http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Engineering A listing of the most recently indexed works about Engineering 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/Engineering http://tc.eserver.org/35131.html http://tc.eserver.org/35131.html This study explores design presentations that were graded by engineering faculty in order to assess the distinguishing features of those that were successful. Using a thematic analysis of 17 videotaped, final presentations from a capstone chemical engineering (CHE) course, it explores the rhetorical strategies, oral styles, and organizational structures that differentiate successful and unsuccessful team presentations. The results suggest that successful presenters used rhetorical strategies, oral styles, and organizational structures that illustrated students’ ability to negotiate the real and simulated relational and identity nuances of the design presentation genre—in short, they illustrated students’ relational genre knowledge. 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/34196.html http://tc.eserver.org/34196.html Defines basic sales terms. Explores ways to use text and illustrations to create engineering marketing slides. Examines six methods of strengthening the persuasiveness of engineering marketing slides. 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/34160.html http://tc.eserver.org/34160.html How to get lab discoveries and results into a written document. http://tc.eserver.org/34161.html http://tc.eserver.org/34161.html The principle objective of this course is to prepare you for all the communication activities you will engage in as a professional engineer, including various forms of writing, speaking, illustrating, collaborating, and presenting. Since an important part of engineering work is to disseminate the results of research and data collection, the course focuses on reports and presentations. But we also try to duplicate many of the conditions of the workplace, where you will often work with cross-functional teams on collaborative projects and where you will often be communicating to people who are NOT engineers. http://tc.eserver.org/34162.html http://tc.eserver.org/34162.html This course offers engineering graduate students the opportunity to accomplish the following: communicate effectively with a variety of audiences; communicate effectively in several media: written, oral, visual; manage the process of collecting, synthesizing, and presenting data and information; manage the process of writing and publishing scholarly work; produce a portion of their thesis or dissertation or a complete scholarly paper. http://tc.eserver.org/34163.html http://tc.eserver.org/34163.html This guide is intended to help you write the best thesis you can by anticipating and answering common questions about content, structure, format, figures, and language. We have also included some suggestions on how to manage the process of turning your research -- your testing and reading, your findings and conclusions -- into a clear, complete, well-written, and convincing thesis or dissertation. http://tc.eserver.org/33933.html http://tc.eserver.org/33933.html Using activity theory as a supplement to genre studies, this article explores a case of the disintegration of a traditional engineering firm. It focuses on the causes of such disintegration and the role of different types of communication in serving as sites where contradictions can be brought to visibility and resolution. The authors’ goal is both to show the power of activity theory in illuminating issues of tension, contradiction, and dissonance that lead to the breakup of the original organization into two separate firms and point to fundamental differences in the cultures of traditional engineering firms and software design enterprises. http://tc.eserver.org/33577.html http://tc.eserver.org/33577.html This work explores prediction of technical communication patterns within product development organizations. Our methodology involves first predicting the patterns of communication and then measuring the actual communications to see if the anticipated linkages are realized. We applied this methodology to a commercial product development project in the electronics industry. In this case study we found that: 81% of all coordination type communication linkages were predicted in advance; occurrences of frequent communications were more accurately predicted than infrequent communications; and two-way communication exchange was most often observed, even where oneway information transfer was predicted. For the management of product development projects, these results imply that certain aspects of organizational design can be planned by anticipating the technical communication linkages required for project execution. Finally, a critical analysis of our methodology suggests improvements for future work. 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/31777.html http://tc.eserver.org/31777.html In the aircraft industry, a number of factors have converged to highlight the importance of maintenance manuals. http://tc.eserver.org/31669.html http://tc.eserver.org/31669.html The question, what do we gain by assessment, is one that has been asked more and more often by engineering educators. They ask the question even as the changes in accreditation brought on by ABET, Inc. and the Engineering Criteria have been cemented in programs both in the United States and abroad. http://tc.eserver.org/31646.html http://tc.eserver.org/31646.html Teaching writing to engineering students representing Indian, Middle Eastern, Asian, and American cultures can be daunting as their cultural perceptions of time, gender, source of authority, individualism and risk taking, affect learning styles. However, despite cultural differences, many International students have no difficulty with much of American instruction and, in some cases, perform better than American students. Their ability to adapt to American instruction appears to depend primarily on the educational goals of their cultures. http://tc.eserver.org/31348.html http://tc.eserver.org/31348.html Not only people preparing to work in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries, but also students of industrial chemistry and chemical engineering can immensely benefit from the material provided in this coursebook and supplementary CDs. http://tc.eserver.org/31023.html http://tc.eserver.org/31023.html This article discusses the development of a unified social theory of genre learning based on the integration of rhetorical genre studies, activity theory, and the situated learning perspective. The article proposes that these three theoretical perspectives are compatible and complementary, and it illustrates applications of a unified framework to a study of genre learning by novice engineers. The author draws examples from a longitudinal qualitative study of a group of novice engineers who developed their professional genre knowledge through both academic and workplace experiences. These examples illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework for the study of professional genre learning. http://tc.eserver.org/31021.html http://tc.eserver.org/31021.html This article investigates the introductions of 40 professional speeches from a rhetorical perspective to address the problems audiences seem to have with presentations about engineering. The authors use an exordial model that they derived from classical manuals on rhetoric. This model enumerates and groups rhetorical exordial techniques into 3 main functions: attentum, benevolum, and docilem . The study shows that rhetorically complete