Teaching/Learning with the TC Library

[Geoff Sauer]

In a recent conversation on the ATTW-L mailing list (http://tc.eserver.org/10197.html), Clay Spinuzzi (http://locus.cwrl.utexas.edu/spinuzzi/) asked faculty members in the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing which textbooks they use for their TC/TW courses. He compiled the results, which included just about every textbook I know.

But a question that wasn't asked, but that I would like to ask, is "what online resources do you use to complement your textbook, and how to you use them?" And there's probably a good reason why the question isn't being asked. Because online articles and resources can be valuable, but they're difficult to integrate into teaching. And it isn't clear how to incorporate online catalogues/indexes (like the TC Library) into courses.

But it being unclear doesn't mean it wouldn't be worth doing. I wonder, sometimes, how effective textbooks are for teaching today. My students sometimes speak ill of their textbooks. In my experience textbooks tend to produce clear, simple overviews of the major issues in a field of knowledge, attempting to convey to students (in a simple transmission model, from the 'knower' to the 'tabula rasa' student). But I'm not sure that's the only way students learn.

My students, when they're interested in a topic, often use Google or Wikipedia searches to learn more. They're often cynical, or skeptical, or doubtful of their textbooks. I'm not exactly sure which.

But for technical communication purposes, I don't believe that either Wikipedia or Google are really adequate for learning the intricacies of the field of technical communication.

It's nothing against those sites. Wikipedia is a fine encyclopedia. A great place to go for a one-page or two-page introduction to a subject. It's a great place to go if you don't know anything about a field, to see an overview of what it is. But that's only useful for about five minutes for my students. They need to learn more than that.

And obviously, Google is a powerful system. It could never have risen to such prominence if it weren't a powerful search engine. But it doesn't differentiate between websites and online documents: if I search Google for technical communication (http://www.google.com/search?q=technical+communication) I find individual articles as well as organization websites (some of which have thousands and thousands of pages). When browsing, it's much more useful to have a higher level of parallelism, so that one can search for articles separately than organizations. And Google obviously can't necessarily find the best sites: when you search Google for 'technical communication', on the first page of results you find a document called 'Sexy girls Online on webcam.' Because Google isn't human-edited, it can't discern why some sites are more appropriate than others.

So, when we founded the TC Library in 2001, part of the goal was to produce an index that would organize quality online resources so that they could be used, either by professors or by people who are teaching themselves topics within the fields of technical, scientific and professional communication.

But here we are, at the end of 2007, without the problem solved. I'm interested in developing a pedagogy that would permit people to learn about issues within the field(s) effectively.

So. Please help us. Let me know if you have suggestions or ideas about how we could build a pedagogical interface to our body of knowledge in the field. We can do the development work, to make the site better than it is now for learning/teaching. I just need ideas, suggestions, and discussion to help me think through how to do this well. I'll look forward to hearing your ideas.

[Geoff Sauer]

In October 2009, I posted a follow-up e-mail with more details, which you can read here.