<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> Instant messaging (IM) in the workplace has become an important topic for research as IM applications have proliferated in the corporate context. However, much of the work done to date has examined IM use from the consumer perspective, leaving us with little guidance as to its use in the office. This special issue addresses this shortcoming in the literature, providing several important studies on workplace IM use. One paper examines the use of IM in resolving differing points of view among coworkers. Another paper studies workplace communications costs and the role IM has in contributing to them by increasing communication volume. Two papers in the issue examine workplace IM in an international context, considering both cross-cultural and demographic issues that impact IM use. </para>

Communication researchers have helped frame understandings about disciplinary and professional writing. But often they are outsiders looking in. To complement that research, this study focuses on insider perspectives of engineers in academic and industrial contexts at diverse career stages. Qualitative data are analyzed using phenomenological research methods. Findings indicate that participant perspectives fall along a rhetorical awareness continuum at points spanning from denial and acknowledgment to an accentuation of rhetoric as critical to individual and organizational success. Participant perspectives along the continuum also vary in terms of writer and reader roles, writer identity, career stage/organizational role, and objectivity. Implications for practitioners are discussed.

As is true for engineering communication programs nationwide, at MIT curricular and pedagogical reforms have been driven by changes in the kinds of problems that engineers solve and the associated skill sets that engineers must now have in communication and teamwork. This article presents three case studies from communication-intensive classes at MIT that intend to help students develop the advanced communication skills required of professional engineers today. Highlighting classes in biological engineering, aeronautics/astronautics engineering, and biomedical engineering, we explore the following questions: What does it mean for educational practice if professional communication competencies and tasks are the goals? How can students and technical faculty best create the conditions for students to learn to be skilled team members? How can engineering students move from mere display of data to making skilled visual arguments based on those data? The importance of helping students meet the target competencies of professional practice, of teaching effective teamwork and collaboration, and of teaching students to understand and argue with visual data are recognized as widespread needs, and these case studies attest to the possibilities and challenges in meeting those needs.

Communication has long been a central component of engineering curricula, but recent developments in accreditation, software, and available media, along with rapid increases in cross-functional, global, and virtual teams, have dramatically expanded the nature of communicative practice. In response, faculty in writing and communication programs that support engineers have developed a range of innovative practices. Approaches include expanded research into workplace practices, communication across the curriculum, dedicated classes, and modules tailored to individual courses. This introduction highlights both the drivers and the innovations described in this Special Issue.

To optimize learning to write like engineers, undergraduate engineering students need to develop a conscious awareness of alternative writing practices and their strengths and limitations in different contexts, something that is unlikely to come about either in the workplace alone or in one writing course alone. Needed, then, is an engineering curriculum with writing integrated throughout. What follows is a case study of one attempt to integrate writing throughout the curriculum in a department of civil and environmental engineering. This department's "beyond WI to department-wide" model of writing is still in the early stages; the case study is less a textual account of writing outcomes than it is an account of the sociohistoric institutional conditions that led to the creation of this model and of the reasons for rejecting a model of writing instruction that relies on only two or three writing courses. The model in the case study is contrasted with other models.

Writing, especially when accompanied by feedback and revision, is a powerful enhancer for learning, as the writing-to-learn literature attests. Yet, writing as a vehicle for learning seldom appears in engineering content courses. We relate our experiences with a pilot program in engineering design funded through the National Science Foundation. Specifically, we focus on using Calibrated Peer Review as a platform for formative and summative assessment of integrated writing assignments in targeted courses. Our results show that students improved their skills in elements of engineering design and in writing. Additionally, assessment of the learning outcomes from the targeted courses were used successfully to document accreditation board for engineering and technology's criterion EC3 (g), "ability to communicate effectively," in our latest accreditation cycle.

The book's purpose is to present the evolution, innovations, and best practices of electronic human resources management (e-HRM) to human resources management researchers, faculty, practitioners, and consultants. Ten chapters are catalogued into one of four sections: "The Cutting-Edge in HRM," "Redesigning HR Administrative Processes," "E-Learning Strategies," and "Managing IT and Organizational Changes." Chapters are essentially scholarly articles, containing an abstract, introduction, a study, conclusions, and references. The text is easy to navigate because it displays effective visual design and uses visuals, such as graphs and charts. It is easy to read because the authors of each article clearly state, support, and delineate how technology and HRM are used in their work. The authors present compelling case studies and examples to support their claims. This book can serve as a reference for managers, researchers, and other HRM practitioners who are preparing for the future and trying to learn from the successes and challenges of other HRM organizations.