introductions are rare. Most of the speakers seemed to prefer a content-oriented, direct approach (docilem) in their introductions and seldom used techniques to garner the audience's attention (attentum) or sympathy (benevolum). The article concludes with an evaluation of the exordial model and a discussion of the study's pedagogical implications. http://tc.eserver.org/30188.html http://tc.eserver.org/30188.html This paper presents a developing process for Web based expert systems and specifically focuses on the developing process of their corresponding Web sites. As a case study, the architecture of a Web site/application, which includes the Landfill Operation Management Advisor (LOMA) expert system, will be presented. The Web site/application is available at http://loma.civil.duth.gr since November 2002. Based on the gained experience, useful tips will be given on the construction of such Web sites/applications. Moreover, some explanations will be recorded supporting the assertion that Web based expeconsidered as a category of Web engineering applications. http://tc.eserver.org/30137.html http://tc.eserver.org/30137.html The Engineering Writing sequence at the University of California, Santa Barbara, teaches fundamental college writing and research skills emphasizing the discourse and genres common to professional engineering. The first quarter emphasizes library, electronic-database, and literature-type searches, culminating in a literature review on a current technological topic. The second quarter integrates primary research and interviewing with the above, while the students design solutions to actual university building and plant resource problems. The third quarter involves advanced issues of document design and publication, as students post web sites not only pertinent to this year's theme, Engineering and the Environment, but also useful to the local community. http://tc.eserver.org/30151.html http://tc.eserver.org/30151.html The evolving roles of technical communicators threaten the comfortable assumptions of many educators who see themselves as primarily writing teachers. These threats can become opportunities if we perceive ourselves as participants in the evolving paradigms. This new perception requires significant interaction with colleagues. As we start to see ourselves as collaborators at work, in education, across disciplines and boundaries, we can make larger contributions and can enjoy greater professional recognition. Technical communicators can be partners with engineering faculty in developing innovative curricula; can achieve educational objectives by becoming partners with industry and practitioners; and can lead the shift in education through instructional technology. http://tc.eserver.org/29865.html http://tc.eserver.org/29865.html Freshman engineering students are bombarded with classes in chemistry, physics, math and other highly technical and demanding courses. This intense schedule leaves little time for learning other important subjects critical to future engineers such as ethics and professionalism. The College of Engineering and the Writing Program at the University of California Santa Barbara offer a unique sequence of courses that meet general education requirements while also addressing the development of ethics and professionalism in future engineers by using a combination of case studies, practical applications and readings. http://tc.eserver.org/29540.html http://tc.eserver.org/29540.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/29150.html http://tc.eserver.org/29150.html While the importance of "expressive writing," or informal, self-directed writing, has been well established, teachers underutilize it, particularly in technical writing courses. We introduce the term expressive/exploratory technical writing (XTW), which is the use of informal, self-directed writing to problem-solve in technical fields. We describe how engineering students resist writing, despite decades of research showing its importance to their careers, and we suggest that such resistance may be because most students only see writing as an audience-driven performance and thus incompletely understand the link between writing and thinking. The treatment of invention in rhetorical history supports their view. We describe two examples of using XTW in software engineering to plan programming tasks. We conclude by discussing how a systematic use of XTW could shift the technical writing curriculum, imbuing the curriculum with writing and helping students see how to problem-solve using natural language. http://tc.eserver.org/29124.html http://tc.eserver.org/29124.html One goal of college technical writing courses is to prepare students for real-world writing situations. Business writing textbooks function similarly, using guidelines, sample assignments, and model documents to help students develop rhetorical strategies to use in the workplace. Students attend class, or read and perform exercises in a textbook, with the faith that these skills will apply to workplace writing. In an attempt to better understand the similarities and differences between industry and academe's expectations of one genre of workplace writing, the memo, we compared the perceptions of memo quality by engineering faculty, students, and practitioners. All three groups responded to three sample memos taken from textbooks used by engineering professors in their undergraduate classrooms. The results indicate that students' and engineers' opinions of memo quality were more closely related to one another than to professors' comments, focusing on content, while professors were the most critical of style issues. http://tc.eserver.org/29163.html http://tc.eserver.org/29163.html The "steel bible" emerged in 1919 and went through 11 editions in 80 years. In its evolution we can see the shift from individual to group authorship, an increasing use of visual elements, and a physical change from a small, hand-held volume to a weighty desktop reference. In a textual analysis, we can see that it was essentially static, changing only by additions and deletions, as the industry evolved. The eventual closing of hundreds of plants and the migration of the industry to other countries can be seen in the change of publisher, the sudden absence of photography, and the international references. Originally, the steel bible came from the factory floor and the words of the plant managers, but by the 1990s, it was a highly-abstracted representation of knowledge. In the steel bible, we can see the history of the industry and the maturing of technical communication in the 20th century. http://tc.eserver.org/29147.html http://tc.eserver.org/29147.html Previous research has indicated that engineering faculty do not follow best practices when commenting on students' technical writing. However, it is unclear whether the faculty prefer to comment in these ineffective ways, or whether they prefer more effective practices but simply do not enact them. This study adapts a well known study of response in composition to ask whether engineering faculty prefer authoritative, form-focused comments, or whether they may prefer to write different sorts of comments. We asked ten civil engineering faculty to comment on a sample paper and then rank their preferences for provided versions of comments on the same paper. One provided version emphasized comments on content, one emphasized comments on form, and one was balanced. Comparisons of the respondents' preferences and practices suggest that the engineering faculty recognize and value content-focused, non-authoritative responses, but generally do not write comments that