Complicating Binaries: Exploring Tensions in Technical and Scientific Communication

Proceedings 2002 29th Annual Conference Logan, Utah

About CPTSC Purpose: The Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication was founded in 1973 to promote programs in technical and scientific communication, promote research in technical and scientific communication, develop opportunities for the exchange of ideas and information concerning programs, research, and career opportunities, assist in the development and evaluation of new programs in technical and scientific communication, if requested, and promote exchange of information between this organization and interested parties. Annual conference: CPTSC holds an annual conference featuring roundtable discussions of position papers submitted by members. The proceedings include the position papers. Authors have the option of developing their papers after the meeting into more detailed versions. Program reviews: CPTSC offers program reviews. The reviews involve intensive self-study as well as site visits by external reviewers. Information is available at the CPTSC Web site. Web site: CPTSC maintains a Web site at http://www.cptsc.org. This site includes the constitution, information on conferences and membership, a forum for discussion of distance education, and other organizational and program information. Listserv: CPTSC’s listserv is CPTSC-L. To subscribe, send an email message to [email protected]. Keep the subject line of the message blank and delete your signature block if you use one. In the first line of the message type subscribe CPTSC-L your_email_address

CPTSC Officers 2000—2002 2002—2004 President Stuart Selber Bruce Maylath Vice President Bruce Maylath Ann Blakeslee Secretary Dianne Atkinson Kelli Cargile Cook Treasurer Karen Schnakenberg Karen Schnakenberg Members at Large Nancy Allen Nancy Allen Jeff Grabill Jim Dubinsky Dale Sullivan Karla Saari Kitalong Past President Deborah Andrews Stuart Selber Technology Officer William Williamson William Williamson

About the 29th Annual Conference The 29th annual CPTSC Conference was held at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, and was hosted by the English Department's Professional and Technical Writing Program. Sessions were held in the Eccles Conference Center on the Utah State campus. The campus, nestled between the Bear and Wellsville ranges of the Wasatch Mountains, lies in the Cache Valley. Participants enjoyed scenic mountain views as they walked across campus during the conference and hiked the colorful Crimson Trail on Saturday's excursion. Presentations focused on the theme of "Complicating Binaries: Exploring Tensions in Technical and Scientific Communication," inspired by the Janus year of 2002.

Upcoming Conferences 2003: October 2-4 Potsdam, NY Clarkson University 2004: October West Lafayette, IN Purdue University 2005: October Lubbock, TX Texas Tech University

Complicating Binaries: Exploring Tensions in Technical and Scientific Communication

Proceedings 2002 29th Annual Conference Logan, Utah

Acknowledgements: Proceedings Conference Logo William Soleau Proceedings Editor Ann Blakeslee Editorial Assistant Jeffrey Steichmann Copy Editors Rhonda Copeland Kendra Moe

Acknowledgements: Conference Program Chairs Nancy Allen Dale Sullivan Local Arrangements Chairs Kelli Cargile Cook Nancy O'Rourke Web site information Jeff Grabill Karen Schnakenberg Susan Lawrence Conference Web site Dale Sullivan

Donations to Support the Conference Greenwood/Ablex Allyn & Bacon/Longman Lawrence Erlbaum Bedford/St. Martins Prentice Hall The 3GB Group and Syllabase

©2003 Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication Printed in the United States of America in Ann Arbor, MI 48105 Papers may be reproduced for educational purposes without permission of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication if the author and CPTSC are credited.

Contents

Keynote Presentation

Globalization and Critical Consciousness in Technical Communication...... 1 Thomas Huckin Plenary Panel on New Graduate Programs

Texts and Technology Ph.D. Program: University of Central Florida ...... 14 Paul Dombrowski Digital Rhetoric at Michigan State University: Designing a New Professional Writing Program...... 16 Jeff Grabill Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media: Challenges in Interdisciplinary Program Design ...... 18 Carolyn Miller Theory & Practice of Professional Communication: A New Ph.D. Program at Utah State University...... 21 Mark Zachry Concurrent Session 1

A. Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Relating English Depts. Exploring Attitudes and Values: Tensions in Interdisciplinary Discourse...... 23 Molly Johnson Courses, Credits, and Contact Hours: Clarifying the Role of the Humanities/Technology Binary Along a Continuum of Emphasis in Technical Communication...... 24 Michael Knievel Developing Technical Communication Degree Options in an Arts and Humanities Setting ...... 27 Kate Latterell

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B. Teaching Tech. Comm.: The Content Question Ours/Theirs: Core Content in Technical Communication ...... 28 Dave Clark Actions and Reactions: Technical Communication and the Process of Change ...... 29 Helen Correll Is There a Place for Technical Communication in the Public Sphere?...... 31 Carolyn Rude The White Paper: Prominent in Industry, Neglected in Academia...... 33 Russell Willeron C. Tech. Comm. & Digital Media: Information Architecture Pedagogy, Praxis and Proliferation: Technical Communicators as Information Architects ...... 37 Michael Salvo The Need for Architect/Construction Worker Dichotomies in Information Architecture as a Profession...... 39 Geoffrey Sauer Open Source Practices and Technical Communication Programs...... 41 Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Brenton Faber Concurrent Session 2

A. Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Relating to Technology ‘We look forward and back, and pine…’ Can this Relationship Be Saved? ...... 44 J. Harrison Carpenter 'We Look Before and After, and Pine' Part II: How Do We Negotiate Our Differences, and Should We? ...... 46 Margaret Hundleby Lessons Learned While Looking Both Ways: A Work-in-Process Review of Cincinnati State's Multimedia Information Design Programs ...... 48 Pamela S. Ecker Complicating Tensions and Reproducing Culture: Searching for Models in Technical and Scientific Communication...... 49 Carroll Ferguson Nardone

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B. Teaching Tech. Comm.: Redesigning Presentation Thinking Global: If "International" Means English, What does "Intercultural" Mean?...... 52 Dianne Atkinson "Learning to Write / Writing to Learn": Considering the Limits of a Pedagogical Binary in Science and Engineering Communication in the Disciplines...... 53 Linda Driskill A Call for a Prax-ical Undergraduate Major Curricular Framework...... 55 Tim Peeples C. Tech. Comm. & Digital Media: Teaching Online Considerations for Online Technical Writing...... 57 Keith Gibson Hyper-Textbooks ...... 60 Kevin LaGrandeur Technical Writing and Online Distance Education: The Advantages and the Pitfalls ...... 63 Kenneth T. Rainey Negotiating the Intersection of Instructional Methods in Distance Education and the Traditional Classroom...... 65 Janice Tovey D. New Approaches in the Classroom: Visuals, Text, Web Program Priorities: Visuals versus Text ...... 67 Deborah C. Andrews With World Enough and Time: Balancing Fundamental Skills and Ultimate Goals in Document Design Courses ...... 68 Susan Lawrence Web Design as Technical Communication Service Course ...... 70 Pete Praetorius Ad/Manual: Rhetoric of Technology in the Technical Communication Program...... 72 Dan Riordan

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Concurrent Session 3

A. Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Collaborating Inside and Outside Academia The Inside-Out Initiative: Negotiating and Reducing Difference with Colleagues Both In and Outside the University; Or, What Do Technical Communication and English Education Have in Common? ...... 73 Ann M. Blakeslee Training Students as Technical Communicators for Interdisciplinary Situations: Traditional Scenes vs. Indeterminate Zones for Collaboration ...... 75 John C. Gooch Creating and Connecting Curricular and Extracurricular Service Learning Opportunities: A Role for and Benefit to Technical Communication Programs ...... 77 Heather Sehmel B. Teaching Tech. Comm.: Theory & Practice in Curriculum Development Repurposing v. Generating: Developing a Certificate in Technical Writing...... 79 Tracy Bridgeford Back to Basics: Theory and Research vs. Teaching Software in Tech Com Programs...... 81 Susan Feinberg Skills and Literacies for the Postmodern World: Developing a Professional & Technical Communication Major at Weber State University...... 82 Becky Jo McShane Familiar Wheel to Build, New Road to Explore...... 83 Lili Fox Velez C. Tech. Comm. & Digital Media: Web-based Learning Identifying Tensions in Virtual Spaces...... 84 Rebecca E. Burnett Online Learning: Revisioning Rather than Repurposing...... 85 David Fisher Tensions Between the Academy and Industry...... 87 David Morgan Dissembling the Binary of Theory and Praxis in Digital Communication: Programmatic Concerns...... 89 Richard K. Mott

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D. Researching Our Needs & Limitations Building the Research Base of Scientific and Technical Communication by Increasing Our Collaboration with Master’s Students ...... 90 David Dayton No Human Subjects Were Harmed in the Writing of This Proposal: Tensions Between Institutional Review Boards and Writing Programs ...... 92 Cindy Nahrwold, Barbara L’Eplattenier, and Karen M. Kuralt Technical Communication: A Discipline in Need of More Empirical Inquiry ...... 97 Graham Smart Concurrent Session 4

A. Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Academy and Industry Sticking to Skills/Considering Ethics ...... 99 Barbara Gordon Binary Tension in Teaching/Practicing/Researching/Producing in Academies/Industry...... 101 TyAnna Herrington and Jessica Cunard-Hunter The Gap between Old and New: Technology and Traditional Scholarship ...... 103 Terri Palmer B. Teaching Tech. Comm.: Designing Graduate Programs Death and Resurrection: The Viability of Reinstating a MS/MA in Scientific and Technical Communication in a Service Milieu ...... 105 Teena A. M. Carnegie Supervising Adjunct Instructors: Reflections of a New, Tenure-Track Professional Writing Coordinator at a Small Comprehensive University...... 108 David Alan Sapp The Mechanics and Politics of Teaching with Technology Certificates ...... 111 Stuart Selber "Conducting" Graduate Programs in Technical Communication...... 113 Robert R. Johnson

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C. Rethinking Our Writing for Reader/Users Adding the “Universe of Users” to Usability Testing and Field Research: A Call for Change in the Academy and Industry...... 114 Jennifer L. Bowie Recruiting New Faculty? Change Your Rhetorical Perspective...... 119 Kelli Cargile Cook Retaining the Relevancy of Rhetoric in Practice: Interactivity as a Rhetorical Strategy in Multimedia Writing ...... 123 Julia Romberger Appendices

Distinguished Service Award ...... 125 29th Annual Conference Program ...... 132 Minutes and Treasurer’s Report...... 139 CPTSC Members 2002 ...... 143

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Contents viii Keynote Presentation

Globalization and Critical Consciousness in Technical and Professional Communication

Thomas Huckin University of Utah

In the business and technical world, An understanding of practical increasing attention is being given to rhetoric as conduct provides what a globalization. Yet, in technical and techne cannot: a locus for professional communication (TPC) questioning, for criticism, for textbooks and scholarly publications, distinguishing good practice from globalization receives only the faintest bad. That locus is not the nod. I find this strange, given the clear individual or any particular set of interest in context, ethics, and social private interests but the human issues among contemporary TPC community that is created through scholars and theorists. In my view, if this conduct… While the good that broad scope of interest were extended praxis in this higher sense creates beyond our national borders, as it should may include the interests of be, TPC researchers and teachers would individuals and industry, it is larger naturally give more attention in their and more complex; the relevant scholarly publications and in their community is not the working classroom teaching practices to the group or the corporation but the sociopolitical aspects of globalization. larger community within which the Such a move would add depth and corporation sells its products, pays relevance to the entire enterprise of taxes, hires employees, lobbies, teaching technical and professional issues stock, files lawsuits, and is communication in today’s world. itself held accountable to the law… Theoretical precedents If technical writing is the rhetoric of ‘the world of work,’ it is the What I am proposing in this paper is rhetoric of contemporary praxis. In not entirely novel. Carolyn Miller, for teaching such rhetoric, then, we example, long ago championed the idea acquire a measure of responsibility that technical and professional for political and economic conduct. communication courses should include (1989) attention to civic issues: Not long after, Dale Sullivan added to Understanding practical rhetoric as Miller’s thoughts by noting that if a matter of conduct [phronesis] technical communication is seen as rather than of production, as a praxis, we should expand its scope to matter of arguing in a prudent way include political discourse: toward the good of the community rather than of constructing texts, Many of us do not agree or identify should provide some new with the values of the perspectives for teachers of technological society and the technical writing and developers of military-industrial complex. courses and programs in technical Instead, we identify with a variety communication…. of alternative social groups quite diverse in their plurality but all

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sharing at least one value: that of course, opted for this last course of human beings should not be action. subordinated to the technological Globalization imperative. As such, we want to regain the upper hand; that is we One of the defining features of our want to make technology serve times is globalization, defined by the humans instead of letting financier/ philanthropist George Soros as technology shape our society and “the development of global financial its values. Therefore, we can call markets, the growth of transnational technical communication a corporations, and their increasing virtuous practice only when it is domination over national economies” put to the service of one of these Also known as corporate globalization, it alternative humanistic visions. But contrasts with grassroots globalization, the very thought processes which is based on social justice, embodied in most modern regulation of capital, and respect for local technical genres have grown out of cultural preferences. the technological mindset, and Globalization is not new. Rather, as they continue to support the Kevin Phillips points out in Wealth and dominance of the technological Democracy, globalization has been society while denying people the occurring in waves for the past 500 years. power to take social action as It was first led by the Spanish and citizens when they write. In effect, Portuguese, then by the Dutch, then by if we continue to teach these genres, the British, and now by the US. However, we indoctrinate our students into a according to Zbigniew Brzezinski, this is system we don’t agree with; but if the first time in history that globalization we stop preparing them for their has been led by a truly global world roles in the technological world, power, as the previous empires did not then we are no longer really enjoy complete global hegemony in so teaching technical communication many ways. according to the social contract In brief, America stands supreme that we all bought into when we in the four decisive domains of agreed to teach the course.” (379) global power: militarily, it has an Sullivan then listed the possible unmatched global reach; actions facing anyone in this dilemma: economically, it remains the main “(1) You can get with the program, locomotive of global growth…; change your values, and become a technologically, it retains the representative of the technological overall lead in the cutting-edge society; (2) you can leave the profession areas of innovation; and of teaching technical writing; (3) you can culturally, despite some crassness, become schizophrenic; or (4) you can it enjoys an appeal that is figure out how to change your course so unrivaled, especially among the that it at once teaches the discourse world’s youth—all of which appropriate for the technological world gives the United States a political and makes students aware of the values clout that no other state comes embedded in such discourse and the close to matching dehumanizing effects of it.” (ibid) He,

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The US spends more on its military globalization has done, or has than the next 15 nations combined. It is failed to do. the biggest arms dealer in the world. It Globalization is meant to signify has 5% of the world’s population but uses integration and unity – yet it has 40% of the world’s basic resources and proved, in its way, to be no less emits 25% of the world’s CO2. polarizing than the cold-war Brzezinski argues that the US likely divisions it has supplanted. The will also be the very last global lines between globalization’s superpower. That’s because “in the long supporters and its critics run not run, global politics are bound to become only between countries but also increasingly uncongenial to the through them, as people struggle to concentration on hegemonic power in the come to terms with the defining hands of a single state… Nation-states economic force shaping the planet are gradually becoming increasingly today. The two sides in the permeable [and] knowledge as power is discussion – a shouting match, becoming more diffuse, more shared, and really—describe what seem to be less constrained by national two completely different forces. Is boundaries… [Furthermore, there is] the the globe being knit together by the new web of global linkages that is Nikes and Microsofts and growing exponentially outside the more Citigroups in a dynamic new traditional nation-state system. That system that will eventually lift the web—woven by multinational have-nots of the world up from corporations, NGOs (many of them medieval misery? Or are ordinary transnational in character) and scientific people now victims of ruthless communities and reinforced by the corporate domination, as the Nikes Internet—already creates an informal and Microsofts and Citigroups roll global system that is inherently over the poor in nation after nation uncongenial to more institutionalized and in search of new profits?” inclusive global cooperation.” ( 209, 215) Corporations are indeed the dominant Writing recently in The New York players in all of this: Times, Tina Rosenberg notes that: • Of the 100 largest economies in Globalization is a phenomenon the world, 51 are corporations; that has remade the economy of only 49 are countries. virtually every nation, reshaped almost every industry and touched • The top 200 corporations' billions of lives, often in surprising combined sales are bigger than and ambiguous ways. The stories the combined economies of all filling the front pages in recent countries minus the biggest 10. weeks – about economic crisis and • While the sales of the top 200 are contagion in Argentina, Uruguay the equivalent of 27.5 percent of and Brazil, about President Bush world economic activity, they getting the trade bill he wanted – employ only 0.78 percent of the are all part of the same story, the world's workforce. largest story of our times: what • Between 1983 and 1999, the profits of the top 200 firms grew

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362.4 percent, while the number still not cleaned up the site of people they employed grew by and no executive has been only 14.4 percent. punished. • A full five percent of the top 200s' 2. Shell’s persecution of Ogoni combined workforce is employed tribesmen in Nigeria, by Wal-Mart, a company including the hanging of notorious for union-busting and poet/activist Ken Saro-Wiwa widespread use of part-time and eight others in 1995. This workers to avoid paying benefits. past summer five • US corporations dominate the top ChevronTexaco facilities 200, with 82 slots (41% of the were seized by Nigerian total). women demanding jobs for their men. • Of the US corporations on the list, 44 did not pay the full standard 3. Unocal’s use of Burmese 35% federal corporate tax rate soldiers to force villagers to during the period 1996-1998. build a pipeline. Some of Seven of the firms actually paid these villagers were raped and less than zero in federal income murdered by these soldiers, taxes in 1998 (because of rebates). and a US federal panel ruled These include: Texaco, Chevron, just two weeks ago that PepsiCo, Enron, WorldCom, Unocal can be held liable for McKesson and the world's this in US courts. Unocal also biggest corporation - General supported the Taliban in Motors. Afghanistan up until 9/11. • All this, plus their lack of public 4. Pharmaceuticals vs. AIDS: accountability, has made the Of 25 million HIV carriers in globe “a friendly playground for Africa today, less than the transnational corporation” one-tenth of one percent are (Institute for Transnational receiving drug treatments that Corps.) could save or at least prolong their lives. Meanwhile, the Many corporations have abused their top 10 US pharmaceuticals power. Consider just these few examples: made $100 billion profit last 1. The explosion of the Union year. Cipla (India’s largest Carbide pesticide plant in pharma) sells an anti-AIDS Bhopal, India in 1984. This is pill for 64 cents that the US the world’s deadliest pharmas charge $25 for. industrial disaster, with 5. Some other examples include 22,149 deaths as of 1999, Enron’s Dabhol power plant with more still to come, plus in India, ExxonMobil’s countless deformities and activities in Indonesia, and chronic illnesses. The Nike’s use of sweatshop labor accident was caused by poor in Malaysia. These and others maintenance due to reckless are detailed on websites for cost-cutting; the company has Human Rights Watch,

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Amnesty International, FAIR, • Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and National Labor Committee, other diseases etc. See, for example, • Ensure environmental http://www.globalissues.org/ sustainability TradeRelated/Corporations/H umanRights.asp • Develop a global partnership for development 6. And, of course, there are environmental issues of all kinds, as described on A common reaction to the grim websites for Greenpeace, statistics on the one hand and these Earthjustice, Union of (seemingly idealistic) goals on the other Concerned Scientists, Sierra is to throw up one’s hands and say, what Club, the UN’s can anyone do? This is certainly Intergovernmental Panel on understandable, but as financial experts Climate Change, and so on. like William Tabb and George Soros say, “It’s wrongheaded.” There are realistic ways to solve these problems, and I Meanwhile, the richest 1 percent of recommend Tabb’s Unequal Partners the world’s population receives as much and Soros’s George Soros on as the poorest 57 percent.; 1.2 billion Globalization, both published this year. people live on less than one dollar a day, Soros, an ardent and unusually 2.8 billion on $2 dollars a day.; 1.1 billion progressive globalist, says there are four lack access to safe drinking water; 826 main tasks before us: million suffer from malnutrition; 11 million children die each year of • Containing the instability of preventable causes; and 113 million financial markets children of primary school age are not in • Correcting the built-in bias in our school. [UN Capital Development Fund, international financial and trade 2002] institutions that favors the At the UN General Assembly in 2000, developed countries that largely heads of state and government took stock control these institutions of the gross inequalities in human • Complementing these development worldwide and recognized international financial and trade “their collective responsibility to uphold institutions with similarly the principles of human dignity, equality powerful institutions devoted to and equity at the global level”. They set poverty reduction, provision of eight goals for 2015: public goods, and other social • Eliminate poverty and hunger goals • Achieve universal primary • Improving the quality of public education life in countries suffering from corrupt, oppressive governments. • Achieve gender equity and empower women Tabb takes a more radical approach, explaining in detail how corporate • Reduce child mortality globalization can be countered by a • Improve maternal health grassroots form of globalization, the

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seeds of which have been planted in the audiences). For example, Markel (2001) well-publicized protests in Seattle, Genoa, has one page advocating the ”moral and elsewhere. minimum” in international marketing, Among the many important and three and one-half pages on encouraging points he makes is the fact understanding multiculturalism that about 90% of all capital flows in the (including the usual guidelines for global marketplace are the global writing for international readers such as equivalent of day-trading, i.e., very “keep sentences short,” “limit your short-term speculative transactions vocabulary,” etc.), two and one-half involving currencies. None of these pages on ethics and multiculturalism transactions are presently taxed, but if (including a nice case study), one-half they were taxed at even a very small level, page on persuading multicultural as Nobel laureate James Tobin has audiences, two pages on creating proposed, it would provide the funding graphics for multicultural audiences, and necessary to finance the goals mentioned one page on writing instructions and earlier. Many experts, politicians, and manuals for multicultural readers. This financiers support such a "Tobin tax," adds up to about 11 ½ pages in all (out of which according to Tabb would raise 745 pages), or 1.5 percent. It's good on an more than a trillion dollars a year. (232) instrumental level, but does nothing to challenge capitalist orthodoxy. Most graduates of our TPC courses go on to careers in American Burnett (2001) has three pages on corporations, and most will either work international collaboration, four pages on abroad for some time or have significant cross-cultural product information, a interactions with colleagues or customers two-page example of an international overseas. And it is a shrinking world: report, three pages on international already one-third of US profits are earned manuals, and three sentences on giving in international trade; four out of five an oral presentation to an international new jobs in the US are created to produce audience. This adds up to 12 pages out of goods and services overseas; and current about 800, also 1.5percent. It too is US investments overseas are worth over strictly instrumental in its orientation. $300 billion. (DeVoss). Thus, for Jones and Lane (2002), after noting instrumental reasons alone, our students that “Today’s workplace is international should be made aware of how Corporate or global,” devotes less than three pages America works, both for better and for out of 760 to international topics. worse, both at home and abroad. Included are the usual embarrassing How is TPC responding? mistranslations, such as “Coors translated its slogan ‘Turn it Loose’ into Spanish, Given the importance of where it read as ‘Suffer from Diarrhea.’” globalization and the importance of Andrews’ Technical Communication Corporate America in carrying it out, one in the Global Community, 2nd would think that TPC would be giving it edition (2001) is a unique and comprehensive major emphasis. But that’s not the case: textbook, covering all sorts of aspects of Textbooks. TPC textbooks pay only international technical communication. lip service to globalization, using the Even with its lengthy discussion of umbrella term ”multiculturalism” (which conveniently includes domestic ESL

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cross-cultural ethics, though, it is largely careers 6 or 8 or 12 times over a instrumental. lifetime, changing the way Hoft (1995) is a unique scholarly students perceive their relationship monograph on the subject of to authority structures, technology, international technical communication. and information itself is the Unfortunately, it too takes an entirely greatest positive impact we can uncritical stance on corporate US have on their lives… If we start activities overseas. Even the subtitle of now to infuse the work world with the book, “How to Export Information symbolic analysts who appreciate about High Technology,” presupposes the role of technical American superiority. communication, the world can only be an easier place for those of Journal articles. Scholarly articles us who already recognize that in our field generally mirror the value.” (97) instrumentalism of textbooks. For example, DeVoss, et al. (2002), lists five The article makes some good points but challenges in teaching intercultural is instrumental and accommodationist communication: (a) Focusing on rather than critical. Catherine Fox and characteristics of students’ own cultures, David Fisher (2001) take Wilson’s paper (b) replacing notions of cultural to task on this issue and urge greater stereotypes with more fluid reflexivity, although they say little about understanding of tendencies, (c) avoiding globalization. limiting guidelines for good ITC to Conference papers. Conference guidelines for good tech comm. in papers tend to follow suit. Of the 57 general, (d) developing a more papers presented at the most recent sophisticated sense of design ATTW conference, for example, many considerations for ITC, and (e) dealt with civic activism, ethics, gender encouraging students to move ITC issues, or politics (usually internal). Six beyond the classroom. This article is dealt with overseas issues, including a perhaps the best of its kind, but it deals panel of three papers describing new tech with intercultural communication and is comm programs in the Ukraine. A fourth, almost entirely uncritical. titled “Steps Toward Globalizing the Greg Wilson’s “Technical Technical Writing Classroom,” was Communication and Late Capitalism: about an online exchange between novice Considering a Postmodern Technical tech writing students in the US, Belgium, Communication Pedagogy” (2001) and Denmark dealing with translation discusses the challenge of being a problems. Only two papers could be said technical communicator in a global, to address the kinds of issues that I’m postindustrial economy. He notes, among talking about today, i.e. the sociopolitical other things, that: aspects of globalization. Interestingly, they’re both centered not on the Technical communication ascendant American empire but on the pedagogy has not historically been after-effects of the long-dead British concerned with agency, but in a empire. global economy where information increasingly is the product and In short, at a time when both US employees can expect to change imperialism and corporate America are

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becoming more and more dominant and “Why?” responds her husband. “That guy are under intense criticism both at home knew four and what did it get him?” and (especially) abroad, there is a glaring A fourth reason for this neglect, I absence of global sociopolitical think, has to do with a general insecurity consciousness in TPC. I think this is a many of us feel about our knowledge of major problem. Students majoring in globalization issues. Even TPC teachers technical areas, business, pre-med, etc., who have traveled overseas and who are seldom exposed to political ideas generally have a good knowledge of other than American-style laissez-faire world geography and politics may feel capitalism. If we in TPC raise our sights uncertain about specific matters of and broaden our horizons, a TPC course corporate globalization. This problem, in an English department or writing however, can be remedied through program might offer these students their consulting good primers like Tabb (2002) only exposure to alternative ideas and and Chua (2003). Finally, TPC is would thereby be a truly educating dominated by utilitarianism, including experience. the utilitarian interests of corporations, Reasons for this neglect who are potential employers of our students and underwriters of our research; Where does this neglect of issues of universities, who welcome such involving corporate globalization derive academic-industry partnerships; and of from? I believe there are at least five students, who welcome the acquisition of distinct causes. First, there is simply the communication skills that are valued on inertia of tradition. TPC has never the job market and in the workplace. As concerned itself with critical analyses of Susan Wells has said, “The ideology of corporate globalization and therefore technical writing explicitly assents to its would need some prodding to change this instrumental subordination to capital; the pattern. Second, TPC as a field originated aim of the discipline as a whole is to and developed in the United States, become a more responsive tool” (Wells, addressing primarily an audience of American college students. Thus it has cited in Miller 1989). always had a domestic orientation. Third, Reasons to change course despite its longstanding identity as a There are many reasons, however, for melting pot of immigrants, US society TPC scholars and teachers to go beyond has always been somewhat insular. As our traditional, US-focused Hoft notes, “Large countries with large instrumentalism and include more domestic markets encourage international topics viewed from a more ethnocentrism” (127). Geography also critical stance. For one thing, issues such plays a role, as is reflected in this joke as technology transfer, use of labor, and about American monolingualism: An environmental impact fall readily within American couple is standing on the street the domain of TPC instruction and in Paris. A man walks over and asks a research, and they are also at the forefront question in French. The Americans shrug. of globalization and global politics. Thus He repeats the question in German, TPC can broaden its scope without Spanish, then Italian. Getting no response, departing radically from customary he leaves. The woman turns to her topics of interest. Second, US companies husband and says, “Maybe we should are doing more and more business learn a foreign language, honey.”

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overseas, with increasingly greater Institutional Å Description ÅÆ Institutional Æ impacts on those societies. Hence, there Maintenance Change is more material for both teachers and (e.g. scholars to work with. Third, students (e.g. Carroll Bazerman (Selfe & Selfe seem to be taking more of an interest in 1984, Dorazio & Paradis 1996, Sullivan global issues, especially after September & Stovall 1997) 1991, & Porter 1997) 11. Fourth, such a move would be a Spilka natural extension of a longstanding trend 1993) in TPC, namely, an increasing attention Instrumental Disruptive/ to context and its effects on the kinds of troublesome documents we want our students to (Self-)regulate Archival d Unregulated produce. This trend can be seen in the gradual shift from current-traditional Objective Contingent rhetoric to social constructionism, Techne Phronesis postmodernism, and other more contemporary approaches to rhetoric and epistemology. It can be seen in genre study, where emergent genres and hybrid genres and other forms responsive to contextual demands are of more interest than the fixed formats of years ago. It can Model of qualitative research practices be seen in audience analysis, as TPC has (from Herndl and Nahrwold, 2000) moved beyond the simple demographic In general, the top journals and categories and stereotypes of the 70s to conferences in TPC today are more likely usability studies, ethnographies, and to feature sociopolitical topics such as other more sophisticated ways of feminism, multiculturalism, and understanding an audience. It can be seen organizational culture than more in the emergence of document design as a traditional topics associated with major component of TPC following the institutional maintenance or description. pioneering work by Karen Schriver, Sixth, along with sociopolitical topics William Horton, Robin Williams, and there is a longstanding and increasing others. interest in ethical issues. However, studies A fifth reason for TPC to change course of ethics in TPC typically take a critical at this point in history is that our research perspective only when addressing a paradigms are becoming more critical. As company-specific situation. What’s needed Carl Herndl and Cindy Nahrwold have is more awareness of macro issues, argued, scholarship in TPC has shifted in international human rights issues, and so on, the past decade from an emphasis on techne as manifested for example in the protests of to a more politically-oriented phronesis, as World Trade Organization meetings. illustrated in the table below: Seventh, many TPC scholars have the academic background to do critical work and there is already a burgeoning literature on civic activism in TPC (cf. C. Miller, 1989; D. Sullivan, 1990; T. Miller, 1991; Sauer, 1993; Myers; Selfe & Selfe, 1996; Waddell, 1996; Wells, 1996; Stotsky, 1996;

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Keynote: Globalization and Critical Consciousness 9

Segal, et al., 1998; Cook, 2002; Faber, 8. Teachers need to see 2002). But except for a single chapter in themselves as ‘transformative Faber (2002) illustrating the predations of a intellectuals’ US transnational death-care company on a 9. Students need a critically small town in North America, almost none conscious ‘voice’ of this scholarly literature relates to globalization. Specific ideas Finally, critical theories of There are many opportunities, it technology (e.g. Harding, Winner, seems to me, for TPC scholars to bring Feenberg) and of TPC (e.g. Selfe & Selfe, globalization issues into our research and Sullivan & Porter, Ornatowski) can serve teaching and thus raise consciousness as models for critical studies of about this important aspect of modern life. globalization. Such models can then be Pedagogically, we can make a point of incorporated into graduate student including the global context in classroom training in TPC, expanding for example discussions wherever it seems on the model proposed by Johnson-Eilola appropriate. For example, exercises in & Selber (2001). In addition, other audience analysis could take into account disciplines have developed critical an overseas context and audience; models that can be imported into TPC. traditional cases of the Couture and For example, the following nine Goldstein type could be rewritten with an principles from critical pedagogy international scope. Second, more ethics (Giroux 1991) would seem to be relevant cases like those found in Markel (2001) to a more socially conscious form of could be developed. These could involve, TPC: for example, human rights, 1. Education produces not only environmentalism, labor conditions, etc. knowledge but political Third, we could incorporate more issues subjectivities of globalization and critical consciousness into graduate student 2. Ethics is central to education training, using perhaps a methodology 3. We need to understand like critical discourse analysis (see below) difference in how identities and curricular schemas like that are formed and maintained described in Johnson-Eilola & Selber 4. Instead of treating curriculum (2001). Fourth, service learning is knowledge as a sacred text we making inroads into TPC courses need to understand how (Huckin 1997), including the political different types of knowledge consciousness-raising that goes with it. are given priority in schools Up to now such efforts have been restricted to local community issues, but 5. We should pursue new forms if we raised our sights we could have our of culture and knowledge students doing writing projects for local 6. Claims to objective affiliates of human rights organizations, knowledge should be labor unions, or international challenged environmental organizations in their struggles with the WTO, the World Bank, 7. A critical pedagogy must the IMF, or other such agencies whose include a vision of a better world

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Keynote: Globalization and Critical Consciousness 10

policies many in the Third World see as of the privatization of electrospace in the oppressive. global economy (Graham 2001), Finally, we could take advantage of Kelly-Holmes’s analysis of marketing study abroad or international studies discourse in central and eastern Europe programs on campus. The number of US (Kelly-Holmes 1998), and Gee, Hull, and students studying abroad has increased in Lankshear’s pathbreaking 1997 book, the past 15 years from 48,000 to 160,000; The New Work Order: Behind the TPC educators could encourage their Language of the New Capitalism. There students to take advantage of this are opportunities, it seems to me, to draw opportunity. During this same time, the on work in critical rhetoric, cultural number of international students at US studies, and other related fields. A good colleges and universities has increased example of this is Myers’ use of actor from 350,000 to 550,000. Most of these network theory in talking about the effect students are enrolled in technical areas, of Chernobyl fallout on English sheep and they could provide valuable ‘insider’ growers (Myers 1996). Myers information to TPC educators in rhetoricizes this situation as follows: designing instructional materials. Such Rhetoric has always seen audiences measures would help combat the current in terms of the controlling powers of insularity of TPC education in the United producers of texts. It is harder for rhetoric States. As Nancy Hoft writes, “Increasing to deal with the constructive powers of global cooperation also increases consumers who may take a text into new parochialism.” (Hoft 1995) contexts, play with it, ironicize it, On a scholarly level, there are many reproduce it. But it is this sort of active opportunities as well. To begin, one audience that is important in issues like could take the ideas proposed by critical toxic wastes, global warming, Chernobyl, TPC theorists such as Miller, D. Sullivan, or Heysham. People do not just read and P. Sullivan & Porter, and Ornatowski absorb the materials given to them by (2002), and extend them to the Nuclear Electric, Greenpeace, or international arena. Secondly, one could Lancashire Against Nuclear Dumping draw inspiration from international (LAND). They place these materials in scholars doing critical studies in terms of their daily lives, sense of the TPC-related areas such as Applied future, relations of trust, and their often Linguistics and English for Science and ambivalent responses to environmental Technology. For example, scholars change. (21) Alistair Pennycook and Sarah Benesch In keeping with actor network theory, have promulgated critical approaches to Myers’ comment points to the the fields of applied linguistics and ESL, repercussions that technological events respectively, that are gaining wide can have on ordinary people beyond currency in those fields. Third, the national borders. I think if we in TPC fast-growing field of critical discourse were to broaden our horizons and apply analysis could be tapped for use by TPC this same sensitivity to societies outside scholars interested in casting light on the the US but still within the orbit of discourse of corporate globalization. American power, we could gain similar Some particularly interesting recent insightfulness and, more importantly, examples of this include Graham’s study teach our students to do so as well.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Keynote: Globalization and Critical Consciousness 11

Works Cited Akrich, M. (1992). The de-scription of technical objects. In W. Bijker & J. Law (eds.), Shaping technology/building society: Studies in sociotechnical change. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Bazerman, C. and Paradis, J. (1991). Textual Dynamics of the Professions. U. Wisconsin. Benesch, S. (1996). Needs analysis and curriculum development in EAP: An example of a critical approach. TESOL Quarterly 30, 723-738 Bhatia, V.J. (1993). Analysing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. Longman Brzezinski, Z. (1997). The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. Basic Books. Carroll, J.M. (1984). Minimalist training. Datamation, Nov 1, 125-136. Chua, A. (2003). World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability. NY: Doubleday. Cook, K.C. (2002). Layered literacies: A theoretical frame for technical communication pedagogy. TCQ 11:1 [esp. the section on “Critical Literacy”] DeVoss, D., Jasken, J., Hayden, D. (2002). Teaching Intracultural and Intercultural Communication. J. Business and Technical Communication, 16:1. Dorazio, P. and Stovall, J. (1997). Research in context: Ethnographic usability. J. of Technical Writing and Communication, 17, 57-67. Faber, B. (2002). Community Action and Organizational Change: Image, Narrative, Identity. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Feenberg, Andrew (1999). Questioning Technology. Routledge Feenberg, A. (2002). The Critical Theory of Technology. Fox, C. and Fisher, D. (2001). “A Comment on Greg Wilson’s ‘Technical Communication and Late Capitalism: Considering a Postmodern Technical Communication Pedagogy’.” JBTC 15:2. Gee, J., Hull, G., Lankshear, C. (1996) The New Work Order: Behind the Language of the New Capitalism. Boulder: Westview. Graham, P. (2001). “Space: Irrealis Objects in Technology Policy and their Role in a New Political Economy.” Discourse & Society, 12:6 Herndl, C. and Nahrwold, C. (2000). Research as social practice: A case study of research on technical and professional communication. Written Communication 17:2. Hoft, N.L. (1995). International Technical Communication: How to Export Information about High Technology. NY: Wiley. Huckin, T. (1997). Technical Writing and Community Service. J. Business and Technical Communication, 11:1. Johnson-Eilola, J. and Selber, S. (2001). Sketching a framework for graduate education in technical communication. TCQ, 10:4.

