Fair Use and Distance Learning in the Digital Age  

At Wharton Executive Education we use technology to deliver up-to-the-minute information to students on campus and on line. As part of my job as systems coordinator, I set up electronic course material reserves for The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania's well-known and highly respected executive programs. Most of the programs are campus-based over a few days or a few weeks, but some are distance-education courses that can last several weeks. I also secure permission to store materials and allow access through a secure Web site for the students. However, because we use technology in innovative ways, we sometimes cannot deliver the latest information as quickly as we would like.

Smith, Millison. Journal of Electronic Publishing (2000). Articles>Intellectual Property>Education>Online

FAQs About Your First CBT  

A comprehensive overview of computer-based training for technical communicators new to the subject.

Wokosin, Linda. Intercom (2004). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

Fashioning the Emperor's New Clothes: Emerging Pedagogy and Practices of Turning Wireless Laptops Into Classroom Literacy Stations @SouthernCT.edu  

It seems humans want the best of technology without having to look at it, or what it does, closely. Though wireless technology makes a great pun about how it improves our ability to be "wired," not everyone is laughing. In this collaborative hypertext, four English professors explore their learning curves in a newly created, wireless, laptop-equipped classroom. Our research and writing was guided by these four questions.

Dean, Christopher, Will Hochman, Carra Hood and Robert McEachern. Kairos (2004). Articles>Education>Wireless Web

Finding a Home for Technical Communication in the Academy    

The placement of technical communication within an academic curriculum presents an interesting challenge for university administrators and faculty. Technical communication is a young discipline that borrows content from several older, more established disciplines. As a younger discipline, technical communication must combine its borrowed ingredients from other areas into a new and complete offering that can attract research funding for professionals in the academy and deliver job opportunities for its students preparing to enter industry. The credibility of technical communication as a new discipline is dependent on its ability to develop a cohesive body of basic and applied research, its ability to manage technological change, and its ability to promote its identity among an army of competing disciplines.

Carver, Michael. ACM SIGDOC (1998). Academic>Education>Assessment

Focus Groups: Planning the Education of Technical Communicators During the Next Ten Years  

These focus groups continue the dialogue begun in focus groups organized by Ken Rainey and Katherine Staples, Education and Research PIC, at the 1993 annual conference in Dallas. Participants discussed the topic of how partnerships among the Society, business and industry, and colleges and universitates could strengthen academic programs in technical communication, empower the profession, and promote research.

Barnum, Carol M., Saul A. Carliner, JoAnn T. Hackos, Rita Reaves, Stuart A. Selber and Sherry G. Southard. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Education>Industry and Academy>STC

La Formation au Métier  

Voici une liste de différentes formations au métier de Rédacteur Technique ou proche de la Communication Technique.

Redtech (2002). (French) Academic>Education>Regional>France

Forums for Improving HCI Education

As HCI continues to mature as a discipline, educators face a challenging task. HCI educators need to keep up with the changing definition of HCI, understand what industry is experiencing, and where research is heading. To do this, HCI educators must continue to discuss the discipline and how they teach it.

Sears, Andrew. SIGCHI Bulletin (1997). Articles>Education>Usability

Fostering Dialogue Between Engineers and Technical Communicators  

In order to better prepare engineers for business and industry, the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Michigan is running a three year pilot project. The purpose of this project is to design a seamless course that integrates the engineering and technical communication components. One way that this is being achieved is through interactive learning modules. These modules supplement course lectures. In addition, the process of designing them helps to foster conversation between faculty members—important for uncovering assumptions about teaching, engineering, and communication.

Fraiberg, Steven A. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Instructional Design

Four Countries, Four Futures: Tom Klinkowstein's Horizon Projects Workshops

For the past year and half, Tom Klinkowstein has conducted workshops, called Horizon Projects, with design students in four countries using a methodology adapted from John Anderson, a NASA scientist. The workshops lasted from 1/2 a day in New York, to two days in Istanbul, Turkey, three days In Shanghai, China and five days in Mumbai, India.

Klinkowstein, Tom. uiGarden (2005). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Case Studies

Four Tips for Professional Development  

Discusses how technical communicators can keep themselves marketable at a time when technologies and work environments are rapidly changing.