conform to these values. We consider the implication of these findings for research on response to technical writing as well as for technical writing faculty in their own course. While recognizing the need for more research, we also discuss ways in which writing professionals, including WAC administrators and technical writing professors, can encourage engineering faculty to enact their preferences for response styles that reflect best practices. http://tc.eserver.org/29145.html http://tc.eserver.org/29145.html http://tc.eserver.org/29053.html http://tc.eserver.org/29053.html Although rhetoricians have studied the discourse practices of engineers, little is known about the production workers who must assemble engineering knowledge into functional products. This case study examines what happens when a production worker tried to improve manufacturing documentation, and how her success depended upon both her craft knowledge and the rhetorical skills she attributes to a Writing Across the Curriculum program she experienced in college. http://tc.eserver.org/28889.html http://tc.eserver.org/28889.html The incorporation of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in the teaching-learning process of technical education programs in Indian universities is a relatively recent and gradual phenomenon. Most technical education colleges in the country still follow the traditional classroom and blackboard oriented teaching approach. This study, conducted on a group of engineering students at Agra, India, evaluated the impact of using web-based audio-visual study aids alongside (and as a supplement to) the traditional classroom teaching methodology and observed a substantial improvement in the students' academic performance. http://tc.eserver.org/28556.html http://tc.eserver.org/28556.html This study reports on the use of graphics by engineers as a method of stimulating the writing process (rhetorical invention). Information presented here comes from working engineers, based on a questionnaire developed after informal conversations and then administered to 15 participants in private industry, with questions about specific writing genres and types of graphics. Results show that graphics have a powerful function in stimulating writing ideas. Although individual writers' preferences in graphics are strong, patterns could be seen in (1) overall number of graphics types used by each writer, (2) specific types of graphics used by each writer based on the writing genre, and (3) the most common types of graphics used overall. http://tc.eserver.org/27450.html http://tc.eserver.org/27450.html The Goddard Space Flight Center's (GSFC) Software Assurance Technology Center (SATC) has developed an early life cycle tool for assessing requirements that are specified in natural language. The Automated Requirements Measurement (ARM) tool was used to analyze more than 50 NASA System/Software Requirements Specification (SRS) documents. ARM reports were used to focus human analysis on specific aspects of the documentation practices exhibited by these documents. Several significant weaknesses were identified. This paper identifies the underlying problems that produce these deficiencies and recommends methods that can be used to prevent such problems. http://tc.eserver.org/27288.html http://tc.eserver.org/27288.html The availability of the Internet has provided unprecedented opportunities for both data compilers and users. With respect to materials data, this paper explores: how do we know what is available? how can data be accessed, interpreted, exchanged? what novel modes of presentation are now available? what organizations are active in this field and what are their programs? what improvements are needed? where do we go from here and how? Examples will be illustrated of specific materials databases available on the Internet from a variety of materials data fields, e.g. fundamental data, engineering design properties, environmental data, and materials safety data. While there is no question that large and widely varied bodies of data are accessible on the Internet, significant improvements are needed promptly. The paper concludes by summarizing these problems and possible means for their alleviation. http://tc.eserver.org/27251.html http://tc.eserver.org/27251.html Companies place little emphasis on the quality of an engineer's writing. An engineer's writing is usually only for evidence a particular transaction took place, or for proof they did the appropriate research. There is hardly ever any emphasis on the readability or usefulness of the writing. In this article, the author states several reasons for this problem and that development teams must come to understand in order to find a solution. http://tc.eserver.org/27247.html http://tc.eserver.org/27247.html Errors in requirements specifications translate into poor designs, code that does the wrong thing, and unhappy customers. Requirements documentation should be inspected early and often. Anything you can do to prevent requirements errors from propagating downstream will save you time and money. Karl Wiegers shows you how. http://tc.eserver.org/26924.html http://tc.eserver.org/26924.html For many projects ease of use is never a stated project goal. It may be an assumption among managers or developers that the project will result in something easy to use, but if it’s not a first order goal of the project, tradeoffs can never been made in favor of ease of use (and can implicitly be made against ease of use). Often the lack of a clear statement of ease of use occurs because the team managers or leaders are unfamiliar with how to make ease of use operational in the development process, and one way to avoid this issue is not to make it an explicit goal. http://tc.eserver.org/26703.html http://tc.eserver.org/26703.html Women can be either encouraged or discouraged to take on the role of engineer through communication. Encouraging women to take on the role of engineer is imperative because of the lack of women currently in engineering. http://tc.eserver.org/26577.html http://tc.eserver.org/26577.html The paper examines whether writing tutors control the subject matter discussed in tutoring sessions with engineering students, topic-raising in six tutoring sessions was analyzed. Over 81% of the topics were raised by tutors, suggesting tutors control subject matter. To examine the subject matter that tutors and students focused upon, topics were categorized by type. Over 55% of the topics raised were related to sentence clarity, conciseness, and mechanics. Tutors and students also raised topics related to content, rhetorical situation, and textual organization and formatting. Writing tutors and engineering students focus on sentence-level issues even though students might benefit from more attention to discourse-level issues. http://tc.eserver.org/26557.html http://tc.eserver.org/26557.html Over the past years, many reference books have been published for various science and engineering disciplines. Based on publishers’ descriptions, I selected four for review. http://tc.eserver.org/26555.html http://tc.eserver.org/26555.html The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) that was empowered to investigate the causes of the loss of shuttle Columbia found that NASA often used viewgraph and PowerPoint slides to present complex information that was used to render important technical judgments. These technologies, however, had the effect of obscuring key information and hampering effective decision-making. http://tc.eserver.org/26501.html http://tc.eserver.org/26501.html How could four letters strike such fear in the hearts of