learning match. The bizarre but true stories from our consulting world provide excellent analogies for classroom learning, and feedback from students about the consulting experiences reaffirms the power of using stories for teaching. When discussing this article, we recognized that we used two distinct communication theories for consulting and then for relaying these experiences in teaching. First, we talked about the challenge of truly in-depth process consulting: determining with the client what they need, not simply what they want. This requires extensive uncertainty reduction theory--continuing to drill down until the true nature of the problem is revealed and further consulting can begin. http://tc.eserver.org/35143.html http://tc.eserver.org/35143.html The purpose of this empirical study is to explore expectations of industry insiders and identify how student interns are performing in relation to those expectations as defined by 11 performance areas. The results of a survey of 238 industry supervisors were collected over a 5-year period in the departments of English and communication at a private university in the Northeast. While the results suggest that student interns tend to meet their supervisors' expectations in many areas, performance categories such as initiative, writing skills, and oral communication skills require increased attention in the ways we prepare students for their internships and post-graduation employment and, perhaps, the ways we help onsite supervisors develop expectations for and evaluate our interns. http://tc.eserver.org/35144.html http://tc.eserver.org/35144.html In the wake of global economic crisis, some of those responsible were summoned to testify under oath before Congressional committees to explain to the public what went wrong. What they said opened a window onto the thought processes and communication abilities of major business leaders. Many of them denied responsibility, failed to explain what occurred, and undermined their own credibility; as a result they were pilloried by Congress and the media. But how are these people connected to those of us who teach and do research in business communication? Unfortunately, these are our alumni, our former students. http://tc.eserver.org/35120.html http://tc.eserver.org/35120.html An organized kit of technical-writing exercises, guidelines, activities, and strategies refined and tested in real high-school classes, with notes and comparisons to help teachers borrow and adapt them. Also used for teacher professional development at the Edward Teller Education Center. http://tc.eserver.org/35121.html http://tc.eserver.org/35121.html The value of learning effective nonfiction nonnarrative writing ("technical writing") for middle- and high-school students has been cited repeatedly in official and unofficial academic standards starting in the early 1990s. http://tc.eserver.org/34986.html http://tc.eserver.org/34986.html This research article reports the results of an online survey distributed among technical writing instructors in 2006. The survey aimed to examine how we teach intercultural communication in basic technical writing courses: our current practices and methods. The article discusses three major challenges that instructors may face when teaching about intercultural communication. These challenges concern teacher preparation, time and proposed goals and objectives, and teaching materials and methods. This article provides some suggestions for addressing the challenges and enriching a technical writing curriculum. http://tc.eserver.org/34988.html http://tc.eserver.org/34988.html Current scholarship tells us that skills in teaming are essential for students and practitioners of professional communication. Writers must be able to cooperate with subject-matter experts and team members to make effective decisions and complete projects. Scholarship also suggests that rapid changes in technology and changes in teaming processes challenge workplace communication and cooperation. Professional writers must be able to use complex software for projects that are often completed by multidisciplinary teams working remotely. Moreover, as technical writers shift from content developers to project managers, our responsibilities now include useradvocacy and supervision, further invigorating the need for successful communication. This article offers a different vision of an ancient heuristic—stasis theory—as a solution for the teaming challenges facing today's professional writers. Stasis theory, used as a generative heuristic rather than an eristic weapon, can help foster teaming and effective decision making in contemporary pedagogical and workplace contexts. http://tc.eserver.org/34990.html http://tc.eserver.org/34990.html Many authors give advice to students about how to write the Introduction section of their articles. Some give examples of different ways of doing this in general, and a few discuss the opening sentence in particular. In this article, 13 different types of opening sentences are outlined, and their usage contrasted in British and American journals in the Sciences and Social Sciences. Implications for teaching are considered. http://tc.eserver.org/34993.html http://tc.eserver.org/34993.html This article builds upon the work of Richard Haswell's "NCTE/CCCC's Recent War on Scholarship" by providing an alternative framework for empirical inquiry based on principles of skepticism. It examines the literature relating to empirical research and argues that one of the issues at hand is the perceived link of empirical research to positivism, which clashes with the dominant social constructivist paradigm. It draws upon classical rhetoric and the work of radial empiricist William James to formulate an alternative framework for empirical research based on skeptical principles. http://tc.eserver.org/35002.html http://tc.eserver.org/35002.html Since 1992, Steven Katz's "The Ethic of Expediency" on the rhetoric of technical communication during the Holocaust has become a reference point for discussions of ethics. But how does his thesis compare to current understandings of the Holocaust? As this article describes, Katz was in step with the trend two decades ago to universalize the lessons of the genocide but his thesis presents key problems for Holocaust scholars today. Against his assertion that pure technological expediency was the ethos of Nazi Germany, current scholarship emphasizes the role of ideology. Does that invalidate his thesis? Katz's analysis of rhetoric and his universalizing application to the Holocaust are two claims that may be considered separately. Yet even if one does not agree that "expediency" is inherent in Western rhetoric, Katz has raised awareness that phronesis is socially constructed so that rhetoric can be unethically employed. Thus, rather than remain an uncritically accepted heuristic for technical communicators, "The Ethic of Expediency" can be a starting point for ongoing exploration into the ethical and rhetorical dimensions of the genre. http://tc.eserver.org/35004.html