A Student Recruitment Model for Undergraduate Technical Communication Programs  

Undergraduate technical communication programs are found across the spectrum of American colleges and universities, from the 2-year community college to the tier-one research university. Technical communication programs find themselves in the enviable position of being in a field where demand exceeds supply. The ratio of jobs to graduates in the workplace is greatly in favor of our students. Why then do many programs have difficulties recruiting students? Why do we not produce the graduate pool needed to meet the needs of industry? One reason for this problem is that most undergraduate technical communication programs do not employ systematic and informed recruitment strategies. In this presentation, I present a recruitment-strategy model based upon JoAnn Hackos’s process maturity model&emdash;a procedure which will give institutions a way to enculturate recruitment and to meet program and student needs. This model is informed by research I conducted in the spring of 2000.

Butler, Brad. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>TC>Marketing

Sustainable Practices in Distance Education    

We are engaged in distance education because our graduate program is committed to responsible instructional practices in the computer age. As humanists, our efforts in this relatively new area are primarily energized by opportunities to revisit basic educational assumptions, test the social claims made about distanceeducation, and prepare future teachers who can operate both effectively and judiciously in online environments. From our perspective, departments that foreground the values of the profession will find distance education tobe a productive site for literacy education, one that can even influence the shape of resident instruction in positive ways.

Selber, Stuart A. CPTSC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Education>Online

Teaching as a Conduit: An Interrogation of the Educative Function of the Untenured, Sole Professional Writing Faculty Member    

As the sole faculty member in professional writing, one must find reasonable means for integrating research, teaching, and service. This integration means understanding the institutional context, balancing the research-teaching-service commitments for tenure, and creating a supportive community for professional writing teaching and scholarship.

Kimme Hea, Amy C. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Careers>Academic

Teaching the Visual: Understanding our Approaches

Despite the significant presence of the visual in the field of technical communication, we have not yet achieved a unified pedagogical approach to the visual. Because of the traditional emphasis on written communication, there is often a conflicting boundary between teaching the visual and textual, which often results in the visual assuming a secondary position to the textual.

Portewig, Tiffany Craft. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Visual Rhetoric

Technical and Scientific Communication: Research on the Internet-Expanding Wealth or Chaos?  

Since writers/communicators now carry legal responsibility for what they write, on paper or online, it would be useful to students in Technical and Scientific Communication Programs to have instruction in communication law and explore its many applications online.

Turpin, Elizabeth R. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Legal

Technical Communication and Corporate Training  

Unless the professional lives of my former students are unaccountably unique, I expect you will confirm that many of your own former students find themselves developing materials that will be used in workplace training situations. You are undoubtedly aware that a number of technical communicators not only develop such materials but serve as trainers, themselves. The other side of the coin is that full-time professional trainers commonly have to develop their own training documents. Indeed, the majority of students in our Advanced Technical Writing course at Illinois State University are Industrial Technology majors, whose professional goals are to work as industry trainers or as teachers of industrial technology in secondary and postsecondary education programs.

Savage, Gerald J. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Articles>Education>Instructional Design

Technical Communication Research: A Call for Action

Argues for an increased emphasis on research in technical communication education.

Spilka, Rachel. CPTSC (2005). Presentations>Education>Research

Technical Writers and Trainers as Facilitators of Change  

Effective technical writing/training in my organization involves a model of performance that goes beyond traditional ideas about documentation and passive training methods. It involves a practice which, in a single word, I would call facilitating. Documents are part of it and new or changed behaviors by people in the organization are part of it, but a traditional writer or a traditional trainer, whether alone or working together, will not be able to achieve what we ask of them in our organization. Essentially, the model we have found successful and that we expect our technical writer/trainers to be able to implement involves the following.

Hotz, Glenn. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Collaboration

Technology and the Learning/Teaching Divide  

When we put to one side technological responsibilities, we miss an important opportunity to build communities of workers and scholars.

Selfe, Cynthia L. and Richard Selfe. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Technology

Thank You, Thank You! Or: How External Reviewers Help Out

Conversations about assessment for technical communication programs often focus on evaluating features internally, through means such as course evaluations and portfolio reviews.

Rehling, Louise. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Assessment

Theorizing the Borders of Academic Technical Communication  

As technical communication programs come to accept our field's (emergent) status as a profession, we need to discuss more carefully how to judge the boundaries of technical communication as an academic field. Although many writers have recently called for efforts to span traditional borders between workplace practice and academic study of the field (Carver 1998, Sutcliff 2000, Eaton 2001 and Smith 2002 among others), doing so in practice can be quite difficult. From my experience as a member of the editorial board of the EServer Technical Communication Library (http://tc.eserver.org/), a website of resources in the field (originally founded explicitly to support such interdisciplinarity), I would today suggest that there are numerous practical and theoretical issues still remaining to resolve in how the field delimits and judges the diverse forms of work we perform.

