Ten Engineers Reading: Disjunctions Between Preference and Practice in Civil Engineering Faculty Responses    

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.

Smith Taylor, Summer and Martha D. Patton. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2006). Articles>Education>Engineering>Writing

Through the Looking Glass: Identifying Causes of the Alice-Syndrome in Undergraduate Engineering Writers

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.

Artemeva, Natasha and Janna Fox. Newsletter of the CASLL (2003). Articles>Education>Engineering

Tips for Scientific Communicators: How to Become a Member of the Research Team  

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.

Davis, Nancy E. and Mark Hodges. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Scientific Communication>Engineering>Rhetoric

Topic-Raising in Tutoring Sessions Involving Writing Tutors and Engineering Students  

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.

Mackiewicz, Jo M. Association for Business Communication (2004). Articles>Education>Writing>Engineering

Toward a Unified Social Theory of Genre Learning    

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.

Artemeva, Natasha. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Rhetoric>Engineering>Genre

Traveling in Space and Time: A Study of Learning Trajectories in Student Acquisition of Engineering Communication Strategies

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.

Artemeva, Natasha. Newsletter of the CASLL (2003). Articles>Education>Engineering>Writing

The Two Shuttle Accident Reports: Context and Culture in Technical Communication    

Dombrowski, Paul M. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2006). Articles>TC>Reports>Engineering

Understanding Failures in Organizational Discourse: The Accident at Three Mile Island and the Shuttle Challenger Disaster  

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.

Herndl, Carl G., Barbara A. Fennell and Carolyn R. Miller. WAC Clearinghouse (1991). Articles>Risk Communication>Engineering

User Instruction Missing

A story about testing the stability of airplane windshields from collisions with birds.

TC-FORUM (2002). Humor>Documentation>Engineering

Using Portfolios to Evaluate Service Courses as Part of an Engineering Writing Program      

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.

Scott, Cathie and Carolyn Plumb. Technical Communication Quarterly (1999). Articles>Education>Engineering>Assessment

Using the Web to Bring Space Science and Technology Down to Earth  

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.

Miller, Diane F. STC Proceedings (1997). Presentations>Scientific Communication>Engineering

Want to Talk About...: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Introductions of 40 Speeches About Engineering    

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.

Van De Mieroop, Dorien, Jaap de Jong and Bas Andeweg. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Education>Rhetoric>Engineering

What Counts as Writing? An Argument From Engineers' Practice  

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.

Winsor, Dorothy A. JAC (1992). Articles>Rhetoric>Engineering

What Do We Gain by Assessment?

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.

Williams, Julia M. IEEE PCS (2008). Articles>Education>Assessment>Engineering

When a Production Worker is Technically a Writer: Using Craft and Rhetorical Knowledge in a Manufacturing Environment    

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.

Vélez, Lili Fox and Susan P. Hall. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2001). Articles>TC>Technical Writing>Engineering

Why Great Technologies Don't Make Great Designs

This essay explains why so many technologies fail to solve people's problems, and offers a business and engineering philosophy for creating better technologies.

Berkun, Scott. UIWeb (2000). Design>Usability>Engineering

WikiWiki as Tech Review Vehicle

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.

Parnell, Korby. Microsoft (2004). Articles>Editing>Engineering>Assessment

Writing as an Embodied Practice: The Case of Engineering Standards    

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.

Haas, Christina and Stephen P. Witte. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2001). Articles>Writing>Engineering>Technical Writing

Writing Effective Requirements Specifications

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.

Wilson, William M. NASA (1997). Articles>Writing>Specifications>Engineering

Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students

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.

Alley, Michael. Virginia Tech. Resources>Writing>Engineering

Technically Speaking: Fostering the Communication Skills of Computer Science and Mathematics Students    

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.

Havill, Jessen T. and Lewis D. Ludwig. SIGCSE Bulletin (2007). Articles>Education>Communication>Engineering

Predicting Technical Communication in Product Development Organizations    

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.

Morelli, M.D., S.D. Eppinger and R.K. Gulati. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management (1995). Articles>TC>Organizational Communication>Engineering

"Just the Boys Playing on Computers": An Activity Theory Analysis of Differences in the Cultures of Two Engineering Firms    

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.

Artemeva, Natasha and Aviva Freedman. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2001). Articles>Academic>Genre>Engineering

Writing as a Materials Engineer  

How to get lab discoveries and results into a written document.

Hart, Hillary. University of Texas (2008). Presentations>Writing>Technical Writing>Engineering

CE 333T: Engineering Communication

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.

Hart, Hillary. University of Texas (2009). Academic>Courses>TC>Engineering