Placing Technical Communication at the Border of Service-Learning, Democratic Citizenship. and Corporate Interest  

What happens when we adapt the paradigm of service learning, which traditionally serves the underprivileged or nonprofits, to for-profit clients?

Williams, Sean D. and Renee Love. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Service Learning

Portrait of a Maturing Department    

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Department of Rhetoric and Writing has been an independent department since 1993. When we left the English Department, the writing programs -- composition, the shared B.A. program in Professional and Technical Writing, and the M.A. program in Technical and Expository Writing -- naturally came with us. What we didn't have was a developmental vision of a program.

L'Eplattenier, Barbara, Betty Freeland, Cindy Nahrwold, Karen Kuralt and Susann Barr. CPTSC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Education>Technical Writing

Program List

A list of all programs in scientific and technical communication. The titles of some programs may include related names such as professional writing or professional communication.

CPTSC. Academic>Programs

Program Models for Supporting Faculty and Student Research

Presentations about how to facilitate student and faculty research in higher education academic programs.

Yeats, Dave, Miles A. Kimball and Robert Waller, Nancy Allen, Kathleen Gygi and Russell Willerton. CPTSC (2005). Presentations>Management>Research

Program Revision and Assessment

Four presentations about program assessment and the revisions to programs that they suggest.

Eble, Michelle F., Ann S. Jennings, Janice Tovey and Sherry Southard. CPTSC (2005). Presentations>Education>Assessment

Program Revision and Assessment II  

Four presentations about exigences that are leading to change and innovation in technical communication academic programs.

Smith Taylor, Summer, Karen Kuralt, Elizabeth Pass and Wanda L. Worley. CPTSC (2005). Presentations>Education>Assessment

Program/Professional Management/Identity    

Technical communication faces the same identity crisis in 2001 that it did in 1991, 1981, 1971,and 1901. It seems that no matter how much energy technical communicators invest in the development and promotion of their expertise in their social and economic marketplaces, there are always morepeople who do not know what they do or why than there are people who understand what technical communication is. Certainly, this forces program administrators to recycle old arguments while relivingold battles and working to maintain their own institutional and professional integrity. Here, years after the emergence of technical communication as a viable academic pursuit and career choice, people stillwonder if technical communication is a profession or not. There are two sources of identity crisis here: 1) mismatched standards for judging technical communication as a profession, and 2) ill-suited language for framing the qualities of technical communication professionals.

Williamson, William J. CPTSC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Education>TC

Programmatic Roles in Research, Professional Development, and Ethical Responsibility

Four presentations about the roles of programs in the professional, ethical, and research roles of its students and faculty.

Farkas, David K., Jennifer L. Bowie, Kenneth T. Rainey and W.J. Williamson. CPTSC (2005). Presentations>Education>Professionalism

A Proposal for the Marriage of Technical Communication and WAC/WID    

Traditionally, Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing In the Disciplines have focused almost exclusively on preparing students to write in an academic environment in general and within their major disciplines in particular. Technical communication programs, on the other hand, focus almost entirely on preparing students to write for the world of work. A common concern among students, some professors, and many businesspeople is the lack of professional writing preparation that students receive within the university curriculum unless these students take courses in our programs. Even WAC/WID administrators are quick to note the need to find ways to integrate professional writing into some writing intensive courses. This presentation examined ways in which technical communication programs can revitalize writing-across-the-curriculum and writing-in-the-disciplines programs to the advantage of all concerned by working with WAC/WID administrators to design communication programs that integrate technical/professional into the curriculum at the senior level. Thus, technical communication programs can become the bridges that prepare students to enter the world of work with writing skills that are the focus of our programs.

Bosley, Deborah S. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Articles>Writing>Writing Across the Curriculum

Providing a Backbone for an Online Master's Program in Technical Communication    

Classrooms without walls. Textbooks without pages. Thinking outside the box. These are the hip phrases that describe contemporary e-learning. What is it, then, that provides structure, cohesion, and foundation for distance learning degree programs in technical and scientific communication?

Coppola, Nancy W. CPTSC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Education>Online

Re-Creating a PhD: From Technical to Professional Writing  

This presentation will investigate a number of questions involved in re-shaping a program, including: shaping a curriculum that adequately prepares students; creating opportunities to foster PhD candidates' professional development; identifying and capitalizing on our unique program strengths; balancing between theoretical knowledge and applied skills for PhD candidates; maintaining legitimacy in a traditional English department while still teaching applied skills; providing opportunities for intra-disciplinary research; and creating PhD candidates who are excellent teachers, researchers, and practitioners.

Tillery, Denise. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Graduate>PhD

Re-Visioning and Repositioning Technical Communication Programs in Digital Spaces  

As society increasingly inhabits digital spaces in addition to physical places, the environment in which technical communication programs are developed undergoes fundamental change. To a large extent, these changes occur because networked digital spaces exhibit different dynamics, dimensions, and characteristics than do physical places. For example, while physical places have three dimensions, digital spaces are unlimited in their dimensions, connections, and relationships. In such spaces, different entities, such as people, agents, objects, technologies, and information relate to each other in unlimited numbers and ways. With this capacity, digital spaces allow for the nearly instant aggregation of mega-structures called portal technologies, which command the lion's share of traffic in these spaces. According to Adamic and Huberman, digital spaces thus follow what they call a 'universal power law,' resulting in a winner-take-all environment.