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Kelly-Holmes, H. (1998). The discourse of western marketing professionals in central and eastern Europe. Discourse & Society, 9:3. Markel, M. (2001). Technical Communication, 6th ed. NY: Bedford/St. Martins Miller, C. (1989). What’s practical about technical writing? Technical Writing: Theory and Practice, B.E. Fearing and W.K. Sparrow (eds.), NY: MLA, 14-24. Miller, T. (1991). Treating professional writing as social praxis. JAC 11, 57-72. Myers, G. (1996). Out of the laboratory and down to the bay. Written Communication, 13(1). Ornatowski, C. (2002). Techne and politeia: Langdon Winner’s political theory of technology and its implications for technical communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 11:2. Pennycook, A. (2001) Critical Applied Linguistics. Lawrence Erlbaum Phillips, K. (2002). Wealth and Democracy. NY: Broadway Books. Selfe, C. and Selfe, R. (1996) Writing as democratic social action in a technological world: Politicizing and inhabiting virtual landscapes. In A.H. Duin & C.J. Hansen (eds.), Nonacademic Writing: Social Theory and Technology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Soros, G. (2002). George Soros on Globalization. NY: Public Affairs Spilka, R. (1993). Writing in the Workplace. Carbondale, IL: SIU Press. Stotsky, S. (1996). Participatory Writing: Literacy for Civic Purposes. In A.H. Duin & C.J. Hansen (eds.), Nonacademic Writing: Social Theory and Technology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Sullivan, D. (1990). Political-ethical implications of defining technical communication as a practice. JAC 10: 375-386. Sullivan, P. and Porter, J. (1997). Opening Spaces. Ablex Tabb, W.K. (2002). Unequal Partners: A Primer on Globalization. NY: New Press. Wilson, G. (2001). Technical communication and late capitalism: Considering a postmodern technical communication pedagogy. JBTC 15:1. Winner, Langdon (1986). The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. U. Chicago

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Keynote: Globalization and Critical Consciousness 13 Plenary Panel on New Graduate Programs

Texts and Technology Ph.D. at U. Central Florida

Paul M. Dombrowski University of Central Florida

We are excited about our new Ph.D. afforded by digital and other technologies. program in Texts and Technology (T&T), We will test existing theories and which has just begun its second year. generate knowledge and new theories After describing the program and how it about how to use, communicate, and came to be, I will explain two key issues create with digital technologies, and we we faced in winning approval for it. will critically examine the cultural Though the University of Central impact of these developments. New Florida (UCF) is only about 35 years old, theories and new practices are hallmarks we now have 38,000 students and are still of the program. Admission requires a growing. We began as Florida master's degree and the program requires Technological University, to serve the at least 36 credits of coursework. There space industry of the Cape are three core courses: Theory of T&T, Canaveral/Cape Kennedy space coast, so History of T&T, and Research Methods we are technologic to the core. We are for T&T. Beyond that there is a situated along the federally-designated requirement for 12 credits of restricted High Tech Corridor linking Orlando and electives in our department, and 9 of Tampa, too. Right next to campus we interdisciplinary electives. Each student have a Research Park that did over $1 is required also to participate in a billion in business last year, housing teaching practicum and professional firms such as Oracle, Siemens, and internship, each one semester long for Lockheed Martin, and a U.S. Army nine credits. We now have, in our second National Simulation Center. year, ten full-time students supported with stipends and twelve part-time Though our English department had students. been pushing the program for about six years, the terrain shifted three years ago T&T is interdisciplinary in several as we were pulled by the administration ways. We invite applications from any and so the proposal moved ahead almost master's field of study and encourage suddenly. The major factor was the dissertation topics that span disciplines. desire to attain Carnegie classification as Already, candidates with master’s a research extensive institution. The state degrees in computer science, English, board of regents had made it clear that psychology, instructional technology, they would not endorse a conventional education, and political science are Ph.D. in English; any new program from represented in the program, showing its us had to be involved with new interdisciplinarity. We also have formal technologies. Ours is now the first Ph.D. support alliances with several other in a Humanities area at UCF. departments (Computer Science, Film, Digital Media, and Psychology), and The Program. Texts and computer science and digital media Technology (T&T) is a research program professors advise us in program planning. for exploring the textual possibilities

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Plenary Panel on New Graduate Programs 14

The Issues. In creating and arguing planning committee, I defended the for the program, we faced two main proposal through all stages of the issues that have broad relevance to the approval process except through the state field of technical and scientific board of regents. communication. As chair of the T&T

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Plenary Panel on New Graduate Programs 15

Digital Rhetoric at Michigan State University: Designing a Professional Writing Program

Jeffrey T. Grabill Michigan State University

The last two years have been a time of important of these issues is a strong fast and extensive writing program cultural rhetoric component. One development at Michigan State additional strength of American Thought University. Driven both by energy from and Language has been its Service the top (the provost) and the bottom (the Learning Writing Project, which may be long-term work of writing faculty the longest running writing project of its fragmented across various departments), kind. The professional writing program Michigan State has developed a new that has resulted emphasizes the undergraduate major in professional following issues (see the curriculum at writing, a new master of arts program in http://www.rhetoric.msu.edu/undergrad/ digital rhetoric and professional writing, BA_profwriting.pdf): and a new doctoral program in rhetoric • Technical writing and writing. In addition, this new writing program will impact first-year writing • Electronic writing & new media and the writing across the curriculum • Writing & public advocacy (e.g., requirement on campus. service learning, risk and health I will focus on the undergraduate communication) professional writing major, but it is worth • Creative non-fiction (for us this noting the institutional context within means writing about science and which this program has taken shape. One nature, not scientific writing yet) aspect of this context is the fragmented nature of writing instruction on campus. • Cultural rhetorics First-year writing, for example, is taught I would argue that this is a in the American Thought and Language compelling way to think about Department (ATL) and in other colleges professional writing. It allows and departments. Currently, the new professional writing to work in more writing programs at Michigan State are traditional areas such as technical writing, college programs in the College of Arts but also allows it to more fully embrace and Letters, while most of the faculty new media. In addition, it articulates a associated with these programs are in the connection between professional writing ATL Department, a department with a and civic engagement, public advocacy, strong history of work in American and broader issues of science, nature, and Studies but without a major. Its current culture. The focus on cultural rhetorics in focus, again, is to provide first year particular hold the promise of articulating writing instruction. even deeper connections between Designing a professional writing professional communication, race, class, program within this context means that gender, and other issues of identity. the program has connections to issues Having said all this, there are a important in American Studies. The most number of questions that we must deal

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Plenary Panel on New Graduate Programs 16

with on an ongoing basis, questions that • When multiple writing programs may also be a concern of other and a department overlap, what professional writing programs. Here is a administrative models work that partial list: maintain the best interests of • How to continue to articulate students, faculty, and program meaningful relationships between identities? the various traditions built into These are some of the questions that this (or any) writing program? will concern us at Michigan State • How to adjust programs once they University as our program design efforts are in place? continue through the first few years of running these new—and we think exciting—initiatives.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Plenary Panel on New Graduate Programs 17

Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media: Challenges in Interdisciplinary Program Design

Carolyn R. Miller North Carolina State University

The doctoral program in programs to enhance the profile of the Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital College of Humanities and Social Media that we have proposed at North Sciences in research and graduate Carolina State University will offer education. New academic programs in training that integrates the study of oral, the North Carolina state system have to written and visual modes of be justified in terms of institutional communication within the context of mission, state needs, non-duplication changing technologies and cultural considerations, and the job market for relations. This integrated approach is a graduates. These requirements created necessary response to the transformation many constraints on what we could do. of human communication practices that We also wanted to take advantage of accompanies the evolution of institutional strengths and resources. information and communication And we wanted to create a program that technologies. The program aims to would represent “the next step” in graduate students qualified for academic program development nationally. positions in departments of English or The program we have proposed is a Communication and in the increasing joint effort of the two departments number of programs that cross involved; it builds on a history of prior departmental boundaries, such as writing joint efforts at NC State, more and less and speaking across the curriculum, successful, including a pilot first-year electronic portfolio development, media course in writing and speaking, a studies, online instruction, and technical campus-wide writing and speaking communication. In nonacademic across-the-curriculum program, many contexts graduates will be qualified to cross-listed courses, and joint programs conduct research, manage development, in journalism and film studies.γ Since and analyze policy in the uses and social both English and Communication applications of new communication departments across the country are active technologies. both in rhetorical studies and in digital The program proposal was created by media studies, an alliance that brings a team of faculty from our English their intellectual energies together should Department, representing the areas of strengthen the education we are able to rhetoric, composition, and technical offer students. An additional alliance communication, and from our that will be important to our program is Communication Department, with the recently launched Ph.D. in representing rhetoric, mass Information Design in our College of communication, and new media. This Design. work was a response to our dean’s As we have worked to design the request for interdisciplinary doctoral program, prepare the proposal, and

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Plenary Panel on New Graduate Programs 18

present it to the complex of committees Interdepartmental issues and boards that are involved in the Like many universities these days, approval process, we have faced a NC State officially encourages number of issues. Since many of these interdisciplinary research and teaching. present problems that are institution- At the same time, its traditional specific, I can describe them in only organization into academic departments general terms here. Again, in general can make such programs difficult to terms, they problems have two sources: initiate and administer. Departments those that arise because the program is control budgets, and budgets control interdisciplinary, and those that arise administrative structures; because it is interdepartmental. departmentalization also influences Interdisciplinary issues access to higher administration, Our faculty committee met frequently fund-raising mechanisms, and planning over a period of six months to develop a priorities. While we have not curriculum plan. Even working with encountered serious problems of these faculty in the closely related disciplines sorts yet, we know that an and subdisciplines I mentioned above, we interdisciplinary program must anticipate found that many of our assumptions them and work to create a funding differed: about what is basic and what is mechanism and administrative structure specialized, about what the organizing that will not leave the program vulnerable framework should be, about how to to the differing priorities of participating achieve the interdisciplinary integration departments and to ever-changing we all sought. As curriculum committees leadership in department and dean’s at all levels so often do, once we had offices. everyone’s “must-include” courses on Another artifact of the table, there was no room left for departmentalization in universities is the electives. As faculty frequently do, we familiar phenomenon of turf-protection. all worked inductively from our own Some faculty in our psychology doctoral experiences, universalizing the department expressed apprehension that rightness of our own education. our program aimed to offer students the We compromised, we started over, opportunity to work in the we re-examined our premises, and we human-computer interaction area, though finally arrived at a curriculum we could with the guidance of an enlightened all agree to, though it made nobody department head, we received an totally happy. We consoled ourselves enthusiastic endorsement on the principle with the thought that curricula always that more people working in this area evolve and that our eventual students would enlarge rather than restrict would help us shake it down and improve opportunities. Similarly, we received the ways it brings together separate but some expression of anxiety from the related intellectual and research College of Design about our use of the traditions. It is in the students who study term “design” and have worked to and connect multiple traditions that the emphasize our different, and true interdisciplinary integration will complementary, interests in it. occur. Fortunately, the upper administration’s commitment to interdisciplinary program development means that we have strong

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Plenary Panel on New Graduate Programs 19

support for the notion that no department Issues for technical communication can “own” a term, like design or What can the field of technical and communication. scientific communication gain from the A third issue was one we faced while development of a program like this? designing the curriculum. How could we While technical and scientific graduate students who could be hired by communication is not the sole focus of both departments of communication or our proposal, this field will play a key departments of English? We knew that role in the interdisciplinary mix and in students would have to be “recognizable” the market for graduates. Because the to departments with at least somewhat field benefits from intellectual diversity, traditional disciplinary identities at the nationally we need programs that same time that they brought a specialize in different research traditions non-traditional and forward-looking and different theoretical frameworks. doctoral experience that, we hope, would The field also benefits from cultivating be what made them competitive in the connections with a variety of other academic marketplace. We did not disciplines, as it always has—with attempt to design a program that would cognitive psychology, software make students equally recognizable to engineering, rhetorical studies, visual both departments, but we did want to find design, organizational communication, a way to produce both kinds of students and composition studies. The new digital without turning the program into two media provide the opportunity and the separate programs, a move that would need for technical and scientific defeat our commitment to the value of the communication to develop a new set of interdisciplinary enterprise. We productive interdisciplinary alliances like therefore built into the curriculum design those our program will promote. On each 12 credit-hours of work in a “home campus, a somewhat different mix of discipline” that would provide a interdisciplinary connections will be departmental grounding for the otherwise possible, and I believe this diversity will interdisciplinary work. These hours strengthen the field overall and make the could be in organizational current proliferation of programs communication, for example, or complementary, rather than competitive. technical communication.

Note § Some of these programs are described in a joint essay by several of the program planners; the essay also provides a justification for the integrated approach to doctoral education. See Carolyn R. Miller, Victoria Gallagher and Michael Carter, “Integrated Approaches to Teaching Rhetoric: Unifying a Divided House,” Realms of Rhetoric, eds. Joseph Pegraglia and Deepika Bahri (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, in press).

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Plenary Panel on New Graduate Programs 20

Theory & Practice of Professional Communication: A New Ph.D. Program at Utah State University

Mark Zachry Utah State University

The English department at Utah State forthcoming Technical Communication University will soon offer a new Ph.D. article by Cook, Thralls, and Zachry, degree in Theory & Practice of proved instrumental in our planning Professional Communication. The discussions about the proposed degree. proposed degree, which lacks only final Based on the information collected, approval by the Board of Regents in Utah, the department has designed a doctoral has been in development since August degree program that draws on strengths 2000. It will be the first doctoral degree of two of its pre-existing areas, technical offered by the department, and only the communication and English education. second to be offered in the College of Within these areas are 16 specialists in Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. technical communication, organizational The proposed program was communication, rhetoric, composition, developed at the request of upper classroom instruction, online learning, administration at the university, where and linguistics. In addition to the primary the department's success with its existing courses offered by the new Theory & programs in this area and the strengths of Practice of Professional Communication recent faculty hires made such a program faculty, doctoral students will complete feasible. (For a more detailed discussion significant coursework in a cognate area of this program's evolution, see the of their own choosing. These cognate Profession article by Brooks, Yancey, areas are not predefined (students and Zachry.) With this administrative develop them in conjunction with their support, committees and individual supervisory committees), but we faculty members within the department anticipate that many students will draw initiated studies that would help shape the heavily on graduate courses in decision-making process during proposal instructional technology, business, and development. These studies included a mass communication. Initial survey of potential students in the conversations with potential students also Intermountain region to determine how indicate a widespread interest in doing many qualified people might be cognate work in the Folklore and interested in applying to such a program American Studies programs, which have and what they would be interested in a strong reputation at Utah State. In studying upon entrance. An assessment particular, potential students have of doctoral program offerings and discussed research that would combine strengths throughout the Western states practice and theory in professional provided additional information, as did communication with educational an examination of Utah State faculty opportunities in museum work, field strengths and departmental resources. studies, and archival processes. The results of these and other related In earlier versions of the proposal, the investigations such as a study of program was entitled, “Professional academic job advertisements and a

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Plenary Panel on New Graduate Programs 21

Communication, Culture, and Much of the programmatic materials Technology.” Outside the department, needed to offer this program (e.g., policy however, this name was criticized as and procedure texts, forms) have already being too broad and too far removed from been created in anticipation of final traditional conceptions of what English approval. State budgetary constraints, departments do. Consequently, the name however, have led to a freeze on all new was changed to “Theory & Practice of program offerings. When the program Professional Communication,” and the receives this final approval, it will be emphases in culture and technology will formally advertised, and we will begin instead be described in the planned accepting applications from an existing catalog and advertising descriptions of pool of potential students who have the program. already expressed interest in applying.

Works Cited Brooks, Kevin, Kathleen Blake Yancey, and Mark Zachry. "Developing Doctoral Programs in the Corporate University: New Models." Profession 2002. New York: MLA, 2002. 89-103. Cook, Kelli Cargile, Charlotte Thralls, and Mark Zachry. "Doctoral-level Graduates in Professional, Technical, and Scientific Communication 1995-2000: A Profile." Technical Communication (forthcoming May 2003).

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Plenary Panel on New Graduate Programs 22 Concurrent Session 1

A: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Relating English Departments

Exploring Attitudes and Values: Tensions in Interdisciplinary Discourse

Molly K. Johnson University of Houston-Downtown A few years ago, Dorothy Winsor severe problems in all sorts of directions" posted a "Research Wish List," gathered (238). What he does not discuss is how from professional technical writers, to the that attitude is transmitted and what those ATTW listserv. The last item in her list, other directions might be. "Language Barriers," raised an issue that Through close analysis of discourse seemed particularly relevant to technical used by participants in a pilot program writers in academic settings. Winsor's linking engineering and writing faculty, I contributor pointed to the term "discourse explore the role language plays in communities” as an example of the transmitting attitudes and reinforcing barriers that language can inadvertently disciplinary boundaries. Evidence of create between academics and “working rhetorical appeals and identification, such stiffs,” as the person who raised the issue as described by Kenneth Burke in A called himself: Rhetoric of Motives (1950/1969), I worked someplace where an suggests that the gaps between entire writing group amused engineering and English values can be themselves for a week… after a measured by participants' attempts to student [intern] asked one of them create solidarity and cohesion. Such gaps to identify the discourse between disciplinary values are subtle, communities within the company: but serious language and attitude "Hey Joe - I need to talk to you and problems suggest faculty may be Beth about the XYZ project." unconsciously alienating the very people "Certainly! But first we must form with whom faculty and practitioners want a discourse community! I'll draw to collaborate. up the by-laws, and you order up a By attending to the details of gate and a guard!" discourse, my presentation provides This contributor's experience of insights into the language that creates academic jargon as a factor that solidarity as well as division in academic exacerbated tensions between technical settings. With this understanding of writing arenas generated my discussion interdisciplinary discourse, we may question: What are the ways language become more successful in negotiating imposes laws and sets up guards within the underlying tensions within our our institutions, our disciplines, and our programs, our institutions, and between programs? academics and “working stiffs.” The challenge then becomes: How do we use Toby Fulwiler alludes to this problem this insight into professional discourse to when he discusses “Turf” in the final prepare technical writing students to chapter of Writing across the Disciplines more effectively negotiate workplace (1986), suggesting that English teachers have a certain arrogance about their boundaries? ability to teach writing, which "raises

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech Comm and Its Neighbors Relating English Departments 23

Courses, Credits, and Contact Hours: Clarifying the Role of the Humanities/Technology Binary Along a Continuum of Emphasis in Technical Communication

Michael Knievel University of Wyoming

Technical communication programs demonstrates it to be untenable by and courses often find themselves located asserting, for instance, the necessity of a within traditionally-framed English complex understanding of both rhetoric departments in colleges and universities and the technological tools that give around the country. As Mary Sue voice to it. However, I would argue that MacNealy and Leon B. Heaton note in the influence of this binary takes on their 1999 JTWC article, “Can This greater importance or, at least, visibility, Marriage Be Saved: Is An English at different points along a continuum of Department a Good Home For Technical curricular emphasis in technical and Communication,” such placement has professional communication. One way been, at once, both a good and bad fit for of viewing this continuum puts the technical communication students, English department offering a course or scholars, and programs. two in technical or professional writing This ambivalence exists, at least in on one end and that department offering a part, because of a complicated and doctoral program on another, with limiting binary relationship between various degrees between: technology and the humanities, abstractions that give shape to what C.P. Course Offerings Major Masters Snow named the “Two Cultures” of Minor PhD literature and the humanities and science and technology, respectively. I am particularly interested here in Technology, academic lore holds, is what happens as we slide down the scale defined in opposition to the humanities of emphasis from doctoral work to a and thus English Studies. It is this binary minor in technical and/or professional that complicates not only the relationship communication. While different doctoral between technical communication and its programs have very different emphases disciplinary peers in English but also the (cultural studies, rhetoric, electronic technical and professional writing, usability), their breadth affords communication curricula emerging in them the luxury of coverage. Moreover, such a context. The ability to conflate the these programs are oftentimes either binary, it seems, becomes the hallmark of freestanding or located in English good programs. departments that are more receptive to binary conflation; in these departments, Indeed, given its purpose as a field technical communication can be devoted to the practical execution of appreciated as more than a “mere” skill rhetorical principles in both traditional and site of technological aptitude and contemporary media forms, technical development. Indeed, it seems that good communication is ideally suited to graduate (and undergraduate major challenge Snow’s binary model in that it programs) are good because they are able

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to conflate that binary relationship and departments, it seems that these minors bring to the fore questions about what become critical sites of emphasis—sites makes the relationship between where “statements” are made regarding technology and the humanities essential, the false binaries between technology and not optional—they dissolve the binary. the humanities, theory and practice. A Understanding of this relationship is single course or combination of courses crucial, and understanding can be can get lost in other departmental developed over time in a more robust offerings—not so much is at stake. A course of study. minor, on the other hand, retains a But with debate existing over how the visibility. It is a choice, from a student’s humanities/technology–theory/practice? perspective, of significance, and it has the –binary is represented in graduate heft of a program that must pass through programs and undergraduate majors, for various administrative channels to gain instance, how might the limited approval. Indeed, I argue that a minor in disciplinary exposure of an technical and professional undergraduate minor or a sprinkling of communication might be among the most technical communication courses in a difficult of all to define in that its larger writing or literature curriculum range—probably four to seven change the dynamic? The left side of the courses—allows a department to make a continuum (minors, minimal course statement about what technical and offerings) offers but a glimpse of our professional communication is, unlike a field and the way it responds to the binary. single course that can focus on skills and What should that glimpse look like? The conventional genres without attracting issue is further complicated by the fact much scrutiny. that those departments with minimal The minor becomes a site in which course offerings or a minor are we must make the most difficult choices, oftentimes more traditionally akin to the “if you could take only one humanities-oriented in their emphasis; possession with you from your burning they exist in a different departmental home, what would you take?” Given the culture that has not committed itself to narrow space within which such a teaching technical communication in the program exists in a curricular sense, same way. choices must be made: will the minor be Of the two points on the continuum skills based? Theoretically oriented? that I would describe as minimal to How will technologies be dealt with? modest exposure to technical and Generally? Or must some specific tools professional communication be taught? If so, where and what? And, (coursework or a minor), I posit that the given the departmental culture that often freestanding—meaning, there is no major houses a minor (traditional English), how option or graduate program to “trickle does one get such courses on the books? down” influence—minor in technical or In sum, scholars and teachers in professional communication is a technical communication—more and particularly challenging curricular more typically graduates of programs in configuration, a flashpoint of sorts along writing or specifically in technical this continuum of emphasis. And, given communication— must anticipate the that freestanding minors are likely to be complications of moving from such found in more traditional English relatively robust curricular spaces into

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narrower curricular spaces, such as albeit condensed, view of the field. This writing minors, and work together to issue will increase in importance as theorize ideal programmatic experiences programs in technical and professional for students in those spaces—experiences communication continue to emerge that provide those students with a rich, around the country.

Works Cited MacNealy, Mary Sue, and Leon B. Heaton. “Can This Marriage Be Saved: Is an English Department a Good Home for Technical Communication?” Journal of Technical Writing and Communication 29.1 (1999): 41-64.

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Developing Technical Communication Degree Options in an Arts and Humanities Setting

Catherine Latterell Penn State, Altoona

The arts and humanities context that management. An arts and humanities exists at most small college campuses setting can provide a productive positions technical and professional environment for developing professional communication faculty differently than communication degree options in those faculty who work in larger collaboration with creative writing and institutions are positioned. In fact, I arts faculty. As a branch campus of the would argue that the small college Pennsylvania State University, Altoona’s context—with its emphasis on the liberal campus is a 4-year college with arts or the humanities—has been a approximately 4,000 students. Instead of relatively under-examined context for departments, we are divided into four technical and professional divisions, and reflective of that structure, communication. Yet, recent tracking of the campus cultivates a collaborative, hiring trends in the MLA Job Listings interdisciplinary academic community. indicates that the largest area of growth in Traditional binaries or boundaries that tenure-line positions for technical and might separate us in another (larger?) professional communication is the small context do not serve our interest in college. As a field we need to examine developing upper division degree options. the challenges and stories of faculty My efforts to define a degree option and working in the small college context in develop/teach courses such as writing for order to promote a more balanced view of the web, technical editing, style, report the professional circumstances of writing have required the active technical communication academics. We involvement of faculty in creative writing need clearer sense of the ways in which and the visual arts. This work has brought the material conditions of small college together a number of diverse disciplines faculty differ from the conditions of those that, on a larger campus, would not working at large institutions. Failure to traditionally be in such close include and examine the challenges of communication. Being small in size and program development and administration having a shared commitment to at small colleges may inadvertently humanistic approaches to teaching works imply that these programs have not in the favor of small college technical and participated in the progress that has professional communication faculty. characterized our professional discourse. Small colleges with strong commitments Perhaps a major challenge that is to liberal arts preparation of students unique to working in a small college or often reward such interdisciplinary arts and humanities context is that of collaboration. program development and program

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B: Teaching Tech. Comm.: The Content Question

Ours/Theirs: Core Content in Technical Communication

Dave Clark University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Technical communication is writing program is not permitted (by the frequently characterized as a field with university) to use the word no core content of its own; this is an "Communication" to describe our ancient rhetorical argument, but one program to avoid competition and that’s still hard to answer to the confusion with the Communication satisfaction of outsiders. And we’ve department, the Journalism department deepened the problem, I suggest, by objects (so far unsuccessfully) to our use being cavalier about establishing and of the term "Professional Writing," and articulating disciplinary boundaries, by the Information Resources school seeming to claim everything as being (formerly Library Science) advertises to within our range of expertise (from potential majors that their graduates grammar to Web design to programming become technical writers (although they languages) and by failing to defend that know next to nothing of the profession). stake against academic claim jumpers. I know from examining programs at After all, we’re interdisciplinary; we’re other schools that our situation here is not hesitant to impose strictures on others unique. What makes the situation more that might later be imposed on our own worrisome is that while certainly some opportunistic tendency to borrow co-option is calculated, departments and anything we think might help our programs frequently jump our claims students. But within our institutions our without malice, without even realizing lack of a core can spell trouble, and it’s that they’re treading on areas we consider critical, therefore, that we develop to be our own. Not that we could defend strategies for answering the content our turf anyway, given that we haven’t question in ways that will allow us to made these topics our own by publishing achieve our goals. scholarship that talks to other disciplines; Consider our situation at the our feeble cries for rhetorical savvy don’t University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, amount to much when we’ve only where our “Professional Writing” preached that savvy to ourselves. And program is housed in the Department of too often, the courses offered by other English. Other departments frequently departments are, from our perspective, infringe on territory we’d like to claim as under-theorized and under-rhetoricized, our own, thus limiting our possibilities too software-driven and uncritical to be for growth and creating a good deal of help students get what we think they need in-house competition for student and therefore not much use as part of an enrollments. UWM students can take interdisciplinary program. Finally, Web design, communication ethics, annoyingly enough, the courses are very database design, information architecture, popular with students, who don’t care rhetoric, and document design courses where they get the expertise they know from 2 or 3 different departments per they want. topic. In addition, our professional

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Actions and Reactions: Technical Communication and the Process of Change

Helen Correll Metropolitan State University

Technical communicators are faced Change, as noted before, runs into with a dilemma. If we come up with an resistance. Technical communicators innovative way to implement a new idea who are trying to implement a new idea or design, we are usually met with can run into resistance in the form of resistance. If we come up with a new laggards (those who usually don’t like way of teaching, we are met with change in general), or reactionaries resistance. Basically, if we try to (those who have a vested interest in implement change, we are met with keeping things as they are). There are a resistance. Our students encounter the variety of ways to work through this same dilemma. Once they get into the resistance, which we can discuss, but my workplace, they are subject to main purpose in this panel is to promote organizational culture that seldom the idea that students need to become embraces change. So, how do we prepare aware of the process of innovation our students to promote change and diffusion. Hall and Hord suggest the innovation while at the same time following stages of innovation: (0) working within the organizational awareness (little concern or knowledge); culture? (1) informational (interest in learning); (2) I suggest that we need to include personal (questioning the change); (3) within our curriculum some strategies for management (attention on task); (4) analyzing and implementing change. consequence (attention on impact); (5) Research on implementation of change collaboration (focus on others); (6) comes from many areas (anthropology, refocusing (exploring benefits). These sociology, and education), but some of stages don’t always appear, nor do they the most applicable to technical always appear sequentially. communication comes from Everett M. As our students learn about new ways Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations. Rogers of designing documents, usability testing, suggests that change starts with an and project management, they also need innovator, usually a single individual to understand that these new ways and with a new idea (in our case, a technical ideas will not be automatically adopted. I communicator). The innovation spreads suggest that they be made aware of the slowly at first, usually through the work diffusion of innovation research to make of change agents who adopt it then them aware of ways that they can be more actively promote it. Eventually, the effective. In addition to their knowledge innovation is adopted by the majority. of the process of change, I suggest that Obviously, this is not as simple as it they make sure the proposed solution might appear. they are suggesting will actually be of benefit, that they accept there will be resistance to new ideas, that they allow

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Teaching Tech. Comm.: The Content Question 29

time for diffusion, that they polish up threatening, even when the change will their rhetorical skills, that they learn to ultimately benefit those who resist it. If network with innovators and change our students can see the resistance to agents, and that they keep a sense of change as part of a process, they will be humor! Change is frequently seen as ultimately more effective.