Sauer, Geoffrey. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>TC>Academic

Theory vs. Practice: the Ongoing Battle  

George Hayhoe calls it the 'gulf between classroom and workplace,' Katherine Staples calls it 'the schism between academic theory and workplace practice,' Bonita Selting calls it the 'schizophrenia of the curriculum' and Carolyn Miller calls it the 'virulent praxis/techne and academic/industry polarities.' The debate immediately struck me when I returned from six years as a technical writer, but is it just a difference of teaching methods, or is it also a question of exclusionary politics, a class issue? In her historical summary, Teresa Kynell notes that technical communication has the ''tag' of vocationalism' and Staples dates it from the early 'conflict between career education and the humanities.' What is the distinction between pure academics and practical learning? Is it that college teachers have a higher social status than workers?

Johnson, Carol Siri. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Theory

Theory, Pedagogy, and Program Design

Four presentations about the integration of theory and pedagogical innovation into the design of academic programs.

Gibson, Keith, Margaret Hundleby, Alan Chong, Amy Franklin, Robert Irish, Katherine Tiede and Deborah Tihanyi, Kendall Kelly and Katrine Dahl. CPTSC (2005). Presentations>Education>Theory

Thoughts on Designing a Master's Certificate Program  

Despite the success of internship components, however, a common complaint from industry professionals still exists: that students still don't know how to write. Part of this complaint could be explained by specific industry practices for which students still need to be trained. Another part could rest in the need for more research about industry contexts. Still another, and probably the most likely, is the perceived differences in academe and industry expectations for theoretical components of curricula. Academics assume that industry professionals seek practical skills dealing with 'correctness' in language (e.g., grammar, spelling, punctuation) at the expense of theory; while industry professionals assume academics seek more conceptual components (e.g., philosophy) at the expense of practice. I think both parties are asking for the same thing: they seek students/employees who can develop an understanding of the how and the why of their work (Miller, 1979); that is, students who possess productive knowledge about a particular craft. In other words, they exemplify a techne (Atwill). In classical rhetoric, techne is associated with the 'knowledge of arts and crafts associated with the making of things' (Johnson, 1998, p. 51). In Technical Communication, one way to think of techne is through genre knowledge, that is, knowing which form suits a particular situation and why.

Bridgeford, Tracy. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Graduate

Timing is Everything: Integrating Low-Profile "Concentration" Courses into a High-Profile Master's Degree  

This paper discusses the phenomenon of a sense of timing as a sense of timely design and of timing as active response to unfolding demands as the key elements in making any program effective and durable. Indeed, I claim that timing is everything. Auburn's extended experience developing a new, high-profile Master's degree out of beginnings as a low-profile adjunct to a deeply conservative 'Great Books' English department has shown this clearly. Across the chronological stretch of a decade occupied with paying close attention to program elements, not only was effort required for time-keeping, or chronos, to establish and stabilize program elements, but a strong sense of timing, or kairos was also needed to meet and adjust to shifts in academic, political and industrial climates in and around the program. Rather than following a model or sticking to a set design, our decade of experience in transforming a 'concentration' program primarily serving undergraduates to a fully professional Master's degree has been a decade of improving our sense of timing.

Hundleby, Margaret N. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Graduate

United We Stand, Divided We Fall? Thoughts on Cohesiveness in the MA in Writing    

What's happening to all of the things our students in the different strands once shared in common? When I taught the research methods class last fall, I was struck when my students in both strands commented on how they had not realized until then how much they shared and how happy they were to be able to help each other and to inform each other's work. These comments, and the tangible evidence I had of their truthfulness in my students' productive exchanges, are at the heart of my concerns. I am curious if other writing programs with multiple strands are also encountering these issues. Is becoming more separate a natural response to developments and progress in our respective fields? Is it the best response to those developments and progress?

Blakeslee, Ann M. CPTSC Proceedings (2001). Academic>Writing>Education

Untangling a Jigsaw Puzzle: The Place for Assessment in Program Development  

Assessment has long been a topic of conversation among technical communication teachers and program coordinators. Much has been written about how we assess and respond to work students do in our classrooms. We have also discussed methods to assess programs in technical and scientific communication (TSC). In fact, CPTSC offers a comprehensive self-study and program review. The purpose of the review 'is to help develop strong programs. . . not to compare or rank programs, and not to establish certification for programs or their graduates.' Of course, a focus on developing strong programs rather than ranking programs is an appropriate focus for an organization such as CPTSC.