normally stalwart faculty? Why would administrators loathe the mere mention of the word 'accreditation'? The source of their fear and frustration is a cycle of evaluation, assessment, and reporting that constitutes a six-year accreditation period. http://tc.eserver.org/26413.html http://tc.eserver.org/26413.html In this economic situation, it is imperative that computer science students are well prepared before entering the work force; new graduates must understand what skills the IT industry is seeking. http://tc.eserver.org/25999.html http://tc.eserver.org/25999.html Twenty terms from engineering writiting translated into the vernacular. http://tc.eserver.org/25668.html http://tc.eserver.org/25668.html Current methods of access to the electronic resources offered by the Internet make little use of basic principles of information organization and retrieval, relying instead on relatively informal and, at times, ad hoc approaches. This creates problems in terms of the volume of information retrieved by a user of the Internet and the precision with which that information matches the user's information need. There is a plethora of engineering resources available on the Internet, yet no systematic method of retrieval is available to engineers who are in need of the most current information in their discipline. The Internet is often the only immediate source of the most current engineering resources. The purpose of this project is to identify electronic resources that could be of value to engineers and to represent these resources in a manner that enables engineers to make timely, informed decisions about the usefulness of the resources. This paper addresses the specific objectives the project which include: 1) the development of selection criteria for electronic engineering resources; 2) the identification of electronic resources of interest to engineers, as defined by the selection policy; and 3) the creation of abstracts for these electronic resources that will include at least two hyperlinks to other related electronic resources. http://tc.eserver.org/25309.html http://tc.eserver.org/25309.html References to sources should be numbered sequentially by order of mention in the text, with the number placed in brackets and printed on line (not as a super- or subscript) like [1]. http://tc.eserver.org/25143.html http://tc.eserver.org/25143.html We must understand that if we graduate engineering students who have a full complement of communication skills, we will better prepare them to be more effective professionals as well as highly valued citizens. Clear communcation and clear thinking are mutually reinforcing. Together they are a powerful combination that will serve well the individual, our nation and world in the exciting years ahead. http://tc.eserver.org/24567.html http://tc.eserver.org/24567.html This article explores the role of embodied knowledge and embodied representation in the joint revision of a small section of a large technical document by personnel from two organizations: a city government and a consulting engineering firm. The article points to differences between the knowledge and the representation practices of personnel from the two organizations as manifested in their words and gestures during the revision task, and it points to the gestures of the city personnel as a principal means by which their greater embodied knowledge of channel easements becomes distributed across the group as a whole. The article concludes by pointing to some advantages of considering acts of writing as embodied practices and by indicating a number of related questions that should be pursued in subsequent investigations of literacy in modern workplaces. http://tc.eserver.org/24507.html http://tc.eserver.org/24507.html This survey of 73 top-ranked U.S. and Canadian engineering schools examines initiatives that engineering schools are taking to improve communication instruction for their students. The survey reveals that 50% of the U.S. schools and 80% of the Canadian schools require a course in technical communication. About 33% of the schools utilize some form of integrated communication instruction, and another 33% offer elective courses in communication. Just 10 schools have created engineering communication centers to provide additional individualized coaching and feedback for their students. The most comprehensive preparation that engineering schools provide is a communication-across-the-curriculum approach that combines these instructional methods to offer concentrated instruction, continual practice, situated learning, and individualized feedback. http://tc.eserver.org/23990.html http://tc.eserver.org/23990.html Developers want details. They want information they can take back and talk about on their own. They want the space to decide, based on their own criteria, what is valuable and what is not. They make use of the divide between designers and developers to help maintain their boundaries. http://tc.eserver.org/23994.html http://tc.eserver.org/23994.html When companies plan out a new product (or service, or business process) they often think of the effort as the coordination of two teams solving different problems. Engineering addresses the question 'what can you make?' Marketing addresses the question 'what can you sell?' http://tc.eserver.org/23503.html http://tc.eserver.org/23503.html Language Across the Curriculum in Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto helps students to communicate in writing and orally. http://tc.eserver.org/23439.html http://tc.eserver.org/23439.html The cause for the careless handling of possible dangers is not so much unwillingness, but rather the lack of know-how. There are no standardised and well-documented processes that are simple to implement and use. http://tc.eserver.org/23379.html http://tc.eserver.org/23379.html The University of Maine has begun a multi-year effort to redesign the way it teaches technical communication to students in the College of Engineering. At its core, this new design will mean replacing the existing requirement of a stand alone course in technical communication. http://tc.eserver.org/22979.html http://tc.eserver.org/22979.html A rich discussion of collaboration as integral to writing in academia and the workplace has been on-going for some time among writing instructors and researchers. The outcomes of this discussion have convinced some writing instructors to promote peer feedback as one of the forms of collaborative writing in the classroom. In this paper we report on the preliminary stages of a longitudinal study of the role and place of peer feedback in the development of students' writing. http://tc.eserver.org/22980.html http://tc.eserver.org/22980.html Using activity theory as a supplement to genre studies, this article explores a case of the disintegration of a traditional engineering firm. It focuses on the causes of such disintegration and the role of different types of communication in serving as sites where contradictions can be brought to visibility and resolution. The authors' goal is both to show the power of activity theory in illuminating issues of tension, contradiction, and dissonance that lead to the breakup of the original organization into two separate firms and point to fundamental differences in the cultures of traditional engineering firms and software design enterprises. http://tc.eserver.org/22984.html http://tc.eserver.org/22984.html This study grew out of a question asked by an engineering professor at the University of Windsor, Peter Frise, who observed while reading design proposals from his fourth year students: 'Many of these kids actually write like