Works Cited Hall, Gene E., and Shirley M. Hord. Change in Schools: Facilitating the Process. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987. Rogers, Everett M. Diffusion of Innovations. 4th ed. New York: The Free Press, 1995.

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Is There a Place for Technical Communication in the Public Sphere?

Carolyn Rude Texas Tech University

Academic programs in technical Even if there is no promise of jobs in the communication have, at least in their field, should it be OK for programs to recent history, emphasized the offer such a course anyway, for the preparation of students for corporate enrichment of student lives? The idealist positions. We claim the ubiquity and says yes, but the realities of budgets and relevance of our work to all areas of life, limits in the curriculum may constrain and indeed it is easy enough to find these ideals. examples of “technical communication” To divorce research and practice, everywhere. But this observation is not graduate and undergraduate, public and the same as observing that there is a role corporate is to disparage and trivialize for technical communicators everywhere. practice. This is not to say that the The question of this paper reflects research of the field (and the graduate several binaries and tensions: curriculum) must always favor the corporate/public, practice/research, application of technical communication undergraduate/graduate, education for in corporate spaces nor that graduate jobs/education for life. As director of a students must be constrained by the multi-level program, I feel Janus-faced practical realities of the undergraduate trying to meet the interests of students at curriculum. Such constraints would limit various levels, given all of these binaries. the relevance of the field and its appeal to When a doctoral student proposes a smart people and reduce the field to dissertation on a social issue, I am vocational preparation at all levels. But interested, but at the same time, as a research in critical, public, and social frequent member of university hiring problems will have more impact if it committees, I forecast that student at a connects to practice, that is, if there is a job interview and wonder if there will be practical as well as critical role for a gap between what the student offers and technical communication in the public the needs of the hiring committee she is sphere, if the polar ends of our binaries talking to. Most academic jobs are in are joined in some common ground. undergraduate programs, which, because It is easy to claim that what technical of the job market, are inherently biased communicators know applies in the toward corporate positions, practice, and public sphere and in social service as well production of documents in various as in the corporation. Clearly a number of media. Is the specialist in environmental academics are drawn to inquiries that writing prepared to teach online help? interrogate policy and discover And if she does teach environmental ambiguities and ideologies in messages. writing to undergraduates, will it be with To maintain a productive tension and not the expectation that her students will seek an irremediable gap between these and find jobs with environmental groups? possibilities and the practical needs of the

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undergraduate classroom, I think we than saying so, and I invite discussion of must develop career opportunities in the ways to insert this field, more than public sphere, not to displace the incidentally and anecdotally, in public corporate opportunities but to life. complement them. But doing so is harder

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The White Paper: Prominent in Industry, Neglected in Academia

Russell Willerton Texas Tech University

The TECHWR-L discussion list is a organize electronic white papers that prominent forum for ideas and trends in technical communicators can study for the technical communication workplace. subject knowledge and emulate in their Every so often, someone will post a query own work. The “industry” category also like this one: “My boss just told me to includes government entities engaged in write a white paper on a certain topic, but various forms of engineering and I’ve never written one before. Can research. anyone tell me what a white paper is?” In this short essay, I would like to Usually, several people on the list address three things about white papers will respond to the query. I’ve observed that I think technical communicators in these three traits among the typical academia should know: no firm standards responses: white papers are used to for white papers exist, white papers tend convey technical information within a to be connected with marketing purposes, specific field (computer programming, and yet white papers are an important telecommunications, computer genre in the professional world of networking, and so on), no two technical communication. definitions are exactly alike, and most Lack of firm standards describe the white paper as a type of marketing piece. One reason for the dearth of academic resources for writing white papers might Any technical communicator looking be that the definition of “white paper” is for a definition of “white paper” is so broad. In the words of writers Gordon unlikely to find helpful academic and Graham, “There are no rules. There resources. In five recent textbooks for are no standards. But there sure are a lot technical communication (Burnett 5/e, of white papers to write!” (“Downloads”). Sims 1/e, Lannon 8/e and 9/e, Markel No single definition can encompass all 6/e), the term “white paper” does not that might be labeled a white paper. even appear in the index. Even in Harner Elsewhere, Gordon and Graham list some and Zimmerman’s new textbook on typical purposes that white papers are technical marketing communication, the used to fulfill: a pre-sales tool, a way to term appears twice but is neither explain a complex product or service to a discussed nor defined. Technical particular audience, an explanation of a communication (TC) journals do not design philosophy or concept; they even provide much more information either. quote one person who wants white papers In industry, however, technical to be “all things to all people” (“Art of the communicators can find many resources White Paper” 3). on white papers. Many technical White papers can be used for many communication consultants and firms purposes. Gordon and Graham focus on offer to produce white papers. Websites white papers as tools to differentiate a such as ITpapers.com collect and firm’s products or services from those of

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competitors. White papers are sometimes exceed or fall short of 10-20 pages. While used as “position papers,” outlining an many white papers use black type on organization’s stance on a particular issue white paper (or a white background), or a technology. King’s list, while not others will be more colorful. Graphics are exhaustive, provides a helpful summary common, befitting of texts that are of common applications: written for explanatory purposes. Many • Technology Briefing. Explains a white papers are printed, but more and new or underlying technology more are placed on websites in PDF and that is incorporated into your HTML formats. products. White papers and marketing • Industry Trend Overview. Another possible reason that Analyzes current market, academics in TC don’t appear to deal operational, or technological with white papers often is that humanists trends. are often reluctant to deal with genres and topics related to marketing and • Application Digest. Describes advertising. Henson has shown that some potential applications for a in TC consider marketing inherently product or technology. deceptive and unethical. Bryan has • Planning Guide. Presents described challenging ethical issues and guidelines for implementing a pressures he encountered while working new technology or preparing for as a marketing writer. Many TC future industry changes. professors are trained in the humanities • Management Discussion. and teach in humanities-oriented Describes how technology departments; this likely discourages considerations relate to financial, some academics from pursuing operational, or other business marketing-related topics in their needs. scholarship and teaching. Marketing is a close cousin of advertising, which • Issues Analysis. Describes the rhetorician Lester Faigley has called “the nature of an industry issue or discursive Anti-Christ that does controversy, and offers the everything the tradition of academic company’s viewpoint or literacy detests…” (189). recommendations on how customers might respond. As sources such as King, Gordon and (King 195-97) Graham (“Art of the White Paper”), and others show, the marketing purposes In terms of format, again the behind creation of a white paper are often guidelines are only general. Several inextricable from the informational sources reflect these ideas from ForWord purposes. Many white papers are written Communications: “A white paper is a about products and services that are sold 10-20 page piece whose production in competitive marketplaces. The need to values fall between a manual and a inform and the need to compete go brochure. A white paper’s modest together. The marketplace can also limit appearance leads the reader to expect an the information that appears in a white informational piece” (“White Papers”). paper. As Bruce Byfield pointed out on Of course, white papers commonly TECHWR-L, “The major difference [of a CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Teaching Tech. Comm.: The Content Question 34

white paper] from an academic paper is markets addressed - the key criteria that a company will often be more for product selection” circumspect than a pure research paper, (“What’s a White Paper?”). so that competitors don’t learn too much” ITpapers.com goes on to list the types (Byfield). of papers to which it offers links, many of Gordon and Graham point out that which closely relate to King’s list. These many white papers are begun or papers clarify outlines on big issues, requested by marketing personnel; summarize implications of technological technical communicators are often developments, stake out a company’s brought in to contribute to white papers approach to an issue, and educate and even to oversee entire white paper technology readers. The website for projects. In smaller companies, the Sandia National Laboratories, for marketing communication and example, contains links to white papers documentation functions often overlap; that fulfill many of these same functions. this gives technical communicators And yet, the promotional aspect of a opportunities to add to their skill sets and white paper continues to coincide with their areas of influence. the informational. ITpapers.com states Viability of white papers for technical that it does not list “purely promotional communicators in industry documents” (“What’s a White Paper?”), but implies that white papers without any The field of technical promotional elements are few and far communication has long been associated between. In some instances, white papers with writing for informational purposes. contain instructional information that one Along with the other purposes they fulfill, would expect to find in a traditional white papers convey information. While how-to manual. Perhaps this is a result this quote is from ITpapers.com, a site from the shift away from printed containing links to white papers focused documentation and toward information in on information technology (IT), I think electronic form. the focus on informational value and uses relating to decision-making applies to Possibilities for future Inquiry white papers of many types: Killingsworth and Gilbertson write “In the IT community, a White that “Genre, in the simplest sense of the Paper is an informational brief word, then, means a kind of writing offering an overview of a recognized as distinctive by writers and technology, product, issue, readers” (78). They identify three modes standard, policy, or solution - its of technical communication (promotional, importance, use and operational, and reportorial) and genres implementation, and business that correspond to these modes benefits. With the growth of the (proposals, manuals, and reports, Internet as a fast and easy vehicle respectively). While this list of genres for distribution of information, and modes is not exhaustive, it is clear White Papers have emerged as the that white papers do not fit neatly into standard way of communicating any particular, distinct category. more in-depth information to IT Industry recognizes the white paper and business decision-makers in as a genre, albeit a loose one; the terms of problems solved and CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Teaching Tech. Comm.: The Content Question 35

academic TC community has not yet more attention. Future investigation of done so. Because white papers are white papers by academics will help frequently written by practitioners and strengthen the relationship between used in a variety of decision-making industry and the academy. contexts, academics should give them

Works Cited Bryan, John. “Down the Slippery Slope: Ethics and the Technical Writer as Marketer.” Technical Communication Quarterly 1.1 (1992): 73-88. Byfield, Bruce. “What is a White Paper?” Online posting. 13 Jul. 2000. TECHWR-L. 5 Apr. 2002. . Faigley, Lester. “Material Literacy and Visual Design.” Rhetorical Bodies. Eds. Jack Selzer and Sharon Crowley. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1999, 171-201. ForWord Communications. 1996-1998. “White Papers.” 5 April 2002. . Gordon, Manuel, and Gordon Graham. “The Art of the White Paper.” May 2001. Gordon & Gordon. 15 February 2003. . ---. “Downloads.” 18 October 2002. Gordon & Gordon. 15 February 2003. . Henson, Leigh. “A Preliminary Rhetoric of Technical Copywriting.” Technical Communication 41.3 (3Q 1994): 447-455. Killingsworth, M. Jimmie, and Michael K. Gilbertson. Signs, Genres, and Communities in Technical Communication. Baywood’s Technical Communication Series. Amityville, NY: Baywood, 1992. King, Janice M. Writing High-Tech Copy that Sells. New York: Wiley, 1995. “Sandia National Laboratories.” 1997-2003. Sandia National Laboratories. 15 February 2003. . “What’s a White Paper?” n.d. ITpapers.com. 21 Mar. 2002. .

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C: Tech. Comm. & Digital Media: Information Architecture

Pedagogy, Praxis and Proliferation: Technical Communicators as Information Architects

Michael J. Salvo Northeastern University

Proliferating uses of the World Wide of technical communication education), Web have led to a proliferation of need my position offers pedagogical for professionals who not only justification for exploring information understand new uses of digital architecture. Programs in information technology but also the rhetorical architecture, under a variety of titles, are situations (and opportunities) represented appearing in a variety of institutions and by these technologies. As the departments ranging from Architecture, information available online multiplies, Communication, Library Science, to indeed, as it continues to grow schools of Management, Engineering exponentially, the need for organization, programs to English departments and cataloguing and searching grows as well. Rhetoric and Writing programs. Like the One emerging title for the professional variety of definitions of technical responsible for organization of web communication that are informed by their content is "information architect." institutional homes and histories, Proponents of information architecture information architecture is defined do not often include technical differently depending upon its communicators among those institutional and departmental placement. professionals suited for the role. Rather than assert that technical However, the rhetorical training of communication should become technical communicators make them information architecture, I am interested uniquely qualified to organize, categorize, in those characteristics of information label and develop organizational architecture that help technical strategies for the web. Indeed, as web communicators better define their sites and the content on those sites rhetorical and professional roles. multiplies, there is an increasing need for The WWW is remade with each new the rhetorical skills technical networked application: browsers, communicators possess. As online peer-to-peer file-sharing, instant information increases, the ability to sift, messaging, video conferencing. Joining prioritize, chunk, label and design text this technology are the ubiquitous rings and other media is an increasingly valued of cell phones, ever-shrinking digital skill, a skill that technical communicators assistants, and multi-function devices can bring to the role of information that promise (or threaten) to put an office architect. in your pocket. These technologies Rather than argue that technical require the expertise of information communication should or ought to be designers capable of leading teams who somehow reconfigured to become will build information structures information architecture (a position that designed to make vast amounts of will result in both professional confusion information navigable. No one person and a loss of the unique rhetorical focus will be able to do the work him- or

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech, Comm. & Digital Media: Information Architecture 37

her-self, just as no one field's expertise communication will contribute to future will be able to meet every technological definitions both of the field and of its and communication challenge. While curricula. many players will participate in the Acting too modestly will encourage creation of information architecture, further essentialization and there are compelling reasons for technical functionalization of technical communicators to take a class communication as instrumental discourse. specifically addressing the rhetorical But acting too aggressively and claiming issues surrounding information information architecture and other architecture. emerging fields as domains of technical The proliferation of information on communication are equally risky the web and in portable devices strategies, giving the impression that challenges technical communication to rhetoric seeks to colonize territory update curriculum and theory for the developed by other fields of intellectual information age while it opens inquiry. The goal then is to balance the opportunities to explore new fields of potential fruits of exploration with the inquiry like information architecture. The problems of colonization, to act role of information architecture in the cautiously but with great intellectual training of future technical curiosity. My conclusion shares communicators and new definitions of similarities with Robert Johnson's essay technical communication itself is not yet exploring the costs and responsibilities of known, and are certainly far beyond the interdisciplinary study (1998) in which grasp of this position paper. However, he warns that there are responsibilities to exploring new contexts for the practice of contextualize intellectual insights. rhetoric, like the emerging field of However, my position is concerned not information architecture, contributes to only with the practice of scholarship, the critical rhetorical education of with analysis, but with building technical communicators. It is precisely pedagogies and curricula for technical because the future configuration of communication. These new pedagogies technical communication is as yet encourage students to be effective agents unknown that it becomes increasingly in the creation and design of technologies, important to experiment with to apply analysis toward establishing possibilities and contingent praxis for effective communication on configurations: the experiments the web and in the larger culture undertaken now to define technical emerging in the age of information..

Works Cited Johnson, Robert R. "Complicating Technology: Interdisciplinary Method, the Burden of Comprehension, and the Ethical Space of the Technical Communicator." Technical Communication Quarterly. 7.1 (1998): 75-98.

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The Need for Architect/Construction Worker Dichotomies in Information Architecture as a Profession

Geoffrey Sauer University of Washington-Seattle

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, firm, should he or she decide to leave. computer programming matured from its From a corporate perspective, software early process (the innovative work of development would be more rational creative individuals) to its present should it be directed by a project process, software development, a manager—someone who might or might collaborative process using sophisticated not have development experience, but be tools to permit multiple software skilled in traditional management developers to collaborate, each working function. And this manager would then on aspects of the task at hand. The tools have a staff of developers, whose tasks created for this work, called Integrated would be work on components of a larger Development Environments (or IDEs), system, without any being irreplaceable permit a single large document (such as to the overall product. the source code of a computer application) This would also allow the to be made up of smaller sections (called development of hierarchies within subroutines), each of which can be programming, between higher-level and checked out by individuals who might lower-level developers on projects. each work on various parts of the project Higher-level developers could work on simultaneously. Such IDEs allow "big picture" issues within software contemporary software development to development, while common employ project management and programming tasks could be delegated to longer-term coordination than had been younger, less highly salaries employees. possible in the past. Thomas Kuhn suggested in his 1962 There are several reasons why this book _The Structure of Scientific occurred: one was the danger that existed Revolutions_ that what determined the in a single programmer being the sole success of any new paradigm was that it person who truly understood how enabled increased differentiation of roles important code actually functioned. and more specific forms of knowledge Developers at Microsoft discuss this as within a field—in short, more jobs, with "the bus problem"—what would happen more areas of specific expertise. And this should the most important person on a has certainly occurred within software project be unexpectedly hit by a bus? But development. from U.S. employers' perspectives, there were other but similar issues: if a single This is important to technical programmer were to become _essential_ communicators because while to a project, he or she could demand a information architecture in the 1990s higher salary, or could cripple a project permitted valuable information by leaving the company, or could take developers to attain 'irreplaceable' status valuable strategic knowledge to another within organizations, contemporary systems of information architecture seem

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Digital Media: Information Architecture 39

to be following the software development leadership role, we must carefully IDE model. Contemporary content re-think how we conceive of and management and knowledge present our value to the management systems by Astarte and organizations we serve. And we Adobe, in fact, seem to be modeled quite must work to expand that value by closely on several leading IDE packages. broadening our technological This paper will suggest that a knowledge base to make us more traditional dichotomy within the field of viable as leaders in an increasingly technical communication—that which electronic world. (Wick 2000) differentiates our "practitioners" from Other authors, such as Edmond Weiss, our "professionals"—lends certain ease agree, suggesting that such systems make to our adoption of this model. possible "professional" status for workers Academic programs in technical in technical communication. Weiss communication, seeking to identify generalizes from a narrative he tells about ourselves with professional status, might the 20th century professionalization of seek to teach our students (particularly engineering, that such our graduate students) to serve as instrumentalization will lead to greater "information architects"—the project quality and better status for all within the management roles in online document field (Weiss forthcoming, 2002). design. Read, for instance, the conclusion I would suggest that before we adopt of Corey Wick's article "Knowledge such a model and concede the Management and Leadership construction worker (role of "other") to Opportunities for Technical many members of our field in order to Communicators" from November 2000 negotiate management positions for a few, in Technical Communication: that we look to other professions to see Knowledge management also how they have resisted this dichotomy. It represents an exceptional may be argued, perhaps, that professions opportunity to end the oversight such as medicine and the law have that has historically challenged our managed to avoid successfully such profession.... Leadership in hierarchical dichotomies—at least in part. knowledge management belongs At the least, we should debate the to us as much as to people of any possible implications of such systems other discipline. But to claim that more rigorously than we have to date.

Works Cited Weiss, Edmond H. "Egoless Writing: Improving Quality by Replacing Artistic Impulse with Engineering Discipline." Forthcoming in the _Journal of Computer Documentation_. Volume 26, Issue 4, October 2002. Wick, Corey. "Knowledge Management and Leadership Opportunities for Technical Communicators." in _Technical Communication_. Volume 47, Number 4. November 2000. pp. 515-529.

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Open Source Practices and Technical Communication Programs Johndan Johnson-Eilola Clarkson University Brenton Faber Clarkson University Open Source Software (OSS) has when we purchase a computer program, received increased attention in recent we reiterate a process in which the years (Berglund & Priestley 2001) with communication inherent in a computer the technological success of projects like program (online help, printed manuals, the Linux operating system, the Apache interface elements) is devalued. Although Web server, the Perl programming we teach communication as an active, language, and the release of Netscape’s ongoing process, commodified source code for Mozilla (an open source information structures communication as Web browser). Open source products and relatively anonymous receipt of business models (Red Hat Linux, Zope massified, discrete, and proprietary CMS, for example) have even been pieces of information. In other words, reported widely in the business press although we insist to ourselves and our (Ante 2001; Biggs 2001) though a good students that communication is a rich, deal of this attention has been paid to the messy, interactive process, the competition between OSS and commodified forms inherent in proprietary software (Gomes 2001; Flynn commercial software documentation and 2001; Moody 2002). interfaces say that communications are In this presentation, we argue that discrete, fragmented, and isolated objects OSS represents two key opportunities for that can be purchased on the open market technical communication programs (and, like beads or automobile tires. indeed, the discipline as a whole). First, Open source software, on the other at a general level, OSS provides a hand, represents a different model for transition away from commodified valuing information. Although OSS can information that has plagued technical be sold in some cases, its primary model communication as a low-status field for encourages people to think of several decades. Second, at a more information as communal, co-developed, concrete level, OSS can provide a shared, localized spaces for ongoing work. By collaborative framework for developing breaking the automatic connection curricular materials that can be more between information and monetary easily moved from class to class and exchange, communication can be school to school. restructured in useful ways. This shift has Beyond commodified information potential implications for technical communication’s efforts to place Late capitalist approaches to software importance on a more complex model of development and use structure communication and technology use, one information as a commodity, something that values communication as a bought and sold in global markets. participatory, communal activity. Although we don’t often comment on or Technical communication has the consider the implications of this fact, opportunity to leverage this new

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Digital Media: Information Architecture 41

understanding to affect how both users ability to simply use modules that others and developers think of our field, making have developed, they also have the ability it central rather than peripheral to their to design and share new modules with the work. Crateware community. For example, A framework for sharing course Crateware includes short, relatively materials conventional lessons on writing different types of documents (memoranda, email, In a related way, at a more concrete etc.) that covers both formatting and level, OSS also offers a framework for rhetorical topics. These modules can be overcoming a persistent problem in referenced by project (real-world projects creating a global learning community. or fictional cases). In general content, Although most technical communication Crateware modules are similar to things teachers freely share resources with each that most of us already develop for our other (on websites, over email and own courses. At a broader level, though, discussions lists, in journal articles and the shared framework of Crateware conference presentations), we are often allows instructors at different institutions impeded by structural and logistical and in different courses to more easily issues: One teacher develops materials in exchange materials. Because OSS Microsoft Word, another uses encourages both transformation and Blackboard, a third uses a combination of republication of resources, Crateware mass produced textbook and PowerPoint helps to break down the distinction slides. The structural differences among between “textbook” and “syllabus” (or these different resource formats impede other course materials). Instructors have our efforts to develop a learning simple, web-based tools for modifying community. existing modules, ranging from the In an attempt to provide the starting ability to change the title of an points for a shared framework for assignment to use local terminology to learning communities, we’ve begun developing completely new interactive development of an OSS platform called tools for online discussion. The OSS Crateware (Crateware). Based on an model, because it goes beyond OSS content management system called commodified information and requires “Zope” (Zope Corporation 2003), users and developers to become a part of Crateware includes classes of standard a community, provides a much broader learning modules that can be shared and richer environment for learning. among different courses (and institutions). While instructors having the

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Digital Media: Information Architecture 42

Works Cited Ante, S. E. “Big Blue’s Big Bet on Free Software; It’s Pouring Cash into an All-Out Effort to Promote Linux.” Business Week 10 Dec. 2001: 78. Biggs, J. D. “New Uses Help Introduce Linux Operating System to Non-Geeks.” New York Times 29 Nov. 2001: G.6. Crateware. "Nasco Business Simulation.” TC209: Analysis and Communication for Managers fall 2002, (14 January 2003). Gomes, L. “Linux Campaign Is An Uphill Battle For Microsoft Corp.” Wall Street Journal 14 June 2001: B.10.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Digital Media: Information Architecture 43 Concurrent Section 2

A. Tech Comm. & Its Neighbors: Relating to Technology

‘We look forward and back, and pine…’ Can this Relationship Be Saved?

J. Harrison Carpenter University of Colorado at Boulder

The English department at Utah State investigations such as a study of University will soon offer a new Ph.D. academic job advertisements and a degree in Theory & Practice of forthcoming Technical Communication Professional Communication. The article by Cook, Thralls, and Zachry, proposed degree, which lacks only final proved instrumental in our planning approval by the Board of Regents in Utah, discussions about the proposed degree. has been in development since August Based on the information collected, 2000. It will be the first doctoral degree the department has designed a doctoral offered by the department, and only the degree program that draws on strengths second to be offered in the College of of two of its pre-existing areas, technical Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. communication and English education. The proposed program was Within these areas are 16 specialists in developed at the request of upper technical communication, organizational administration at the university, where communication, rhetoric, composition, the department's success with its existing classroom instruction, online learning, programs in this area and the strengths of and linguistics. In addition to the primary recent faculty hires made such a program courses offered by the new Theory & feasible. (For a more detailed discussion Practice of Professional Communication of this program's evolution, see the faculty, doctoral students will complete Profession article by Brooks, Yancey, significant coursework in a cognate area and Zachry.) With this administrative of their own choosing. These cognate support, committees and individual areas are not predefined (students faculty members within the department develop them in conjunction with their initiated studies that would help shape the supervisory committees), but we decision-making process during proposal anticipate that many students will draw development. These studies included a heavily on graduate courses in survey of potential students in the instructional technology, business, and Intermountain region to determine how mass communication. Initial many qualified people might be conversations with potential students also interested in applying to such a program indicate a widespread interest in doing and what they would be interested in cognate work in the Folklore and studying upon entrance. An assessment American Studies programs, which have of doctoral program offerings and a strong reputation at Utah State. In strengths throughout the Western states particular, potential students have provided additional information, as did discussed research that would combine an examination of Utah State faculty practice and theory in professional strengths and departmental resources. communication with educational The results of these and other related

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Relating to Technology 44

opportunities in museum work, field catalog and advertising descriptions of studies, and archival processes. the program. In earlier versions of the proposal, the Much of the programmatic materials program was entitled, “Professional needed to offer this program (e.g., policy Communication, Culture, and and procedure texts, forms) have already Technology.” Outside the department, been created in anticipation of final however, this name was criticized as approval. State budgetary constraints, being too broad and too far removed from however, have led to a freeze on all new traditional conceptions of what English program offerings. When the program departments do. Consequently, the name receives this final approval, it will be was changed to “Theory & Practice of formally advertised, and we will begin Professional Communication,” and the accepting applications from an existing emphases in culture and technology will pool of potential students who have instead be described in the planned already expressed interest in applying.

Works Cited Anderson, Paul V., R. John Brockmann, and Carolyn R. Miller. “Introduction: Research in Technical and Scientific Communication.” New Essays in Technical and Scientific Communication: Research, Theory, Practice. Eds. Paul V. Anderson, R. John Brockmann, and Carolyn R. Miller. Amityville: Baywood, 1983. 7-14. Bosley, Debrorah S. “Jumping Off the Ivory Tower: Changing the Academic Perspective.” Rethinking Technical Communication. Eds. Barbara Mirel and Rachel Spilka. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002. 27-39. Geisler, Cheryl. “Multidisciplinarity and the Renewal of the University and Its Curriculum.” Dialogue Between the Two Cultures Public Lecture Series. University of Colorado at Boulder, 12 Dec. 2002. Hayhoe, George F. “The Academe-Industry Partnership: What’s in It for All of Us?” Technical Communication 45 (1998): 19-22. Journet, Debra. “Interdisciplinary Discourse and ‘Boundary Rhetorics’: The Case of S. E. Jeliffe.” Written Communication 10 (1993): 510-41. Smith, Elizabeth Overman. “Points of Reference in Technical Communication Scholarship.” Technical Communication Quarterly 9 (2000): 427-53. Taylor, Charles Alan. Defining Science: A Rhetoric of Demarcation. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1996.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Relating to Technology 45

'We Look Before and After, and Pine' Part II: How Do We Negotiate Our Differences, and Should We? Margaret Hundleby University of Houston-Downtown

As Harrison Carpenter has pointed same time as we espouse increasing out, a central concern for the interdisciplinarity and expand our technical/scientific/professional scholarly interests from WAC to WID to communication field is the existence of Genre Studies to Activity Theory and an uneasy relationship with rhetoric and beyond. We are already negotiating a composition. Particular difficulty lies in highly tricky passage; it is in our best there being several distinctly different interests to pause to ask not "do we want points-of-view not only about where the to do this?" but to consider both how and field is gong, but also where it has been. why to select the baggage that will help If one views Tech Comm as an outgrowth us complete the voyage rather than of the process movement in weighing us down. composition—perhaps burnished by The best example I know of comes association with rhetorical studies—one from current thinking about assessment likely possesses a set of assumptions in Tech Comm. In the "bad old days," the about continuation of a rather genteel remnants of logical positivism held us in tradition of critical inquiry and thrall to a range of measurement expressive discourse as characteristic and conventions that were finally questioned proper activities. If, on the other hand, and dissolved by composition's one considers Tech Comm to be an development of, first, holistic evaluation outgrowth of post-World War II society, procedures, and, then, portfolio practices with characteristic and perhaps that at least acknowledge cultural not-so-proper features determined by concerns and situatedness. Yes, there is pragmatic response to an increasingly an ongoing tendency to stay tied to trait technologized society, a different set of description as a means of validation from assumptions emphasizing the fundamentally interpretative problem-solving skills and an orientation point-of-view that has been borrowed toward representational discourse holds from our Arts beginnings. But, as our sway. Do these two highly differentiated interdisciplinarity increases, we can look viewpoints have a chance to meet in back to our history to recognize that some well-chaperoned middle? Or methodological insistence is baggage we should they even consider dating? don't need. From one part of our history Whether one considers these sources we have acquired the ability to polarities or next-of-kin, they already accommodate varied disciplinary form an uneasy alliance in English viewpoints; from the other, we have Departments across the country. In our retained the onus to critique it as we use it. existing Tech Comm programs, we often By understanding our history even as we mirror the early efforts of Writing- replace it with what is germane for just Across-the-Curriculum pioneers, at the this time and in just this place, we

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Relating to Technology 46

understand our practices, and our practice. "Negotiation" is equally a assessment of them, as moving beyond fixture of success in that practice. In the the statement of goals and criteria to the end, the challenge is not to decide if we complex investigation of outcomes and should negotiate differences within, and consequences. without, our programs, but to look to our The questions in the title of this paper history with the already-established are, then, multiply implicated: practice and to be as aware of our history "difference" is an inescapable as we are of our prospects. characteristic realized daily in the interdisciplinarity of Tech Comm

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Relating to Technology 47

Lessons Learned While Looking Both Ways: A Work-in-Process Review of Cincinnati State's Multimedia Information Design Programs

Pamela S. Ecker Cincinnati State Technical & Community College

In Fall 2000, the Technical Writing & whenever possible, encourage students to Editing degree at Cincinnati State engage in experiences outside their Technical and Community College, typical individual comfort zones and generally regarded as a model for instead bring them into the same sorts of associate degree technical multidisciplinary teams that we expect communication programs, was abolished. them to be part of when they join "real" The program that had lived for 15 years project teams. in the Humanities Division, attracting Two years later, Cincinnati State's about 25 students a year, was put to rest, Multimedia Information Design and a new program was established programs have about 500 enrolled within the College's brand new students, we have started to provide the Information Technologies Division, in a community with graduates (and the brand new department titled Multimedia community is responding with Information Design. The new cooperative education placements and configuration provided students with four even some permanent jobs), we have an choices, each leading to a separate expanded full-time faculty (and, as is associate of applied science degree: unfortunately the norm, an even more Audio/Video Production, Computer expanded part-time faculty), and we have Graphics, Technical Communication, learned a great deal about the ease and the and Web Design. difficulty of meeting our original goals. Initially, two faculty members were This presentation will review (very charged with developing and briefly) briefly some of the key implementing the new programs. One discoveries and the critical points of had a background in technical contention encountered during the first communication, the other in business full implementation cycle for the computer programming. From the outset, reconfigured and expanded programs. the faculty members agreed (in principle, Topics to be addressed include recruiting at least) that the four Multimedia degrees and mentoring faculty, developing course should address the traditional arts as well and program curricula, gaining as the high-tech sciences, should provide institutional support (both material and students with opportunities to explore psychological) for the new initiatives, theory (especially theory concerning and promoting "team-oriented" values audience assessment and product among faculty and students. usability assessment) as well as to gain plenty of hands-on practice, and should,

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Relating to Technology 48

Complicating Tensions and Reproducing Culture: Searching for Models in Technical and Scientific Communication

Carroll Ferguson Nardone Sam Houston State University

In building or refining programs of Postmodern influences technical and scientific communication, Knowledge in a professional setting departments wisely look toward already is socially constructed, most of it in existing programs to explore ways to conjunction with some form of written structure or ways to refocus instruction. communication. Through the various Developers also wisely look at industry genres of workplace writing, business to find what they require so that program and industry continually change to mold outcomes can be directly linked with a culture that is consistently in a state of industry needs. This notion of modeling flux. In our attempts to teach our students is valued in most pedagogical circles and to be successful in professional careers is not being discounted here. A lot can be we cannot recreate the world for them. said for tweaking the wheel to fit a new We can attempt to recreate writing context, rather than reinventing it. The situations that mimic those they will find role research plays in defining our field in their professions, but the reality is that must not be discounted, either. As Debs no matter how closely our attempts suggests, “When we write research, we mirror our perceptions of a non-academic create ourselves” (238). setting, we are still placing that attempt However, as we sift among the within the academic setting. One way to variety of institutional programs to find get around this is through internships, but courses, research, and ideas that we can even in that context, the institutional use for our own building processes, we constraints still outweigh many of the have to be aware that by accepting professional job site constraints that already proven methods, we might be affect students’ behaviors and stunting our own progress. By accepting performances. what has come before, what has been Why this is of such importance to successful in another context, and what both our discipline and our students is by nature is constrained by the culture that many of the jobs our students will be which creates it, we run the risk of doing, and the technology that they will allowing a dominant culture, whether be using, have not even been invented yet. useful or not, to supercede the rhetorical To focus our programs on current needs of both our programs and our technology and current practices, both students. More important, these dominant academic and non-academic, is to paradigms can mask the needs of condemn our students to skills that will business and industry. Thus, we must be obsolete and conceivably examine the rhetoric of our own unmarketable in a few years. What we development methods and understand the can do is to teach students to think tensions they create (Debs 252). critically, so that they can adjust their skills for the creation of new knowledge and ways of doing. All this sounds fine,

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except when it comes down to the how they help us to train our students to pragmatic. How can we create programs function in the workplace. A core in technical and scientific curriculum with core competencies communication that do not re-create the would serve such a normalizing function. current dominant culture and that do not As Elizabeth Tebeaux argues, however, condemn our students to preconceived “academics seem more concerned with and most probably ill-conceived notions describing past and current of what their writing careers will entail? communication practices and trying to Kuhn’s contribution theorize a paradigm for these issues than with predicting future communication One way is to look at the postmodern environments and determining the best influence and to begin finding ways into communication solutions for those theorizing how we might construct our problems” (44). She suggests using the programs that allow for the diverse, workplace as a point of departure to help poly-vocal, interdisciplinary world we ensure the relevance of the research (44). live. Kuhn’s notion of “normal science” Through her ideas for an integrated can help with this exploration. As he research to pedagogy process, she hopes explains, research proceeds according to that knowledge gained will “prepare our the elaboration and characterization from students for immediate nonacademic which a usual verbalization is derived. demands as well as the probable demands For example, current physics textbooks of the future” (52). I’d like to heed her teach “student[s] that light is call for relevant teaching and research, photons—quantum-mechanical entities and perhaps this is the point to start, but that exhibit some characteristics of waves we have to ask ourselves, what and some of particles.” But as he points workplaces and with what effect? out, this “characterization of light is...scarcely half a century old. Before it “When we write research, we create was developed...physics texts taught that ourselves” light was a transverse wave motion” (12). Mary Beth Debs believes that we may This conception was rooted from a choose the role we want to play and paradigm derived mainly from the 19th through her investigation of research century. And before that, it was taught practices in related fields, she suggests that light was material corpuscles. Each that we challenge ourselves through of these schools of thought derived itself dialectic to open forums for debate. What from its relation to some particular we need to guide our choices is a metaphysic and each emphasized the “self-conscious reflection” to the particular cluster of optical phenomena consequences (252). Through this that its own theory could do most to process, we could then create for explain (13). What this doesn’t allow for, ourselves and our individual institutions, however, is the notion that all or none of professional writing programs that are them may actually be useful. geared toward our individual student This notion of normal science is populations and those workplace fitting for our discussion because we can situations we are most familiar with, use the analogy of our programs to that of either by geography or product. As a the textbooks that normalize our concept result, we would have a condition that of what technical communication is and privileges the local and not the global. As CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Relating to Technology 50

Geertz argues, since all knowledge is relationships between specific discourses local knowledge, this would suggest that can go a long way to help us provide a our programs could be shaped by the language for our students that will not specific culture that generates and just mimic the status quo, but will allow believes it. Would these local narratives for us to challenge our students to be any less totalizing than the global analyze their own situations and continue narratives? to learn even as they enter those Perhaps the way to answer these professions with specific job tasks not yet questions is to adapt a Trimbur’s method evident to those of us working to prepare of dissensus used in collaborative them. learning situations (quoted by Herndl). We can create ourselves and our This rhetoric of dissensus would allow us programs, but it must not be through to explore where programs differ, where simple modeling—it must involve an those differences are manifested, and integration of ostensibly disparate why they manifest as they do. Through workplace discourses. Only through research that looks at the discourse these efforts can we assume that we are communities of unrelated fields such as truly recognizing the differences in the biological sciences, the computer workplace cultures and teaching our sciences, and engineering fields, we can students the nuances about these begin to find those differences and use differences so that when they seek to them to build a new discourse—one that enter the field, they will have the tools takes the differences into consideration they need to analyze the rhetoric and and that extols the differences while also respond accordingly. Therefore, rather finding points of similarity that can be than looking to an industry to model exploited into our pedagogy. Research pedagogy, we must look to all industry to that supports this exploration of the create a pedagogy.