http://tc.eserver.org/35004.html A significant problem for practitioners of technical communication is to gain the skills to compete in a global, multicultural work environment. Instructors of technical communication can provide future practitioners with the tools to compete and excel in this global environment by introducing heuristics of cultural dimensions into the service-level classroom. By practicing how to use these heuristics in "real-world" contexts, instructors can prepare students to function as both information architects and symbolic-analytic operators within this global work environment. In this article, I first examine common cultural heuristics as they pertain to business communication. Next, I articulate how technical communicators can benefit from incorporating these heuristics into the classroom. Finally, I offer a pedagogical approach to introducing heuristics of cultural dimensions into the service-level technical communication classroom. http://tc.eserver.org/34972.html http://tc.eserver.org/34972.html A study published in the April issue of British Educational Research Journal found that 59 percent of students in a new survey reported that at least half of their lectures were boring, and that PowerPoint was one of the dullest methods they saw. "The least boring teaching methods were found to be seminars, practical sessions, and group discussions," said the report. In other words, tech-free classrooms were the most engaging. http://tc.eserver.org/34919.html http://tc.eserver.org/34919.html The traditional distinction between writing across the curriculum and writing in the disciplines (WID) as writing to learn versus learning to write understates WID's focus on learning in the disciplines. Advocates of WID have described learning as socialization, but little research addresses how writing disciplinary discourses in disciplinary settings encourages socialization into the disciplines. Data from interviews with students who wrote lab reports in a biology lab suggest five ways in which writing promotes learning in scientific disciplines. Drawing on theories of situated learning, the authors argue that apprenticeship genres can encourage socialization into disciplinary communities. http://tc.eserver.org/34955.html http://tc.eserver.org/34955.html Many e-learning applications and games have been studied to identify the common interaction models of constructivist learning. http://tc.eserver.org/34881.html http://tc.eserver.org/34881.html Scholarly conversation within the field of professional communication increasingly has focused on the practice, research, and pedagogy of visual rhetoric. Yet, visual thinking has received relatively little attention within the field. If our programs produce students who can think verbally but not visually, they risk producing writers who are visual technicians but are unable to move fluidly between and within modes of communication. This article examines the literature and pedagogical practices of visually oriented disciplines to identify strategies for helping students develop the ambidexterity of thought needed for the communication tasks of today's workplace. http://tc.eserver.org/34882.html http://tc.eserver.org/34882.html Many engineering undergraduates receive their first and perhaps most intensive exposure to engineering communication through writing lab reports in lab courses taught by graduate teaching assistants (TAs). Most of the TAs' teaching of writing happens through their comments on students' lab reports. Technical writing faculty need to be aware of TAs' response practices so they can build on or counteract that instruction as needed. This study examines the response practices of two TAs and the ways the practices shifted after the TAs began using a grading rubric. The analysis reveals distinct patterns in focus and mode, some reflecting best practices and some not. It also indicates encouraging changes after the TAs started using the grading rubric. The TAs' marginalia became more content focused and specific and, perhaps most important, less authoritative and more likely to reflect a coaching mode. The article concludes with implications for technical writing courses. http://tc.eserver.org/34883.html http://tc.eserver.org/34883.html How should we teach international business communication? What role can multiculturalism play in the business communication classroom? Can we identify a set of business communication requirements that are valid across different cultures? This article enters this discussion by presenting a small empirical study of the business communication needs expressed by postgraduate students in a North Cyprus university and comparing it to similar studies conducted in the United States and Singapore. The findings reveal some interesting correspondences between the needs expressed by students in these different countries. In addition, the multicultural environment of the North Cyprus university studied suggests that multicultural interaction increases students' sensitivity to the need for a nonethnocentric approach to international communication. The findings also indicate that respondents in multicultural settings may be more inclined to engage in groupthink because of their heightened awareness of cultural differences and their wish to avoid conflict. http://tc.eserver.org/34816.html http://tc.eserver.org/34816.html Studying abroad enhances the intercultural competencies of American students, but that enhancement strategy may be seen as an obstacle to those in business and technical fields who follow a tight curriculum and work to cover expenses. To meet their needs, U.S. professional communication faculty are designing short courses that can be delivered abroad during between-term periods and that foster an understanding of the situations and genres of the field within a context of cultural dislocation. Based on the courses described in this article, the best approach is to settle students in one location rather than touring; keep student numbers low by an entrepreneurial approach to keeping costs low; encourage students to live as the locals do, in apartments rather than hotels; explicitly plan appropriate access to technology; use class time to provide structure and reflection, but allow free time for collateral learning; and make sure the course grows local roots. http://tc.eserver.org/34817.html http://tc.eserver.org/34817.html Regardless of the justifications we use for team member selection or the techniques preferred for managing team conflict, an often-overlooked yet critically important first step of collaborative assignments involves teaching teams about teamwork. Prior to working on a team project, students need to practice the collaborative skills required to complete the assignment. Although teaching teams about teamwork is not a new concept, students are often left to “sink or swim,” and they mistakenly apply individual work processes to group experiences. Falling under the categories of instructional methodology as well as classroom strategies, concepts related to teaching