engineers! What accounts for the difference between those who do and those who don't?' Peter had just moved from teaching Engineering at Carleton where he specialized in introducing first-year students to their engineering studies. In Windsor, his responsibilities had shifted to primarily fourth-year and graduate students. He remembered only too well how ineffective and unengineering-like the writing of his first year students had been. We picked up Peter's question and began to collect data. http://tc.eserver.org/22982.html http://tc.eserver.org/22982.html My preliminary studies have shown that students do indeed acquire basic communication strategies appropriate for their chosen field that help them to become acculturated in workplace contexts. In other words, they begin to genre their 'way through social interactions, choosing the correct form in response to each communicative situation [they] encounter,' which they do 'with varying degree of mastery'. The subject of my CCCC 2003 presentation is a series of events that occurred in the life of one of my longitudinal study participants. In the presentation, I related these events to the audience and then analyzed them using Rhetorical Genre Studies as a theoretical tool. http://tc.eserver.org/22837.html http://tc.eserver.org/22837.html At one time or another most technical communicators have had to work with scientific/technical professionals who were the authors of their own research projects or product documentation. As a group, engineers more so than scientists do not view writing documentation as a critical (though perhaps important) part of the product or their job description. The technical publications team in Motorola’s RISC Systems Engineering Division has adopted seven strategies developed by the author that will help get engineers, programmers, and other technical professionals clamoring for the services of technical communicators. This paper addresses these seven strategies. http://tc.eserver.org/22676.html http://tc.eserver.org/22676.html Technical and professional communication combines writing, organizing and communicating skills. The sites below deal with specific topics such as: interviewing; writing proposals, reports and resumes; and analyzing, organizing and presenting technical information. http://tc.eserver.org/21975.html http://tc.eserver.org/21975.html As a discussion of writing-across-the-curriculum programs in universities, his essay focuses on disciplinary discourse within academic settings. Nonacademic discourse also occurs with particular conventions, purposes and institutions; such discourse can be subjected to similar study. http://tc.eserver.org/21973.html http://tc.eserver.org/21973.html Both the Challenger and Three Mile Island disasters involved failures of communication among ordinary professional people, mistakes committed in the course of routine work on the job, small mishaps with grotesque conseqences. http://tc.eserver.org/21804.html http://tc.eserver.org/21804.html A bibliography on engineering communication assessment. http://tc.eserver.org/21805.html http://tc.eserver.org/21805.html Enthusiastic comments about 3(g)--one of the most widely appreciated ABET 2000 criteria--have masked disagreements about what 'effectiveness' is and how it should be defined in relation to schools' missions. Most of the methods that have been recommended for assessing engineering communication imitate procedures used for large-scale testing in English composition. The main purpose of this paper is to show that these methods have nothing to do with effectiveness or audience, and that they provide meager feedback to guide curriculum improvement. This uncertainty provides an opportunity for cooperation between engineering and communication faculty in individual institutions as well as between ASEE and professional organizations in engineering communication. Continuous monitoring and evaluation of industry best practices seem well suited to provide engineering schools with assessment strategies that can be updated as communication practices in industry change. Research projects should focus on exemplars' adaptations to new technologies and audiences. Collaboration between organizations for technical communication and the ASEE and between faculty from engineering and faculty from technical communication on individual campuses can ensure that engineering programs are realistically preparing students to meet future challenges. http://tc.eserver.org/21806.html http://tc.eserver.org/21806.html The objective of this paper is to bring about a reevaluation of writing assessment practices in engineering classes. The authors begin by drawing rhetoric (the knowledge base of effective technical communication) and engineering together, explaining how engineering work is rhetorical. From this theoretical vantage point, the authors argue for a change in engineering writing assessment practices. Specifically, they argue for an approach that favors formative assessment (focused on writing comments that lead to both better writing and better engineering) over summative assessment (which sees writing ability as separate from engineering design). The authors continue by revealing a scoring guide for the formative assessment of engineering reports, and detailing the process by which such a scoring guide may be created. Each criterion in the scoring guide is explained in terms of the rhetorical and engineering principles that it simultaneously addresses. http://tc.eserver.org/21807.html http://tc.eserver.org/21807.html Like most technical writers, getting my feature team to review my help topics for technical accuracy is like keeping an Iditarod team from making a dash for the nearest McDonalds or garbage dump in the middle of a blinding blizzard.  Technical contributors want to participate in technical documentation reviews but they rarely have enough bandwidth to do so effectively. Consequently, I spend a lot of time trying to determine the most effective way to squeeze my teammates for feedback.  This can be a painstaking process, especially for technical writers who are unlucky enough to work with teams that are halfway around the world or spread across the country. Some contributors only produce if I corner them in their office with a paper copy.  Others are overly motivated, but I love them all the same.  Most technical reviewers, at least at Microsoft, require a combination of:  incentives (food, beer, ...), attention getters (a stern note from their manager) and tech review tools that fit their working style and team culture. http://tc.eserver.org/21665.html http://tc.eserver.org/21665.html A story about testing the stability of airplane windshields from collisions with birds. http://tc.eserver.org/21662.html http://tc.eserver.org/21662.html A complete resource to put all microwave geeks on the same page when it comes to tech writing. http://tc.eserver.org/21232.html http://tc.eserver.org/21232.html Communicators usually focus on audience needs, and rightly so. But scientific communicators may find it equally important to consider the needs and cultural values of the scientist/engineer researchers they work with. Working within the context of their culture, as well as observing (or at least recognizing) their etiquette and standards, can help us become their trusted collaborators. http://tc.eserver.org/21224.html http://tc.eserver.org/21224.html Doing technical writing from within an engineering department can offer some special opportunities for the more technically-inclined technical writer. Compared to customary technical publications departments, there may be a greater variety of projects. There