Works Cited Debs, Mary Beth. “Reflexive and Reflective Tensions: Considering Research Methods from Writing-Related Fields.” Writing in the Workplace: New Research Perspectives. Ed. Rachel Spilka. Southern Illinois UP, 1993. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic, 1973. Herndl, Carl. “Teaching Discourse and Reproducing Culture: A Critique of Research and Pedagogy in Professional and Non-Academic Writing." College, Composition, and Communication 44 (October 1993): 349-63. Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996. Tebeaux, Elizabeth. “Nonacademic Writing Into the 21st Century: Achieving and Sustaining Relevance in Research and Curricula.” Nonacademic Writing, Social Theory and Technology. Eds. Ann Hill Duin and Craig J. Hansen. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996.

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B. Teaching Tech. Comm.: Redesigning Presentation

Thinking Global: If "International" Means English, What does "Intercultural" Mean?

Dianne Atkinson Purdue University School of Mechanical Engineering

The push/pull of the global market providing global design experience to place is changing the agenda for undergraduate mechanical engineers, a communications in technical disciplines. concept perhaps best known in Even deep in the Midwest, where automotive circles as exemplified in the engineering "gear heads" have been Ford Motor Company "world car," the accustomed to finding safe havens in platform designed via collaboration automotive and other legacy across five design sites for the purpose of manufacturing operations, global engineering a product that could be markets are changing the way industry manufactured and marketed around the organizes both production and design. world. The way we develop our technical The three complications to be communications programs, in the described are the binaries: Midwest and elsewhere, will be (1) local/global, (2) process/product, and challenged and complicated by the global (3) personal/professional. We are initiatives now underway. attempting to bridge two local contexts The complexity of that global for the purpose of addressing global challenge is disguised by the pervasive issues about the process of product use of English on the Internet and within design, working with a cultural corporate communications originating in immersion approach to gaining North America. The recent merger of professional skills through personal Daimler-Benz and Chrysler provides an experience. "Intercultural" transactions important new case history of the will be necessarily personal yet will be underestimation of the communications validated through technical project difficulties to be expected when cultural collaborations. differences are discounted because Program development for the "everyone speaks English." As Purdue/Karlsruhe communications professionals in technical program is itself a product of communications, we must prepare to collaboration, the work of an develop programs that address the international and cross-disciplinary team, problem of negotiating the unspoken including German language faculty, boundaries between cultures. mechanical engineering faculty, and I would like to identify three technical communications professionals. complications for program design that are The complications I will address are now emerging for one specific new drawn from our planning and program, an alliance between Purdue development work over the past six University and the Universität Karlsruhe months. in Germany. The program centers on

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Teaching Tech. Comm.: Redesigning Presentation 52

"Learning to Write / Writing to Learn": Considering the Limits of a Pedagogical Binary in Science and Engineering Communication in the Disciplines

Linda Driskill Rice University

Technical Communication Programs senior design or capstone courses. There, often help colleagues in the disciplines by students produce proposals, reports on identifying two purposes for design projects, or feasibility students for communication assignments: "writing to fictional and sometimes actual clients. learn" and "learning to write." This Although these categories have been binary has several advantages: faculty highly acceptable to colleagues in other grasp the distinctions fairly easily; the disciplines, they should be framed in a two purposes, respectively, seem context of rhetorical research as well as congruent with the aims of introductory disciplinary conventions. At the extremes, courses and capstone or design courses; these oppositions tend to reify scientific and the distinction helps justify meaning as acontextual in the case of differences in grading criteria. The writing to learn and as formulaic in categories also sidestep the objections fictionalized settings of learning to write. that all writing assignments are only Writing to learn given "to teach writing" and that faculty in other disciplines are not prepared "to Writing to learn assignments can teach writing." We say, in effect, "See allow students to devote their energies to how easy this is? You can do it." expressing content without addressing However, these classifications also can constraints of genre, audience, and style. sabotage the status of leaders in writing Freedom from these constraints can yield across the curriculum and reinforce more processing power for grappling notions that only "content" matters. By with complex intellectual tasks. However, recognizing the unintended consequences when the professor is the only audience, of our persuasive strategies, technical the activity may re-emphasize science as communication programs can address knowledge that is only school knowledge, their educational as well as political separate from a context in which people effects. have vested interests in answers. When style and audience don't matter, only the In technical and scientific correctness of the calculation or the communication programs "writing to technical aspects of the subject may be learn" assignments include such things as marked or commented on. The student's defining concepts, summarizing chapters sense of constructing knowledge or lectures, or explaining processes. Short purposefully may be diminished. exercises such as one minute essays, in-class responses, and concept maps fall Learning to write into this category, as do some posters, lab Assignments that add a fictional reports, and essay-style test questions. setting, a corporate audience, and a genre "Learning to write/communicate" such as a design report, proposal, or assignments are more likely to occur in feasibility study can help students

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anticipate how their knowledge will be advanced courses. Seeing assignments in used in industry or other settings. relation to a matrix of assignment However, too often, students receive no features and evaluation criteria can instruction in the writing or speaking ensure better integrated sequences of activity, just an assignment to "do it." technical communication instruction. When the assignment involves audiences Indeed, if format, conventions of students know little about, such as a documentation, and topic allocation are president, high level managers, or project all students gain in a "learning to write" managers for a plant to be built in China assignment, then what does the WAC or another country, students may rely on scholar know that is valuable? The stereotypes or ignore audience needs assignment binary works to make altogether. Students may lack knowledge rhetoricians' expertise invisible. Most of of constraints that writers rely on in the prestigious universities that have industry for a host of significant recently (last five years) decided they decisions, such as knowledge of must "do something" about writing and corporate culture, larger processes of communication have chosen to staff business organizations, the relation to programs with untenured people and other types of documents, and a have hired the leaders as administrators, background of communication practices not as researchers. A few--Harvard, Duke, in the organization. In such situations the Stanford--have hired one distinguished students take report conventions and scholar to lead their university-wide subject matter/content allocation rigidly programs, but the main workforce is a and miss the persuasive elements that flock of untenured, term-contract might well determine success or failure in instructors who gain no advantage by the workplace. Discussions may be publishing or doing research. Many work organized in an academic fashion, for salaries of $30k to 40k. Without delaying "bottom-line" issues until the having time for scholarship, these end. The result is performance that instructors cannot be up to date on doesn't mimic real situations and students technologies, visual design, intercultural don't learn how to organize to meet the communication, negotiation, and other expectations of actual audiences or adapt changes in communication that result to the variations that result from from globalization and communication international, multicultural, or complex technologies. Students will not be as audiences. prepared as they need to be when they Giving some attention to audience enter the workforce. Everyone loses. We and genre in writing to learn as well as need to examine the effects of persuasive paying attention to the process of binaries that conceal the work of scholars adapting content to genres and in rhetoric. We must make visible the multicultural audiences can help avoid a rhetorical expertise that can infuse both disjunction in instructors' expectations types of assignments with crucial and a serious shift in grading criteria as relevance. students move from introductory to

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A Call for a Prax-ical Undergraduate Major Curricular Framework

Tim Peeples Elon University

At an accelerated pace, the broad experiences also reflect a theory/practice field of professional writing is seeing binary within professional writing. growth in the development of Within the scope of pedagogy, the undergraduate major programs. With field has long challenged the purposes distinct from service, certificate, theory/practice binary, but I want to minor, and graduate programs (because propose that we pursue ways of they focus on building full disciplinary challenging this binary at the curricular educational experiences for an level. More specifically, I propose that undergraduate population), creating we work to develop curricular curricula for undergraduate majors poses frameworks based on one of the many new challenges for the field. following related terms: praxis, One such challenge lies in locating reflection-in-action, or theorizing. Hocks, the best curricular frameworks. Faculty Sanders Lopez, and Grabill in "Praxis looking for such frameworks can quickly and Institutional Architecture" have find a variety, spanning from the described how we can approach dominant (e.g., genre-driven, media- curricular development as a form of driven, and professional context-driven) praxis, and though I recommend their to the haphazard (e.g., driven by article, their argument is not the one I am disconnected faculty interests or a set of forwarding here. Rather than focusing on disconnected "popular" courses) to the the process of curricular design, I argue innovative (e.g., Johnson-Eilola and we must imagine professional writing Selber's recent TCQ article). curricular frameworks that are One framework that often dominates, constructed around praxis rather than the either directly or indirectly, is theory/practice binary if we are to constructed around the theory/practice graduate students and develop industry binary. The binary is evident, often, in colleagues who understand professional curricular requirements, wherein students writing as more than the application of are directed to take a certain number of theories to practice; if we are to re-create theory and practice courses–the case at professional writing as a form of my university, in fact. A great number of critically reflective social practice; and if programs also encourage or require we are to elevate the value of internships and include client projects in professional writing/professional writers their courses–also the case at my within and outside academia. university. Because both internships and Instead of arguing that our curricula client- based projects are typically develop well disciplined students conceived as opportunities to practice knowledgeable of theories and capable of applying theories and strategies learned good practice, I am arguing that our in prior courses, these kinds of curricula develop students who are effective professional writing theorists,

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"prax-itioners." Weiser and Rose argue develop these abilities, perhaps even in a that theorizing involves several abilities, conscious and planned way, I still assert the ability to develop theory, to decide that we must pursue a curricular that one needs to apply or develop a framework that forefronts a praxis theory, to apply theory within particular orientation. Especially in the rapidly contexts, and to reflect upon actions to changing organizational, cultural, and which the application of theory may lead. technological contexts in which we ("Theorizing Writing Program write/act, perhaps the most important Theorizing") Perhaps these varying work we can do is teach our students how abilities point to a curricular sequence? to build and reflect on situated theories of Even though our separate courses may rhetorical action..

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C. Tech. Comm. & Digital Media: Teaching Online

Considerations for Online Technical Writing

Keith Gibson Penn State University

As has been written about extensively, online, I have worked with students from online technical writing courses hold as far away as Malaysia who are many potential benefits for students. suddenly able to work in peer writing These benefits are particularly groups and ask me specific questions meaningful for students who would about writing assignments. I have also otherwise be relegated to correspondence had students who work full time, who, courses, where the only teacher-student being several years removed from their interaction was via snail mail and own college experience, have greatly student-student interaction was benefited from the opportunity to work non-existent. Despite this promise, early closely with other members of the course. versions of on-line teaching have Problems encountered some unexpected obstacles in the form of students ill-prepared for But, as with nearly any enterprise, life the rigors of electronic learning and is not all wine and roses for internet teachers unaccustomed to dealing with courses. In my experience with the students without ever speaking to them. World Campus (the Penn State In this position paper, I will address instantiation of Internet distance potential benefits to on-line courses as education), very few of the students are well as some suggestions for adequately those described above who would be preparing teachers and students for this unable to attend a resident section. new learning environment. Instead, the vast majority of my students have been typical juniors or seniors right Benefits here in University Park who have chosen Distance education courses have long the World Campus for one of two reasons: been an important part of many schools’ no attendance requirement and cheaper curricula, providing services for students tuition. As a college student myself, I unable to participate in the more fully understand these two motivations; traditional resident courses. Historically, as a teacher, though, I see these this option has consisted largely of motivations leading to a large number of correspondence courses in which students in each class who are students cover the material on their own ill-prepared for the rigors of an internet and mail in tests and assignments. This course. The problem is one of system limited the interaction between perspective: students whose only other teacher and student and eliminated option is a correspondence course see an interaction between students. Newer internet course as an opportunity to do internet versions of distance education more; students who have been taking have solved these problems, as teachers resident courses see distance courses as a and students can easily communicate via chance to do less. As such, these students email and online message boards. In the are surprised by the amount of work technical writing courses I have taught involved in a distance education course.

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They are not prepared to participate in Solutions online discussions and peer reviews, and Though my specific discussion of they are surprised that there are weekly, these issues stems from my experience at and sometimes daily, deadlines. In my one university, conversations with others experience, this situation causes several have led me to believe that these are students to acclimate themselves very fairly common phenomena. And though slowly; it often takes so long that they my chief intent is to bring attention to drop the course rather than face the these issues for departments and make-up work. I have had sections cut programs that are starting internet nearly in half by this phenomenon, and courses, I would here like to discuss some this reduces the benefits that come from general strategies to combat these the group work in the course. problems before they begin. A second issue is the different Before registering for an online expectations of the teachers. One area in course, students need to know if they which this commonly occurs is in the use have the learning style that will allow of standard syllabi for distance courses. them to thrive in a distance education Effective internet courses will employ environment. To discern this, students sophisticated software that allows for could be required to participate in an teacher-student and student-student online orientation before registering that interaction. Thus, to keep the uploading shows them in some detail what kind of at a reasonable level, most internet requirements exist in internet courses. courses employ a standard syllabus This would have a two-fold benefit: it across all sections. The problem here is would discourage students who are one of familiarity on the part of the looking for an easy way out, and it would teacher. The first time I taught a World give the others a better idea of their Campus section of technical writing, I ability to succeed in a World Campus. had several sections of resident tech The specifics of this orientation would writing under my belt, and I was fairly depend on the specifics of the course, but confident about my ability to handle the any introduction would help the students new format. The assignments, however, prepare themselves. were new, and in the first couple weeks of the course, I encountered a couple Likewise, first-time teachers of questions that I couldn’t answer. I felt internet sections would benefit from a like a first-time teacher again as I practicum that familiarized them with the explained that I had to go ask my intricacies of online teaching as well as supervisor. Now, my feelings are not the specifics of the course syllabus. particularly important, but my standing Teaching online is vastly different from with the students is, and teachers can teaching in person, and there are many have a difficult time maintaining their difficulties that could be avoided if credibility, especially with older, experienced World Campus teachers non-traditional students, if they do not were able to discuss in detail some seem to be in charge of the course. strategies for success in this new environment. Online courses are certain to have a large place in higher education as the

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world becomes more wired, and there are of the programs think specifically about certainly many benefits to be derived the potential pitfalls and provide some from such classes. These benefits can be ways around them for both teachers and maximized if the administrators in charge students.

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Hyper-Textbooks

Kevin LaGrandeur New York Institute of Technology

The technological aspect of technical sense to use Web-based texts as communication has been changing so textbooks. For example, if a teacher rapidly that it is getting harder to find wanted to teach a class that focused on textbooks that match what we do in class. writing instructions for Web-based For instance, a class on writing for the environments, and wanted to touch on Web can entail exposure to a number of elements of Web design, information modalities of writing—informational, architecture, usability testing and client instructional, persuasive—and each of management as part of the course, then these sorts of modalities can call for that teacher could include hypertexts exposing students to different types of from such respected Web design sites as technological issues as well: students webmonkey, or use search engines to may need to learn about HTML, find good texts (there is a good text on manipulating graphics, and information Tripod.com, for example, on the basics of architecture. The problem is that often no HTML). single textbook can suffice for such There are some drawbacks to this classes, and the teacher is faced with course of action, as well as some either tailoring a class to a advantages, as I see it. Let me list them to textbook—which restricts pedagogical provide possible inroads for discussion. freedom—or asking students to buy a number of books. This last option can be Advantages of using hypertext an onerous financial burden on the collections as a course textbook: student. • Low cost to student One other option might be using a • Highly flexible topic selection collection of hypertext sources as a textbook. This idea is not new. In the • Easily tailored to changing course world of hardcopy, the problem of needs finding suitable literary anthologies for • Good for use in computer labs composition classes has been enough of a (can have textbook on screen problem that several textbook companies alongside software tools) began, a few years ago, to make customized textbooks for instructors. The • Lost or forgotten textbooks are no teacher, in those cases, chooses from a longer a worry as long as a list of works that the company has computer is handy available, and the publisher puts together a customized, specially bound textbook of the chosen pieces for that particular class. In the case of a technical communication class that focuses on Web-based documents, it might make

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Disadvantages of using hypertext complaints of the students in the Ohio collections as a course textbook: State study. Writing in 1998, Jeffrey Veen lamented that “designers add links • Initially labor intensive for by inserting harsh blue underlined scars teacher (who has to search for and into the patterns of the paragraphs. The screen sources) result? An overbearing distraction to the • Hyperlinks can expire or change reader’s subconscious. Suddenly, that (teacher needs to occasionally reader must decide: Do I stop here and monitor state of links) click on to this link? Do I finish the • Accessibility problems for sentence and come back? Do I finish the students without easy computer story and scroll back to the navigation availability, or with disabilities element? It’s a headachy mess”(1). • On-screen The upshot of this “headachy mess,” reading/comprehension problems according to the Ohio State study, is that printed versions of articles were This last problem is an especially consistently judged to be “more sticky one. Educational institutions, interesting and persuasive” than the same following the lead of many businesses, articles read on-screen. Web designers, it are trying to move toward electronic seems, will have to be more careful about deliverables and paperless work their use of graphics and, more crucially, environments. This is particularly true of come up with some kind of adjustment to academic programs in technical rectify the problem with hypertext. Veen communication, which educate people to mentions various solutions, including work in an employment arena that is two interesting, low-tech ones: move the increasingly electronic. There is evidence, hyperlinks to the margin of the text, so however, that reading comprehension that they become like annotations, or suffers when individuals are asked to move them all to the end of the document. read materials onscreen, as opposed to on He notes that these solutions have been paper. A recent study done at Ohio State tried by various companies, such as the University found that people had trouble New York Times, but does not say how understanding and focusing on good the results have been. Web-based content. One of the students in the study said his problems stemmed Another problem for comprehending from the greater graphical focus of Web onscreen material is that, as most Web pages. “There are all these great graphics, design theory maintains, those accessing and it takes concentration to home in and Web pages actually skim online material focus on the actual information,” he rather than read it (activity on the Web is complained (Greenman G11). Part of this not called “surfing” for nothing). This student’s problem also had to do with poses a problem, as the type of reading a hyperlinks: he found himself “struggling textbook demands must include critical to digest the information on a Web page thinking and reflection, a form of reading before being lured away by links to other to which the materials on the Web seem pages.” resistant. Web users are not the only ones Perhaps the most vexing problem, in troubled by hypertextual documents. At terms of class preparation, is that least one Web designer anticipated the Websites and their associated hyperlinks

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are relatively ephemeral: they change or “degradable”—that is, they do not look disappear regularly. This means that the good on older browsers and computers. instructor has to constantly check and So if a student has older technology at update hypertext documents used as home (or none at all), he or she will face course material—a task that often means an additional burden in using class wading through numerous listings for materials. Moreover, the difficulties with keywords associated with that material reading onscreen may be amplified for that come up in response to online those with any kind of disability. searches. Though it is true that instructors I have delineated the drawbacks to must review newer editions of textbooks using Web-based texts as primary course for their classes, and that even hardcopy material because I think that in our textbooks become obsolete, it is also true enthusiasm to adopt technology for that their shelf-life is usually at least two classroom use—or, for some, because of or three years. This means that we can pressure to adopt educational technology annotate the margins of our textbooks for reasons of institutional finances or to with notes that can be used repeatedly—a keep up with the job world—we may not type of preparation, by the way, that is always be moved to consider the virtually impossible with Web pages, drawbacks of technology. Nevertheless, which do not lend themselves to easy if we can find good solutions to the marginal notation. problems I outline, the convenience, Even once materials are located and financial advantages to both students and loaded, one must always consider institutions, and flexibility that could be accessibility. Some Websites take a long gained by using Web-based textbooks time to load and are not very would be significant.

Works Cited Greenman, Catherine. “Printed Page Beats PC Screen for Reading, Study Finds,” New York Times, 10 August 2000: G11. All subsequent references to the Ohio State study are from this article. Veen, Jeffrey. “The Foundations of Web Design,” webmonkey: The Web Developer's Resource, 16 February 1998, Lesson 3, page 1.

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Technical Writing and Online Distance Education: The Advantages and The Pitfalls

Kenneth T. Rainey Southern Polytechnic State University

I will describe as much as I know differentials poses major pitfall for a about the extent of online distance nascent program. education in the delivery of technical The pitfalls for the students are writing courses, primarily at the equally threatening. I have taught our undergraduate level but with some undergraduate service course in technical mention of several reasonably significant writing for two years now completely forays into graduate education via through online delivery. The intended distance learning. participants of this course are I will discuss the advantages that such sophomores who have completed the first a delivery method provides to academic year (two courses) composition sequence. programs in technical communication, The major weakness of this student is focusing on the advantages to the immaturity and lack of controlled programs themselves, to the students, and discipline of their lives and of their study. to the instructors. The advantages for the In the five classes that I have taught, I programs include such opportunities as have lost from thirty to sixty percent of reaching far greater audience for the the initial enrolment because the students courses and degree programs. What most got behind in the work and could not programs are discovering is that the catch up. Because of this, I am changing online courses appeal to students already the method of delivering the course from registered in the university. That is, all online to a "hybrid" form, chiefly programs that may have been intended online but with mandatory face-to-face initially to reach different audiences end meetings during the semester, some 4 or up delivering to an existing audience 5. This immediately diminishes one of simply through a different medium. So the chief advantages for students who programs contemplating such an attempt find it difficult or impossible to travel to must realize that to reach a new audience, the campus. they will have to market the opportunity The pitfalls for the instructor are to that target audience. similarly imposing. In addition to having Much of the time, however, I will to teach using an entirely different identify some of the major pitfalls lurking method of delivery, the instructor faces for the unwary who blithely wander over the threatening problem of having to them. One of the significant problems create the course Web site, learning the facing programs in delivering online Web delivery software, and deciding how instruction to a new and wider audience to effectively organize the course is the problem of entrenched bureaucracy information so that students can access it at the campus and regents' level of easily. These are major pitfalls that can administration. Specifically, the problem frustrate students and teachers alike. of how to handle out-of-state tuition Moreover, just as students will have to

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spend more time on the course work, so Finally, I will suggest that we really teachers will have to spend more time on need some research into all of the it. My off the top of my head estimate is advantages and pitfalls that such a that my online courses require a delivery system presents. In fact, I intend minimum of 50% more of my time than a to organize a study that will compare and face-t-face course. contrast this course delivered in both online and in face-to-face forms by the same instructor, during the same semester, using the same materials.

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Negotiating the Intersection of Instructional Methods in Distance Education and the Traditional Classroom

Janice Tovey East Carolina University

More and more technical attention; they can email or chat with communication programs are instructors when they are actually incorporating distance education into engaged in writing an assignment. their curricula. Whether they use web Instructors and students can't anticipate sites to replace or supplement traditional all the potential questions and problems instruction, the web and Internet have during the normal class time. made their marks on the programs today. Students can also access the Online programs are growing in number "classroom" at any time. If they work and degree options: one post-graduate better in the evening, then the material is online certificate program at a regional available on the web site. Besides southern University recently added the accommodating work activities and other option of an online masters degree. responsibilities, it also helps aids students While its Distance Education certificate who work better during hours not program is a success, its instructional traditionally assigned to the classroom. method—the web—has influenced the Students can work in greater comfort traditional on-campus program to such a from their home from their own degree that the two are virtually computers. And, my students would add, interchangeable. they don't have to drive around looking Tension arises when students enroll for a parking place. in a campus class and find themselves in But beyond the practical and time a virtual classroom. They may not ever saving, there are other aspects of web have to physically enter the classroom, instruction that take away from the may never meet the instructor or the other educational and practical experience. The students. For some students, this situation interaction with peers and instructor is is ideal: they can work full time, take as lacking and is probably unsatisfactory for many as classes per semester as they can many. Instruction may suffer from lack handle, not worry about baby-sitters or of depth: students in a classroom interact taking time away from work. For other with peers and instructors to gain more students, this method of instruction may knowledge, but those same opportunities seem attractive, but in the end works to may not arise in a web class. Even with their disadvantage. an organized discussion, the spontaneity The benefits of distance education is missing and important information seem clear enough. For the universities may not be discussed. The best-prepared and their faculties, resources are used web site may not cover every situation. more efficiently. Documents can be Decisions about instructions in both submitted via email, saving paper and distance education programs and printing costs, and returned with traditional programs have to be made comments typed directly into the file. with students' best interest in mind. Students can get more individual Perhaps some classes can be

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"interchangeable" while others must be determine the success of any program taught differently depending on the whether undergraduate or graduate level audience. Negotiating the line between and the satisfaction of its students. traditional and online classrooms will

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D: New Approaches in the Classroom: Visuals, Text, Web

Program Priorities: Visuals versus Text

Deborah C. Andrews University of Delaware

At Delaware, the program through faculty are visually oriented and trained which we prepare professional business in visual thinking, others are not. So how and technical writers is a concentration can we best educate our students in visual within the Department of English. Our thinking and presentation? Third, since students are English majors first: within the core of an English major is the concentration we offer courses in traditionally text, is instruction in visual editing, rhetoric, and publication, in print presentation thus outside the core? And and online. Partly because of information can it count? technology and new media, these courses, My presentation at CPTSC won't, of once devoted to preparing text, now pay course, provide definitive answers to any equal and even greater attention to of these questions. But it will discuss how preparing visuals, or preparing text as a we are collaborating with colleagues in visual. the Department of Art to teach strategies This binary (visuals and text) leads to for both visual and textual several programmatic questions. For one, communication and how English how much class time should be spent on departments like that at Delaware are visuals versus time spent on text? Second, gradually connecting with their although some technical communication inner—visual—selves.