Dimick, Sharlyn A. Intercom (2002). Careers>Education>Continuing

A Framework for Developing Research-Based Curricula in Professional Writing Programs  

For our field, these are times of significant change. Undergraduate and graduate professional writing programs are proliferating across the country. At the same time, our students are moving into anincreasingly broad range of workplace settings. To respond to this reality, we need to establish reliable frameworks for developing curricula that are aligned with the discursive, technical, social, and ethicaldemands our students will face in these settings. We are proposing such a framework -- i.e., a set ofguiding principles -- for designing research-based curricula for professional writing programs. More specifically, we will describe how this framework can be used to orient the empirical research that willallow us to 1) identify the knowledge, abilities, critical awareness, and aspects of identity that ourgraduates will need as practicing professionals and 2) develop curricula that respond to these needs.

Smart, Graham and Nicole Brown. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Education>Business Communication

From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing      

In an attempt to bring composition studies into a more thoroughgoing discussion of the place of visual literacy in the writing classroom, I argue that throughout the history of writing instruction in this country the terms of debate typical in discussions of visual literacy and the teaching of writing have limited the kinds of assignments we might imagine for composition.

George, Diana. CCC (2002). Articles>Education>Rhetoric>Visual Rhetoric

From Classroom to Cubicle  

Identifies helpful courses and activities that can prepare students and new technical communicators for their duties in the workplace.

Johnson, Felicia R. Intercom (2002). Careers>Education>TC>Workplace

From Courseware Cosmetics to Human Cognetics: A Pragmatic, Innovative Pedagogy for Distributed Learning Design and Development  

Commercial courseware management systems efficiently distribute expository instructional shovelware without regarding how adults actually construct knowledge or develop practical skills. Critical, unaddressed instructional problems increasingly face the commercial and academic distributed learning community and require thoughtful, boldly pragmatic instructional design solutions to this salient issue. Alternative, innovative pedagogical approaches more appropriate for 21st century communications technologies need to be systematically explored, developed, validated, and creatively implemented. One promising perspective is to focus emerging technology systems on the design of cognitive learning environments based upon what we know and what we are discovering about how people actually learn, develop performance skills and heuristic competencies, and construct meaningful, transferable knowledge throughout their lifetimes.

Lasnik, Vincent E. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Online

From Email to the Web: Teaching an ESL Technical Writing Class  

This paper discusses the author’s experience of teaching an English as a Second Language (ESL) technical writing class. The class consisted of students from several European and Asian countries who work for the same company as the author. The class began as an email “correspondence” class, but the author developed a web page which served as a “home” for the class to meet. As with most good classes, the teacher ended up learning as much or more than the students. This paper shares some of what the author learned from teaching.

Crawley, Charles R. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Education>Online>Technical Writing

From Ice Cream to Mousetraps: Explaining Technical Communication to K-12 Students  

Technical communicators who desire to “spread the word” about their profession will find ready audiences in the educational institutions of their local communities. This paper examines techniques which the author has used in elementary, middle, and high schools to explain technical communication. They are techniques which require the students to do a simplified form of technical writing. The author also explains why doing these types of presentations is an enjoyable activity.

Crawley, Charles R. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Education>Instructional Design

From Monologue to Dialog to Chorus: The Place of Instrumental Discourse in English Studies and Technical Communication    

One way to resolve some of the conflict in English studies and technical communication over their diminishing cultural capital is to recognize the place of instrumental discourse in communication studies. Instrumental discourse is individually verified social agreements to coordinate and control physical actions. One purpose of literary works is to voice new concerns about social inequities. A purpose of rhetoric is to persuade others of the validity of those concerns. Instrumental discourse registers agreements about those concerns and brings them to temporary closure in laws, instructions, contracts, and constitutions. Instrumental discourse is the culmination of a process that often begins with a literary monolog, is continued in many rhetorical dialogs, and ends, for a while, in a chorus of approval. Each phase of this communication process--monolog, dialog, and chorus--has a place in English studies. If more English studies faculty would recognize the need to study the communications that promote dissensus and consensus, then they might contribute more to global discussions about social justice, cooperation, and sustainability, and they might gain more cultural capital and social influence.

Moore, Patrick. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2006). Articles>Education>TC>Workplace

From Page to Stage: How Theories of Genre and Situated Learning Help Introduce Engineering Students to Discipline-Specific Communication      

This article describes a discipline-specific communication course for engineering students offered by a Canadian university. The pedagogy of this course is based on North American theories of genre and theories of situated learning. In keeping with these theories, the course provides a context in which students acquire rhetorical skills and strategies necessary to integrate into a discipline-specific discourse community. The authors argue that such a pedagogical approach can be used to design communication courses tailored to the needs of any discipline if the following three key conditions are met: assignments are connected to subject matter courses, a dialogic environment is provided, and the nature of assignments allows students to build on their learning experiences in the course.