This 160-page book acquaints readers with the tools, techniques, and the discipline of project management. The first two chapters get readers up to speed by listing and defining vocabulary terms. The elements of project management are then presented: planning the project; developing a mission, vision, goals, and objectives for a project; using the work breakdown structure to plan a project; scheduling project work; producing a workable schedule; project control and evaluation; and project control using earned value analysis. Three chapters focus on managing the people who work on projects. While the book lays out the fundamentals in an accessible way for general readers, it will by no means give potential project managers all that they need to know.

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> This paper describes a new cross-curricular design for an engineering communication course based on four themes: (1) ethics, accountability, and professionalism; (2) intellectual property; (3) design, creativity, and invention; and (4) globalization. It is believed that the thematic structure creates both dynamic and contemporary contexts for writing and research along with enough freedom to pursue individual student interests. The result is a higher degree of intrinsic motivation for the assignments. The course is a collaborative effort between an English department and a school of engineering designed to both improve curriculum and provide more assessment data for engineering accreditation. Among the criteria from the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) is the “ability to communicate effectively.” Along with satisfying this criterion, the course discussed in this paper details how to capture data in support of an additional four of ABET's criteria known as “a–k.” After highlighting these ABET criteria and giving an overview of the structure of the course, the paper details each theme, including their respective readings and assignments. This new course was taught for the first time in the 2006–2007 academic year, and the paper closes by weighing the outcomes and implications of adopting a similar format. The current version of the syllabus and reading list for this course are included in this paper. </para>

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> Engineering teams are often globally distributed and comprise participants from multiple disciplines and cultures who rely on professional communication support. Companies, organizations, and institutions increasingly embrace these virtual teams and use a variety of information and communication technologies to support synchronous and asynchronous team interaction (e.g., chat, videoconferencing, email, group support systems, instant messaging, and forums). More and more, communication takes place without being face-to-face. Students should be prepared for such a workplace. However, it is difficult to emulate the specifics of real-world projects in a 100-hour university course. One way to bring the real world into the classroom is by combining the efforts of 100 students into a 10,000-hour project. This paper describes the Hong Kong-Netherlands project (HKNet) as an example of an integrated learning activity among multiple international institutions that brings the reality of engineering management with professional communication into educational contexts. Virtual teams comprising students from different parts of the world build websites on specific software topics that are then integrated into a single product. HKNet has entered its tenth year, and over 1000 students have participated. </para>

When developers need to make a system available for a particular culture, the specific aspects of the target group are evaluated and then the content and navigation are ldquolocalizedrdquo for it. However, there are many situations in which Web media cannot be localized and hence, culturally heterogeneous users must interact with the same interface. The emerging strategy for this kind of usability is known as the shared meaning or shared context approach. This paper presents results of a between-group study of culturally heterogeneous users who provided shared contextual meanings and performance measures from interaction with a Web interface. Results were mixed but do suggest methods for how Websites may be developed in shared situations.

It is evolutionarily adaptive for humans to have enhanced memories of events surrounding surprise situations, because in our ancestral past surprise situations were often associated with survival threats. Vividly remembering memories immediately before and after a snake attack, for example, allowed our hominid ancestors to be better prepared to avoid and deal with future attacks, which in turn enhanced their chances of survival. This study shows that such enhanced memorization capacity likely endowed on us by evolution can be exploited for knowledge communication through computer interfaces. A knowledge communication experiment was conducted in which subjects were asked to review Web-based learning modules about International Commercial Terms (Incoterms), and then take a test on what they had learned. Data from six learning modules in two experimental conditions were contrasted. In the treatment condition, a Web-based screen with a snake picture in attack position, displayed together with a hissing background noise, was used to create a simulated threat that surprised the subjects. In the control condition the simulated threat was absent. As expected, based on the evolutionary psychological view that surprise can enhance learning, the subjects in the treatment condition (i.e., with the snake screen) did approximately 28% better than those in the control condition (i.e., without the snake screen) at learning about Incoterms. This improvement occurred only for the two Web-based modules immediately before and after the snake screen. Those two modules comprise what is referred to in this study as the surprise zone. There were no significant differences in learning performance between the two experimental conditions for modules outside the surprise zone.

Based on a case study of a global training team, this article focuses on an important ability for professional communicators: collaborating with translators. The study confirms the value of approaching translation as a collaborative recreation rather than mere information transfer and suggests the need to integrate translation with localization and to develop team rapport. Relevant abilities include understanding cultural and professional context, using bicultural vision, and building team relationships. Pursuit of these abilities should draw from translation studies and intercultural communication literature and be informed by diverse rhetorical traditions. Global educational and research partnerships are an ideal way to pursue these goals. Such collaboration can improve research methodology and challenge culturally based assumptions about translation-related communication roles and competencies.