may also be more chances for inexperienced writers, especially engineers and technicians who want to enter technical writing. http://tc.eserver.org/21054.html http://tc.eserver.org/21054.html The engineers who build the products people use every day are not experts in user behaviour, and they frequently make mistakes that cause lost time and immeasurable frustration. Interaction designers could improve thousands upon thousands of products, leaving engineers to deal with the areas of their interest and experience. http://tc.eserver.org/20964.html http://tc.eserver.org/20964.html A list-in-progress assembled by Jeff Jablonski @ UNLV with help from others. http://tc.eserver.org/20569.html http://tc.eserver.org/20569.html Adresses engineering students' complaints that technical communication courses are not relevant to their major area of study. Describes a joint course in metallurgical engineering and English taught in the same classroom, with credit given in both subjects. http://tc.eserver.org/20485.html http://tc.eserver.org/20485.html Technical communication resources of interest to the oil and gas industry. http://tc.eserver.org/20317.html http://tc.eserver.org/20317.html The traditional technical publications world in engineering companies has been turned upside down with the advent of personal computers on every engineer’s desk. Engineers are now their own “tech pubs” and rarely call on technical writers and editors for assistance. This new environment is described and it’s implications for both engineers and technical publications personnel are explored. Engineering writing at the University of California at Santa Barbara is described and suggestions are made for a similar education—albeit less formal—for technical writers and editors. http://tc.eserver.org/20318.html http://tc.eserver.org/20318.html By engaging the rhetorical and technical challenges of formal requests for proposals (RFPs), observation reports, and group work plans, first-year engineering students at UC Santa Barbara demonstrate that they are able to emulate the design strategies employed by professional engineers in the production of design proposals. Because the RFPs called for products that aided the disabled, the students also became practiced in the research and questioning skills that engineers need to employ when they are designing products for a population of consumers with special needs http://tc.eserver.org/20214.html http://tc.eserver.org/20214.html In the U.S. and Canada, there are more than 6,000 business, technical, academic, scientific and trade publications, which among them publish several hundred technical articles a year. Technical publications are the vehicles through which engineers and scientists communicate with their peers in other fields. Academic journals are the vehicles they use to communicate within their own field. http://tc.eserver.org/19821.html http://tc.eserver.org/19821.html Usability engineers receive training in principles and techniques of usability engineering, but are often not prepared for the realities of the workplace. This paper presents strategies for integrating usability engineering and the product development process that have been gleaned from personal experience as well as advice. The strategies are organized into six categories: (1) educating yourself about the organization, (2) educating the organization about usability, (3) making yourself known to the “right” people and groups, (4) building an infrastructure for usability engineering, (5) taking a serviceoriented approach, and (6) demonstrating valueadded aspects of usability. http://tc.eserver.org/19729.html http://tc.eserver.org/19729.html A technical writer in power systems must be a perfect jack-of -all trades, with flair to glean information on materials, equipments, systems, applications – and the related skills! A keen eye for detail is critical. The smallest slip can cause a serious mishap. But curiosity never killed a good technical writer! Being a good electrical engineer inherently takes care of most of these requirements - certainly not all. The scope is limitless to the self-motivated communicator. http://tc.eserver.org/19654.html http://tc.eserver.org/19654.html Reading research papers effectively is challenging. These papers are written in a very condensed style because of page limitations and the intended audience, which is assumed to already know the area well. Moreover, the reasons for writing the paper may be different than the reasons the paper has been assigned, meaning you have to work harder to find the content that you are interested in. Finally, your time is very limited, so you may not have time to read every word of the paper or read it several times to extract all the nuances. For all these reasons, reading a research paper can require a special approach. http://tc.eserver.org/23949.html http://tc.eserver.org/23949.html Founded in 1995, the Electronic Journal of Information Technology in construction is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal on the use of IT in construction. Articles are submitted and published electronically. Biannually, limited number of copies is printed as well. The Journal is committed to minimising publication delays, and to promoting maximum flexibility in the ways that readers use the journal for teaching, research, and scholarship. Readers' license is limited only as required to insure fair attribution to authors and the journal, and to prohibit use in a competing commercial publication http://tc.eserver.org/19132.html http://tc.eserver.org/19132.html The Rogers report seems to be more than just a report to explain the Challenger accident and give suggestions to avoid a similar tragedy occurring in the future. In a sense, it appears to be a type of apologia. On January 28, 1986 the Space Shuttle Challenger, mission 51-L, launched from Florida's Kennedy Air force Base at 11:38 a.m. Eastern Stand ard Time. As the country watched in disbelief, the shuttle disintegrated 73 seconds later in an explosion of hydrogen and oxygen. All seven crew members died. On February 3, President Reagan issued an executive order to set up a commission to investigate the challenger accident. The commission was sworn in on February 6, and presented its report to the president on June 6 of the same year. This report, commonly known as the Rogers Report, after its chairman William R. Roger, had a dual mandate from the president. First to look at the probable causes of the accident, and second, to develop recommendations for corrective action. This was done through a comprehensive investigation involving all of the following: interviews with more than 160 people, more than 35 formal panel investigations, examination of more than 6,300 documents (which included hundreds of photographs and more then 122,000 pages), the generation of almost 12,000 pages of transcript and another 2,800 pages of hearing transcripts. http://tc.eserver.org/19083.html http://tc.eserver.org/19083.html Increased support for greater accountability and assessment of engineering communication programs have led many schools of engineering and technology to initiate methods of assessing the quality of their students’ engineering communication abilities. In my institution, I have spearheaded the pilot year of such a program, and, as anticipated, have learned several valuable lessons that may be of interest to others interested in developing assessment procedures for engineering communication programs. http://tc.eserver.org/19066.html http://tc.eserver.org/19066.html Our discussion will consider the ways in which we conceptualized an engineering enterprise initiative’s 