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With World Enough and Time: Balancing Fundamental Skills and Ultimate Goals in Document Design Courses

Susan Lawrence Carnegie Mellon University

Document Design courses may be them adequate time to experiment with necessarily ambitious in scope. the principles of gestalt composition, Kostelnick's "Designing Visual typography, page proportion and grid Language," for instance, suggests that structures can consume more than such a course will address gestalt one-third of the course, up to five or six composition, typography, grid structure, weeks. information structure, presentation of Looking at textbooks, we can infer data, use of illustrations, and designing that a course in document design might for usability. Schriver's "Dynamics in devote two to three weeks of its syllabus Document Design" adds the history of to gestalt composition, typography, and graphic design as well as research page proportion. This is just about methods for planning, testing and enough time for students to learn about revising user-centered documents. In these principles and guidelines, but not some courses, these concerns may be nearly enough time to practice them. In addressed for both paper and on line this scenario, students try out this new set formats. of tools and concerns for the first time in At Carnegie Mellon, one of my their rhetorically driven projects. But colleagues, Susan Hagan, has developed we've found that when students move a course in document design that focuses directly from learning about visual on creating effective text/visual composition into a goal-oriented project combinations on the page surface. We are with multiple constraints, their designs able to emphasize this aspect of tend to be conservative and timid, and document design because we have other they often simply default to "page set-up" courses dedicated to research methods, mode, perhaps with a new typeface and a planning and testing documents, and on shorter line length. In short, using these line information design. Yet even having new compositional tools for the first time freed ourselves to focus on the in rhetorically situated projects seems to interactions between visual and verbal short-circuit students' learning about elements on a page, we still have those tools, and, consequently, to difficulty balancing the foundational constrict their ability to use them. This skills of visual composition with the problem is similar to one we face with ultimate goal of the course—allowing regards to writing, but it may be even students to create effective visual verbal more pronounced when writers are interactions for a variety of rhetorical learning visual composition, a practice situations and purposes. Specifically, with which they typically have little we've found that introducing students familiarity. unfamiliar with visual design to the When, on the other hand, we've theory and tools of visual composition allowed time for students to experiment takes a great deal of time, and that giving

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with their new compositional tools in purpose. One reason is that document loosely designed assignments with design needs to help students develop minimal constraints, they make generalized principles and heuristics for discoveries and build a repertoire of composing visual/verbal combinations strategies (developed through a great deal that can be brought to bear on audiences of trial and error) upon which to draw and purposes we don't explore in our when they move on to designing course. Dedicating time to the ultimate documents for specific audiences and goals of the course becomes difficult, of purposes. In effect, we want students to course, when one-third of the syllabus is practice drawing an audience's eye into given to the fundamentals of visual and through a page using as many composition. But we are trying to avoid a elements of grouping as possible—value, situation in which we introduce students size, placement, proximity, isolation, to a set of concerns and tools without texture, shape, etc.—and to have ample providing the scaffolding they need to put time to work with negative space shape. these concerns and tools into play. We want them to discover—not just read Our program has sought a variety of about—how typographic elements like means to ease this tension between typeface and size, line length, leading, fundamental skills and ultimate goals in justification and page proportion interact visual/verbal composition. As noted with one another. Doing this takes time, above, we have divided the labor of even more time if we want to allow for document design among more than one second and third iterations. The course. We've taken a slightly different advantage is that when students approach approach with our master's students, their formal projects with real-world requiring them to take a prerequisite rhetorical constraints, their designs course in visual design fundamentals reflect a more confident use of visual from Carnegie Mellon's School of Design, composition and typography in order to a strategy that is meant to create more achieve their rhetorical goals. space in our own course for its most The problem with this approach is central concerns. that we lose valuable time that would I am interested to hear how others otherwise be devoted to two equally have experienced this tension or important dimensions of the course: first, attempted to resolve it, with respect to exploring the different kinds of visual/verbal combinations specifically, interactions between visual and verbal or with document design more generally. elements on a page, and second, creating And although I haven't made this concern visual/verbal combinations that are central to my presentation, I would be effective for specific rhetorical purposes. interested in unpacking this issue of what Susan Hagan has developed a taxonomy happens as students try to develop and of interactions that can link visual and use their document design expertise in verbal elements to create meaning and courses that don't actually address this guide audiences' attention from text to aspect of professional communication. A visual and back again. We believe it's final programmatic concern is how these important for students to think about issues affect the training of Ph.D students visual/verbal combinations in terms of in programs in professional and technical these interactions as well as through the communication. more traditional lens of rhetorical

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Web Design as Technical Communication Service Course

Pete Praetorius Montana Tech of the University of Montana

During the spring of 2002 I taught a begins with rhetorical concerns Web design course. To my surprise, such as consideration of audience. two-thirds of the students who registered • Design Principles: Robin for the course were business majors. Williams (author of The These students registered for the course Non-Designer’s Design Book and because the Montana Tech Business The Non-Designer’s Web Book) Department decided to count the Web rightly points out that basic design course as a computer science design principles for the world of elective. Although I still argue that Web print are applicable to the Web design is a technical communications and and vice versa. Thus, when not a computer science course, both the students learn about alignment, students and I quickly realized that a contrast, and proximity in a Web course in Web design is appropriate for design class, they are learning business students. In fact, rather than design principles that can readily being simply a specialty course for be employed when they work on technical communication majors, the print documents. Web design course makes for an excellent service course for students • Search Engines: Although a majoring in all disciplines. In this course in Web design is not position statement, I discuss how a Web generally identified as a research design service course can benefit students course, this course is an excellent of any major as well as departments of place to help students understand technical communication. how search engines work. In learning how to make their own Benefits to students sites come up in searches, What students learn in a course on students also learn how search Web design overlaps and complements engines work. Because the gap in what they learn in a course in technical or how Web based search engines business communication/writing. Here is and library search engines work a partial list: has narrowed, students gain a • Rhetorical Concerns: As with transferable skill when they learn early composition courses that the intricacies of Web search were taught in computer labs, it is engines. easy for a Web design course to • Usability: A Web design class is lose its design/communications an excellent place to introduce purpose and slip into being taught students to the concept of as a course in how to use a user-centered design. Students particular Web authoring quickly realize that those who software. Designing a Web site visit Web sites are often “users”

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: New Approaches in the Classroom: Visuals, Text, Web 70

rather than “readers,” and, if users Thus, as a service course, Web are going to stay on a site, the site design will help grow technical must function in a way that easily communication departments. allows users to complete their objectives. • Recruitment Tool: The Web • Organization: Although the design class is a good place to experience of users using the introduce students in other World Wide Web is often disciplines to the Technical categorized as nonlinear and a Communication major. Students hierarchical, those who create and in other majors are often maintain Web sites must be very scheduled to take a technical or organized and pay close attention business communication class in to organization and detail. The their junior or senior year. Such organizational skills that students students may excel in their learn in a Web design class will technical communication course, likely help them in their other and may even wish to change classes and throughout their lives. majors, but many are too far into • Evaluation: Perhaps the most their academic careers to do so. important thing that students Moreover, a number of students learn (particularly business may be dissatisfied with their students) when taking a class in current major and drop out of Web design is how to tell the school or transfer before learning difference between good and bad about a school’s technical Web sites. Because many communication degree. Technical business majors may one day be Communication departments can in a position to pay for Web site use the Web design course as a development, these students recruitment tool and introduce should be given the ability to students to technical recognize a good Web site. communication during their freshman or sophomore year. Benefits to a technical communication department • GTA Course: Web design can In addition to being a benefit to readily be taught by graduate students, a Web design service course students. The Web design course can be a welcome FTE generating course can help technical for departments of technical communication departments communication. recruit graduate students by providing a source of graduate • Service Course: Web design teaching assistantships. courses could conceivably become required for many majors; if a Web design course isn’t required, it will certainly continue to grow as a popular elective.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: New Approaches in the Classroom: Visuals, Text, Web 71

Ad/Manual: Rhetoric of Technology in the Technical Communication Program

Dan Riordan University of Wisconsin-Stout

While at first glance ads and manuals method they can apply the same approach have little in common in the rhetorical to pages of a manual. The arrangement study of technology, their use in the of the information on the manual's page undergraduate rhetoric of technology becomes not a set of design rules to course provides a fruitful way to help follow, but a rhetorical method to emerging technical communicators grasp socialize a technology for a reader. The the conceptual basis of their profession. Charley perfume ad from the 1960s and After an introduction to basic the manual for an Epson scanner concepts of technology, rhetoric, and suddenly interrelate in a powerful way. discourses, students must learn to As students study ads they come to analyze the rhetoric by which technology understand the role of rhetoric in culture is socialized or as Charles Bazerman says, and the powerful way in which rhetoric given "presence, meaning and value" and technology are intertwined; they can (335). In Body Talk, Mary Lay and others see the cultural impacts of technology; call for a close reading of the they experience the humanistic basis of technological situation, urging critics to technical communication. As students look carefully at word choice, metaphor, apply the knowledge gained to studying definitions, images, narratives and manual pages, they can see their field and arguments. In Twenty Ads, James their work as communicators in a new, Twitchell uses a similar approach. broader light. They can see how all the To practice this approach students design and writing skills combine to study ads--for any product from lipstick integrate the reader with technology. The to computer operating systems. Students ad/manual binary combines two different learn to read the page rhetorically, seeing approaches into one focused how the images and page arrangement professionalizing experience. constitute a method of socializing the technology. Once students grasp this

Works Cited Bazerman, Charles. The Languages of Edison's Light. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1999. Lay, Mary, Laura J. Gurak, Clare Gravon, and Cynthia Myntti. Eds. Body Talk: Rhetoric, Technology, Reproduction. Madison: U of Wisconsin, 2000. Twitchell, James B. Twenty Ads That Shook the World. New York: Three Rivers, 2000

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: New Approaches in the Classroom: Visuals, Text, Web 72 Concurrent Session 3

A. Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Collaborating Inside and Outside Academia

The Inside-Out Initiative: Negotiating and Reducing Difference with Colleagues Both In and Outside the University; Or, What Do Technical Communication and English Education Have in Common?

Ann M. Blakeslee Eastern Michigan University

Many technical communication 1. Celebration of Student programs reside in large and diverse Writing, an event held at the departments like English. Often, end of each semester where technical communication faculty feel students in first-year writing marginalized and end up struggling for courses make a presentation recognition and identity. When this of community-focused occurs, some of us turn for support to writing and research to the colleagues outside of the university; campus and local community; however, differences exist there as well. 2. Classroom to Classroom, So where do we turn? which brings together English In this presentation, I argue for faculty from EMU and from looking again, but somewhat differently, area middle and secondary at our colleagues both inside our schools for collaborative departments and outside our universities. projects; I show one way in which we might join 3. Classroom to Community, a together to pursue common goals. project that focuses on Specifically, I describe an initiative, establishing connections called Inside-Out, that originated at a between EMU English meeting at which various diverse writing Department classes and the faculty (including basic writing community. specialists, English education faculty, In my presentation, I will share the and technical communication faculty) process by which we developed this discovered an important area of shared initiative, and I will discuss some of the concerns. What we discovered was that specific activities that already have and all of us were doing outreach, in one form are currently resulting from it, including or another. What we determined was that a portfolio exhibit that involves students, we had a good deal to gain if we faculty, industry specialists, and high coordinated our efforts with outreach. school teachers and their students. I also What resulted was the Inside-Out will describe a summer program designed initiative, a three-part initiative funded by to introduce high school students to the University as a result of a strategic various writing professions. My primary planning process. The three parts include focus will be on ways in which we can the following: work productively on initiatives such as this with our colleagues both inside and outside of the university—and what can

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Collaborating Inside and Outside Academia 73

result when we do. Often the differences students can benefit. Sometimes these we perceive are very real, but opportunities are closer than we might opportunities exist for finding a common think, as my own experiences seem to ground from which both we and our bear out.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Collaborating Inside and Outside Academia 74

Training Students as Technical Communicators for Interdisciplinary Situations: Traditional Scenes vs. Indeterminate Zones for Collaboration

John C. Gooch Louisiana Tech University

Texts such as Andrea Lunsford and Duncker), and in order for technical and Lisa Ede's Single Text/Plural Authors: professional communication students to Perspectives on Collaborative Writing succeed in such situations, we should and Collaborative Writing in Industry: begin asking them to consider Investigations in Theory and Practice indeterminate zones for collaboration and (Mary Lay and Bill Karis, Eds.) have professional writing within inspired dialogue and further research organizational cultures. Some scenes of concerning collaboration and technical collaboration are typical for workplace writing. This extensive body of research, practitioners; for example, the technical which has grown considerably over the writer in a software company works daily last 10-15 years, has asked us to consider with software engineers, the SMEs, to what defines successful collaboration as prepare well-written documentation. well as ways in which the technical writer However, projects may require that the can more effectively collaborate with the technical writer, or the disciplinary subject matter expert (SME). professional who is engaged in The focus of most studies, both those professional/technical writing, to work that emphasize workplace writing and with several people from outside his or those that emphasize pedagogy, is to her field of expertise. Organizations are examine traditional scenes of now working increasingly across collaboration and technical multiple disciplinary boundaries, and a communication. I want to encourage wide-range and number of SMEs can technical and scientific communication indeed exist in some collaborative programs to prepare students for writing situations. collaboration within "indeterminate One particular approach to zones," or "instances where practice is encouraging interdisciplinary training in not smooth because the practitioner has classrooms is, rather simply, to ask encountered an unfamiliar situation" students to work with others from a very (Howe). Research and both pedagogical different field of study. For example, I and workplace practice have not have created collaborative groups in aggressively pursued the question of how which the marketing major must work we can better train students to address with the engineer, which establishes a situations that they may not encounter as situation that might indeed correspond to a part of the day-to-day work routine. one in the workplace. By focusing Multi-disciplinary or collaborative writing projects on subjects interdisciplinary situations for workplace that require the expertise of all members, collaboration are becoming more and students learn to communicate and to more the norm in workplace settings (see work with others who come from fields very different from their own. Essentially, CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Collaborating Inside and Outside Academia 75

the student is learning to understand the learning to accommodate and to engage disciplinary language and mindset of another perspective different from his or another aspiring professional as well as her own.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Collaborating Inside and Outside Academia 76

Creating and Connecting Curricular and Extracurricular Service Learning Opportunities: A Role for and Benefit to Technical Communication Programs

Heather Sehmel Texas Technological University

Service learning, where students Faculty advisors, the same faculty who learn course content partially through may be asking students in class to work projects with people in the larger on service learning projects, are less community, is currently a popular likely to guide student organizations pedagogy for technical writing teachers toward extracurricular projects. This and in technical writing programs. separation between curricular and Proponents argue that service learning extracurricular activities does not do any gives students experience dealing with harm, but neither does it enhance the real scheduling, budget, and audience students' education and service in the realities of real writing projects while ways that bridging this divide might. helping them contribute to their While both academic (classroom) and communities and apply course concepts professional/social/academic in a situation that they perceive as more extracurricular groups participate in real than many more traditional case service projects, with the former study and other classroom approaches. At emphasizing learning and the latter the same time, student chapters of the emphasizing service, technical Society for Technical Communication communication programs could do more and other student organizations based in to integrate these efforts, guiding student academic departments or university organizations to participate more often contexts and catering wholly or at least in and more intensely in service projects part to technical communication students that can help participating students learn often must maintain service projects in in addition to allowing them to serve. order to qualify for university student Programs could also help support such organization funding or choose to service projects, perhaps by providing participate in service projects as part of "clients" to serve or by making faculty their organizational missions. available to provide support for different However, in-class service learning aspects of a project. An example of a and extracurricular service projects tend service/service learning project that to be divorced from one another. could cross the curricular/extracurricular Students in student organizations are boundaries might be having a student probably more likely to plan traditional organization analyze an audience for and student organization projects like picking create a website for a local not-for-profit up trash in the community, raking leaves organization. The technical for the elderly, or planning a blood drive, communication program might help than they are to think of and implement provide a client, with whom one of the service projects that ask them to use and faculty members might have an existing practice their developing document relationship. Faculty might help students management, writing, and design skills. in the student organization plan the CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Collaborating Inside and Outside Academia 77

project, breaking it down into discrete introductory level course might work and overlapping units and creating a alongside and learn from seniors about to schedule for planning, drafts, revision, graduate, a kind of cross-level and delivery of the product. Parts of the collaboration—currently rare—that project might be completed by members could enhance student learning and create of the student organization, working in a sense of community in the student small groups. Students in existing organization and writing program. At the courses could complete other parts of the same time, members of the student project. Members of the student organization would both conduct organization might create a plan for required or desirable community service analyzing the audiences for the group's and also contribute to their community in website and carry out some parts of that a way that few other student plan, like creating and distributing a organizations on campus could. survey. Meanwhile, students in existing Furthermore, members of the student classes might create parts of the website organization would be learning more as class assignments while other parts are, through their service project than they if need be, created by students in the would through other, more traditional student organization, all with the service projects. guidance of faculty members through Altogether, while my suggestion that in-class instruction, out of class technical communication programs help workshops, and other help. Then, students bridge the students in an existing class might curricular/extracurricular binary would usability test the website and prepare a require some investment of time and report for the student organization, which effort on the part of faculty and students, could assign members to revise the the rewards for such a project, whether website. large (like the website example I This kind of project would enhance discussed before) or small (making a student experiences in and outside the newsletter or a brochure for a local group) classroom. Students in classes could are many and varied. In addition to work on small parts of a larger project, tangible benefits like deliverables made having manageable assignments like for the community, community service usability testing a portion of a website or projects completed, and reality-based creating just one part of a larger website. classroom assignments completed, there In the process, they would work are intangible benefits: building a collaboratively with students in other community of learners within a program, classes, sharing experiences with and building students' collaborative, planning, learning from students at other levels of and writing skills, and enabling students the program: first-year students in an to use those skills to help others.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Collaborating Inside and Outside Academia 78

B. Teaching Tech. Comm.: Theory & Practice in Curriculum Development

Repurposing v. Generating: Developing a Certificate in Technical Writing

Tracy Bridgeford University of Nebraska at Omaha

Developing a certificate program in perspective, but also allows technical communication has led to some department and faculty to shine in concern for me about the value they offer new ways. students. This concern grows out of my • Generating refers to the belief of technical communication as a development new courses that are rhetorical practice and the idea that designated specifically for the “certificate” could reinforce the certificate program, but prior to “vocational ethos” often attached to our its existence. Although programs and courses (Little, 1998). generating new courses might Although this concern is justified, require new resources, these certificate programs can add value to our resources can often be gained programmatic and pedagogical through agreements with other objectives through careful and departments. For example, in conscientious planning. exchange for cross listing my Certificate programs are valuable for courses with the Department of departments that lack the resources to Communication, I am allowed to offer a full bachelor’s or master’s teach in their computer labs, programs, for departments seeking to which are better equipped than identify various specializations, for ours in English. departments that collaborate with related At my university, certificate programs offered by the university, and programs have grown considerably for departments working in conjunction during the last five years in an effort to with industry to fill a local need for realize the “metropolitan” mission that specialized knowledge and skills. the university advocates, which Certificate programs seem to be essentially strives to meet the increasing designed in one of two ways: as a needs of industry in my region. To gain repurposing of courses within an existing approval for a certificate program at program or as a generation of new UNO, the courses must already be in courses within an existing program. place and the proposal should reflect • Repurposing refers to the university metropolitan mission bringing together of existing statement. Like other universities, my resources into a new university enthusiastically supports the format—essentially redefining creation of certificate programs through their purpose within a new repurposing mainly because it saves framework. Repurposing existing money (which is especially important courses not only saves time, with the budgets cuts occurring at this money, and energy, especially and other schools across the nation). from an administrative CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Teaching Tech. Comm.: Theory & Practice in Curriculum Development 79

As a new faculty member, I am mind even before developing these charged with developing a technical courses. communication certificate program. For me, the purpose of this certificate Because technical communication is new program in technical communication has to the traditional English Department in to be to prepare students to be prepared to which I work (aside from the obligatory learn much of what they’ll need to service course), I have had to first succeed on the job. I need to design these generate new courses that will provide courses in ways that teach students the certificate’s curriculum in order to strategies for continued learning that, in later repurpose these new courses in a essence, teaches them how to figure out proposal for the program. what they need to learn. And figuring Common sense would suggest that things out requires helping students this programmatic approach seems develop interpretative strategies. backwards. Creating a certificate With only five courses to help program by generating new courses prepare them, students have to learn how under the guise of a repurposing model to interpret what’s going on, how to not only reinforces the vocational ethos articulate their interpretations, and how many have fought against but also to negotiate their interpretations with contradicts my efforts to develop a other members of a community. They comprehensive and meaningful program. need to learn strategies for demonstrating In designing meaningful courses, I will their understanding of how to belong to a need to have the repurposing model in particular community.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Teaching Tech. Comm.: Theory & Practice in Curriculum Development 80

Back to Basics: Theory and Research vs. Teaching Software in Tech Com Programs

Susan Feinberg Illinois Institute of Technology

As technical communication learning of software is a side effect to the programs flourish at the undergraduate study of document design, online design, and graduate levels, the question of project management, etc. Of course the whether or not our field consists only of student generates products such as web service courses or of a curriculum for sites or document designs, but mainly to professionals is becoming moot. But the apply a theory. Here the students earn a question we are revisiting at IIT is 1) are master of science in Tech Com, with the we providing only a professional ability to learn software on the job, education with applied courses that teach perhaps at the company's expense. specific software, or 2) are we providing This paper raises the question not of an education in technical communication right or wrong, but rather of degrees of with courses that stress theory and compromise. Who are the stake holders? research. Students, professors, administrators, To take the side of the proponents employers? What priority should each be who advance designing a curriculum for given? professional education with applied Are there other significant factors? courses, we should begin with the The economy, the environment of the students who want to focus on institution, the political/socio/cultural preparation for a job. They want a mood of the times? professional degree, perhaps a masters of Tech Com, with courses that translate This paper will discuss the well to the marketplace, including the professional versus the educational issues teaching of useful software. as they complicate and challenge programmatic perspectives in technical On the other side are academicians and scientific communication. who feel that a university is a place where students learn theory and research that I would hope that other at CPTSC they can apply to practical situations. The would join in this discussion.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Teaching Tech. Comm.: Theory & Practice in Curriculum Development 81

Skills and Literacies for the Postmodern World: Developing a Professional & Technical Communication Major at Weber State University

Becky Jo McShane Weber State University

At Weber State University, we offer a stimulating careers in technical 4-course minor/emphasis in professional communication. and technical writing. As we develop our Currently, the P&TW program at program into a major, we need to focus Weber includes four courses: English on the skills outlined by Greg Wilson and 3100 Professional and Technical Writing, Kelli Cargile Cook. In their respective English 3140: Technical Editing, English articles, Wilson and Cargile Cook 4100: Issues in Professional and explain the four types of skills essential Technical Writing, and English 4120: for technical communicators to succeed Seminar and Practicum in Professional in the postmodern world (Wilson 84) and and Technical Writing. In the final the six layered literacies necessary for capstone course, English 4120, students good technical communication pedagogy do an internship and assemble a portfolio (Cargile Cook 7). The four skills include of their professional and technical writing. abstraction, systems thinking, As they participate in technical experimentation, and collaboration. The communication situations (internships), six literacies include basic, rhetorical, as they use email and online discussion social, technological, ethical, and critical. groups to report their progress and By foregrounding these skills and respond to readings (assignments), and as literacies in the development and they package their communication skills assessment of our program, I believe that for their future job search (portfolio), we can create a lively and timely students demonstrate the skills described technical communication major. In by Wilson and the literacies outlined by Wilson's words, "courses that focus on Cargile Cook. By using this course as a technical communication as symbolic final check of our students' skills and analysis may better prepare students to be literacies, we can determine where the corporate citizens in the postmodern program weaknesses lie and begin to fill workforce" (85). Unlike my own in any gaps as we develop new courses. I experience as a technical writer, I hope propose adopting these frameworks as we can develop a major that enables our the theoretical apparatus for our students to find, create, and retain program's expansion.

Works Cited Cook, Kelli Cargile. "Layered Literacies: A Theoretical Frame for Technical Communication Pedagogy." TCQ. 11.1 (2002): 5-29. Wilson, Greg. "Technical Communication and Late Capitalism: Considering a Postmodern Technical Communication Pedagogy." JBTC. 15.1 (2001): 72-99. CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Teaching Tech. Comm.: Theory & Practice in Curriculum Development 82

Familiar Wheel to Build, New Road to Explore

Lili Fox Velez Vox Medica

Perhaps because we believe that there the legitimate source of are rhetorics operating in every field, we knowledge/documentation. keep finding new places to recreate What I'd like to discuss with the ourselves: technical writers work group is how medical writers of varied with—or as—engineers, scientists, backgrounds try to educate one another in businessfolk...and we strive to show the workplace [and about workplaces], dubious professionals that our area of and how this might inform technical expertise is both not foreign to their writing curricula, and student recruitment. profession and not simply a decorative art. One of the binary oppositions I tried to "It's not content vs. embellishment!" we defuse when running a program in insist. "It's effective communication for a medical writing was the perception that given purpose and audience!" We settle potential undergraduates would either be the matter as best we can and troop off to interested in a medically-oriented career the next discipline where the natives don't OR a humanities-oriented career. It was see how people without their credentials difficult persuading admissions could possibly help them communicate counselors that students who might better. Rhetorical knowledge isn't yet a desire both kinds of preparation existed recognized skillset in these disciplines, in sufficient numbers to be economically even though success requires persuasive interesting. And perhaps they can't be, abilities. because at the undergraduate level, The world of pharmaceutical research, students are forced to choose: the training development, and marketing [which is usually required to gain medical becoming more and more of a blur, credentials often eliminates room for exactly when perhaps we'd all prefer a electives—pharmacists-in-training, for few crisp distinctions] requires great instance—are not permitted to take amounts of rhetorical ingenuity, but for classes outside their major during the last most communication positions, the two years of their R.Ph. programs. But desired credential is a medical license. there ought to be ways to overcome these It's the situation technical writing faced obstacles. when only the engineers were considered

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Teaching Tech. Comm.: Theory & Practice in Curriculum Development 83

C: Tech. Comm. & Digital Media: Web-based Learning

Identifying Tensions in Virtual Spaces

Rebecca E. Burnett Iowa State University

The development of Web-based individuals to identify and protect professional communication programs is ownership of intellectual property. constrained by a number of political, Technical tensions often constrain process, technical, and pedagogical development: (4) Managing face-to-face tensions, most of which are and Web-based delivery. In courses oversimplified as binaries. This designed for traditional, on-campus presentation reviews this team's goals students, Web-based learning and development process, identifies a environments are often used in number of these binary challenges, and conjunction with face-to-face then introduces one way to address a interactions. Combining modes of number of them in our Web-based instruction requires instructors and learning environment. students to understand and negotiate the Political tensions often derail purposes of both modes of delivery and development efforts: (1) Buy-in vs. the ways in which they can work together. resistance. While universities are (5) Integrating usable design and promoting Web-based courses, resistance pedagogy. Implementing Web- based from stakeholders who don't fully buy in learning environments involves both to such learning environments constrains instructional design and Web design the process. Buy-in and resistance are experience. Instructors and designers often conflated when institutions need to ensure that Web designs are not encourage Web-based learning only usable but also compatible with the environments but provide minimal pedagogical goals for support and underestimate instructor communication-intensive courses. efforts in developing and teaching such Pedagogical tensions often highlight courses. instructors' apprehensions: (6) Presenting Process tensions often define rhetorical and instrumental discourses. institutional biases: (2) Costs vs. benefits. Web-based learning environments need Developing online learning environments to provide a strong rhetorical foundation has both temporal and financial costs. in technical and professional However, these costs don't necessarily communication and to address the result in individual and/or institutional instrumental goals suggested by some benefits often touted for online learning. aspects of the workplace, a challenge that (3) Intellectual property vs. egalitarian is magnified in virtual spaces. (7) Web. One of the earliest concepts of the Managing student expectations and Web envisioned a space for unrestricted resistance. Students familiar with sharing of information. This concept is conventional classes often approach increasingly in conflict with perceived Web-based learning environments with interests and needs of institutions and varying comfort levels about technology and independent learning.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm & Digital Media: Web-based Learning 84

Online Learning: Revisioning Rather than Repurposing

David Fisher Iowa State University

At first glance, the deployment of These additive strategies, I believe, learning materials on the Web seems to arise when we concentrate on the content offer considerable potential for giving of new media rather than the media itself students some control over their learning, as a discourse formation. In allowing them to take a participative role Understanding Media, Marshall in knowledge construction rather than a McLuhan interrogates technology and passive role as receivers of knowledge communication media by juxtaposing a (Oliver and Herrington 189). Students medium’s “content,” and the medium’s determine the time during which they “message,” which for him “is the change interact with the course materials and the of scale or pace or pattern that it place from which they access those introduces into human affairs” (8). Both materials. Furthermore, a Web McLuhan and Johndan Johnson-Eilola presentation allows them to determine see the initial applications of new their path through the material. Still, most technologies as hearkening to common would agree that providing students with uses of familiar technology (e.g., placing the ability to “click around” a textbook a textbook online). Johnson-Eilola that has been “chunked up” and placed suggests that “those features of the online is a weak construal of a technology that are most alien” promote a “participative role in knowledge form of “nostalgia,” causing us to construction.” Oliver and Herrington “rearticulate new technologies to warn of the “technological imperative” function like old ones” (8). In the case of that “sees the need and place for Web-technologies, I believe the feature information technologies in education that seems most alien—both liberating being based on such organizational and intimidating—is that of virtual space. factors as opportunity, competition, and Our first inclination, then, has been to fill efficiency” (178). They go on to observe this space with traditional content or that when these technical imperatives adapt ( repurpose ) traditional content for drive change in education: this space. “Web delivery,” then, is the The applications of learning mantra of the nostalgic technological technologies are more likely to be imperative. The statement “Web made through additive strategies delivery” implies that the Web enables us which see existing strategies and to convey existing materials (syllabi, methods being complemented by lecture notes, assignment sheets, technology-oriented initiatives. . . . textbooks) more efficiently and to A majority of current Web-based individuals spread across a greater learning environments have geographic area (who have access to evolved from face-to-face teaching computer and telecommunications programs in [this] additive form . . . technologies). It says nothing about the (178). potential for radical transformation of pedagogical practices inherent in virtual space.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm & Digital Media: Web-based Learning 85

How, then, might we create an what Carl Herndl calls “‘practical’ environment that develops from a knowledge of how things work,” which pedagogical imperative rather than the he observes usually “remains tacit” technological imperative discussed (353). above (178)? The pedagogical The simulation experience does not imperative, Oliver and Herrington claim, eliminate the need for instruction in leads to “more integrated approaches rhetorical theory; however, it does turn which have the potential to redefine and the traditional model of reading the “text” transform the more fundamental aspects before undertaking a prescribed writing of teaching and learning” (178). I believe task on its head. The simulation the development of an online learning experience causes students to seek help environment in which we ask students to from an online guide or a “writing make sense of things as they participate mentor” (the instructor) as they need it. in a simulation is one representation of This approach helps technical the integrated approaches for which communication instructors to develop Oliver and Herrington call. Indeed, the our students as technitai, or “artists,” who deployment of a simulation space are able to learn the causes of what they provides students with what Lévi-Strauss are doing as they are immersed in a calls “the set of tools and materials . . . particular context. Furthermore, the [that are] the contingent result of all the simulation enables us to prompt students occasions there have been to renew or to discover situational elements that have enrich the stock or to maintain it with the traditionally been difficult to evoke in the remains of previous constructions or advanced writing classroom (e.g., destructions” (17). Within such space, enabling them to discover tangible our students can practice the way of the elements of an organization’s document bricoleur, which I think is also the way of circulation processes). Such experience the contemporary professional should prove useful to students as they communicator. Students can transform make the transition from their work at the questions like “who named this stuff?” university to their work outside the into interrogations and articulations of university.

Works Cited Herndl, Carl G. “Teaching Discourse and Reproducing Culture: A Critique of Research and Pedagogy in Professional and Non-Academic Writing.” College Composition and Communication, 44 (October 1993): 349-63. Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Nostalgic Angels: Rearticulating Hypertext Writing. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1997. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Savage Mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1964. Oliver, Ron and Jan Herrington. “Using Situated Learning as a Design Strategy for Web-Based Learning.” Instructional and Cognitive Impacts of Web-based Education. Ed. Beverly Abbey. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing, 2000. 178-91.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm & Digital Media: Web-based Learning 86

Tensions Between the Academy and Industry

David Morgan (Retired)

When I consider the theme of this o A high proportion (at least conference about binary tension in 90%) of the learners who relation to the work I have been doing, I enrol in a module find immediately that I have five complete it successfully. tensions— o The learners acquire 1. I work in Australia, with an competence according to Australian background, which the learning and business is substantially different from outcomes, and can apply the American scene in many the knowledge and skills ways. they have acquired in the 2. My background has been in workplace. industry, producing materials In order to produce successful for clients, not for students in modules, we developed an approach that an academy. we called ‘learning online’. We defined this as the learning that takes place when 3. The medium I worked in was a learner interacts with educational online not face-to-face. materials presented online and learns 4. The emphasis within the team from them in collaboration with a tutor I worked with was learning, and with other learners. This learning can not teaching or training. later be applied in the workplace. Our Arising from that… approach became a highly specialised 5. Our work had to be application of technical communication. successful or our clients were Seven key elements mark off learning unhappy and we didn’t get online from any other approach, and any new ones. these would constitute the basis of any In order to satisfy clients, program designed to teach students how online products have to be to produce successful online modules. successful. ‘Successful’ for us 1. The material must be meant: provided by a subject matter expert, who must take no part in the production of the module.

Producing an online module requires highly specialised skills that academics cannot be expected to have. The production team must be a closely integrated creative

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm & Digital Media: Web-based Learning 87

group with skills in language, the assessment are therefore writing, design, and education. real to the learners. They do not need to have 5. The learners must be able to much technical knowledge apply their learning except to be able to work successfully in the workplace. within the learner management system. The knowledge and skills 2. The material must be oriented acquired enable the learners to both learner and learning. to do a new job or to do an existing job more proficiently. The whole emphasis is on There is no point in learning if having the learners learn. the learners cannot apply There is no teacher, although what they have learned in the there is a tutor, who plays workplace. That is what the quite a different role, and employer wants–to have there is no classroom, real or skilled and knowledgeable virtual. employees, at all levels. 3. The goals of the module must 6. The module must engage the be expressed as learning and learners. business outcomes. It does that through design, These are defined in terms of text, illustration, navigation, what the employer wants the and so on. The learners learners to achieve and be generate meaning from a able to apply to the workplace. whole range of clues provided Learning outcomes by by the screens, and interact themselves are not sufficient. with the material that they Business outcomes relate to perceive there. the benefits that the company Successful learning needs contact will derive from the learning. with a tutor and collaboration with other 4. The learning material must be learners. The tutor supervises the contextualised. learners’ progress, provides assistance where needed, and assesses and provides The learning is set into a feedback on assignments. The learners metaphoric environment that collaborate with each other through is as close as practicable to a discussion boards, guided by the tutor, workplace. The learning and and so enhance their learning from the experience of others.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm & Digital Media: Web-based Learning 88

Dissembling the Binary of Theory and Praxis in Digital Communication: Programmatic Concerns

Richard K. Mott New Mexico Tech

Although the structure and presenting so they can arrange it in some organization of content has always been comprehensible form. important in the classroom, technical and Thus, students who train to be digital scientific writing programs must exhibit communicators must negotiate the binary and impart a critical literacy unknown of theory and practice. Not only must less than a decade ago. In order to instruct students learn to critique and analyze students how to recognize, understand, other multimedia projects in terms of and ultimately, design effective digital content, structure, and navigational documents, not only must programs train issues, they must learn to be conversant students how to produce multimedia in the language of multimedia software content either from scratch or from and hardware. Many programs attempt to third-party material ñ the practice of teach these elements in a series of digital communication ñ they must also disconnected one-semester classes in teach them how to arrange that content which students create smaller, more while implementing clear navigational controlled projects. I argue, however, that strategies ñ the theory of digital in order to cover the breadth of material communication. necessary to become effective digital Teachers stress structure and communicators, students must organization of content within the digital collaborate on at least one year-long medium because, as Kathleen Burnett project to design, record, and produce a claims, hypermedia "posits an professional-quality CD or DVD. information structure so dissimilar to any Such a proposal, however, creates other in human experience that it is problems within the structures of many difficult to describe as a structure at all." technical and scientific writing programs. Because of this apparent lack of Which "traditional" class or classes can organization and Liestol Gunnar's claim be sacrificed or folded into a revised set that, "hypertext redefines the authority of of course requirements that include these the author, implied or explicit, and the year-long digital projects? Is such change reader gains more control," digital even necessary? Why must writing communicators must clearly and instructors teach students how to use completely understand for themselves the software applications anyway ñ shouldn't structure of the information they are they focus more on the theory of digital communication?

