What Can Technical Communication Programs Learn from Corporate Universities?  

As technical communications programs consider our own strategic program development it is important for us to consider a variety of program development models that exist both within and outside of traditional university contexts. This presentation will present alternative models for program development employed by leading corporate universities. These programs emphasize on-demand learning, immersion and experiential learning, and highly accountable educational experiences. The presentation will not argue that technical communication programs should simply import these models from corporate settings. Instead, it will suggest that corporate approaches bring many important issues to the table that strategic program developers need to evaluate and discuss as they consider their own program development.

Faber, Brenton D. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education

What We Do Best

This lecture describes the need for the field to clarify how we represent ourselves and think about ourselves.

Bernhardt, Stephen A. CPTSC Proceedings (1996). Presentations>Lectures>Streaming>Audio

What's the Balance? Technical Communicator or Technical Communicator?  

When developing a technical communication program, program developers need to determine how technical their programs will be. In my part of the country, for example, the prevailing philosophy for many years was that you could take technical people and teach them to write easier than you could take trained communicators and teach them the needed technical information. Ads for technical communicators across the country scream for knowledge and sometimes expertise in a wide range of computer software, and usually it is not only knowledge of formatting technical documents as in Frame, or Power Point, or HTML, but also knowledge of and again sometimes expertise about the scientific and technical subjects about which they write.

Little, Sherry Burgus. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Technology

"Who are You, and What is It You Do Again?": Struggling for Identity in Small Technical Communication Programs  

Technical writing faculty who work in solo situations are often seen as the 'other' in their home departments, whether we are housed with literature, business, or engineering faculty. We are thus inscribed in a unique border location, and consequently are further inscribed in a peripheral location within the greater technical writing academy.

Nardone, Carroll Ferguson. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Writing>Technical Writing

Why and How Our Institutional Home Matters: Strategic Program Planning in a Specific Setting  

My presentation will address the conference question of how institutional setting affects program focus and development. The answer, at least as we understand it so far, turns out to be fairly complex. In our case, for example, the recent changes to our Technical Writing degree have been directly responsive to rapid changes in the field of technical communication, in evolving technologies, and in the importance of information systems and web-related writing and design for technical communicators, At the same time, it is clearly the case that an equally strong influence has been the internal pressures we feel as we find ourselves competing with other departments at CMU for students who had once been a kind of private preserve, And this pressure involves more than competition for students. An equally important value at stake is our perceived status and role within our department and our university.

Schnakenberg, Karen R. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Rhetoric

Why Do Students Entering a Major in Technical Communication Resist the Introductory Course?  

I have been teaching HU2600, Introduction to Technical and Scientific Communication, a course in which students are introduced to the major and the profession for the last three years. Students have resisted this course during, and previous teachers report that the resistance preceded my taking over the course. I believe that students' resistance is tied, first, to the nature of technical communication education. Using C. S. Lewis's definitions, I point out that teaching the technical communication curriculum is not technically the same thing as educating the student; nor is it equivalent to offering students the chance to pursue 'learning' for its own sake. Rather, it is training aimed at producing a specialist. As such, the technical communication curriculum is what Lewis calls a composite curriculum chosen for the student by those who understand the profession better than they do. Add to this definition Jacques Ellul's claim that education in the technological society attempts to make people happy doing things they would normally not choose to do (348), and we arrive at an accurate, though unflattering, description of the project of 'educating' majors in technical communication.

Sullivan, Dale L. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Articles>Education>TC

Why Should We Be Exploring Accountability?  

We probably need to think much more than we have in the past in terms of assessment, external evaluation, and accountability. We are hearing ever more frequently the concerns of administrators, regents, legislators, and departments of education for greater accountability by universities-concerns that will be passed down the administrative levels to program directors and teachers. This may be a blessing in disguise, an opportunity to tell the public who we are and why we are important.

Savage, Gerald J. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>TC>Assessment

Working in the Liberal Arts/Technology Borderlands

One border that technical and professional communication (TPC) programs straddle constantly is that between the liberal arts and technology. We struggle to find ways to do justice to both as we prepare our students to enter these professions.

Allen, Nancy J. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Technology

Writing at the End of Text: Rethinking Production in Technical Communication  

Technical Communication, as a discipline and as a practice, has always held an odd relationship to writing: We practice a subordinate for of writing, one step or more removed from those our cultures value most highly. We are not, admittedly, authors in the sense in which Foucault once defined the term. The writing that technical communicators do is of a different status than the writing that authors do. Although we could say that manuals and instructions and online help are the fuel that increasingly powers our economy, we would have to admit that our texts do not receive the esteem given to literature. But we might, instead, arrange the issue differently: what if technical communication rejects writing? Not merely in the sense that 'communication' is about multiple media, but in the more fundamental sense that technical communication is about a different order of production, more like the database than the essay. Rephrasing the question of value this way presents a different set of approaches to technical communication curricula, among other things, allowing us to take new perspectives on a set of issues that have haunted our field from the beginning.

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Articles>TC>Theory

The Zen of TC: Transgressing Imagined Boundaries Between Liberal Arts and Technical Communication  

The field of Technical Communication has long recognized the value of bringing the world of business and research into the TC classroom. Indeed, most TC programs not only require students to analyze case studies of real-world business enterprises, they also require students to participate in intensive internship programs. Certainly, TC students who engage in exercises either modeled after effective business and research practices or directly situated within these environments are better able to contribute to their employer's success once they graduate.

Mott, Richard K. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>TC