'communication component,' alternate ways in which it could be conceptualized, and our efforts to maintain pedagogical and programmatic integrity while addressing the very practical needs of this ABET-driven curricula change. We feel that these questions must be addressed if we are to truly participate in a 'systemic change' in engineering education and its integral communication challenges. http://tc.eserver.org/19067.html http://tc.eserver.org/19067.html New models for program development in technical and scientific communication are imperative. Demand for communicative expertise continues to expand rapidly yet traditional approaches for supporting student competence fall far short of expectations. http://tc.eserver.org/19075.html http://tc.eserver.org/19075.html Having the department of technical communication located within the School of Engineering has a significant impact on the program’s development. http://tc.eserver.org/18812.html http://tc.eserver.org/18812.html These guidelines are designed to help you, the engineering or science student, perform technical writing assignments in your laboratory, design, and technical communication classes. In these guidelines, you will find discussions of several common documents in engineering writing and scientific writing. For these types of documents, you will find models written by other students. http://tc.eserver.org/18680.html http://tc.eserver.org/18680.html This essay explains why so many technologies fail to solve people's problems, and offers a business and engineering philosophy for creating better technologies. http://tc.eserver.org/18520.html http://tc.eserver.org/18520.html With wider acceptance and use of Engineering Cases in engineering education, there is a new form of engineering writing available. This paper presents some ideas based on our experience with cases over the last ten years, including writing over 25 cases (good or bad), assisting with several student-written cases, using cases extensively in our courses, and reviewing many cases, e.g., for Engineering Education. Use of Engineering Cases is still in its infancy; as use matures, things will change. We have adopted many ideas suggested by colleagues reviewing our cases. We have also drawn heavily on ideas from case writing for business schools. We do not view this as a definitive paper on case writing. We present these ideas as a compilation which may be useful to those who are considering writing cases and wonder what it is about. We also offer our compilation to seasoned case writers as a position with which to differ. http://tc.eserver.org/18465.html http://tc.eserver.org/18465.html Communications basics for scientists and engineers. http://tc.eserver.org/18461.html http://tc.eserver.org/18461.html The average engineering student would rather go to the dentist and have root canal than write a technical report or a memo. This is unfortunate, as a large part of a working engineer’s professional life is spent in writing technical communiqués of one sort or another. Although, the widespread aversion to writing has a variety of causes, I suspect that a large part of the problem is simply not understanding the process and elements of good technical writing. And this comes as no surprise, because many students’ exposure to writing comes in college freshman English, and these courses train the student to write a certain kind of critical essay that is largely useful in passing college freshman English. Remarkably few such courses expose the student to the kinds of business writing they will use for the rest of their lives. http://tc.eserver.org/15026.html http://tc.eserver.org/15026.html To achieve collaboration between different actors in the workplace requires a holistic view and knowledge (and experience) in multiple areas: domain knowledge, general and specialised communication, IT. To cater for these needs, six disciplines at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have co-operated to design and teach a unique interdisciplinary and bilingual technical communication programme for engineers. The questions What aspects of technical documentation are particularly relevant to engineers? How can we encourage co-operation between engineers and technical writers throughout the design process? What can engineers learn from technical writers, and vice-versa? This idea market discussion will not only serve as valuable on-site practice for the student, but will also give the audience the possibility of evaluating the programme on the basis of both teacher and learner experiences. http://tc.eserver.org/14475.html http://tc.eserver.org/14475.html This manual is intended to be used by any engineering student (undergraduate or graduate) who has to complete writing assignments or oral presentations for any course. You will find information on general principles of grammar and style, as well as specific examples of technical writing and presenting. If your communication assignment is for an engineering class, you will want to pay particular attention to the sample documents. http://tc.eserver.org/14355.html http://tc.eserver.org/14355.html At JPL, the World-Wide Web has become an invaluable educational outreach mechanism. In the area of space flight mission operations, for example, we have been able to make publicly accessible two workbooks found to be of much wider interest than their original internal training purposes would have suggested. These electronic documents, by using simple language and illustrations, andfocusing on pithy content and good writing style, have met with great success not only in disseminating important scienttjic and technological concepts to a society pittjuily behind the curve in these areas, but also in promoting understanding and enthusiasm for NASA ‘s unmanned space exploration programs. http://tc.eserver.org/14299.html http://tc.eserver.org/14299.html This paper summarizes some quantitative measures and qualitative observations that we have made regarding the effects of architecture on technical communication. We begin with some early results, showing how the probability that two organizations’ members will communicate regularly declines rapidly with the distance between their work locations. . Following this, we assess several objections to these observations and deal with each. We look briefly at the relationships among different media, (i.e., face-to-face, telephone, electronic mail) and how each is affected by separation. Finally, we discuss some examples of architectural strategies for managing communication. http://tc.eserver.org/14062.html http://tc.eserver.org/14062.html Preferred editorial style for the preparation of proposed IEEE standards is established. Many of the frequently asked questions about writing drafts are answered. The optional and required contents of drafts are described, and instructions on submitting drafts for IEEE-SA Standards Board approval and publication are provided. This manual is not intended to be a guide to the procedural development of standards. http://tc.eserver.org/14038.html http://tc.eserver.org/14038.html My argument attempts to add to the kinds of documents seen as worth studying in the discipline loosely known as English. Over the last twenty years, we have moved from thinking that only literature is worth studying to including student writing, business writing, technical writing, and so on as part of our field of study. I think we have to extend our attention to documents which are even less literature-like. Calling these documents 'writing' has consequences for our understanding of both writing and the various fields in which it