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D: Research: Evaluating Our Needs & Limitations

Building the Research Base of Scientific and Technical Communication by Increasing Our Collaboration with Master’s Students

David Dayton Southern Polytechnic State University

The English department at Utah State The results of these and other related University will soon offer a new Ph.D. investigations such as a study of degree in Theory & Practice of academic job advertisements and a Professional Communication. The forthcoming Technical Communication proposed degree, which lacks only final article by Cook, Thralls, and Zachry, approval by the Board of Regents in Utah, proved instrumental in our planning has been in development since August discussions about the proposed degree. 2000. It will be the first doctoral degree Based on the information collected, offered by the department, and only the the department has designed a doctoral second to be offered in the College of degree program that draws on strengths Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. of two of its pre-existing areas, technical The proposed program was communication and English education. developed at the request of upper Within these areas are 16 specialists in administration at the university, where technical communication, organizational the department's success with its existing communication, rhetoric, composition, programs in this area and the strengths of classroom instruction, online learning, recent faculty hires made such a program and linguistics. In addition to the primary feasible. (For a more detailed discussion courses offered by the new Theory & of this program's evolution, see the Practice of Professional Communication Profession article by Brooks, Yancey, faculty, doctoral students will complete and Zachry.) With this administrative significant coursework in a cognate area support, committees and individual of their own choosing. These cognate faculty members within the department areas are not predefined (students initiated studies that would help shape the develop them in conjunction with their decision-making process during proposal supervisory committees), but we development. These studies included a anticipate that many students will draw survey of potential students in the heavily on graduate courses in Intermountain region to determine how instructional technology, business, and many qualified people might be mass communication. Initial interested in applying to such a program conversations with potential students also and what they would be interested in indicate a widespread interest in doing studying upon entrance. An assessment cognate work in the Folklore and of doctoral program offerings and American Studies programs, which have strengths throughout the Western states a strong reputation at Utah State. In provided additional information, as did particular, potential students have an examination of Utah State faculty discussed research that would combine strengths and departmental resources. practice and theory in professional CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Research: Evaluating Our Needs & Limitations 90

communication with educational catalog and advertising descriptions of opportunities in museum work, field the program. studies, and archival processes. Much of the programmatic materials In earlier versions of the proposal, the needed to offer this program (e.g., policy program was entitled, “Professional and procedure texts, forms) have already Communication, Culture, and been created in anticipation of final Technology.” Outside the department, approval. State budgetary constraints, however, this name was criticized as however, have led to a freeze on all new being too broad and too far removed from program offerings. When the program traditional conceptions of what English receives this final approval, it will be departments do. Consequently, the name formally advertised, and we will begin was changed to “Theory & Practice of accepting applications from an existing Professional Communication,” and the pool of potential students who have emphases in culture and technology will already expressed interest in applying. instead be described in the planned

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No Human Subjects Were Harmed in the Writing of This Proposal: Tensions Between Institutional Review Boards and Writing Programs

Cindy Nahrwold University of Arkansas—Little Rock Barbara L’Eplattenier University of Arkansas—Little Rock Karen M. Kuralt University of Arkansas—Little Rock

At the start of the 2001-2002 school she received an e-mail message saying year, our Office of Research and that her final project “posed no risks to Sponsored Programs (ORSP) e-mailed human subjects.” Because university the entire faculty the “Student’s Guide to regulations state that we are not supposed Using Human Subjects in Research” to start projects without IRB approval, (Appendix A). While many of us in the this could have jeopardized her degree. Department of Rhetoric and Writing The Review Request form states, ignored it, we soon learned that this “Describe how the data collected from policy may have a potentially devastating this sample will be kept confidential impact on teaching and research in our while using it, collecting it, storing it, and program at both undergraduate and disposing of it.” As is pointed out in a graduate levels. “For the Record” article in the May/June To date, we have encountered the 2002 issue of Academe, destroying following problems with our Institutional records and notes prevents researchers Review Board (IRB): from doing any longitudinal studies or The “Student Guide” states “if from revisiting their data for new your research project (including conclusions. observation, interviews and The confidentiality requirement has surveys) involves human subjects, hampered our efforts to supervise you must submit an IRB Review graduate projects. A graduate student request form.” As technical decided to abandon her thesis project on writing teachers, this description investigating new teacher fears due to covers almost every undergraduate IRB concerns about a supervising teacher and graduate project we assign. In reviewing data. The IRB suggested two response to our questions options: 1. the teacher never look at the concerning specific projects data or 2. the student do her research in (including, we might add, a another department. memoir assignment), the IRB had a We have noticed increasing standard response: “That would discussion among graduate students that need approval.” they will not do certain projects because While the stated turnaround time is of IRB delays, conflicts, and the endless two weeks, one of our graduate students amount of paperwork. finished her IRB Review Request in late We are uncertain—and the IRB is October; one month after she graduated, too—about the status of graduate

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research projects begun in a classroom We would like to discuss with other and then developed into thesis projects. conference participants how departments, In response, the graduate committee our field in general, and CPTSC should has drafted a position statement proactively respond to IRB regulations describing which projects we believe and policies. We would also like to should be submitted for IRB review and discuss the feasibility of CPTSC which projects should be exempted developing a position statement (Appendix B); however, we are acutely regarding this matter, similar to the aware that acceptance of this position various organizational statements like the statement rests solely on IRB approval, WPA’s “Portland Resolution” or and it carries little or no weight. “Statement on Intellectual Work.”

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Appendix A

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Institutional Review Board

A Student’s Guide to Using Human Subjects in Research

• What is the UALR policy regarding the use of human subjects in research?

All research involving human subjects conducted by faculty, staff, or students of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) must be reviewed and approved by the UALR Institutional Review Board (IRB). The UALR IRB operates according to the guidelines in the Code of Federal Regulations (45CFR46) and other state and institutional guidelines.

• What does the IRB do?

It is the responsibility of the IRB to review research protocols involving human subjects to ensure that the rights of the human subjects are protected, that they are not subject to unreasonable harm (physical and emotional), and that information about them is kept confidential.

• What is research?

Research means any systematic investigation, including pilot research, testing and evaluation, that is designed to develop or contribute to academic and disciplinary knowledge. Activities that meet this definition constitute research for purposes of this policy.

• What is a human subject?

Human subject means a living individual about whom an investigator conducting research obtains data through observation, intervention or interaction with the individual, or through identifiable private information.

• How do I know if I should submit a research protocol to the IRB?

If your research project (including observation, interviews and surveys) involves human subjects you must submit an IRB Review request form.

• When should I submit my review request to the IRB? You should submit your request after the final research design has been determined. You must receive IRB approval before you begin the research project. CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Research: Evaluating Our Needs & Limitations 94

• What do I submit?

Complete an IRB Review Request form. IRB Review Request forms are available at the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, 205 Administration North. The forms are also available electronically on the ORSP website (www.ualr.edu/~orsp).

You must also submit a letter of informed consent (or survey cover letter) and any tests, surveys, or interview questions you will be using in your study.

• What is informed consent?

Informed consent is generally obtained through a letter that fully identifies the researcher(s), discloses the nature of the research, explains the risks (both physical and psychological) and benefits, and allows the individual to voluntarily decide whether to participate in the research study or not.

• To whom do I submit my request?

IRB review requests may be submitted electronically or in hard copy. If submitted electronically, e-mail it to at [email protected]. If you submit hard copy send it to

XXX XXXXXX, Associate Director Human Subjects Compliance Officer Office of Research and Sponsored Programs 205 Administration North

• What happens after I submit my IRB Review Request?

Once the request is submitted it will be processed and routed to the IRB. Most “expedited review” requests will be processed within one month.

• How will I be notified of the status of my request?

You will receive an official written memorandum from the chair of the IRB committee regarding your approval status. Notification will be made through e-mail or regular mail.

• What is the best way to prepare my IRB Review request?

You should work closely with your faculty advisor well in advance of beginning the actual research.

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Appendix B

Rhetoric and Writing Department, UALR IRB Position Statement (Draft—January 18, 2002)

• All undergraduate projects are exempt from IRB procedures because such projects are designed to develop research and writing skills, not to develop or contribute to academic and disciplinary knowledge.

• All graduate projects, prior to the final project (thesis), will be exempt from IRB procedures for the same reason, unless the professor deems informed consent essential to protect the student and the human subjects of the research.

• MA students will seek IRB approval if the Graduate Committee determines that the project will develop or contribute to academic or disciplinary knowledge.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Research: Evaluating Our Needs & Limitations 96

Technical Communication: A Discipline in Need of More Empirical Inquiry

Graham Smart University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

An overview practices that we build into our curricula similar, or at least Technical Communication is an highly relevant, to the practices academic discipline in need of our students will encounter in self-reflexive critique. Specifically, we need to acknowledge and examine the worksites after graduation? lack of empirical research into the • Learnability—If the answer to the practices of the classrooms and worksites first question is yes, are our that define our students’ current and students successfully learning future experience. Operating from a these technical communication self-reflexive stance, we need to look at practices in our classrooms? the causes and consequences of this lack • Applicability— If the answer to of empirical research and use this the above questions is yes, are our analysis as step towards taking up a more students able to apply and extend research-oriented posture as a discipline. what they have learned in our The argument in full classrooms to the professional Some assumptions: demands they face in the workplace? We need to know much more about what students experience in our The problem: Technical Communication classrooms Compared to related and about what our graduates experience disciplines—such as, for example, in the worksites they enter as technical applied linguistics, education, and ESL communicators. To mature as a discipline, writing—technical communication does Technical Communication needs the not sufficiently promote empirical empirical research that would allow us to research. Much of the empirical research develop an extensive body of conducted in our discipline is done by field-specific “grounded theory” (Glaser graduate students for theses and & Strauss, 1967; Strauss & Corbin, 1998), dissertations. There isn’t a great deal of that is, theory derived from data that have post-dissertation research activity. We been systematically gathered and have too few tenured faculty doing analyzed through empirical research in a serious empirical research throughout range of classrooms and worksites. This their careers (though some might produce research and theory would allow us to edited collections of empirical studies address three issues that are fundamental based largely on dissertation research). to our curricula and pedagogy: Further, those in the field who consult in industry don’t use these experiences • Significance—Are the versions of frequently enough as opportunities for technical communication

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workplace research. And in the support it can require. Yet faculty in publications of our field, empirical disciplines such as applied linguistics, studies are much less common than education, and ESL writing manage to speculative commentaries on issues such find the necessary resources, and I as ethics, current and future believe we could too if we were so developments in the discipline, and so on. inclined. While we certainly need such Consequences: commentaries, the relative dearth of empirical research leaves technical Because of the lack of indigenous communication in a weakened position. research and grounded theory, we end up importing too much research and theory Possible causes: from other fields (while some of this kind The culture of technical of importing is healthy for a discipline, I communication doesn’t sufficiently would suggest that too much is encourage and reward empirical research, symptomatic of a problem). And most so that we have a large population of significantly, our curricula and tenured faculty who do little field pedagogies suffer, so that our students research. Why is this? One reason may be are not as prepared as they might be for that our disciplinary culture has been their future careers as technical adversely influenced by its close communicators. association with Literature Studies, The change that’s needed: where empirical research is extremely rare. Indeed, one might speculate that We need to change our disciplinary some of our Literature colleagues do not culture so that the expectation—and want us to be taken seriously as an practice—will be that more academics in independent discipline, and that it serves Technical Communication continue to do them well for us to remain a field where empirical research throughout their relatively little empirical research is careers. Reorienting the discipline in this conducted. Of course another reason for way would allow us to develop a body of the scarcity of empirical research may be field-specific “grounded theory” to the resources of time, effort, and financial support our curricula and pedagogy.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Research: Evaluating Our Needs & Limitations 98 Concurrent Session 4

A: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Academy and Industry

Sticking to Skills/Considering Ethics

Barbara Gordon Elon University

Nearly any faculty member who is a She realizes that the company she part of a technical scientific works for has created a life extending, communication program is elated when a possibly, life saving drug. On the other student lands a high paying, interesting hand, she fears the company, and her job where she or he can put to use honed work by extension, may be preying on writing abilities and employ new media women's fears to take a drug when a to deftly accomplish assignments. It is better one exists, or perhaps to take a gratifying to prepare a graduate capable drug unnecessarily. The competitors of doing whatever an employer might more recent medication, so far, has been request, capable of going even beyond found to be safer and more effective, what the employer could have imagined. though that drug has not been fully tested Now imagine this young writer, one in long term clinical trials. If she had of your graduates, employed by a large breast cancer, she would be taking the pharmaceutical company. Her project competitor's medication. She also thinks manager has asked her to help create a of a friend who has a history of breast website for the lay public and pamphlets cancer in her family. Is it OK to for physicians about a cancer drug, encourage women, like her friend, who perhaps a drug like Tamoxifen/Nolvadex, don't have breast cancer to ask their a medication that is known to reduce the gynecologists about taking her recurrence of breast cancer, and one that company's medication as a means of "life has recently been found to decrease the insurance?" She knows some doctors will possibility of developing breast cancer. A prescribe medicine based on patients' competitor has a drug that does likewise, demands when it is not the wisest a new, less tested drug, one that appears medical decision. Might her company be to have fewer side effects. pushing a drug with potential harmful side effects on a scared public? Here your former student runs into trouble. She is well prepared to translate She would like to create a website the scientific terminology into and pamphlets that will meet the boss's information that the public will requirements, and not exploit women. understand in a user-friendly manner. She hopes to convince her boss that it is She has acquired enough medical in the best interests of the company to background to write intelligently to make clear to patients and doctors alike oncologists about pharmaceutical this drug's dangers and limitations even research, but she finds herself though this will decrease sales. She procrastinating and becoming discontent. doubts this is possible. She becomes Before long, it becomes clear to her that acutely aware that projects are not an ethical dilemma is hampering her isolated from larger issues, issues that work. relate to the well being of others, and herself. She knows through her

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conscience that it is not only the "text" responsibility? How would we define itself that matters, but where it appears, that responsibility? Could we be in when it appears, why it appears, and what danger of being righteousness and impact it may have. advocating personal morality? Are Her formal education did not prepare ethical issues our responsibility, or her for this ethical dilemma. As faculty should the liberal arts general distribution preparing professional communicators, requirements tackle issues of humanity? our dilemma is - should it have? Are we If we don't weave ethics into our courses, responsible for incorporating into our are we mainly teaching skills? If our courses ethical dilemmas our students programs do not promote a humane might likely face in their employment as perspective, do they belong in a technical and scientific writers? professional school rather than in the liberal arts? In technical and scientific writing programs should we aspire to Few people would argue that Quintillion's "the good person speaking technical and scientific communication well?" In various ways all programs teach curricula should provide students with logos, pathos, and ethos to suit particular the background necessary to get a job, rhetorical situations. Should we be sure stay employed, and meet employers' to discuss with students issues such as needs. Should we, though, call upon creating a false ethos for an organization? students to consider interrelationships Should we draw their attention to the such as organizations' roles in society, distinction between seeming to be the and the employees' roles and good person/organization and really responsibility in organizations, and their being the good person/organization? In responsibility to themselves, their loved doing so, might we be making our ones, and fellow beings? Should and can students better human beings, but less we help students learn to hold a job, to employable? weigh ethical consequences, and to foster change in a manner that makes the world Should we attempt to instill the ethic better for others, or at least does little that with skill/power comes harm?

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Binary Tension in Teaching/Practicing/Researching/Producing in Academies/Industry

TyAnna Herrington Georgia Institute of Technology Jessica Cunard-Hunter Multimedia Designer

The theory/practice binary occurs intellectual products more broadly, naturally when addressing issues in but it allows a place to teach about the intellectual property. But it also creates more theoretical, policy-oriented issues supposed binary oppositions in regarding the law. It allows space to ask teaching/research and academy/industry, students to question, criticize, and that reflect many of the same concerns analyze effects of existing law. Students addressed in programmatic development and educators excel at this kind of in technical communication study. teaching and research within academic Graduate programs that train students forums, but once we move outside the to become technical communicators, academy, the other side of the multimedia designers, graphic artists, and academy/industry binary requires that we digital film creators provide education for understand intellectual property issues in individuals with dual roles. As creators, a different dimension. Thus, in industry particularly in their roles as students, they (whether the academic industry or have an interest in using intellectual otherwise), we are rewarded for products (often building from those of practicing behavior that treats intellectual others) to meet educational goals. By law, products with the care of a pragmatist, Americans participating in educational using as much of another's product as is processes within the USA have a right to legally safe, and protecting our own use copyrighted materials in order to intellectual products with as much legal support learning processes. (This right is and rhetorical armor as possible. qualified by various factors, ensuring that This scenario, played out in every no harm comes to copyright holders.) But technical communication program across these students will also become the country, both reflects and illustrates intellectual product creators whose the necessity that programs allow room interests in protecting their own for complementary duality in copyrighted work will be heightened theory/practice, teaching/research, and once their livelihoods depend on their academy/industry. The challenge is to work. And as creators working outside create technical communication the educational process, their lawfully programs that not only allow room for, supported access to and use of but support the duality necessary for intellectual products will be lessened. robust programs that provide for the Teaching about issues in intellectual varied needs of all students and educators property (as with other educational both during their time in academia as practices) allows room not only to use well as their lives beyond.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Academy & Industry 101

In our (not so) binary roles as perspectives of the dual nature of academic educator/researcher and former intellectual property as a means to reflect graduate student/now practicing on programmatic needs in technical multimedia designer, we propose to communication programs. provide theoretical and pragmatic

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The Gap between Old and New: Technology and Traditional Scholarship

Terri Palmer Carnegie Mellon University

I served as webmaster for the entirely, as I worked for the computer Carnegie Mellon Department of English science department while an English this past academic year. My primary task major) I thought that technology issues was to commission a designer to create a within humanities departments would more contemporary look for the English focus on ease of use. However, I have department website; my secondary task since come to realize that as more and was to maintain the current website and more documents are put into electronic help department members with their web form that there are at least two major questions, which ranged from putting issues that must be faced: teaching materials online to putting Authority and copyright: How do personal and programmatic information traditional copyright laws apply to new on the site for potential students and media? More importantly, how is colleagues. authority established in a medium where, In the course of this year, I found that in theory, anyone at all can write about a the questions I had expected, the "how do topic? Ought scholars only to turn to I do X" type, far less troublesome than approved websites that run along those I hadn't. These unexpected traditional lines—academic, questions stemmed less from technical peer-reviewed journals and well-known difficulties than from the intellectual publishers who elect to provide material changes that arise from moving materials online? And if that is the case, if online to electronic form: How could it be that publishing merely replicates print an online database could legally publishing, is there any benefit at all to distribute a given faculty member's work online publishing, besides speed, which without his explicit permission? To what itself is often offset by the difficulties of degree can I trust a website for its working with very new technology? research about a writer? Who permits Design and aesthetics: Web design in such websites to be created? Why is this particular seems to undergo a revolution website design, which resembles every two years or so, often relying upon traditional print, not preferable to this new technologies to do so (witness the more recent design? number of sites that now depend on Flash In short, the transition from animations). What does this mean for traditional print media to online media scholars who are not particularly has posed a set of new difficulties I would interested in online communication but not have foreseen. I worked for the wish to be able to talk to their students computer science department at my and colleagues who are interested and undergraduate institution and had long who incorporate the most recent been familiar with such issues. Coming aesthetics into their own work? Scholars in as something of an outsider (not who don't pay attention to these trends

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often find the newer designs confusing part of a technical communicator's job in and ugly, and yet English departments dealing with more traditional scholars as must work within those stylistic confines is teaching the simpler how-tos of getting in order to communicate with students new technologies to function. From the and industry. other direction, too, I think we need to I have come to some private discuss these issues with students, who conclusions about these issues, but I am often see no problems whatsoever with concerned that these questions are often blithely quoting dubious websites as part ignored in the rush to adopt new of their research for a paper or who technologies. While those of us who do design sites that only readers with fast work closely with technology may find Internet connections and the newest the above concerns odd or irrelevant, I browsers and plug-ins can even view. In have not found this to be the case with other words, I propose that a substantial more traditional scholars (and this is not part of a technical communicator's job sheerly a gap of age; as many of the now concerns online ethics and graduate students asked such questions as authority—and that this is far too often faculty). It's my firm belief now that neglected. dealing with these problems is as much a

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B: Teaching Tech. Comm.: Designing Graduate Programs

Death and Resurrection: The Viability of Reinstating an MS/MA in Scientific and Technical Communication in a Service Milieu

Teena A. M. Carnegie Oregon State University

In the 1990s, the growing component to the educational programs development and use of information offered at OSU. technology as an integral part of the The Scientific and Technical United States economy led to increasing Communication masters program was demands for skills in scientific and founded in 1990. It was intended to be an technical communication. This increase interdisciplinary program with four in demand, in turn, encouraged further departments, Art, Journalism, Speech development of technical communication Communications, and English, playing as a specialized professional field. key supporting roles in its program. The Within this context, it seems surprising same year it was founded, however, the that a master’s program in scientific and State enacted a measure which resulted in technical communication should falter substantial financial cuts to University and die. But that is what happened at budgets. In response, OSU eliminated its Oregon State University. journalism program. The other Perhaps the death of such a program participating departments also would be more understandable if there experienced budget decreases and loss of had been strong competition from other faculty, and, as a result, declined to Universities or if the University itself was commit funds and faculty to a program dedicated to the pursuit of the liberal arts that was viewed as peripheral to their with little interest in technical or own. The work for the running program professional education. However, at fell primarily on the director, a position Oregon State University, neither of these with little to no compensation. The conditions existed. Up until its program survived as long as it did largely suspension, the Scientific and Technical through the efforts of its original director. Communication master’s degree program With the retirement of that individual, the was the only one offered in Oregon. program seriously faltered. Presently, only one other similar program The question of whether or not this at the master’s level exists in Oregon, program should or can be resurrected and there are only two other such brings to the fore the binary tension programs offered in the Pacific between service and professional Northwest. As a land-grant, sea-grant education. I argue here that as long as the and space-grant institution, OSU is program is seen as carrying out a service strongly focused on science and function, support for it will always be technology as it relates to industry and wanting. Housed in the College of the professions. And as such, scientific Liberal Arts, the program, as its history and technical communication should indicates, continually struggled against a have been a valued and integral culture of poverty. The constant decline in financial support for public

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Universities (and particularly those in program had never been granted. They Oregon) has only exacerbated the also observed that there had been no suspicion and distrust of professional mission statement or shared vision for the education that can occur within a program. When the director had humanities centered college which feels proposed curriculum changes for the itself beleaguered and devalued by its program in 1999 to an advisory scientific and technological counterparts. committee, the committee was unable to Often, within such an environment, agree on the role of the program and, as a faculty who have a traditional humanities result, unable to reach consensus on focus view professional education as needed changes. In its final report, the workplace training and see it as graduate council review committee antithetical to academic scholarship. In argued that "there are many good reasons such a culture, there is an unwillingness for a STC program at OSU, given the to dedicate resources and funding to a mission of the university, the demand for technical writing program. Instead, it is such training (evidenced by successful assumed that the program will garner programs elsewhere), the enthusiasm of support from the departments that would present students (despite the program's benefit from the service such a program problems), the support it could provide to would provide. other disciplines at OSU" (5). In the end, A survey of heads of departments, the review committee recommended that however, strongly suggests otherwise. the College of Liberal Arts and the three When asked if technical communications remaining participating departments skills were important to their students, "convene a strategic planning session to 91% of respondents agreed or strongly examine the state of the program" and agreed, but only 69% indicated that their "decide whether or not it should be students needed courses in scientific and continued" (5). technical communication (at most one or As a result of the review committee's two courses); of these, 15% indicated that report, the program was put under they provided such courses for their suspension. No action was taken by the students. Only 8% of respondents dean of the College of Liberal Arts to indicated that OSU should have a follow up on the recommendations. master’s program. When asked if they Instead, the college focused its energy on would consider providing support to such starting a new media program. For this a program, most indicated that they program, the university allocated $500, would only recommend students to the 000 and the college hired a full-time program (61%) or participate on a director. Efforts to initiate a process for curriculum committee (30%). A few developing a strategic plan for reinstating indicated they would provide classroom the STC program were met with minimal space (15%) or student advising (7%), interest and with claims that budget cuts but none indicated a willingness to would make it difficult to restart the provide computer labs, faculty, or program. funding. Such a response suggests that the In a review of the program, a graduate resurrection and survival of the STC council committee noted that many of the master’s program is not possible within resources that were needed to support the this context. Deemed as "training" and

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given value primarily in terms of the "the defining it as a professional degree and support it could provide to other seeking the primary and ongoing support disciplines at OSU" (5) the program is from outside the institution. But this destined always to lack appropriate would require administrators with vision resources and funding. Resurrection and and a willingness to work for innovative survival of the program may depend on solutions.

Works Cited Oregon State University. Graduate Council Review Committee. Scientific and Technical Communication Program College of Liberal Arts Graduate Program Review March16, 1999. 2000.

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Supervising Adjunct Instructors: Reflections of a New, Tenure-Track Professional Writing Coordinator at a Small Comprehensive University

David Alan Sapp Fairfield University

The increasing popularity of research, teaching, and service expected technical, scientific, and business writing of other assistant professors. These has caused many small, comprehensive obstacles include tremendous amounts of universities and liberal arts colleges to administrative service such as developing scramble to hire qualified full-time and promoting specialized courses, tenure-track faculty. Many of these preparing schedules, managing budgets, institutions attempt to entice candidates and securing internal and external by offering them decision-making power funding. Perhaps one of the most that they would not have at larger challenging tasks related to these faculty universities with established graduate positions involves the hiring, training, programs. Candidates are often drawn to supervision, and retention of qualified these offers in order to develop programs part-time instructors. in ways, and at a pace, that would not During my first year as coordinator of necessarily be possible (or wise) at larger professional writing in the Department of institutions. However, these faculty English at Fairfield University, for members, many of whom are fresh out of example, I was expected to supervise the very few doctoral programs in our several clearly under-qualified part-time discipline, face unexpected challenges instructors, some of whom had taught when asked to direct new professional business and technical writing at our writing minors, concentrations, emphases, university for a decade or more with little or certificate programs. These challenges guidance or supervision. This reflects are related to tensions involving the past several aspects of English Department and future of English departments, histories. First, it illustrates that even complicated by age-old struggles traditional English programs like ours between literature and composition, and realize that professional writing classes renewed by recent growth in the areas of are in demand, but often add such courses technical and professional writing. These to curricula with little thought or strategic faculty members also face challenges planning. Second, the situation at my related to dialectical tensions between university reveals a common situation: faculty and administrative roles, which many literature faculty either do not care may lead to additional tensions regarding about the fate of writing courses and workers’ rights and program integrity. programs, and/or they believe that Many new tenure-track faculty anyone can teach these courses regardless members, who also serve as coordinators of academic or professional preparation. of technical and professional writing In other words, some of these programs at small colleges and under-qualified instructors have universities, face challenges beyond the undergraduate degrees in English

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(usually literature) and some business excessive number of class meetings each experience, but they have absolutely no semester were often shifted into the training in writing theory or pedagogy professional writing concentration. Thus, and no coursework in technical, the nascent professional writing program professional, or scientific had become a dumping ground for communication. adjunct instructors at the exact same time Only a few months after I arrived in as it was becoming more and more Connecticut, I was faced with the duty of popular with students who realized that “gently releasing” two adjunct instructors these courses would be beneficial for in order to replace them with more their academic and professional highly-qualified instructors who I’d development. found through an extensive local job Another situation I encountered upon search. My doctoral program in rhetoric my arrival concerned a part-time faculty and professional communication had not member who had taught at the university prepared me for such administrative since 1986 and was an alumna (from duties. In fact, I soon learned that this another department). When she, among task was potentially detrimental to my many other things, refused my request for career. For example, my efforts to inform her to schedule any office hours and one instructor that her insisted that there were no good semester-to-semester contract would not textbooks “out there” in business be renewed were met with violent threats. communication (and thus refused to use During this process, I do not feel that I any textbook), I decided to inform her received necessary support from faculty that her contract would not be renewed colleagues (both full-time faculty and my for the following semester. Perhaps this department chair). When I asked my was not the wisest decision. This department chair for advice on this matter, instructor confronted my department she informed me, “This is what we chair and even the university president, brought you here to do.” At the time, I telling them that I didn’t know what I was interpreted her response as support and doing. She eventually threatened to sue acknowledgement of my role-related both the university and me. This turned authority, but I later learned that for out to be a pattern among adjunct several years, one of the faculty instructors, who have resisted changes coordinators had been shifting implemented by younger full-time unsuccessful or under-qualified part-time faculty, with our “worthless Ph.D.’s.” instructors from other areas in the These situations point to a challenge English department into professional for new, untenured coordinators of writing courses where there was no professional writing programs. There is full-time faculty coordinator. The clearly an issue of justice related to department, with an overwhelmingly excusing long-standing adjunct powerful literature faculty, seemed to instructors. While these instructors may fear repercussions from part-time faculty not have been effective, with little to no whose contracts were not renewed, so supervision or feedback, they have also instead, part-time faculty members who had no opportunities for professional earned low teaching evaluations, refused development. Ostensibly, these to hold office hours, or missed an renewable contract positions offer no

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promise of job security; yet an adjunct vulnerable situation, and guidance from instructor who has taught the same course organizations like the CPTSC becomes for 15 or more years has justifiably come crucial. This guidance can first be in the to expect a certain amount of security and form of conferences and workshops; the institutional loyalty. Nevertheless, the CPTSC can also take a leadership role in increasingly rigorous academic training the professional development of young, of professional and technical writing untenured, professional writing program faculty, along with the growth and directors. Second, the CPTSC might increasing supervision of professional organize formal mentorship networks to writing programs necessitates change and alleviate the problem of isolation felt by a corresponding increase in program professional writing faculty and program integrity. This will certainly result in a directors at small colleges and sloughing off of ineffective and universities, where an increasing number underqualified personnel. This tension is of individual tenure-track lines are being increased when the new program director added to departments dominated by is a young, fresh-out Ph.D. who is a literature and creative writing faculty. newcomer to an institution and Additionally, the CPTSC can promote untenured. research about the structure, curriculum, I would argue that these experiences and leadership of professional writing illustrate a moment of transition within programs nationwide. These suggestions our discipline. As smaller institutions are clearly in line with the mission of the start up professional writing programs, CPTSC. and do so by hiring just one junior faculty member, this leaves faculty in a

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The Mechanics and Politics of Teaching with Technology Certificates

Stuart Selber Penn State

At Penn State, all graduate students different ways, we create an educational from any academic department can earn a plan that should lead to student success. non-credit Teaching with Technology Because the certificate is a non-credit certificate. This certificate is awarded by certificate there are no prerequisites or the graduate school and supported by the curricular conditions that must be Center for Academic Computing and the satisfied, which means that advanced departments that have chosen to graduate students could, in theory, participate. We decided to participate proceed to develop their online portfolios because the certificate provides an at their own pace. However, most impetus for us to get more serious about graduate students are not quite ready to technology education. As the proceed without help, so I variously departmental representative for English, I provide them with reading lists, advise help graduate students negotiate the them into appropriate seminars, process of earning the certificate, which encourage them to sit in on appropriate is relatively straightforward. teaching methods courses, advise them They first contact me so that we can into technology training sessions, and go over the requirements as well as the subscribe them to a Listserv list criteria that will be used for assessment. associated with the certificate so that they In order to earn the certificate, a graduate can ask questions and learn from each student creates an online teaching other. portfolio that includes the following Once a graduate student has pulled elements: a philosophy of teaching together a draft of their online portfolio, it statement that focuses on the role of gets reviewed by me and by an technology in education; a professional instructional designer in the Center for home page that includes a curriculum Academic Computing who has thought vitae; evidence of online course materials long and hard about the complications of that are available outside of the teaching with technology. After the classroom; evidence that technology has portfolio has been revised to our been integrated into actual teaching satisfaction, I constitute a small situations, including evaluative departmental committee that takes one reflections on how things went; evidence last look at its contents, being sure to that multiple media have been integrated keep in mind the assessment criteria that into actual teaching situations; and students have been given. The final evidence of the use of technology that portfolio is sent from the English can support progressive pedagogical department to the graduate school where methods. Once we have looked at these it must also be approved. requirements, many of which are flexible given that they can be fulfilled in several

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Because a teaching with technology educational achievement. But for those certificate can be so deceptively difficult graduate students who are serious, the to earn, many of the graduate students institutionalized nature of the initiative who initially sign on eventually commits the English department to self-select themselves out of the process. continuous improvement in the quality of I think this is absolutely fine, for I want its opportunities for technology education the certificate to signify a considerable and support.