Munger, Roger H. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Assessment

Usability Metrics: Drawing Borders Ourselves  

Two borders that are very important in a primarily undergraduate Technical Communication program are the theory/practice borders we face vis-à-vis our students, and vis-à-vis the practitioners who hire our students.

Benninghoff, Steve. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>TC>Usability>Theory

Usability Testing and User-Centered Design in Technical Communication Programs: Current and Emergent Models  

In recent years, technical communication programs have begun to introduce students to the principles of usability testing. A natural outgrowth of the traditional technical communication emphasis on audience analysis and user advocacy, usability testing also serves as an interesting and potentially lucrative career path for some technical communicators, and introduces a fascinating research trajectory for students and faculty alike. It’s no surprise that technical programs are incorporating usability testing instruction in one of two ways: some offer separate courses in usability testing at the undergraduate or graduate level. Specialized labs and corporate collaborations are often associated with such curriculum designs. Most incorporate usability into specific courses in a 'usability across the curriculum' model. Typically, existing computer labs double as usability testing facilities. These efforts are admirable, but leading scholars and practitioners agree that usability testing alone, because it occurs late in the product development cycle, no longer suffices. A gradual movement toward continuous user involvement at all stages of product development is underway.

Kitalong, Karla Saari. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Usability>User Centered Design

Using Portfolios to Help Students Navigate Across Borders  

The concept of borders provides a powerful lens for understanding the student experience in technical communication. During the educational process, our students navigate across borders between teaching and research, between theory and practice, and between nations, cultures, disciplines, and professional organizations. Asking students to think about their experiences at such borders can give rise to interesting questions, insights, and concerns. Student portfolios, developed over the course of their academic careers, provide students with a powerful mechanism for reflecting on and integrating their experiences at these borders.

Turns, Jennifer and Judith A. Ramey. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Academic>Portfolios

Using Web-Based Portfolios to Assist Technical Communication Program Development  

In 1998, the English Department at Carnegie Mellon built an Internet server (english.cmu.edu) to offer free lifetime accounts to English majors and graduate students. We did this (in part) because we had found that students in our professional programs underused campus facilities for web portfolios. Interviews revealed that many Web-savvy students felt alienated from campus Internet publishing options--which serve students while they remain students, but eliminate accounts (and remove alumni websites) soon after graduation. CMU students in professional programs are exceptionally career-oriented, and interviews revealed that they instead planned to postpone website production until they had graduated, when they could create (more) permanent websites--which often did not happen. By encouraging our students --while students--to create online portfolios which they could maintain even after graduation, we removed one of the obstacles to experimentation by our more enthusiastic students, and offered them options to integrate such work into their studies of genre,audience and accessibility. This experiment has been more successful than originally expected; students' websites are among the most popular locations on the entire server, and have led to continuing communications between alumni and faculty. This has led some of us who advised students in Carnegie Mellon's MAPW (Masters in Professional Writing) and CPAD (Masters in Communication Planning and Design) to rethink issues which arise in the creation of web portfolios.

Sauer, Geoffrey. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Portfolios

The Value of Seeking Interdisciplinary Models for Smaller Professional Writing Programs  

Technical communication strains disciplinary boundaries, which can make program development difficult. In a time when we are experiencing what Richard Lanham calls 'a complete renegotiation of the alphabet/icon ratio upon which print-based thought is built,' no traditional departmental home (e.g., English) seems appropriate. One look at the classified section of the Society for Technical Communication Web site suggests that a technical communication student should graduate with competence in information technology and visual rhetoric (among other possibilities) as well as writing. For many of us, however, those competencies fall outside the disciplinary boundaries as defined at our local institutions and in fact we may face penalties for developing such competencies. As a member of a department of English and linguistics, for example, my department has no way to reward me for learning CGI scripting or FrameMaker.

Blythe, Stuart. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education

What About Writing?  

Like many businesses, many academic programs in professional and technical communication attempt to promote themselves as unique and as fulfilling a particular niche. Such specific orientations can serve a marketing function. For instance, some professional and technical programs use their advertising literature to promote classes that train students in the uses of cutting edge technologies. And as this conference's call for proposals suggests, some programs may begin to focus primarily on a particular type of technical communication such as computer documentation, medical writing, or multimedia.

Praetorius, Pete. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>WPA>Marketing