teams about teamwork provide students with the tools they need to perform well in collaborative assignments. http://tc.eserver.org/34819.html http://tc.eserver.org/34819.html In fall 2004, Merck faced a significant threat to the company's public image because of the withdrawal of VIOXX, and Merck executives were forced to defend the company's actions, its motivation for those actions, and its reputation. Confronted with enormous rhetorical challenges, Merck tried to generate public goodwill toward the company by creating a personalized image of a corporate giant worthy of understanding, sympathy, and trust. Open letters released during the initial response to the VIOXX crisis rely on the intimacy of interpersonal communication and demonstrate to students of business communication arguments based on ethos. http://tc.eserver.org/34822.html http://tc.eserver.org/34822.html Report assignments and collaborative assignments can both be fraught with risk. Report projects, if notstration) and/or can leave students wondering what they are supposed to have learned—all while creating a major grading burden for the instructor. Poorly planned group projects can cause similar difficulties, with the added danger of creating interpersonal stress in the student groups. Yet for many reasons, the report assignment is the perfect choice for the collaborative project. Because of its extra length and complexity, the report enables several students to contribute meaningful research, writing, and document design decisions to one product or a related set of products. If the project goes well, each student will learn important lessons both about report writing and about teamwork. To maximize the likelihood that the project will go well, the instructor must think through a wide range of variables and decide, based upon his or her learning objectives, what the features of the project will be. http://tc.eserver.org/34824.html http://tc.eserver.org/34824.html Increasingly, individuals across the world seek relations of cooperation and collaboration rather than that of command and control. This need has influenced the rate at which individuals have allowed the Internet to intricately weave itself into their everyday lives in just over a decade. For many people, human interaction has truly adopted a virtual dimension. Online communities now link to one another and form a complicated technical web of interactions. Social networking Web sites (SNWs) are online tools that have transformed the virtual encounters of the past that were technical and impersonal to today's virtual socialization that is truly nontechnical, social, and interpersonal. The purpose of this article is to report the findings of a study we conducted among university students. We developed a survey to identify the reasons for which individuals use SNWs. We believe that these findings contribute to understanding future workplace expectations and arrangements. http://tc.eserver.org/34825.html http://tc.eserver.org/34825.html Our classes have experienced higher quality outcomes when the Diversity Card Game was used to form teams than when the game was not used. Student feedback has also reinforced the value of the whole brain model through the card game. http://tc.eserver.org/34826.html http://tc.eserver.org/34826.html This article describes the process of planning and implementing a problem-based learning community. Business and communication students from a large university in the Western United States competed in teams to solve an authentic business problem posed by a Fortune 500 company. The company's willingness to adopt some of their recommendations testified to the professional quality of their final product. This experience gave students an opportunity to apply communication concepts to a business problem. They learned how to make vital connections between theory and practice and between shared knowledge and shared knowing. In the process, students grew personally and professionally. http://tc.eserver.org/34827.html http://tc.eserver.org/34827.html What do teams, writing, time, technology, and critiques have in common? If you said they all have the letter 't' in them, you were correct. There can be so much more, though, when we connect each of these words in our course written assignments. Most of us use teams in our graduate and undergraduate organizational communication classes. What follows is a brief description of written (letter) assignments that use student pairs in a virtual Blackboard-based discussion board. http://tc.eserver.org/34828.html http://tc.eserver.org/34828.html While institutions of higher education are enthusiastically embracing technology-mediated learning (TML), little research has been conducted to identify factors that influence student use of TML tools or determine whether use of them increases student learning. This study of business communication students at two universities found that (1) students tend to be sensing, visual, active, and sequential learners; (2) perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of TML tools are positively associated with perceived learning success; (3) learning styles do influence the students' usage behavior of certain TML tools; and (4) students' sensing/intuitive learning style is related to their perceived learning success. http://tc.eserver.org/34829.html http://tc.eserver.org/34829.html When I was assigned to teach graduate-level business writing in a Master's of Professional Communication (MPC) program, I was unsure what to do with the course. What kind of writing instruction do students need that they have not already received in their undergraduate business writing classes or in other required graduate writing courses? What makes an advanced writing class advanced? In order to answer those questions, I began looking for articles by other teachers and scholars in the field of professional and business writing. I discovered that in terms of assignments, teachers and scholars seem to agree that client projects form the cornerstones of business writing curricula. http://tc.eserver.org/34832.html http://tc.eserver.org/34832.html The use of simulation games in business courses is a popular method for providing undergraduate students with experiences similar to those they might encounter in the business world. As such, in 2003 we were pleased to find a classroom simulation tool that combined the decision-making and team experiences of a senior management group with a fun, realistic, and competitive plot: We selected the Business Strategy Game, an online simulation for use with the textbook Crafting and Executing Strategy: The Quest for Competitive Advantage. We then enhanced the student experience by blending the simulation game with reflective writing tools that help students recognize how team experiences and decisions ripple though an enterprise. http://tc.eserver.org/34833.html http://tc.eserver.org/34833.html The authors describe a graduate capstone accounting class as a basis for building communication skills desired by both accounting practitioners and