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"Conducting" Graduate Programs in Technical Communication

Robert R. Johnson Michigan Technological University

The binary of skill vs. conduct has bring issues of conduct into individual arisen in technical communication for courses? How can a curriculum embrace well over two decades. Often couched in and teach ethics? These are important terms of the classical Greek concepts of questions as they demonstrate technical techne vs. phronesis, the argument has communication's commitment to been made that technical communicators, developing programs that are balanced whether in education or the industrial and, hopefully, work across the workplace, are caught within this binary conduct/skills binary. tension. In my presentation, however, I would In most cases, the preferred side of like to use this binary tension to ask the binary has been that of conduct. Most another question: As we develop more scholarship has tended to argue that we and more graduate programs (master's have spent too much time teaching or and Ph.D.), how are we conducting using the skills of our trade, and precious ourselves? Are we honestly asking little thinking through what it means to ourselves about the ethics of developing conduct ourselves within a given new programs? For instance, the number community or sphere of influence. Often, of master's programs has grown from six the argument is posed in terms of ethics. in 1983 to nearly one hundred today. That is, conduct is represented in the Ph.D. programs have seen similar scholarship as involving ethical action, percentages of growth, and new ones are while skill or techne is presented as a being planned all the time. Do we have base form of knowledge that can allow faculty who are adequately prepared to individuals to practice their craft apart staff these programs? Do we have the from ethical concerns. resources to support the students and the Most of the time, when we ask programs themselves? Will we questions of conduct vs. skill, we concern eventually create a glut of graduates, ourselves with issues of individual similar to many other disciplines in the teaching or workplace practices. The past several decades? problem, then, becomes one of answering questions such as: What can we do to

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C: Rethinking Our Writing for Reader/Users

Adding the “Universe of Users” to Usability Testing and Field Research: A Call for Change in the Academy and Industry

Jennifer L. Bowie Texas Tech University

The technical communication usability testing and contextual inquiry industry and many academic programs results are often applied and analyzed in are currently concerned with such a way that the research results point user-centered product design and towards a “universal user” and not the development. Technical communicators differences in the true “universe of in industry and the academy are users.” For instance, usability testing increasingly using field methods, such as results of different users are commonly contextual inquiry, participatory design, combined into “the user” and might and ethnography, to better understand the include information like the time it took relationships between user and “the user” to complete a task or the technology (Spinuzzi 419). Likewise, number of errors made while completing usability testing is now a “common a task. This consolidation creates a requirement in many technical representative universal user and ignores communication development cycles” any differences among the users. (Hughes 488). Proponents value these Contextual inquiry builds affinity methods as part of the user-oriented diagrams, models (flow, sequence, product design and development process. artifact, etc.), and other methods of In usability testing, like the field methods, displaying and analyzing data. Like Dumas and Redish argue we must focus usability testing, the results in these on the users and we must “know, diagrams and models often discuss “the understand, and work with” these users user” (also “the workplace, “the context” (5). But researchers and designers who and more). The outcome of this apply usability testing and contextual consolidation is the creation of a inquiry, as the methods are commonly representative “universal user” which conceived, only begin to know, marginalizes all the user differences. As a understand, and work with the actual consequence, the full universe of users users. with users’ differences is ignored. While “user-centered” is a good idea, Literature and scholarship within the notion of “user” as one single entity technical communication does not doesn’t allow for differences, like age, always ignore the differences of the users. sex, socially constructed gender, culture, For instance, Carol Barnum suggests that education, or socioeconomic status. in usability testing testers should Although various research studies consider such differences as gender and outside of field research in technical age (159). But there are often problems communication have found differences in with the depth of the consideration of these populations, few field research differences. Although the authors studies in technical communication have frequently argue that we should address acknowledged these differences. In fact, the differences in our audience and users,

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they only suggest we do so by technology. She suggests that men are the categorizing broad groups of the users the technology is designed for, and users/audiences that rely on a simple and as a result women may “feel shallow understanding of demographics uncomfortable using technology in rather than a more complex and deeper conventional ways” because those understanding of how human activity “conventional,” male-oriented ways do works. This shallow consideration of the not match women’s preferred ways of universal user leads to superficial using technology (7). These three differences that mask the underlying examples show the problems of sameness instead of focusing on the universalizing one type of difference: universe of actual users. As a result many gender/sex. As Susanne Bødker, Kaj in technical communication are still Grønæk, and Morten Kyng state creating and focusing on the “universal "Different types of users will need user” instead of the broader, diverse different things from the application” universe of users. (158). Clearly, universalizing will ignore As many researchers, especially many other differences like culture, age, feminist researchers, along with social and socioeconomic status, and constructionist, cultural, and postmodern disadvantage these other differences in researchers, have shown, universalizing our audience and users, as much as it is problematic. Carol Gilligan argues that disadvantages women in these three previous work in moral development examples. only considered males and universalized Without attention to the true the findings for all humans (9). The “universe of users” for the products we previous research ignored women’s very are designing and developing, we will not different moral development process and be designing user-oriented products, and led to theories that only represented thus not meeting the goal of many males. Another example of technical communicators. For instance, universalization can be found in the universalizing of the users can have computer-simulated 3D mazes, which are many other negative results beyond the normally designed for the universal user, problems discussed above. Researchers males. Carol A. Lawton found that or designers who apply a design/research women were less accurate navigating in process with a universal user may cause the computer-simulated 3D mazes, as many problems such as: shown through higher number of • Creating a design cycle that only pointing errors (pointing toward unseen designs for the dominant users environmental reference points) (13). who are the universal user. The accuracy issues of the females are due to the fact these 3D mazes are • Inhibiting other user types from designed for the universal user’s method becoming users of the technology of navigation—male methods. The by creating technology that does female method is different and not fit their work practices. disadvantaged in mazes not designed to • Ignoring some types of current value these differences. Ann Brady users from categories other than Aschauer discusses the results of this those the researchers are user/audience universalization with examining.

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• Blending what variety does exist • Include an examination and across users to create “the user” consideration of user differences and “the work,” thus losing into our field methods classes and individual and small group teach our students to (while differences. making sure we also): • Disadvantaging nondominant key o Look at the types of the users by not giving them a voice current users. in the technology design and not o Examine differences in creating a product to fit their work user types. practices. o Consider own biases. The problem of universalized users in field research is a result of a split between o Value all users. the theories of our field and the practice. o Make results Although usability testing and field representative of the methods are based in more recent and universe of users. popular theories like social o Consider creating various constructionism, the researchers using work models (when the these methods do not fully apply the investigation methods theories. However through programmatic requires work models) changes in how we apply and analyze instead of a universal usability testing and field methods and model. through a more thorough application of many of the theories of our field, we can o Remember future users. easily research and design for the • Through our program and “universe of users.” This change from the curriculum avoid, and teach our problematic universal user to the stronger students to avoid, singular terms. and more appropriate universe of users is Elizabeth Minnich suggests that necessary and will enable us to focus on singular terms “lead directly to our true users/audiences—our universe singular abstract notions… Such of users. Some programmatic changes singularity makes thinking of that we can adopt are: plurality, let alone diversity, very • Clearly apply the theories of our difficult indeed” (450). field to our research. Include • Incorporate feminist methods and classes that encourage theoretical techniques of considering discussion of our research differences into our program methods, techniques, and types. including: • Require or incorporate theory and o Interstanding: Michelle research classes into our Ballif, Diane Davis, and curriculum that focus on, or at Roxanne Mountford least acknowledge differences suggests listening to “the and “others” like postmodernism, other” and “interstanding, social constructionism, feminist or glimpsing what lies studies, and gay and lesbian between” the self and studies. other (587).

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o Mestiza: Gloria Anzaldúa and goals and toward a discusses the more whole perspective, development of a new one that includes rather Borderlands than excludes” (399). consciousness, the These programmatic changes allow mestiza, which is a hybrid us, and those in our programs, a deeper of cultures and races. If understanding of our audiences and users, we seriously look at our and not the simple and shallow audiences, our users, and understanding we obtain through even ourselves, we will demographics and other problematic see something of the means. By adopting these methods we mestiza straddling can teach our students to consider true cultures and borders. She differences, and not be limited to a suggests we tolerate universal user or to superficial differences and differences. Integrating these methods contradictions, remain into our programs will change our work, flexible, and do not allow research, and theories of technical rigid boundaries. She communication by making make contends we should move user-centered design appropriate for our “away from set patterns “universe of users.”

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Works Cited Anzaldúa, Gloria. “La Conciencia de la Mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness.” Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Rtp. in Rpt. In Feminist Theory: A Reader. Ed. Wendy Kolmar and Frances Bartkowski. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 2000. 398-403. Aschauer, Ann Brady. “Tinkering with Technological Skill: An Examination of the Gendered Uses of Technologies.” Computers and Composition. 16.1 (1999): 7-23. Ballif, Michelle, D. Diane Davis, and Roxanne Mountford. “Negotiating the Differend: A Feminist Trilogue.” JAC 20.3 (2000): 583-625. Barnum, Carol. Usability Testing and Research. New York: Longman, 2002. Bødker, Susanne, Gronbæk, Kaj, & Kyng, Morten. “Cooperative Design: Techniques and Experiences from the Scandinavian Scene.” In D. Schuler & A. Namioka (Eds.), Participatory design: Principles and practices. Hillsdale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1993, 157-176 Dumas, Joseph S., and Janice C. Redish. A Practical Guide to Usability Testing. Norwood: Ablex, 1994. Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993. Hughes, Michael. “Rigor in Usability Testing.” Technical Communication. (1999): 488-494. Lawton, Carol A. “Gender Differences in Pointing Accuracy in Computer-Simulated 3D Mazes.” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research [online]. Jan. 1999. Available from Findarticles.com. 1-11. 20 Nov. 2002. . Minnich, Elizabeth. “Chapter V: Back to Basics.” Transforming Knowledge. Rpt. In Feminist Theory: A Reader. Ed. Wendy Kolmar and Frances Bartkowski. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 2000. 449-54. Spinuzzi, Clay. “Investigating the Technology-Work Relationship: A Critical Comparison of Three Qualitative Field methods.” IEEE. (2000): 419-432.

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Recruiting New Faculty? Change Your Rhetorical Perspective

Kelli Cargile Cook Utah State University

More and more, technical announcements, the presentation communicators have come to identify analyzes the traditional, departmentally themselves as user advocates who focused position announcement, and then recognize audience needs and produce suggests a number of revisions that will documents that meet those needs. make announcements more Consequently, one of the fundamental candidate-centered and potentially more lessons in technical communication effective. courses is to ask students to identify their Recruitment marketing audience’s perspective, recognize its needs, and then create documents that In general, recruitment marketing is a address those needs. Yet, many program means of attracting and recruiting job directors and members of technical candidates (Breaugh and Starke; Ryan, communication faculties often neglect Gubern, and Rodriguez; Sewell). More this basic rhetorical lesson when the time specifically, it is a method for recruiting comes to write position announcements faculty in a tight or “hot” job market. that recruit new faculty members. Used as a rhetorical tool, recruitment marketing can help persuade job As a genre, position announcements, candidates that an institution has value especially those from academic not available in other organizations. In departments with traditionally large rhetorical terms, recruitment marketing candidate pools, are most frequently means re-evaluating the position written from the recruiting department’s announcement as a rhetorical document perspective. These announcements, aimed at persuading an identifiable, which commonly list the department’s specific audience—potential job “expertise wish list,” often do not include candidates. In other words, it means other information of primary interest to centering the position announcement on prospective job candidates. As a result, candidates and their needs, not solely on such announcements fail to address the the department and its needs. needs of their intended audience and are less effective in recruiting candidates. The departmentally centered position announcement To improve position announcements and their ability to recruit talented faculty, A content analysis of 59 position this article suggests that recruitment announcements posted September 23, marketing strategies can be used as a 2002, in the Modern Language method to improve recruitment of Association’s Job Information List (JIL) technical, scientific, and professional illustrates how departmentally centered communication faculty. To illustrate how (rather than candidate-centered) recruitment marketing strategies might traditional position announcements are. change traditional position The content analysis revealed five

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components in JIL postings for technical, [Candidate qualifications] scientific, and professional Responsibilities: teach lower- and upper-level composition, technical and communication job announcements: professional writing courses, engage in 1. Institution name and website scholarship and service. [Position information] Send application letter, 2. Position information (title, vita, and names, addresses, and responsibilities, duties, start telephone numbers of three references date) to: .... Application deadline: November 8, 2002. [Application requirements and 3. Candidate qualifications contact information] [We] are an Equal (educational requirements, Opportunity Employer that values expertise, and/or experience) diversity. [AA/EO statement] 4. Application requirements and Although it has all the five contact/mailing information components of a JIL announcement, this position announcement with its focus on 5. AA/EO statement qualifications provides few specifics The following example illustrates about the job. It lacks information about these five components (Labels appear in the department, the institution, and even bold font and are set off in brackets): specific course descriptions or names. As a template, it could be used to announce Institution Name [Institutional almost any position available on the information] technical, scientific, and professional Address/Website [Institutional communication market. information] Assistant Professor [Position The candidate-centered job information] announcement In contrast to this generic position Rhetoric & Composition with Prof. & Tech. Writing Specialty. Tenure-track description, recruitment marketing position, nine-month appointment with recommends revamping the position summer teaching possible. Competitive announcement in the following ways to salary. [Position information] make it more candidate-centered: Qualifications: earned doctorate in English by date of employment with a • Target your audience; know specialization in rhetoric and what that audience wants composition; secondary areas in • Consider your announcement technical/professional writing; ability to teach lower- and upper-level from a candidate’s composition courses; evidence of perspective scholarship and research. Preferred • Provide realistic job qualifications: relevant previews/descriptions college/university teaching experience, • Assist candidates in an established research program, and experience with interdisciplinary and/or self-selecting and targeting linked courses. your institution (In other words, help them to see themselves in your organization)

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• Attract candidates with vivid, position announcement, if the department concrete language and wishes to attract candidates. generate interest by Among the other candidate-centered conveying personally changes that departments should consider relevant, specific information are (1) explaining the department’s vision • Be aware of “signals” your for the program and for the candidate; (2) announcement is sending providing a departmental, college, or Recently, a CPTSC-sponsored survey institutional description/character of Ph.D.s graduated from 1995-2000 statement, (3) using inclusive language in revealed eight job attributes that have the position announcement, and (4) attracted job candidates (Cargile Cook, making specific references to teaching Thralls, and Zachry.) Table 1 identifies load, service or administration these job attributes and indicates the requirements, salary. number of times survey respondents identified them as important Departmental vision/fit statements considerations in their job search. are one way that candidates can begin to (Respondents could choose more than envision themselves working within the one consideration.) recruiting institution. Two excerpts from the September 23 JIL postings illustrate Job Attribute Count Percentage how these statements might be worded: job description 58 26.1% • “…The department seeks to location 44 19.8% define itself as part of an urban other 35 15.8% research university focused on colleagues 20 9.0% graduate 19 8.6% questions of globalization and program technology, particularly as they reputation of 18 8.1% affect a comprehensive program institution with a breadth of historical scope salary 17 7.7% and disciplinary diversity.” course load 11 5.0% • “The successful candidate will Total responses 222 100.0% participate in a nationally renowned undergraduate writing Table 1: Job attributes identified by survey program with an established Ph.D. respondents degree in …, an undergraduate Knowing how job candidates value interdisciplinary major in this information can help departments development, and a desire to focus announcements more specifically increase cross-disciplinary on what candidates want and need to pedagogical collaborations.” know about positions. Although Similarly, statements describing departments have no control of where program and institutional reputation can they are located, other attributes, such as also assist candidates in self-selecting job description, reputation of the and targeting an institution. The institution, course load, program and following examples illustrate how these institutional reputation, and salary, are all statements can be worded: kinds of information that can be and, perhaps, should be included in the

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• “[Our] university is designated a candidates to apply may help with Carnegie Research Extensive recruitment. Using wording such as “we university, one of only three invite candidates with the following minority institutions on the list. qualifications…” and “we encourage With a minority enrollment of applications from candidates who…” has over 40%, we are a Hispanic a warmer, more friendly appeal than a list Serving Institution. We enroll the of qualifications that reads like a largest number of Native checklist. Such inclusive language will American students of any tend to attract rather than eliminate university in the U.S.” candidates from the job pool. • “The [department’s] In conclusion, shifting the rhetorical program…offers bachelor’s, focus of position announcements may master’s, and doctoral degrees. help to alleviate some of the tension Growth at the graduate level has associated with recruitment and the job resulted in new professorial search. It allows candidates to identify positions. A newly constructed more quickly the positions that fit their building provides state-of-the-art needs and expertise and allows classrooms and a usability lab.” departments to market themselves more effectively to the small number of Providing candidates with specific candidates available to fill positions in information about job descriptions and technical, scientific, and professional benefits assists candidates to select and communication programs. target an institution; and finally, writing the announcement in a way that invites

Works Cited Breaugh, James A., and Mary Starke. “Research on Employee Recruitment: So Many Studies, So Many Remaining Questions.” Journal of Management 26:3 (2000): 405-434. Cargile Cook, Kelli, Charlotte Thralls, and Mark Zachry. “Doctoral-Level Graduates in Professional, Technical, and Scientific Communication 1995-2000: A Profile.” Technical Communication (May 2003) [in press]. Ryan, Gerard, Marcel Gubern, and Inma Rodriguez. “Recruitment Advertising: The Marketing-Human Resource Interface.” International Advances in Economic Research 6:2 (May 2000): 354-365. Sewell, Laura. “Recruitment Marketing 101” [online]. Wetfeet.com. 23 June 2002.

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Retaining the Relevancy of Rhetoric in Practice: Interactivity as a Rhetorical Strategy in Multimedia Writing

Julia Romberger Purdue University

As writing for multimedia and the issues than simply putting control in one teaching of usability becomes an party's hands versus another's. Andy increasingly significant part of technical Lippman, founding associate of the MIT writing, the rhetorical strategies that are Media Lab, has defined interaction as available for all aspects of multimedia mutual and simultaneous activity on the forms need to be thoroughly explicated if part of both participants, usually (but not we are to continue to preserve rhetoric as necessarily) working toward some goal a fundamental to technical writing (Stone 10 - 11). Clearly, the model being courses and not relegate it to the nether developed to discuss interactivity here is realms of theory. Interactivity is one of a working conversation that is leading the aspects of multimedia writing that toward an accomplishment defined by needs to have a rhetoric developed for it either or both participants. Understanding that can inform our teaching of usability interactivity as being "as much a and the development of multimedia cognitive event as it is a physical act" that projects. is guided by metaphors leads to the Early discussions of interactivity in rhetorical concepts of ethos, pathos, and the scholarship of Jay David Bolter and arrangement to assist in understanding Michael Joyce on hypertext focus on the how interactivity operates in the ability to move beyond traditional rhetorical context (Andrisani, et al). In writer-centered texts to reader-centered the definition given by Lippman, the document experiences by exploiting the emphasis is on the relationship between capacities of hypertext to create user/audience and the non-linear navigation (Bolter 2001, Joyce technology/program. The various ways 1995). Joyce has taken the position in his of arranging types of interactivity to recent work that the current uses of maintain "control" of the information hypertext on the internet do not fully flow within the document and handle the exploit the capacity of the medium to mediation sets up issues of ethos for the create reader-centered documents and originator of the multimedia and is a instead maintain a highly linear structure critical influence on the pathetical appeal (2000). Therefore, interactivity is of the multimedia document on the generally articulated as either reader. reader-centered or writer-centered. I take the position that when teaching I would like to complicate this binary issues of usability for multimedia that posits reader-centered on one side projects to technical writing students, and writer-centered on another. The attention must be paid to how choices of interactivity that is the means to mediate different interactions are in fact choices control over the relaying of information of rhetorical strategies. These affords a much more complex set of interactions can have a critical effect on

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the reception of a multimedia work. This and speeches that are commonly will allow technical writing courses to associated with them and that rhetoric is maintain an emphasis on the importance relevant to the types of composing that of rhetoric as the theoretical basis for the are increasingly utilized in corporate, discipline and show students that academic, entertainment, and personal rhetorical principles are adaptable and venues in the information age. valuable beyond the traditional print texts

Works Cited Andrisani, Debbie, Anna V. Gaal, David Gillette, and Sherry Steward. "Making the Most Out of Interactivity Online." Technical Communication 48.3 (August 2001): n.p. Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assoc. Pub, 2001. Joyce, Michael. Of Two Minds: Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics. Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 1995. Joyce, Michael. Othermindedness: The Emergence of Network Culture. Ann Arbor: U Michigan P, 2000. Stone, Allucquëre Rosanne. The War of Design and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. Cambridge: (n.p.) (n.d.)

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Session Theme: Rethinking Our Writing for Reader/Users 124 Appendices

Distinguished Service Award

Selection Criteria1 programming in technical Persons nominated to receive the communication. This contribution could Distinguished Service Award will in be either as a career long emphasis or as a general possess the following significant special contribution. characteristics and attributes: 2002 Recipient, Dan Riordan 1. They must be members of CPTSC at Speaking on behalf of Riordan the time of their nomination. Steve Bernhardt 2. They should be members of long Kirkpatrick Chair in Writing University of Delaware standing in CPTSC with at least seven consecutive years of It pleases me to no end to see my membership sometime during their friend and colleague Dan Riordan receive careers. The DSSC can recommend the Distinguished Service Award for exceptions to this rule but only for 2002 from the Council for Programs in members of extraordinary merit. Technical and Scientific Communication. Dan is the Council's crazy voice of reason: 3. Nominees must have made a steady, unnerving presence; the significant long term contributions to surprisingly contrarian iconoclast. Dan programming in technical reminds us all of the centrality of communication. It is expected the teaching to our professional lives; he DSSC will consider only members shows us what it means to enact a who have established significant scholarship of teaching. careers in technical communication Dan's career has been devoted to the programming, working both on the students of Stout--young people of good local and the national levels. The key Wisconsin stock--pragmatic, question will be, Have technical career-minded, with unapologetically communication programs been vocationally-driven Midwestern significantly affected in a positive sensibilities. Dan fits his life and his manner by this person’s career? energy to their needs in that setting, Honorary Distinguished Service providing what we often call "service Award courses" but which means, in Dan's terms, The DSSC of the Executive helping students figure out what they Committee with the advice of the DSSC want to do and then helping them learn to may from time to time choose do it. This is empowerment, and it arises non-members to receive an Honorary as these students take control of their Distinguished Service Award. Such lives, discovering how to use language to honorary recipients should have made establish their professional identities. significant contributions to CPTSC or to Dan elevates service to a calling. Beyond those service courses, Dan 1Approved Austin, Texas, October 1997; posted has led the way in establishing a new to the Web site March 1999.

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undergraduate major in technical president. I was immediately impressed. communication, one embedded in an He was welcoming, informative, innovative university philosophy that organized, inspiring, engaging, droll, stresses integration across various charismatic--everything you'd hope to applied disciplines and close connection find in an organization's president. to work settings. Dan has distinguished As I met other CPTSC'ers at that himself as an honored professor at the meeting, I realized that Dan represented University of Wisconsin--Stout, someone what I found in so many CPTSC recognized repeatedly for his outstanding members: these were people who not teaching and for his work across campus. only had their heads in the clouds; they Dan accepts as his mission and role a had their feet on the ground. In other teaching load that would make many of words, I was surrounded by giants. (Now us stagger under the burden--and if you're my size and look up at Dan, continues to lead in the scholarship of there's no question that you're standing teaching. He articulates the model for our next to a man of stature.) service courses, and he provides But seriously, when I say that leadership in curriculum development CPTSC'ers have their heads in the clouds and articulation. As a leader in our and their feet on the ground, what I mean professional organizations, he is that it's an unusual group of people contributes his perspective as both who can dream and consider participant and observer, engaged with practicalities at the same time. Maybe it's his teaching and the development of our because of our field, or maybe the field profession, yet always evidencing an attracts persons of such abilities. ironic detachment, ready to offer droll Technical communication demands that commentary on our activities. we examine and understand the concrete My regret is that family commitments realities in which engineers and designers keep me away from my favorite town of work, at the same time that we imagine Logan this year, but I join you in raising a the abstract, such as an imagined toast to the accomplishments and user/reader and the ideal, most usable professional leadership of my esteemed text to help that reader. In many ways, colleague and valued friend, Dan Riordan. technical communicators bridge the two May his sympathetic grace and wise cultures that C. P. Snow described insight bless us all. several decades ago, now. We work in Bruce Maylath both the sciences and humanities. We Director, Program in Technical Communication imagine, and we make real. UW-Stout It was a few years after I met Dan that I first met Dan Riordan, fittingly we ran into each other at another CPTSC enough, at a CPTSC annual meeting. At conference and he mentioned that his the time, we taught at different school, UW-Stout, was planning to universities in different regions of the launch a technical communication United States. Although his name was program, and he hoped I would apply to familiar to me from his publications and an upcoming position to help lead it. textbook, Technical Report Writing "Wow," I thought. "To work alongside Today, I had never laid eyes on him till Dan Riordan! I'll bet I'd be hard put to that point. At the time, he was CPTSC's find a better colleague."

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The hunch I'd had, based on my London2000 Roundtable remember CPTSC observations, turned out to be Peter--brainstorm a collaborative correct--in fact, far better than I could certificate program in international tech have imagined. When I arrived at Stout, comm. It sounded head-in-the-clouds, Dan had inspired his colleagues with a but when Dan's involved, I know that in a vision of a tech comm program for which few years it will be a feet-on-the-ground it's hard to find an exact parallel reality. anywhere. Some key courses in the Dan, I could see when I met you, curriculum appeared unique. They were serving as CPTSC's president, that you ones Dan foresaw, proposed, and has were even then distinguished in your now implemented--courses like the contributions to tech comm programs. Rhetoric of Technology and a capstone Every day is a privilege to work with you, course for tech comm seniors called and it's a deep privilege now to see you Freelancing/Professional Writing. What honored as this year's recipient of he described at that earlier CPTSC CPTSC's distinguished service award. meeting about that program he Congratulations. envisioned seemed head-in-the-clouds, and now, several years later, it's a Charles W. Sorensen feet-on-the-ground reality, fully living up Chancellor, UW-Stout to its promise and potential. I think it is altogether fitting and Dan's like that with everything he proper that Professor Dan Riordan be touches. While many of you are familiar given the Distinguished Service Award with what he's done to effect the quality from the Council for Programs in of programs not only at Stout but through Scientific and Technical Communication his CPTSC work in North America, and, this year. Dan has been a dedicated and since our London meeting, also in Europe, untiring advocate of our technical you probably aren't aware of all the ways communications program and it is he contributes to education: things like because of his leadership, his vision, his his founding and directing Stout's continued support for its development Teaching & Learning Center, his service and implementation that the program is on the Menomonie Library Board, which here today. led to a new library building, and the time he spends helping Mary with the minority Dan has served this university for students on our campus. over three decades, has always had the best interest of the student as his highest I hope when I become a senior priority and has justly earned an excellent member of our department that I'm as reputation. energetic and innovative and irrepressible as Dan still is. I see his verve I offer my congratulations to an continually--most recently Tuesday night, award well deserved. when he and Mary hosted one of our Marilyn Miller European CPTSC members to dinner at Secretary to the Dean their house. It was invigorating to College of Arts & Sciences, observe Dan and Peter Kastberg of the UW-Stout Århus School of Business in Dr. Dan Riordan was a godsend when Denmark--those of you who attended the I began my position in the Dean's Office

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14 years ago. At that point in my life, I better student and a better writer. He had used an electronic typewriter, served as a role model who motivated me magnetic card machine, and Four-Phase to become an instructor in postsecondary computer for word processing. Never had education. I used a Macintosh. At a time I was feeling unsure of myself and with the Sarah Gudmanson multitude of mixed emotions that come August 2002 graduate (technical communication major) with a new job, I felt overwhelmed. In the UW-Stout door walked professor Dan Riordan, who in ten minutes taught me how to produce Dan Riordan taught many of my a letter on a machine I was fearful of. capstone Technical Communications During the next months he took his time courses at Stout. In all honesty, he was a to teach me how to do tables, mail merges, tough teacher with high standards, and PageMaker, etc. Dan took away my fear this was not always appreciated by all of of computers and renewed my zest for his students--but I believe it was those learning. standards that made them better students and ultimately, better technical Through the years Dan has been communicators. I personally admired generous of his time for all campus how he did not lower his expectations of secretaries, not just our college, by his students, because it was obvious to teaching refresher sessions in grammar me that he cared about us and what would and punctuation. be expected of us when we entered the Dan I want to say thanks for being job market as technical communicators. such a caring (and patient!) individual Dan also made sacrifices as a professor, who helped me when I was floundering. like rearranging his schedule to hold a You are truly worthy of receiving the Monday night class from 7-10 p.m. in Distinguished Service Award. order to help students. Finally, I think Congratulations! everyone would agree with me in saying that Dan Riordan's amazing sense of humor and ability to tell a good story Juli Hastings Taylor Graduate Program Director make learning fun! Thank you Dan, for University of Wisconsin-Stout all you have done for Technical Communication. I am pleased to admit that I had Dr. Riordan as an instructor for Copy Editing Craig Ethier, and Technical Writing during my UW-Stout graduate GE-Interlogix undergraduate coursework approximately 12 years ago. Dr. Riordan Dan is most likely being honored for will always remain one of my favorite his efforts and leadership in the technical instructors because of his expertise, communication program at Stout. enthusiasm, and energy in the classroom. However, I remember Dan in the He is a dynamic instructor who made classroom--a charismatic teacher with an every class session challenging and enthusiastic approach to presenting a exciting. Furthermore, his passion for difficult topic. As a student, I felt comfort writing was contagious. Dr. Riordan's in knowing Dan was preparing me for positive influence helped me to become a work in the real world. As a parent, I can

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only hope that my children find teachers his students to be able to support their with the same dedication, generosity, and ideas with relevant examples of what perseverance. inspired that emotion or triggered that response. It was great training for life as Prather Harrell an adult. I didn't realize it at that time, but UW-Stout Class of 1999 Dan was giving me the tools to be able to embrace my opinions with confidence, I am writing this letter in support of stand firm on my position and beliefs, Dan Riordan, who I understand is and have the intelligence to know how to receiving the Distinguished Service support them with fact, not rhetoric. Award from your organization. I am a former student of Dan's. When I learned As a result of having been his student, he was receiving this award, I thought to I am also very open to surveying the myself, "Distinguished is the perfect title thoughts and opinions of others. Before for this award Dan is receiving, as that class, I always felt the only idea or everything about him is distinguished." opinion that mattered was my own. Now, I eagerly look to share and exchange with As a former student, I remember what others to solve life's dilemmas, so that the I loved so much about Dan's class was beliefs I support and the opinions I have that he kept everything very simple. are considerate of the situation and all While struggling to make the grade for involved, not simply self-motivated. many other subjects, Dan had a very smart, innovative way of teaching his The Distinguished Service Award is a students to embrace their creativity, look wonderful honor, and I am happy to be beyond the obvious, and be open to the able to contribute to how Dan provided ideas and opinions of others. In his class, me with a service that will serve me well all you needed to do was read the the rest of my life. assignment, think about what it meant to Darryl Cross you and how it made you feel, then Senior, Technical Communication Program articulate those thoughts intelligently on UW-Stout paper by using supporting examples from the reading. Each assignment would As a student at Stout, I have learned receive a 1-4; 1 being the lowest grade many things about life and what it means you could earn and 4 being the highest. to deliver your best. Spring semester, The next day we would discuss the 2001, I was privileged to have Dan reading and our responses together as a Riordan as an instructor for a 300 level class. English class. Dan is a teacher who refuses to settle for less than your best. I remember how much I looked During this class, I learned a lot about forward to Dan's class because I thought presenting technical information in an how wonderful it was to be able to give efficient, yet extremely creative manner. my honest opinion and actually earn a 3 I was also forced to critique my or 4 for sharing it (At that time, most classroom learning style and develop a people weren't exactly eager to hear my work ethic focused on attention to detail personal opinion on anything). Dan never and having pride in your work, regardless judged or penalized you for your honesty of its importance. or wayward thinking. He simply wanted