Artemeva, Natasha, Susan Logie and Jennie St-Martin. Technical Communication Quarterly (1999). Articles>Education>Engineering>Writing

From Soup to Nuts: Fashioning the Menu for a New Program in Technical Communication  

The process of revising an English Communications emphasis proceeded smoothly for the most part because of good planning by a Curriculum Committee. However, unseen pitfalls and departmental politics hindered some aspects of the experience. It will be necessary to apply lessons learned to continue the revision process and create a successful emphasis.

Allen, Lori A. STC Proceedings (2002). Academic>Education>Instructional Design>Assessment

From Writer to Trainer: Designing an Effective Technical Training Class  

You spend six months working side by side with the designers and engineers, learning every nuance of the new system. You then spend another six months writing a complete set of training and reference manuals. Face it, you know this system inside and out. So it should come as no surprise when your boss decides you are the perfect person to conduct the training class.

Michaels, Dana. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Software

Functionalism in TC Training

Analyses of users, functions, situations, risks and cost/benefit, together with functional testing which guarantees that needs are met, provide the basis for the real-life projects which the students of technical communication perform at Karlstad University in Sweden. Tutor support throughout is vital. This article gives examples of such projects from the latest academic year. They show that the students can often demonstrate that technical information is highly worthwhile, as is the value of having a holistic approach to the tasks.

Andersson, Ulf-L. TC-FORUM (2001). Articles>Education

The Future of Education: Lessons Learned from Video Games and Museum Exhibits

Education is hot in business as well. The rise of corporate universities is well established, with companies literally spending billions of dollars to educate their employees. Education is now a business, with multiple companies offering courses and degrees as a successful, profit-making business. Of course, one of the problems when everyone is for something is that everyone has a different idea of what it is that they are for. Everyone who is for education seems to have a different idea of what to do, hence the challenge. The one thing everyone agrees upon is that our educational system is in trouble. Something has to be done to fix it. But what? To me, anything that is truly worthwhile is something that is also a major challenge. If you were facing an easy task, why bother? So it's a great year to be graduating, for anything truly worthwhile, anything that will make a difference, not just to you, but to many, is going to be hard. This is a great year, for there are great challenges ahead of you.

Norman, Donald A. JND.org (2001). Presentations>Education

Gauging the Value of Online Grade Posting: An Inquiry into Full Disclosure  

With the continued development of the Internet, distance learning initiatives and Web-based mechanisms designed to support traditional classroom pedagogies are here to stay, and traditional notions of teaching are forever changed. Online colleges and universities like the University of Phoenix already boast burgeoning enrollments, as students flock to a curriculum that will gladly meet them on their own terms and in their own homes and offices. On the Web, teaching moves from brick and mortar classrooms with thirty students entering and leaving every hour, on the hour, to a compendium of synchronous and asynchronous experiences characterized by bulletin board posts, downloads, real-time chats, file transfers, and video and audio files. Web-based approaches to teaching writing and rhetoric are, generally speaking, multivalent, offering new and important capacities that surpass some of the dimensional and practical constraints of the traditional written page. Moreover, many of the practices common in Web-based pedagogy are well supported by theories of dialogism and negotiated learning, and those in the computers and composition community have long trumpeted these benefits.

Knievel, Michael. Kairos (2001). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Online

A Gendered World: Students and Instructional Technologies  

Gender has become a significant issue in the various discussions related to the use of computers and instructional technologies (IT) in higher education. Are gender differences relevant in the students' learning process and their use of technological components in their courses? Is gender significant in determining the use of IT by students in colleges and universities? Does the study of how gender influences students' use of software and presentation formats, throw light on other general behavioural aspects of academic computer-users? This study uses surveys, both direct and online, of students in universities and colleges to explore whether gender is a critical variable in understanding what is labelled as user-friendly computer instruction and learning, Internet searches, and presentation software tools. It also seeks to explore whether and if so why, women students, as distinct from the men, do or do not embrace IT in their learning endeavors or use the new technological tools in handling their courses.

Rajagopal, Indhu and Nis Bojin. First Monday (2003). Articles>Education>Instructional Design>Gender

The Genre System of the Harvard Case Method    

Focusing on the case write-up within the Harvard case method of instruction, this study provides historical and empirical evidence for the theory of genre systems. The Harvard case literature and interviews at a case-based business school in the Harvard tradition show that the purpose of this largely ignored written genre is to prepare students to participate in the primary genre, oral classroom discussion of the case. The case genre system provides highly conventionalized conductor-choreographer roles for instructors and blunt, detached consultant roles for student writers/speakers who repeatedly enact decisive, adversarial personae affirming practices and values of the business school.

Forman, Janis and Jone Rymer. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (1999). Articles>Education>Business Communication