Alan G. Gross, who wrote the classic 1990 work, Rhetoric of Science, returns almost two decades later with this text, in which he maintains and improves the coherence and thoughtfulness of his rhetorical approach to science. No longer a prophet, Gross returns as a seriously considered critic of scientific practice from the rhetorical perspective. His move from the revolutionary periphery of scientific study toward the its center begins as he backs away from the more radical statements of his earlier text. His choice of case studies also dampen the revolutionary tone, with the focus on historical examples. Additionally, the chapters have an impressive coverage. Gross deftly synthesizes so many of the different federalized domains of knowledge into single coherent arguments. The book is useful in two respects. First, it possesses tremendous historical significance, having set a tone that helped to legitimize the rhetorical study of science. Second, the book is useful for its insights into how literal and visual technologies of representation help to invent, legitimate, promote, and popularize scientific work.

This book explains the paper and electronic portfolio-building process, using the portfolio for job seeking, and relevant legal and ethical issues. Included in its nine chapters are the following topics: an overview of the importance of portfolios, their various types and formats, and strategies to organize a portfolio; creating a personal identity; the content, design, and structure of portfolios; revising and improving portfolio quality; representing skills and expertise in electronic portfolios; ethical and legal issues; strategies for getting feedback; and the use of portfolios for job hunting. Each chapter opens with an introduction and closes with a summary of the key ideas. Much of the information is explained in tables and as checklists, making it efficient to find particular information of readers' interest. Another unique feature is that each chapter is relatively independent. This book is recommended for technical and professional communication students and practitioners who seek a practical guide on portfolio creation.

This book consists of essays related to the issues of regulation of communication. The chapters present different facets of the question of how officials control, "regulation," and informal social and cultural constraint of communication, "regularization," impact the processes of communication on the professional and workplace setting. Some of the topics covered include: the regularized communications forms used in the healthcare profession; the impact of the PowerPoint software application as a regulator or "regularizer" of professional presentations; the regulatory practices of academic writing; the use of discourse to challenge the status quo and to work for change; the nature of power in the workplace; and the discourse form used in public hearings and inquiries. The text achieves the editors' objective in providing the reader with a sound picture of the state of current study and with a framework of ideas and perspectives to prompt future research.

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> This article provides an introduction to the Special Section on Darwinian Perspectives on Electronic Communication. It starts with a discussion of the motivation for the Special Section, followed by several sections written by the Guest Editor (Ned Kock) and the Guest Associate Editors (Donald Hantula, Stephen Hayne, Gad Saad, Peter Todd, and Richard Watson). In those sections, the Guest Editor and Associate Editors put forth several provocative ideas that hopefully will provide a roadmap for future inquiry in areas related to the main topic of the Special Section. Toward its end, this article provides a discussion on how biological theories of electronic communication can bridge the current gap between technological and social theories. The article concludes with an answer to an intriguing question: Are we as a species currently evolving to become better at using electronic communication technologies? </para>

Despite numerous sex differences found in spatial navigation, perception, and verbal abilities, the manner in which these differences manifest themselves in terms of online navigation has yet to be explored. We propose a unified framework based on evolutionary psychology and supported by recent findings in cognitive neuroscience for understanding sex differences in cognition and how they relate to online navigation and website preferences. The literature on sex differences in navigation, object location, spatial rotation, the perception of color, form, and movement, and verbal fluency is reviewed within the context of their evolutionary underpinnings. Based on these findings, specific website design recommendations are proposed. Results of a pilot study examining sex differences in web navigation provide evidence that utilizing an evolutionary approach can engender findings with significant implications for e-communication researchers and practitioners alike.

Although the title alludes to communications in general, the emphasis within this book is on speaking, not writing. Eight of the chapters deal specifically with public speaking, one addresses email and memos, and the last two deal with presentation elements, graphs, and PowerPoint. With two chapters emphasizing anxiety, the reader may experience anxiety overload. Control remedies listed include drugs to relieve anxiety. If your profession is highly dependent on oral communication, then this book may offer a number of items to help you become a better than average speaker. If, on the other hand, your profession is more aligned with technical writing, or editing communications, then this text offers very little.