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Distinguished Service Award core, and one of the defining Acceptance Speech characteristics of our profession. I want to thank you for this honor. I And now service. Since this award is know so many people in the field who for service, I would like to reflect on its have done so much, and I am surprised meaning for a moment. Our colleague and delighted to be included in that group. Jimmie Killingsworth has defined In reflecting on this award, I would like technical communication as to speak briefly about CPTSC and about communication items that help other service. people do their jobs. In essence then, technical communication is service. First CPTSC. On the first day that I When I act as a technical communicator, attended a CPTSC meeting I went in, I act in service. But what does it mean to alone, to have breakfast in the dining help others to do their jobs? I think that room of the La Fonda hotel in Santa Fe. I many people have indicated that the key was sitting by myself when a woman at in getting others to do their jobs is to another table got up, came over to me, create a situation, a framework, a introduced herself, and asked me to join space--the metaphors vary but all mean her. It was Virginia Book, one of the the same--and then get out of the way and founders of CPTSC. She asked me about let them work. my career, my classes, my interests, my family. She explained to me how the Spaces are created by architects. In conference worked--the short speeches those spaces many things happen. A good and the lengthy follow-up discussions. space creates communities in which She was proud of what she had helped to occurs both communication and build and I realized that this was an communing--drawing together in a organization that I wanted to be part of. special way. Each space creates a role for Within minutes she made me feel its users--pray here, work here, play here. completely at home, a member of the The great spaces not only create roles, group. they create inspiration and exhilaration. To visit one of those spaces--from In those years CPTSC was smaller soaring cathedrals to that special corner than it is now. The conference was one of your room--is to find a kind of peace concurrent session. We sat at a large table and strength that allows and encourages a and people rose, Quaker fashion, to speak to the community. After their comments person to go forward. the discussion started, inquisitive, And the going forward is the great joy respectful, probing the meaning of of creators of space. To build a building technical communication as a profession. that people want to visit, and then find strength in, and then leave somehow Now we have multiple sessions, enabled, is a great challenge and a great many more attendees, and a wider range satisfaction. For the real value of the of topics than we ever imagined then, but space is in the going forward, the leaving the spirit of the organization has been of the space, the walking through the preserved, not lost, with the growth. That door out to the world. Those who go out welcoming spirit that Virginia carry on not only the role that the space exemplified and the sharing and valuing creates for them, but also a larger, more quality of the group has remained our

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fulfilled sense of themselves and what bags to carry to the car--if you hurry, you they can add to our community. can hold the door." I had the good fortune many years And in these past three decades, ago to marry into the Palmer family. My service in technical communication for wife Mary is beautiful, courageous, and me has been doing my job, working to visionary, among a host of other qualities. create spaces, and hurrying to hold the She has three sisters, all of whom have door as energized, visionary people, the same qualities: an impressive, carrying the bags which held the contents daunting, exhilarating group. When the of a new profession, walked through into four brothers-in-law get together, we wonderful new worlds. It has been my periodically discuss what it is like to be privilege to serve, and I thank you for the married to one of this quartet. One of my opportunity and the kind words so many brothers-in-law expressed it very well have spoken as they crossed the when he said, "If you are married to a threshold. Palmer woman, and if there are three

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Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication 29th Annual Conference Conference Program

Thursday, October 3 6:30-8:00 Opening Reception

8:00 Keynote Address Welcome: Thomas Kent, Dean of Graduate School, Utah State University Introduction: Christine Hult, Utah State University Tom Huckin, University of Utah "Globalization and Critical Consciousness in Technical Communication"

Friday, October 4 9:00 – 10:15 Plenary Panel on New Graduate Programs Paul Dombrowski, University of Central Florida “Texts and Technology Ph.D. Program: University of Central Florida” Jeff Grabill, Michigan State University “Digital Rhetoric at Michigan State University: Designing a New Professional Writing Program “ Carolyn Miller, North Carolina State University “Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media: Challenges in Interdisciplinary Program Design” Mark Zachry, Utah State University “Theory & Practice of Professional Communication: A New Ph.D. Program at Utah State “

10:30-11:30 Concurrent Session 1

A. Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Relating English Depts. (ECC 201) Molly Johnson, Univ. of Houston-Downtown “Exploring Attitudes and Values: Tensions in Interdisciplinary Discourse” Michael Knievel, Texas Tech University “Courses, Credits, and Contact Hours: Clarifying the Role of the Humanities/Technology Binary Along a Continuum of Emphasis in Technical Communication”

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10:30-11:30 Concurrent Session 1, cont. Kate Latterell, Penn State Altoona “Developing Technical Communication Degree Options in an Arts and Humanities Setting” B. Teaching Tech. Comm.: The Content Question (ECC 203) Dave Clark, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee “Ours/Theirs: Core Content in Technical Communication” Helen Correll, Metropolitan State University “Actions and Reactions: Technical Communication and the Process of Change” Carolyn.Rude, Texas Tech University “Is there a place for technical communication in the public sphere?” Russell Willerton, Texas Tech University “The White Paper: Prominent in Industry, Neglected in Academia”

C. Tech. Comm. & Digital Media: Information Architecture (ECC 205) Moderator: Bill Williamson Michael Salvo, Northeastern University “Pedagogy, Praxis and Proliferation: Technical Communicators as Information Architects” Geoffrey Sauer, University of Washington-Seattle “The Need for Architect/Construction Worker Dichotomies in Information Architecture as a Profession” Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Brent Faber, Clarkson University “Open Source Practices and Technical Communication Programs”

11:45-12:45 Concurrent Session 2

A. Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Relating to Technology (ECC 201) Moderator: Bill Macgregor J. Harrison Carpenter, University of Colorado “'We Look Before and After, and Pine....' Part I: Can This Relationship Be Saved?” Margaret Hundleby, University of Houston-Downtown “'We Look Before and After, and Pine....' Part II: How Do We Negotiate Our Differences, and Should We?” Pamela S. Ecker, Cincinnati State Technical & Community College “Lessons Learned While Looking Both Ways: A Work-in-Process Review of Cincinnati State’s Multimedia Information Design Programs” Carroll Ferguson Nardone, Sam Houston State University “Complicating Tensions and Reproducing Culture: Searching for Models in Technical and Scientific Communication”

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11:45-12:45 Concurrent Session 2, cont.

B. Teaching Tech. Comm.: Redesigning Presentation (ECC 203) Moderator: Bruce Maylath Dianne Atkinson, Purdue University “Thinking Global: If ‘International’ Means English, What does ‘Intercultural’ Mean?” Linda Driskill, Rice University “’Learning to Write / Writing to Learn’: Considering the Limits of a Pedagogical Binary in Science and Engineering Communication in the Disciplines” Tim Peeples, Elon University “A Call for a Prax-ical Undergraduate Major Curricular Framework”

C. Tech. Comm. & Digital Media: Teaching Online (ECC 205) Moderator: Geoffrey Sauer Keith Gibson, Penn State University “Online Technical Writing: Professional Service Courses?” Kevin LaGrandeur, New York Institute of Technology “Hyper-Textbooks” Kenneth T. Rainey, Southern Polytechnic State University “Technical Writing and Online Distance Education: The Advantages and the Pitfalls” Janice Tovey, East Carolina University “Negotiating the Intersection of Instructional Methods in Distance Education and the Traditional Classroom”

D. New Approaches in the Classroom: Visuals, Text, Web (ECC 207) Moderator: Tyanna Herrington Deborah C. Andrews, University of Delaware “Program Priorities: Visuals versus Text” Susan Lawrence, Carnegie Mellon “With World Enough and Time: Balancing Fundamental Skills and Ultimate Goals in Document Design Courses” Pete Praetorius, Montana Tech of the University of Montana “Web Design as Technical Communication Service Course” Dan Riordan, University of Wisconsin-Stout “Ad/Manual: Rhetoric of Technology in the Technical Communication Program” 1:00 – 2:00 Lunch

David B. Haight Alumni Center

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2:15-3:15 Concurrent Session 3

A. Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Collaborating Inside and Outside Academia (ECC 201) Moderator: Jeff Grabill Ann M. Blakeslee, Eastern Michigan University “The Inside-Out Initiative: Negotiating and Reducing Difference with Colleagues Both In and Outside the University; Or, What Do Technical Communication and English Education Have in Common?” John C. Gooch, Louisiana Tech University “Training Students as Technical Communicators for Interdisciplinary Situations: Traditional Scenes vs. Indeterminate Zones for Collaboration” Heather Sehmel, Texas Technological University “Creating and Connecting Curricular and Extracurricular Service Learning Opportunities: A Role for and Benefit to Technical Communication Programs”

B. Teaching Tech. Comm.: Theory & Practice in Curr. Development (ECC 203) Moderator: Melinda Knight Tracy Bridgeford, University of Nebraska at Omaha “Repurposing v. Generating: Developing a Certificate Program in Technical Writing” Susan Feinberg, Illinois Institute of Technology “Back to Basics: Theory and Research vs. Teaching Software in Tech Com Programs” Becky Jo McShane, Weber State University “Skills and Literacies for the Postmodern World: Developing a Professional & Technical Communication Major at Weber State University” Lili Fox Velez, Vox Medica “Familiar Wheel to Build, New Road to Explore”

C. Tech. Comm. & Digital Media: Web-based Learning (ECC 205) Moderator: Kenneth Rainey Rebecca E. Burnett, Iowa State University “Tensions in the Development of Web-based Learning Environments: Identifying Tensions in Virtual Spaces” David Fisher, Iowa State University “Tensions in the Development of Web-based Learning Environments: Addressing Tensions in Virtual Spaces” David Morgan “Tensions between the academy and industry”

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2:15-3:15 Concurrent Session 3, cont.

Richard K. Mott, New Mexico Tech “Dissembling the Binary of Theory and Praxis in Digital Communication: Programmatic Concerns”

D. Research: Evaluating Our Needs & Limitations (ECC 207) Moderator: Nancy O’Rourke David Dayton, Southern Polytechnic State University “Building the Research Base of Scientific and Technical Communication by Increasing Our Collaboration with Master’s Students” The Little Rock 3 — Cindy Nahrwold, Barb L’Eplattenier, and Karen M. Kuralt, University of Arkansas-Little Rock “No Human Subjects Were Harmed in the Writing of This Proposal: Tensions Between Institutional Review Boards and Writing Programs” Graham Smart — University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee “The Emperor’s Clothes—Technical Communication as a Research-Light Field in Need of More Empirical Inquiry”

3:15-3:30 P.M. Break

3:30-4:30 Concurrent Session 4

A. Tech. Comm. & Its Neighbors: Academy and Industry (ECC 201) Moderator: Susan Stevenson Barbara Gordon, Elon University “Sticking to Skills/Considering Ethics” TyAnna Herrington and Jessica Cunard-Hunter, Georgia Institute of Technology "Binary Tension in Teaching/Practicing/Researching/Producing in Academies/Industry" Terri Palmer, Carnegie Mellon University “The Gap between Old and New: Technology and Traditional Scholarship”

B. Teaching Tech. Comm.: Designing Graduate Programs (ECC 203) Moderator: Dianne Atkinson Teena A.M. Carnegie, Oregon State University “Death and Resurrection: The Viability of a MS/MA in Scientific and Technical Communication in a Service Milieu” David Alan Sapp, Fairfield University “Supervising Adjunct Instructors: Reflections of a New, Tenure-Track Professional Writing Coordinator at a Small Comprehensive University” Stuart Selber, Penn State University “The Mechanics and Politics of Teaching with Technology Certificates”

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3:30-4:30 Concurrent Session 4, cont.

Robert R. Johnson, Michigan Technological University “’Conducting’ Graduate Programs in Technical Communication”

C. Rethinking Our Writing for Reader/Users (ECC 205) Moderator: Molly Johnson Jennifer L. Bowie, Texas Tech university “Adding the ‘Universe of Users’ to Usability Testing and Field Research: A Call for Change in the Academy and Industry” Kelli Cargile Cook, Utah State University “Recruiting New Faculty? Change Your Rhetorical Perspective” Julia Romberger, Purdue University “Retaining the Relevancy of Rhetoric in Practice: Interactivity as a Rhetorical Strategy in Multimedia Writing”

4:45-5:45 Focus Group: Targeting Topics for STC-Funded Research (ECC 201) Sandi Harner Cedarville University Judy Ramey University of Washington 6:00-7:00 Reception

Bullen Center, 43 S Main Street, Logan

7:00-10:00 Annual Banquet Bullen Center, 43 S Main Street, Logan

Saturday, October 5 9:00-12:00 noon Annual Business Meeting Skyroom Restaurant, Taggart Student Center, 4th Floor

12:15-5:30 Picnic and Hike in Logan Canyon Leave and return from University Inn

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Program 137

CPTSC

gratefully acknowledges the generous contributions of the following publishers whose contributions have supported the conference breaks and banquet reception refreshments:

Greenwood/Ablex Longman/Allyn and Bacon Prentice Hall Bedford/St. Martins The 3GB Group and Syllabase

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 Program 138 CPTSC 29th Annual Business Meeting

Logan, Utah Saturday, October 5, 2002

1. Announcements 2. Minutes from 2001 business meeting approved. 3. Standing reports a. Treasurer’s Report—Annotated by Karen Schnakenberg. The annual conference was self-supporting in 2002. This will also be the case in 2003. We still print a handful of paper copies of proceedings; extra copies will be archived at the University of Minnesota. We also print a newsletter in the fall, which is an additional expense. In 2002 for the first time, CPTSC supported a scholarly research project. b. Publications−Bruce Maylath Proceedings edited during the year went to press in August, and printed copies were sent to ERIC in August and delivered to website. The CPTSC Newsletter is now a tangible product, distributed to current members and those from one year earlier, plus London Roundtable. In 2001-2, Bruce also created a cover letter and Milano invitation, which was mailed to all FORUM participants. The newsletter may be used in the future to announce research projects funding opportunities. c. Program reviews—Stuart Selber, reporting for Carole Yee Carol reports no program review activity this year. A request was made for self-study guidelines, but CPTSC doesn’t structure self-studies. Stuart asked for positive program review experiences other have had. Several members discussed reviews in which they had participated, and Bob Johnson observed that program reviews are especially beneficial in the planning stages and again about five year into a new program. Often have other mandated reviews. Pam Ecker noted that while self-studies may be time-consuming to prepare, they are helpful politically when a designated expert from out of town provide insights about the local program. d. Website—Bill Williamson The website listed 28 job postings in the past year. A new section highlighting the Distinguished Service Award recipients was added. Proceedings 2000 are moving online, and administrative links are now being built. Bill has registered the website with free sites but not with ones charging a fee. Bill asked for archival materials for London meeting to be placed on the website, and Bruce said he would provide text for an announcement regarding Milano 2003. The website might also be used to provide a comprehensive list of programs. A spirited discussion followed about electronic voting. Geoff Sauer will be helping Bill with this issue. Other discussion topics included questions about the possibility of discussion forums prior to Milano, a newsletter archive, and additional materials to support single-person programs, such as lists of grants, etc. Bill said he would like to include more photographs on the site, and everyone was encouraged to send photographs of conference to him.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 2002 Business Meeting Minutes 139 CPTSC 29th Annual Business Meeting

Logan, Utah 4. Other Reports a. CPTSC in Milan, Italy—Bruce Maylath Bruce noted that Forum is now every 3 years, and the next meeting is July 1 and 2, 2003. For the Milano meeting, the program will be on Monday, June 30th. Bruce also distributed the meeting’s Call for Papers. In conjunction with CPTSC, the ATTW International Committee will co-host the conference. This collaboration will add a teaching focus to programmatic issues. The last meeting had 23 attendees from 7 different nations; this year’s goal is 30 or more European participants, where there are many new programs, some guided by London 2002 meeting. In the past year, Bruce has responded to inquiries from the University of Paris and one in Northern Ireland. Business meeting attendees also noted interest growing in Denmark, India, and China, and attendees were encouraged to extend global connections and increase awareness of international programs. b. ATTW—Carolyn Rude Carolyn stated that the ATTW Call for Proposals includes tracks now instead of themes. This change assists junior faculty to interact with senior faculty through roundtables. Dan Riordan will act as chair of the ATTW teaching committee. Carolyn also announced that PDFs are now available for back issues of TCQ, and ATTW members would not have copyright fees as barriers to using these materials. A plan is in process to move TCQ online. c. STC—Sandi Harner and Judi Ramey Sandi announced a new process in place for the Gould Award. Sandi reminded attendees of the value of Sigma Tau Chi for students and encouraged attendees to visit the STC website for more information about the honor society. Attendees discussed other STC-related issues, such as STC job bank, STC student chapters, and the STC research grant program. d. ACM SigDoc—Johndan Johnson-Eilola Johndan reported that ACM SigDoc meets in Toronto this year and that The Journal of Computer Documentation is peer-reviewed. He also noted that it is not necessary to join ACM ($100-150 membership dues) in order to join the SigDoc ($30 membership dues). e. CCCC Committee on Technical Communication—Stuart Selber Stuart noted the October 15 deadline this year for nominating outstanding dissertations. He also asked for information about past dissertation winners and advisors, which will be posted on the website. f. Consortium for the Study of Engineering Communication—Linda Driskill Linda reported that Programs for Engineering Communication will meet at ABC with Lee Odell and Debby Andrews. g. Technical Communication Summit—no activity since June 2000 5. Old Business Kelli Cargile Cook, Charlotte Thralls, and Mark Zachry reported that their CPTSC-supported research project results will be published in Technical Communication, May 2003. 6. New Business a. Ken Rainey encouraged attendees to pursue more international interactions. b. Bill Macgregor reminded everyone of opportunities to participate in a special interest group on service learning at CCCC. c. Joe Strange invited everyone to Missoula to attend the Rocky Mountain MLA meeting.

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 2002 Business Meeting Minutes 140 CPTSC 29th Annual Business Meeting

Logan, Utah d. Carol Nardone requested additional CPTSC attention be paid to “one-person” programs. “The Lone Writer” is the STC equivalent; she suggested that CPTSC provide similar support for lone academicians. 7. Officer Installation Certificates were awarded to outgoing officers and new board members were welcomed. 8. Upcoming CPTSC meetings a. 2004—Purdue/West Lafayette. Dianne Atkinson announced that a statewide team including Marge Hovde (IUPUI) and Stuart Blythe (IUPFW) would welcome CPTSC to the Heartland in 2004. b. 2005—Simon Fraser and the University of Washington/Vancouver. Susan Stevenson, Simon Fraser in Vancouver, will partner with the University of Washington to work out challenges of international meeting. c. 2006—Texas Tech/Lubbock 9. Invitation to Clarkson/Potsdam—Johndan Johnson-Eilola and Brent Faber 10. Meeting Adjourned

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 2002 Business Meeting Minutes 141 CPTSC Treasurer’s Report January 1 to October 1, 2002

Submitted to CPTSC Board & Membership at the Annual Meeting in Logan, Utah October 5, 2002. Submitted by Karen R. Schnakenberg, CPTSC Treasurer October 2002

Subtotal Total Balance

Balance forward from 2001 $ 17, 439.11

INCOME

2001 Conference in Pittsburgh 250.00

Dues

2001-2002 5 @ $ 20 100.00 2002-2003 29 @ $ 20 580.00

Total Income 930.00 18,369.11

EXPENSES

01 Conference

Mailing & misc food 76.08 Refund of Cash Advance from Carnegie Mellon 1887.00

02 Conference

Logo 100.00

Executive Board

Print Newsletter 141.59 Postage Newsletter 101.45 Breakfast meeting 132.86 375.90

Research Support to 750.00 750.00 Kelli Cargile Cook

Total Expenses (3188.98)

BALANCE ON HAND as of October 1, 2002 $ 15,180.13

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 2002 Treasurer’s Report 142 CPTSC Membership List 2002

Last Name First Name Organization E-mail Address Abbott Christine Northern Illinois University [email protected] Allen Nancy Eastern Michigan [email protected] University Allison Elizabeth Southwest Texas State [email protected] University Andrews Deborah C University of Delaware [email protected] Atkinson Diane Purdue University [email protected] Barchilon Marian G. Arizona State University [email protected] (East) Barnum Carol M. Southern Polytechnic [email protected] Barr Suzanne U of Arkansas at Little [email protected] Rock Bearg Janice Simon Fraser University [email protected] Bekins Linn San Diego State University [email protected] Blakeslee Ann Eastern Michigan [email protected] University Blythe Stuart Indiana-Purdue, Fort [email protected] Wayne Boiarsky Carolyn Purdue University - [email protected] Calumet Bonk Robert Widener University [email protected] Breault Robin Georgia State University [email protected] Bridgeford Tracey University of Nebraska at [email protected] Omaha Brocato John Mississippi State [email protected] Brooks Randy Millikin University [email protected] Brown Nicole Purdue University [email protected] Brumberger Eva Virginia Tech [email protected] Butler Brad Texas Tech University [email protected] Carliner Saul c/o Liz Hans - The Virtual [email protected] Assistant Castner Joanna University of Findlay [email protected] Cheng Martha Carnegie Mellon University [email protected] Coney Mary B. University of Washington [email protected] Cook Kelli Cargile Utah State University [email protected] Coppola Nancy New Jersey Inst. of [email protected] Technology Dautermann Jennie Miami University of Ohio [email protected] Davis Marjorie T. Mercer University [email protected] Dayton David Southern Polytechnic [email protected] State University Dombrowski Paul Univ. of Central Florida [email protected] Driskill Linda Rice University [email protected] Dubinsky James Virginia Tech [email protected]

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Dyrud David Oregon Institute of [email protected] Technology Eaton Angela Rensselaer Polytechnic [email protected] Institute Eble Michelle Georgia State University [email protected] Ecker Pamela S. Cincinnati State Technical [email protected] & Community College Eisenhart Chris Carnegie Mellon University [email protected] Eubanks Philip Northern Illinois University [email protected] Faber Brenton Clarkson University [email protected] Feinberg Susan Illinois Institute of [email protected] Technology Fountaine Tim St. Cloud University [email protected] Freeland Betty U of Arkansas at Little [email protected] Rock Friedlander Alexander Drexel University [email protected] Gallert Maj. Petra [email protected] Gaskill David Saginaw Valley State [email protected] University Geonetta Sam University of Cincinnati [email protected] Gooch John Texas Tech University [email protected] Grabill Jeffrey Georgia State University [email protected] Griggs Karen Kettering University [email protected] Hadley Tim Texas Tech University [email protected] Harner Sandra Cedarville College [email protected] Hart Hillary University of Texas [email protected] Hayes Laurie Colorado State University [email protected] Heifferon Barbara Clemson University [email protected] Herrington TyAnna Georgia Institute of [email protected] Technology Hoft Nancy Nancy Hoft Consulting [email protected] Hovde Majorie Indiana Univ.Purdue Univ. [email protected] Hundleby Margaret Auburn University [email protected] Jackson Rebecca Southwest Texas State rj10@sw+.edu University Johnson Molly U o f Houston Downtown [email protected] Johnson-Eilola Johndan Clarkson University [email protected] Karis Bill Clarkson University [email protected] Kastberg Peter Aarhus School of Business [email protected]_ Kaufer David Carnegie Mellon University [email protected] Kreppel Maria C. University of Cincinnati [email protected] Kryder LeeAnne University of California at [email protected] Santa Barbara Kuralt Karen U of Arkansas at Little [email protected] Rock Kynell Teresa Northern Michigan [email protected] University

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LaGrandeur Kevin New York Institute of [email protected] Technology Latterell Kate Penn State, Altoona [email protected] College Lawrence Susan Carnegie Mellon University [email protected] L'Eplattenieer Barbara UA Little Rock [email protected] Levine Barbara Robert Morris College [email protected] Lim Sook Fun Nanyang Technological [email protected] University Ludlow Eben Longman Publishers [email protected] Lutz Jean Miami University of Ohio McShane Bekcy Jo Weber State Univeristy [email protected] Maylath Bruce University of Wisconsin - [email protected] Stout Morgan David H. Learning Dynamics [email protected] Australia Mortimer Frank Prentice Hall [email protected] Mulvihill Teresa J2 Global Communications [email protected] Murray Mary Cleveland State Universtiy [email protected] Nahrwold Cindy U of Arkansas at Little [email protected] Rock Neuwirth Christine Carnegie Mellon University [email protected] Oakley Todd O'Rourke Nancy Utah State University [email protected] Pass Elizabeth James Madison University [email protected] Patterson Celia Pittsburg State University [email protected] Philbin Alice James Madison University [email protected] Porter James Michigan State University [email protected] Praetorius Pete Montana Tech [email protected] Rainey Kenneth Southern Polytechnic [email protected] State U. Ramey Judy University of Washington [email protected] Ranney Frances Wayne State University [email protected] Reep Diana University of Akron [email protected] Riordan Dan University of Wisconsin - [email protected] Stout Rude Carolyn Texas Tech University [email protected] Rusch Alicia Carnegie Mellon University [email protected] Sapp David Alan Fairfield University [email protected] Sauer Geoffrey U of Washington [email protected] Savage Gerald Illinois State University [email protected] Schnakenberg Karen Carnegie Mellon University [email protected] Schriver Karen KSA Inc. [email protected] Sehmel Heather Texas Tech University [email protected] Selber Stuart Penn State University [email protected] Selzer Jack Penn State University [email protected] Simmons Michelle Miami University of Ohio [email protected] Smart Graham Purdue University [email protected]

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 2002 Membership List 145

Smith Summer Clemson University [email protected] Stevenson Susan A. Simon Fraser University [email protected] Strange Joe Utah Valley State College [email protected] Stratman James University of Colorado at [email protected] Denver Sullivan Dale University of Minnesota Thatcher Barry New Mexico State [email protected] University Thralls Charlotte Utah State University [email protected] Tovey Janice East Carolina University [email protected] Warren Thomas Oklahoma State University [email protected] Wilkins Harriet Indiana Univ.Purdue Univ. [email protected] Williams Sean Clemson University [email protected] Williamson William University of Northern [email protected] Iowa Worley Rebecca University of Delaware [email protected] Yancey Kathleen Clemson University [email protected] Yee Carole New Mexico Tech [email protected] Young Art Clemson University [email protected] Zawodny-Wetzel Danielle Carnegie Mellon University [email protected] Zimmerman Donald Colorado State University [email protected] Zimmerman Muriel UC Santa Barbara [email protected] Adams Allan W. Jr. Adams Translation [email protected] Services Allen Jo North Carolina State [email protected] University Aller Betsy Cornell University [email protected] Alred Gerald University of Wisconsin - [email protected] Milwaukee Amezquita Anna San Juan College [email protected] Anderson Paul V. Miami University (Ohio) [email protected] Baker Linda Kodak Pathe [email protected] Barker Thomas Texas Tech University [email protected] Bartholomew Barbara G. University of Houston - [email protected] Downtown Beckham Sue U of Wisconsin0Stout [email protected] Bernhardt Stephen A. University of Delaware [email protected] Bessenoff Arlene Addison Wesley Longman Birchak Beatrice University of Houston - [email protected] Downtown Bleetman Jacqui Coventry University [email protected] Blom Kaaren Camberra Inst. of [email protected] Technology Bosley Deborah UNC Charlotte [email protected] Brekka Susan Prentice Hall [email protected] Broadhead Glenn J. Oklahoma State University [email protected] Brockmann R. John University of Delaware [email protected] Bruce Tina Oxford University Press [email protected]

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 2002 Membership List 146

Burnett Rebecca Iowa State University [email protected] Campanella Craig Prentice Hall [email protected] Campbell Charles P. New Mexico Institute of [email protected] Mining & Technology Carnegie Teena Oregon State University [email protected] Carter Locke Texas Tech University [email protected] Chamberlain Gail Oklahoma State University [email protected] Clancy Michael Michigan Technological University Clark Lawrence New Mexico Tech [email protected] Clarke Dennis Coventry University [email protected] Coggin William Bowling Green State [email protected] University Cooper Marilyn M. Michigan Tech. University [email protected] Corey Jim New Mexico Tech [email protected] Correll Helen St. John's Hall [email protected] Cunningham Donald Auburn University [email protected] Daidone Lisa UNC - Charlotte [email protected] Day Doug Allyn & Bacon/Longman [email protected] Day Michael Northern Illinois University [email protected] Dobberstein Michael Purdue University - [email protected] Calumet Dowdney Donna De Anza College [email protected] Dyke Julie New Mexico State [email protected] University Esbenshade Kent A. U.S. Naval Academy Estill Carrie Flinn Tony Eastern Washington [email protected] University Fox-Velez Lili [email protected] Gillette David Univ. of Central Florida [email protected] Gong Gwendolyn Chinese University of [email protected] Hong Kong Gurak Laura University of Minnesota [email protected] Hankins June Chase Southwest Texas State [email protected] University Hansen Craig Metropolitan State [email protected] University Hart-Davidson Bill Purdue University [email protected] Henry James M. [email protected] Hettich Rebecca Integrated Studies/Penn [email protected] State Hirst Russell University of Tennessee [email protected] Hodgson Helen Westminster College of [email protected] Salt Lake City Hotz Glenn American Commercial [email protected] Barge Lines

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 2002 Membership List 147

Jabusch William Michigan Technological [email protected] University Jennings Ann University of Houston - [email protected] Downtown Jobst John W. Michigan Technological [email protected] University Johnson Robert R. Michigan Technological [email protected] University Johnston Susanne U of Wisconsin Stout [email protected] Jones Dan University of Central [email protected] Florida Kaempf Charlotte University of Karlsruhe [email protected] Karr Bill Texas Tech University [email protected] Katz Susan North Carolina State [email protected] University Keating Thomas Carnegie Mellon University Keene Michael L. University of Tennessee, [email protected] Knoxville Keith William Oregon State University [email protected] Kennedy George E. Washington State University Killingsworth M. Jimmie Texas A & M University [email protected] Kitalong Karla Univ. of Central Florida kitalong@@pegasus.cc.ucf.edu Klein Bill Univeristy of MO - St. [email protected] Louis Kratz Stephanie Heartland Community College Kreth Melinda Central Michigan [email protected] University Lax Joanne Purdue University Lay Mary University of Minnesota [email protected] Leeson Clark U of Wisconsin-Stout [email protected] Leonard David Mercer University leonard_dc@mercer,edu Lipson Carol Syracuse University [email protected] Little Sherry Burgus San Diego State University [email protected] Long Thomas Thomas Nelson Commty [email protected] College Lopez Elizabeth Georgia State University [email protected] Lovitt Carl Clemson University [email protected] Mace Jennings Moorehead State [email protected] University Macgregor William Montana Tech of the U. of [email protected] MT Maid Barry ASU East [email protected] McCord Michael Univ. of Nevada, Las [email protected]? Vegas McCovey Michelle Erlbaum [email protected] McNealy Mary Sue McVay Gwyn [email protected]

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 2002 Membership List 148

Miller Carolyn North Carolina State [email protected] University Minor Dennis Louisiana Tech University dminor.vm.cc.latech.edu Mirshafiei Mohsen California State University [email protected] Fullerton Molitierno Arthur A. Wright State University, [email protected] Lake Campus Montecino Virginia M. George Mason University [email protected] Morgan Margaret UNC-Charlotte [email protected] Munger Roger James Madison University [email protected] Newell Bridget M. Westminster College of [email protected] Salt Lake City Patterson Celia Pittsburg State University [email protected] Payne Donald Iowa State University [email protected] Pearsall Thomas University of Minnesota, [email protected] Emeritus Peters-Whitehead Sabrina Texas Tech University [email protected] Pfeiffer William S. So. Polytechnic State [email protected] University Pickett Nell Hinds Community College [email protected] Pixley Jennifer University of Maine [email protected] Price Kenneth R. Southwest Missouri State [email protected] University Rathke Mary Jo University of Wisconsin - [email protected] Stout Rehling Louise SFSU [email protected] Robbins Karin Texas A & M University [email protected] Rosiak Shelby Southwest Missouri State [email protected] University Salvo Michael Northeastern University [email protected] Samson Donald Radford University [email protected] Samuelson Dave California State Univ. - [email protected] Long Beach Schlueter Renee Kirkwood Community [email protected] College Schneider Suzanne University of Colorado at [email protected] Denver Selfe Cynthia L. Michigan Tech University [email protected] Settle Martin UNC Charlotte [email protected] Shea Elizabeth Northeastern University [email protected] Sheehan Kate Allyn & Bacon Publishers [email protected] Shirk Henrietta University of North Texas [email protected] Smith Elizabeth Auburn University [email protected] Overman Smith Herb J. Southern Polytechnic [email protected] Institute Spinuzzi Clay Texas Tech University [email protected]

CPTSC Proceedings 2002 2002 Membership List 149

Stalls Doug Central Carolina [email protected] Community College Staples Katherine Austin Community [email protected] College-Northridge Starke-Meyerring Doreen University of Minnesota [email protected] Stedman Stephen J. Tennessee Tech. [email protected] University Stuckert L. Thomas University of Findlay [email protected] Sutliff Kristene Southwest Missouri State [email protected] University Thurin Susan U of Wisconsin Stout Turpin Elizabeth R. Ferris State University [email protected] Van der Geest Thea University of Twente [email protected]_ Van Dyne Jenna Illinois State University [email protected] Van Pelt Bill U of Wisconsin - [email protected] Milwaukee Von Obert Alexander [email protected] Welch Linda San Juan College Whitburn Merrill Rensselaer Polytechnic [email protected] Institute Wickliff Gregory UNC Charlotte [email protected] Wilson Greg New Mexico State [email protected] University Wojahn Patricia New Mexico State [email protected] University Wood Gordon irf group, inc. [email protected] Youra Steven Cornell University [email protected] Zappen James Rensselaer Polytechnic [email protected] Institute Zerbe Michael James Madison University [email protected]

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