accounting faculty. An academic service-learning (ASL) component is included. Adopted as a required class for a master of science degree in accounting at two universities, this course supports accounting accreditation. Surveys offer evidence that both accounting practitioners and faculty rate, in slightly different order, the three most important skills as written communication, oral communication, and analytical/critical thinking. Accounting curricula worldwide are under pressure to develop better skills in these areas as well as to meet assessment and accreditation directives and criteria. The authors designed a communication course utilizing ASL that not only meets all of the above objectives but also provides the student with hands-on experiential learning. Information about this course provides a guide to accounting and business faculty who may wish to pursue such an approach in their schools. http://tc.eserver.org/34834.html http://tc.eserver.org/34834.html Whether in the workplace or the classroom, many teams approach problem-solving as a search for certainty—even though certainty rarely exists in business. This search for the one right answer to a problem creates unrealistic expectations and often undermines teams' effectiveness. To help teams manage their problem-solving process and communication better, I teach a systematic comparison approach that transforms the search for certainty into a search for the best alternative based on clearly defined and weighted criteria. With this method, team members realize that all problem- solving involves subjective judgments, but that making that subjectivity transparent increases the chances that an adopted solution will in fact solve the business problem at hand. http://tc.eserver.org/34839.html http://tc.eserver.org/34839.html One privilege enjoyed by new-media authors is the opportunity to realize representations of Self that are rich textual worlds in themselves and also to engage the wider world, with a voice, a smile, imagery, and sound. Still, closer investigation of multimedia composition practices reveals levels of complexity with which the verbal virtuoso is unconcerned. This article argues that while technology-afforded multimedia tools make it comparatively easy to author a vivid text, it is a multiplicatively more complicated matter to vividly realize and publicize an authorial intention. Based on analysis of the digital story creation process of a youth named 'Steven,' the authors attempt to demonstrate the operation of two forces upon which the successful multimodal realization of the author's intention may hinge: 'fixity' and 'fluidity.' The authors show how, within the process of digital self-representation, these forces can intersect to influence multimodal meaning making, and an author's life, in consequential ways. http://tc.eserver.org/34782.html http://tc.eserver.org/34782.html The two main and very closely-related foci of my job are evangelizing open standards and education. I spend a lot of time writing about relevant topics and giving lectures at universities to promote better use of web standards on courses and among students. I believe that the best way to improve the state of the Web is to start with those new to learning the trade. http://tc.eserver.org/34783.html http://tc.eserver.org/34783.html The mission of the Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group is to help enhance and standardize the architecture of the World Wide Web by facilitating the highest quality standards and best practice based education for future generations of Web professionals through such activities as: fostering open communication channels for knowledge transfer, and curriculum sharing between corporate entities, educational institutions, Web professionals, and students. http://tc.eserver.org/34703.html http://tc.eserver.org/34703.html A case study of a university-wide implementation of a web content management system at Gonzaga University. http://tc.eserver.org/34699.html http://tc.eserver.org/34699.html What is E-learning? E-learning is a general term that refers to education delivered using various forms of digital media such as the internet, video conferencing, audio, animation, and virtual environments. A course delivered using these tools, combined with face-to-face learning from an instructor, is referred to as blended learning. http://tc.eserver.org/34667.html http://tc.eserver.org/34667.html This project examines commonplace notions of text and intertextuality, the idea that “writing is recursive,” the disciplinary identification and preoccupation with composition rather than writing, and the historical privileging of pedagogy over (and often in lieu of) curriculum development. In tracing these commonplaces, I also work to establish new directions for our research that are sometimes grounded in our own, often overlooked disciplinary theory, while also moving outside of the humanities in search of cross-disciplinary collaboration. http://tc.eserver.org/34523.html http://tc.eserver.org/34523.html The mere act of reading good books, if you are not stopping to scrutinize the moves and tools used by the writers, examining and dissecting the choices they have made and why they work, will do nothing for you when you sit down to write. If you want a journal to accept your paper, or a federal agency to grant you coin, you have to make clear what is at stake and why the reader should care. Then you have to put forward the strongest reasoning based on evidence you provide in the clearest language you are able to rally. And then you need to know when you need help. http://tc.eserver.org/34498.html http://tc.eserver.org/34498.html A balanced curriculum to help students understand and exercise their digital rights and responsibilities with intellectual property. Working with educators from around the country, the EFF aimed to design a fun and flexible plan that would not just provide information, but also help foster basic skills in research, writing, and critical thinking. http://tc.eserver.org/34445.html http://tc.eserver.org/34445.html The Systematic Design of Instruction is a book on Instructional Design written by Walter Dick, Lou Carey, and James O. Carey. The book introduces the fundamentals of instructional design and explains the concepts and procedures for designing, developing, and evaluating instruction. http://tc.eserver.org/34429.html http://tc.eserver.org/34429.html Within content domains, the key themes of the information age are being adopted: Modularisation, specialisation, integration and interoperability. Our communication is changing in volume, purpose and channels. The emphasis is more on collaboration and less on expert-to-novice teaching. And there’s a stronger emphasis on openness. http://tc.eserver.org/34405.html http://tc.eserver.org/34405.html Learning Management Systems have dominated online education up until now, but must they be what we rely on in the future? Having found our way out of one box, must we immediately look for another? Can we imagine no other possibilities? http://tc.eserver.org/34398.html