occurs. As Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford point out, 'We name in order to know, but that naming inevitably limits our knowing. . . . Definitions of writing, of course, reflect a set of ideological assumptions that we ignore only at our peril' (15). The ideological assumptions we ignore here have to do with how knowledge is created and how much control individuals have over their own knowing. Ideology leads both us and engineers to deny that writing has occurred in much engineering practice. http://tc.eserver.org/13916.html http://tc.eserver.org/13916.html Assessing the efficacy of technical communication service courses is a complex task, yet it is a task that service course providers should embrace as an opportunity to learn more about student and faculty needs and to update and improve curricula. This assessment has become more immediate for many educators because of ABET 2000 (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology), a comprehensive revamping of the way engineering programs are accredited. ABET 2000 criteria require that engineering programs provide evidence of the efficacy of all instruction, including communication. When the new ABET criteria were released, we had already begun a comprehensive evaluation of not only our service courses but also the total writing experience of engineering students at the University of Washington. This paper gives a theoretical rationale for a portfolio evaluation project and describes a directly applicable structure and procedure for such a project. http://tc.eserver.org/13893.html http://tc.eserver.org/13893.html In this article, we analyze a two-semester effort to integrate writing instruction into a multi-disciplinary sophomore engineering design course in Northern Arizona University’s College of Engineering and Technology. Specifically, we describe the programmatic implementation and assessment approach to evaluate whether student writing improved over the course of the semester. After discussing the reasons for taking a writing-intensive approach to engineering, we analyze the results of a pre- and post-test administered over the span of an academic semester. Although the outcome of our assessment did not show significant improvement, we argue that writing instruction is important for increasing students’ overall learning skills. We conclude by pointing out several benefits and disadvantages of trying to assess writing improvement over two one-semester periods. http://tc.eserver.org/13912.html http://tc.eserver.org/13912.html A three-year experiment in integrating technical editing students into a multidisciplinary engineering design project developed several ways of helping students apply classroom learning to practical problems. Each year, the engineering students formed Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) and the technical editing students provided editorial support, first as full members of IPTs, then as separate editorial support teams. Research from cooperative learning and teamwork indicates strategies and techniques for best integrating the technical editing students. http://tc.eserver.org/13902.html http://tc.eserver.org/13902.html A case study of an experienced professor's comments on a design report in a first-year engineering class was conducted over the period of an academic year. When compared with the commenting styles of technical writing teachers, the engineering professor's comments were found to be highly directive, and thus at odds with the preference for facilitative comments that prevails in composition studies. However, differences in genre conventions explain much of the discrepancy. http://tc.eserver.org/13838.html http://tc.eserver.org/13838.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/13825.html http://tc.eserver.org/13825.html I had been involved with a program at Clemson to integrate laptop computers into the engineering curriculum. In this pilot project, I had taught first-year writing since 1998 to engineering and science majors using their own laptops in classrooms equipped with ethernet connections and a video projector. This proved to be a rich environment for sharing work and collaborating among ourselves. I wanted to see whether we could extend our collaborations to other Clemson classrooms. Mary Haque (a professor in Clemson University’s Horticulture Department) and I decided that my first-year composition classes could collaborate with her horticulture classes. http://tc.eserver.org/13539.html http://tc.eserver.org/13539.html The tools engineers use have changed so dramatically over the past 30 years, universities and colleges have adapted by offering their engineering students classes in the latest technologies so they are better prepared to enter the engineering workplace. Engineers often feel less prepared, however, for the nontechnical demands of their jobs. They may possess the technical skills necessary to solve a machine problem in a manufacturing line but feel less prepared to tell the owners of the line what needs to be changed and why. As a result, industry and business have complained to universities and colleges (and particularly to engineering programs) that engineering students are not ready to take on the nontechnical challenges of modern engineering work. And because engineering programs rely on industry and businesses to hire their students, they have taken these demands seriously. http://tc.eserver.org/13288.html http://tc.eserver.org/13288.html The reviews of engineering education carried out in the USA, Canada and Australia have highlighted the importance of developing the communication skills of engineering students. An innovative curriculum has been developed at the University of Technology, Sydney (Australia) to prepare students for effective professional practice. The program has drawn on developments in writing studies and research into workplace practice. A core subject in Engineering Communication acts as a ‘hub’ for a Communication System which extends the development of communication abilities to staff, practitioners and self-directed learners. http://tc.eserver.org/13078.html http://tc.eserver.org/13078.html The Consortium for the Study of Engineering Communication consists of individual engineering communication scholars from six professional organizations and ten universities who are interested in research relating to the Acreditation Board for Engineering and Technology's Engineering Criteria 2000, expecially EC3(g): 'the ability to communicate effectively.' They are working together on research and development projects to identify best communication practices of successful engineers in industry and ways of assessing students' communication performances. Collaboration with others concerned with engineering communication and assessment is welcome. Please see the list of members or the list of organizations represented for further information or contact us. http://tc.eserver.org/13021.html http://tc.eserver.org/13021.html The Ad Hoc Committee on Accreditation recommends that the IEEE Professional Communication Society act as the sponsoring cognizant technical society to present technical communication program criteria to the Related Accreditation Commission (RAC) of Accreditation Body for Engineering and Technology (ABET). This report contains the background documentation for this recommendation. http://tc.eserver.org/10847.html http://tc.eserver.org/10847.html Dilbert, sometimes referred to as a 'patron saint of technical communicators,' represents a sort of workplace humor that often illuminates TC experiences. This website shows the past month's worth of episodes from the daily syndicated cartoon.