Starke-Meyerring, Doreen. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education

Reaching Out: Incorporating the Intercultural in our Programs  

New opportunities for program development are emerging as higher educational institutions are pressed to prepare graduates for the challenges of working in global markets. As communications program designers we must reach out, going beyond disciplinary boundaries in order to acquire new expertise. We need more investment in incorporating the 'intercultural' in our communications programs.

Atkinson, Dianne. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>International

Reflective Instrumentalism as a Possible Guide for Revising a Master's Degree Reading List  

Although we only used Durst's model as an initial starting point to help us articulate one of the main tensions in our revision process and then basically abandoned it, the final reading list we generated--although not perfect--does reveal a degree of 'reflective instrumentalism.' Students who have seen the new list make positive comments about it because the list manages to bring what seem to be opposite poles--reflection and instrumentalism--into a single reading list that represents the current state of our discipline. Although we seemed during the process have lost sight of our model, our list, though not perfect, does seem to represent reflective instrumentalism.

Williams, Sean D. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Graduate

Report of the Technical Writer, 2014: A Possible Future  

My task here is to ponder the next twenty years of technical communication as a way of stimulating discussion about our current values. Since I'm an historical scholar and not a futurologist, I'm going to prevail upon you to join me in a thought experiment. Instead of looking forward in the usual manner of labor department reports and trend-searching popular prophets, let's follow the practice of science fiction writers-I apologize in advance to William Gibson and other masters-and place ourselves ahead in the year 2014, then look back, beginning with our own time in 1994, writing, as it were, the history of the present.

Killingsworth, M. Jimmie. CPTSC Proceedings (1994). Presentations>TC>History

Reviving Technical Writing at a Liberal Arts College: Writing a "Non-Technical" Technical Writing Course Description  

I am asking my program to incorporate more of the liberal arts into the course's title and course description to better appeal to (and serve) students in a liberal arts college. The course will have one or two new sophomore level iterations: as a technical/research writing course in which students complete a semester long service project, researching and writing a final report while focusing on writing, research, and mathematical skills, and/or as a technical writing/document design class where students focus on the document design and writing skills needed to produce items such as a resume, flyers, brochures, posters, and more.

Sehmel, Heather. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Writing>Technical Writing

The Service Course and Its Stretchable/Permeable Borders  

The smaller the program, the more stretchable/permeable the borders of the service course must become.

Patterson, Celia. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Writing

Should Academic Programs in Technical Communication Try to Strengthen the Bond between Academia and Industry?  

Whether the answer to this question is a resounding yes or no, we need to address this question when we consider models for strategic development. My own experience is that technical communication is drawing closer to issues present in both academia and industry, issues such as visualization of data, usability and field testing of products, design of instructional material for the web, and other research issues. But as the two domains need each other to begin to solve problems, the collaboration is fraught with perils, perils such as who states the problem, who manages the project, what resources are available for working on the project, and who owns the results? As we begin to try to strengthen the bond, do we currently have models for successful collaborations? Are there strategies in place that lead to success? Are certain approaches doomed to failure?

Feinberg, Susan G. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Industry and Academy>Collaboration

Should We Concentrate on Developing Specialized Programs to Fill Particular Niches?  

This question, posed as one of many in the annual call for papers, asks further if we should, in developing our technical communications programs, focus on such niches as environmental, safety, or medical writing, writing on the Web, on computer documentation, or on multimedia. As someone who has been asked to coordinate a rethinking of our school’s technical writing curriculum, such a question is paramount. From the perspective of one such as myself, who teaches at a small institution, the answer to this question hinges on three primary considerations: first, how does one balance the need to serve a small university’s duty to serve the general, liberal education requirements of a small body of students with the need to turn out graduates who have specific, marketable skills (a particularly important consideration in technical writing)? Second, how specialized can we make a class in a college like mine before enrollment figures for these classes dry up? And third, are the categories of the niches listed above really mutually exclusive, or can we say that some of them, such as writing for the Web, could be seen as a focus area that could incorporate some of the others?

LaGrandeur, Kevin. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>WPA

Sites of Critical Action for Technical & Professional Writing: Community, Corporation, Curriculum, Computing  

Our presentation will explore four potential sites of critical action for programs in technical and professional writing/communication: community, corporation, curriculum, and computing. Some of these sites have already received attention in the field (e.g., corporation); other sites are relatively un(or under-) examined (e.g., community).

Grabill, Jeffrey T. and James E. Porter. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>TC

Some Ideas About Producing Online Modules: Learning Dynamics Australia    

Online learning results from the interaction of a learner and a Web-based set of content and collaboration with other people. The selection and direction of the content are determined by the learning and business outcomes of any module. The client sets the outcomes and provides the content. The LDA team translates that content into a set of screen components that state the meaning of the content and builds in continuity through a navigation system. In addition, collaboration with a tutor andother learners helps to maintain the personal nature of learning.

Morgan, David. CPTSC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Education>Online>Australia

Strategies for Expanding Program Borders: Communication Modules in Engineering Technology  

To improve university-level presentations, students need rhetorical, design, and usability strategies and tools to create effective, professional presentations. By developing a series of three to five modules for science and technology students, Professional Writing faculty could polish materials for use as one-day professional development workshops in the workplace.

Johnson, Molly K. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Presentations>Education