http://tc.eserver.org/34398.html I have been dwelling for some time with ideas for rethinking the professional writing major in response to phenomena that aren’t going away, such as the inadequacy of the university for life-long learning and the unsustainable way that public education is funded. http://tc.eserver.org/34377.html http://tc.eserver.org/34377.html This report documents the beliefs, perspectives, and practices of educational administrators which help or hinder effective use of Web 2.0 in K-12 education. The study collected data from nearly 1,200 school administrators on the role of Web 2.0 in American schools and was made possible by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. http://tc.eserver.org/34227.html http://tc.eserver.org/34227.html The goal of this site is to serve as a resource for academics trying to navigate the world of computing and technology. There are many sites that do a good job of exploring and theorizing how the growing digital presence is changing the world of academia, and there are also a host of sites that catalog ways to use technology effective, there certainly seems to be a lack of sites dedicated to bridging this gap. That is, outlining the more concrete ways technology and computers can be used to improve both teaching (how to get beyond the use of Power Point) and scholarship (did you know there are more effective, cheaper, alternatives to MS Word-how does a $30 word processor designed by academics sound?). http://tc.eserver.org/34228.html http://tc.eserver.org/34228.html Students and teachers alike must understand how systems of knowledge creation and archivization are changing. Encyclopedias are no longer static collections of facts and figures; they are living entities. Just check the entry on Global Warming. http://tc.eserver.org/34222.html http://tc.eserver.org/34222.html The key objective of Duquesne University's "Learning-on-the-Go" program is to break down the barriers that make studying and attending class difficult for adult students. "Learning-on-the-Go" will accomplish this by providing convenient access to course materials, developing technologically-supported pedagogical tools to foster student learning, and creating a framework for faculty exchange of effective practices in mobile education. http://tc.eserver.org/34223.html http://tc.eserver.org/34223.html How we leveraged Apple's iTunes U program for a seamless capture of in-class enhanced podcasts, developed a one-click iTunes U course creation solution via Blackboard, and more. This presentation will focus on how to make the implementation of university-wide learning technologies transparent and nondisruptive to the teaching and learning process. Why? To assist faculty in expanding their teaching strategies for a more diverse student learning experience. We created a technological infrastructure that allows faculty, independent of their digital literacy skills, to make use of existing social and instructional technologies in and outside the classroom. http://tc.eserver.org/34200.html http://tc.eserver.org/34200.html A case study of a course in which students used collaborative online tools such as Google Docs for major writing assignments, and the results the instructor discovered. http://tc.eserver.org/34205.html http://tc.eserver.org/34205.html This article discusses a longitudinal case study of a novice engineer who has successfully challenged a workplace genre. The study shows that a combination of the novice’s family background, a university engineering communication course, and workplace experiences helped him achieve success. It also provides evidence that, even though genres may differ from workplace to workplace, experienced professionals do recognize and accept superior communication practices imported from elsewhere. Thus, best practices may be taught apart from local contexts. The case study allows technical communication instructors and researchers to refine current understanding of what mastering genres means and indicates directions for the development of new pedagogies. Key Words: agency • engineering communication • kairos • rhetorical genre studies • school-to-work transition http://tc.eserver.org/34142.html http://tc.eserver.org/34142.html A while ago, I queried the techrhet mailing list for suggestions. I asked: Which five technical/technological skills (beyond the basics of e-mailing and word processing) would you make absolutely sure you had under control at the start or the end of the PhD process? Here are the responses. http://tc.eserver.org/34134.html http://tc.eserver.org/34134.html Savita Taylor talks about her journey from textile engineering to technical communication and beyond. http://tc.eserver.org/34136.html http://tc.eserver.org/34136.html Discusses the intricacies of burnout and how to recognize, prevent, and cure it. http://tc.eserver.org/34089.html http://tc.eserver.org/34089.html Newspapers are dying. Are universities next? The parallels between them are closer than they appear. Both industries are in the business of creating and communicating information. Paradoxically, both are threatened by the way technology has made that easier than ever before. http://tc.eserver.org/34077.html http://tc.eserver.org/34077.html Most technical communication practitioners conduct research throughout their careers. Yet, a survey of the Web sites of 114 undergraduate technical communication programs between September 2006 and April 2007 revealed that 65% (about two thirds) of these programs are providing minimal or no exposure to research instruction and therefore are not sufficiently preparing students to handle the types of research they will encounter in their upcoming careers. Given the disconnect between the centrality of research in the work that technical communicators do and the low presence of research instruction at the undergraduate level, academics need to look for ways to overcome institutional and other constraints in order to give research training greater priority in their undergraduate programs. http://tc.eserver.org/34060.html http://tc.eserver.org/34060.html In an age when students gravitate to online sources for research—and when tremendous amounts of both reputable and questionable information are available online—many have come to regard the Internet itself as a culprit in students' plagiarism. Some teachers go so far as to forbid students from researching online, in the mistaken assumption that if students are working from hard-copy sources only, the problem will disappear. We believe that an approach far different from either warnings and punishment or attempts to curtail online research is warranted. http://tc.eserver.org/34000.html http://tc.eserver.org/34000.html Standards have so much to offer that we at The Web Standards Project (WaSP) consider it necessary to help you learn more about them. This document is merely a starting point; it will give you a solid understanding of what standards exist, why they do, and why you should care about them. Every time we create a piece of the Web, we contribute to the common information space that is the Web. We can build it up, or we can add weight that will tear it apart. The choice belongs to us; the consequences belong to everyone. http://tc.eserver.org/34008.html http://tc.eserver.org/34008.html The difference between training and teaching is that teaching encourages reflection, and therefore self improvement. A teacher aims to create students who are better then themselves. A trainer is looking for a human robot. http://tc.eserver.org/34009.html http://tc.eserver.org/34009.html Teachers are a very pragmatic lot and love to borrow good stuff. Give’em a good one in Moodle and they will come! If a science teacher has a great solution using Moodle for a problem or idea her class and say, an English teacher sees it and ‘gets it’ - you can bet the English teacher will at least try or ask how to go about it. And coming from a colleague and a fellow ’struggler’ is a much more powerful thing than coming from the school’s main Moodle peddler like me. http://tc.eserver.org/34018.html http://tc.eserver.org/34018.html Web 2.0 and social media mean that for teachers a declining part of their job involves telling. An increasing part is listening to the class and facilitating them in having conversations. Teachers should help moderate these conversations and draw new learnings from them. They need to say less of: ‘let’s open up a book.’ and more of: ‘let’s open up a conversation.’. The traditional manager is taught to command and control. Web 2.0 challenges that model. http://tc.eserver.org/33962.html http://tc.eserver.org/33962.html Educators should include new dimensions of visual literacy in academic curricula. Today’s students are actively involved in interactive experiences. They are contributing content to websites as well as designing websites and other types of online experiences for the public. Students need to understand the semiotics of interactive computing and how the integration of diverse sensory data with social interaction impacts the way we interpret online information. http://tc.eserver.org/33875.html http://tc.eserver.org/33875.html If we don’t learn, we wither. New trends, new tools and technologies, new techniques. Even just new skills for the job. Continuous education is a key to longevity in the world of technical communication. As a freelancer, though, getting educated can be a bit of a problem. While many full-time employees have access to at least some job-specific training paid for by their employers, freelancers must shoulder the costs themselves. And training isn’t always cheap. So, how do freelancers stay current and stay sharp? Here are a few suggestions. http://tc.eserver.org/33862.html http://tc.eserver.org/33862.html Three workplace trends are driving policies and procedures (P&P) communication to be more suitable for learning than classroom training: changing workforce needs; e-content availability; and changing organizational needs. http://tc.eserver.org/33842.html http://tc.eserver.org/33842.html CMS is revolutionizing the way higher education handle online content. So why are most universities still managing their course catalogs by hand? Join David Cummings for an in-depth look at how XML can improve a university beyond its website. http://tc.eserver.org/33769.html http://tc.eserver.org/33769.html Cisco relies on Elearning for much of its training. So much so, that Cisco has become one of the largest Elearning providers in the world. In fact, Cisco provides over 120 courses in 152 different countries around the world. The courses and related assessments are often subject to frequent change, and the content must be produced in multiple languages or formats, combined into different courses, or efficiently searched and retrieved from large volumes of similar material. Early on, they realized that in order to keep that content current and manageable it was important to build an architecture that scaled well and was easy to maintain.XML became a clear choice for the data format. Cisco’s RLO (Reusable Learning Object) data model provides for flexible data modules that can be reused in many different contexts and driven to many different formats. http://tc.eserver.org/33686.html http://tc.eserver.org/33686.html Let’s face it. Technology moves fast; academia doesn’t. So how should educators teach web design and development—subjects that change constantly? How should educators prepare students for real-world expectations? How do educators stay up-to-date? And how do web professionals help educators to create graduates who fit in and actually know what they’re doing? http://tc.eserver.org/33687.html http://tc.eserver.org/33687.html Our young medium is still ironing out a few kinks—perhaps the biggest of which is the way budding web professionals are being educated. Schools that teach web design struggle to keep pace with our industry, and those just starting their curricula often set off in the wrong direction because the breadth and depth of our medium can be daunting. http://tc.eserver.org/33659.html http://tc.eserver.org/33659.html What are some good ways to educate myself in User Experience? http://tc.eserver.org/33650.html http://tc.eserver.org/33650.html In any field of applied studies such as technical communication, you have to be aware of industry changes. Keeping current with research and academic journals is important, but so is keeping current with what is going on in your industry, particularly in your own city. If you are educating people to get jobs as technical communicators, then you need to be sure you are giving them the right training for the markets they are entering. http://tc.eserver.org/33625.html http://tc.eserver.org/33625.html I'm seeing is a change in the software ecosystem which, for the moment, I'm calling situated software. This is software designed in and for a particular social situation or context. This way of making software is in contrast with what I'll call the Web School (the paradigm I learned to program in), where scalability, generality, and completeness were the key virtues. http://tc.eserver.org/33621.html http://tc.eserver.org/33621.html This article examines the concept of technê in relation to situatedness. Technê is conceived as techniques for situating bodies in contexts. Although many theorists and practitioners in technical communication are working from ecological and posthuman perspectives with regard to interface designs, this article argues for extending those perspectives to workplace and classroom situations. Starting from a Heideggerian reading of technê, the article moves toward the concept of post-technê, which remakes pedagogical techniques for writing and inventing in institutional contexts. http://tc.eserver.org/33609.html http://tc.eserver.org/33609.html I'm not a copyright lawyer (and I don't play one on TV). However, I have had more than one copyright lawyer in my Captivate classes over the past few years who have agreed that it is "perfectly fine to use copyrighted music in Captivate projects, provided the lesson you create is meant for educational purposes and that you do not use more than 10% of the copyrighted works or 30 seconds, whichever comes first." http://tc.eserver.org/33578.html http://tc.eserver.org/33578.html The practice of technical communication, especially for professionals just entering the workplace, is rapidly changing. Companies have higher expectations for degrees in technical communication, a strong foundation in technology, and the ability to function on cross-disciplinary teams alongside technical experts in the design and development process. As the practice of technical communication shifts its focus, academics have the responsibility to be certain that technical communication degree programs have a strong component of such topics as engineering design, programming, human factors, usability, instructional design, and project management, in addition to traditional communication skills. Academic programs have lagged behind practice, largely due to the location of degree programs, departmental reward systems, faculty deficiencies in technology, little depth in fields beyond rhetoric, and lack of exposure to best industry practices. This paper addresses these issues and makes some practical recommendations for catching academe up to practice. http://tc.eserver.org/33553.html http://tc.eserver.org/33553.html The authors pursue three aims in this article. The first is to underscore critical praxis as an especially valuable approach to understanding and enabling teamwork. The second is to offer four dimensions of teamwork—vision, roles, processes, and relationships— as salient areas to interrogate using critical praxis. The third aim is to consider the implications and methods for teaching teamwork in the classroom context. In the process of doing so, the authors highlight limitations of prevailing theoretical approaches and note changes in their own practice of teaching and facilitating teamwork that have occurred through a commitment to critical praxis. http://tc.eserver.org/33554.html http://tc.eserver.org/33554.html To help students develop teamwork skills, teachers should be aware of the strategies students already employ to assert authority and manage conflict. Researchers studying engineering students have identified two such approaches: transfer-of-knowledge sequences, in which students emulate teacher and pupil roles; and collaborative sequences, in which students use circular talk to reach consensus. As demonstrated in this article, these strategies are also used by students in professional communication courses. The second half of this article provides specific suggestions for designing team assignments, interacting effectively with student teams, and developing evaluations that value the process of teamwork. http://tc.eserver.org/33555.html http://tc.eserver.org/33555.html This article describes the ways the authors incorporated team-building activities into our online business writing courses by interrogating the ways that kinesthetic learning translates into the electronic realm. The authors review foundational theories of team building, including Cog's Ladder and Tuckman's Stages, and offer sample exercises they have converted. The authors show how the medium affects the exercises, how the choices made as teachers affect the exercises, and how they adjusted to meet the needs of their students. The authors argue that teamwork most successfully occurs after team building, and too often this team building is lacking in online environments. http://tc.eserver.org/33556.html http://tc.eserver.org/33556.html This article proposes a pedagogical framework to help students analyze their group and team interactions. Intersecting five fundamental group attributes (group size, group goal, group member interdependence, group structure, and group identity) with three overarching group processes (leadership, decision making, and conflict management) creates an analytical tool for the examination of team interaction. Furthermore, each group attribute/group process intersection encourages analytical questions targeting assumptions, values, and ethical positions embedded within the group. One advantage of this heuristic device is that it weds team member behaviors with the values members espouse and enact during team interactions. Pedagogical considerations are also discussed. http://tc.eserver.org/33563.html http://tc.eserver.org/33563.html This article presents an argument for and offers illustrations of service learning in technical communication courses and curricula. Alongside traditional internships that prepare students as future employees, service learning provides students with an education in engaged citizenship. This article reviews service-learning literature, discussing specifically the advantages of projects to students, faculty, and the community. The authors also describe three projects in which instructors and students integrated service learning and technical communication in innovative ways. http://tc.eserver.org/33566.html http://tc.eserver.org/33566.html Graduate education in technical communication should provide students with an expansive view of the field. Toward that end, we offer a three-dimensional framework that represents technical communication as a robust, diverse, complex whole. Although the framework aims towards coherence, it embraces contradiction. That is, the framework represents a totality but does not purport to be the only possible representation. Key to the framework is our belief that the gap between theory and practice can actually be productive. Almost all binaries encourage overly simplistic understandings. But we should not allow the goal of remediating the binary to close off the important tensions that can allow the field to advance. This very gap is actually one of the few sites in which new ideas and approaches can be forged. http://tc.eserver.org/33567.html http://tc.eserver.org/33567.html This article proposes a model for critically engaging technology in technical communication graduate curricula. While computers and writing studies concentrates on academic writing, the development of the field provides a model for engaging technological issues in professional and classroom contexts. Technical communicators have an ethical as well as intellectual responsibility to engage the interface between technology and culture. This article describes one example, a graduate class in information architecture, as a model for engaging the nexus of literacy, technology, and culture. http://tc.eserver.org/33569.html http://tc.eserver.org/33569.html In this article we seek to reframe accountability by means of an emphasis not on auditing but on student performance, not on the development of databases but on the creation of reflective practice. We attempt to demonstrate one model of program assessment that focuses on student performance as the center of a reflective assessment framework that can act as a technology transfer model for the diffusion of program assessment knowledge. http://tc.eserver.org/33506.html http://tc.eserver.org/33506.html Student compositions traditionally are written for the teacher. Yet instructors of professional communication genres have discovered that students' motivation may be enhanced when they write assignments for audiences of peers within the classroom or professionals outside the campus. Yet client-based projects require writing students who have never yet written for an external audience to make a leap beyond the classroom. To bridge the gap between writing for classroom peers and writing for professional clients, this article describes a third and intermediate choice of audience, namely, external peers in cross-classroom collaborations that occur via telecommunication. The author places this intermediate-audience strategy within the larger conversation about the impact of audience on student writing outcomes, applies the strategy to professional writing pedagogy, and reports the results of a small pilot study that provide some preliminary support for the strategy. http://tc.eserver.org/33507.html http://tc.eserver.org/33507.html This article describes a pilot effort for an accreditation-driven writing assessment in a business college, detailing the pilot's logistics and methods. Supported by rubric software and a philosophy of "real readers, real documents," the assessment was piloted in summer 2006 with five evaluators who were English instructors and four who worked or taught in business environments. The nine evaluators were each given 10 reports that were drawn from a sample of 50 reports completed in a writing-intensive course. They created 88 individual assessments using a 10-category rubric. While the overarching purpose of the pilot was to determine the effectiveness of the methods used, the results may also be of interest to those involved with the assessment of writing. http://tc.eserver.org/33480.html http://tc.eserver.org/33480.html How you can educate yourself in user experience. The best ways to capture and present user research data. http://tc.eserver.org/33215.html http://tc.eserver.org/33215.html he objective of this toolkit is to provide institutional Records Managers and other information professionals with a 'one-stop shop' for impartial, detailed and practical advice of use during all the stages of a proposed or actual EDRM system implementation that is free from vendor bias and specific to the needs of the FE/HE sector. This toolkit represents an attempt to synthesise some twenty years of experience of assisting public sector organisations to define their requirements for Electronic Document and Records Management solutions plus all the data gathered from some four months of fact finding in the further and higher education sector. http://tc.eserver.org/33157.html http://tc.eserver.org/33157.html I enjoy creating content. I like to take words and arrange them to convey ideas, paint pictures, spur thought, and give guidance. I like thinking about what arrangement of the words will bring the best impact. I write not necessarily because the world turns on ideas or because information is a buyable product, but because words have a lasting effect on people. http://tc.eserver.org/32891.html http://tc.eserver.org/32891.html LD Web is a website aimed at making the Internet a better place for people with learning disabilities. LD Web develops guidelines and practical "how to" techniques to help web designers understand this underserviced community. LD Web is also meant to be an open discussion forum for dialogue, questions, and experiences in dealing with learning disabilities on the Web. http://tc.eserver.org/32892.html http://tc.eserver.org/32892.html This web site provides you with a comprehensive resource on issues relating to multimedia, e-learning and accessibility. Whether you're new to e-learning, want to know more about specific accessibility issues, or are an expert multimedia developer, we believe you'll find information relevant to your needs. http://tc.eserver.org/32857.html http://tc.eserver.org/32857.html Most policies in education focus exclusively on the practices of in-house Web development professionals. Few institutions are looking at the Web content and Web-based applications that come to them from other sources (e.g., content management systems, finance systems, student information systems, healthcare or benefit systems, human resource systems). So, what is missing in current policy? A mechanism to procure accessible Web products and services is missing. Without procurement as part of the policy, true system-level accessibility can only be an illusion. http://tc.eserver.org/32785.html http://tc.eserver.org/32785.html The Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Denison University has introduced a significant new oral communication component early in both majors. The sophomore computer science and mathematics majors meet together each week for a "lab" taught jointly by a computer scientist and a mathematician. There were three goals in this endeavor: (1) to prepare students for the workforce and graduate school by improving their oral communication skills, (2) to nurture future researchers in both fields by exposing them to research early in their undergraduate training, and (3) to increase computer science students' exposure to mathematics. In the following, we establish the need for such a course, describe our approach, how it satisfies our three goals, and additional outcomes. http://tc.eserver.org/32786.html http://tc.eserver.org/32786.html Development and Implementation of a Technical Speaking Course in Mathematics, will give students an opportunity to cultivate technical, discipline-specific, verbal communication skills and experiences needed to be successful in their chosen disciplines. They will develop skills in assessing an audience’s technical sophistication and adapting their own communications to accommodate the audience. Mathematics will become a familiar “vehicle” for development of general and technical communication competencies. http://tc.eserver.org/32813.html http://tc.eserver.org/32813.html Winning proposals have clearly defined needs and describe how those needs were identified. Winning proposals define programs to meet the identified needs. http://tc.eserver.org/32645.html http://tc.eserver.org/32645.html if Post Secondary Educators don’t change their attitude towards you—and soon—you are going to find it really hard to find trained staff for your businesses. http://tc.eserver.org/32618.html http://tc.eserver.org/32618.html This research article reports the results of an online survey distributed among technical writing instructors in 2006. The survey aimed to examine how we teach intercultural communication in basic technical writing courses: our current practices and methods. The article discusses three major challenges that instructors may face when teaching about intercultural communication. These challenges concern teacher preparation, time and proposed goals and objectives, and teaching materials and methods. This article provides some suggestions for addressing the challenges and enriching a technical writing curriculum.