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <?Pub Dtl=""?>This paper extends the Behavioral Ecology of Consumption, a foraging theory model of human decision-making in an online environment, in a replication and extension of previous online foraging research. Participants shopped for music CDs in a simulated internet mall featuring five virtual music stores with delay to in-stock feedback of 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 seconds. Preference was measured as the proportion of total purchases and shopping time allocated to each store. Consistent with previous research, a hyperbolic decay function provided the best fit to the data. The results further the consumer foraging model and bolster existing evidence of the generality of hyperbolic discounting and matching in human decision-making. </para>

Modern communication technology has greatly increased the number of options we can choose among in a variety of evolutionarily important domains, from housing to food to mates. But is this greater choice beneficial? To find out, we ran two experimental studies to examine the effects of increasing option set-size on anticipated and experienced choice perceptions in the modern context of online mate choice. While participants expected greater enjoyment, increased satisfaction, and less regret when choosing from larger (versus smaller) sets of prospective partners (at least up to a point; Study 1), participants presented with a supposedly ideal number of options experienced no improvement in affect and showed more memory confusions regarding their choice than did those participants presented with fewer options (Study 2). Participants correctly anticipated that greater choice would yield increasing costs, but they overestimated the point at which this would occur. We offer an evolutionary-cognitive framework within which to understand this misperception, discuss factors that may make it difficult for decision-makers to correct for it, and suggest ways in which dating websites could be designed to help users choose from large option sets.

In this book, the author mentors his readers in principles of designing a web portfolio, a multimedia vehicle that allows individuals and companies to show their work across geographical boundaries. He outlines a modular process for developing a web portfolio and explains common pitfalls that can interfere with the process. Topics covered include: conceptualization; information design and visual design; content, collection, development and management; web page design; functionality; uploading and testing sites; and portfolio launch and promotion. This practical book is worth the time and price.

This book outlines what public relations professionals think it means to do the right thing and what they truly must do to advance their careers. The authors talked with almost 200 "diverse professionals" and received survey responses from more than 1,000 others. The 11 chapters if the book not only present the authors' research, but also they provide background on the public relations profession. The book provides extensive information in an organized manner and includes relevant data charts throughout the book to call out highlights of the research. Those who manage public relations or communications activities will find this book relevant to the work they do.

The visual rhetoric of data displays (e.g., charts, graphs, maps) has changed profoundly over the past 50 years as a result of research in display techniques, the application of traditional and emerging rhetorical approaches, and the democratizing effects of data design technology. Perhaps in no other visual realm than data design is the notion of clarity more critical or more contested. Indeed the ascendancy of rhetorical approaches was initiated by the perceptual/cognitive science of data design, which in seeking to identify optimal display techniques, fostered a concern for ethics and evoked the universality and minimalism of modernist aesthetics. The rhetoric of adaptation, which emphasizes the variability of audiences, purposes, and situational contexts, rendered clarity contingent and mutable-a moving target that requires constant attention. Social rhetoric considered data design as a collective construct, tethering clarity to visual discourse communities, convention-building, cultural values, and power. The concept of clarity has been further reoriented by the rhetoric of participation, which is fostered by interactive digital design that enables users to adapt displays according to their needs and interests.

This book discusses the technology behind portals and grid networks, describes grid technology's evolution, and helps readers make managerial decisions. It has 18 chapters and is divided into four sections. "The Toolset," consisting of three chapters, gives readers basic knowledge necessary to read the rest of the sections. In Section II, entitled "Web Services as Shared Resources," the authors describe web services in terms of a multi-tier architecture and discuss implementation. Section III, "Putting Portals on the Web," associates portals with web services, and thoroughly describes portals, including historical background, development framework, application platforms, maintenance, and management. The final section, "Grids as Virtual Organizations," covers grid goals, grid networks and applications, and web services as grid platforms. The book could be more reader-friendly by making sure all acronyms are escorted by their full names the first time they appear and providing more explanation of new ideas and concepts. Despite the slight flaws, the book is an excellent read and recommended for project managers, web architects, and IT students.

This study on computer-mediated deception features an experiment involving an interactive interview of deceitful applicants for a fictitious scholarship, using one of three different computer-based communication media. Results showed that people were successful at deceiving others no matter what medium was used, but interviewers who used interactive, as opposed to non-interactive, media probed interviewees more during the interviews. Probing led to better lie detection. Also, interviewers who had received simple warnings about the possible presence of deception were better at detecting deception than were interviewers who had received no warnings. However, warnings alone were not sufficient to increase interviewers' probing.

After the controversial police shooting of a developmentally-disabled African-American teenager in July 2003, the new mayor of Denver, CO, appointed a politically diverse task force to revise the police department's use-of-force policy and propose a new model for police oversight. This teaching case is based on the task force's deliberations and collaborative efforts to build policy consensus in a sometimes rancorous, high-stakes environment. In it, I reconstruct the story of the shooting that gave rise to the task force, trace the arc of the task force's 104-day existence, and analyze the letter and final report submitted by the task force's co-chairs to (1) demonstrate the highly-pressurized nature of policy language invention and the crucial impact of word choice in such policy, and (2) illustrate the difficulty the task force encountered in attempting to secure consensus and the manner in which the final work product acknowledges, rather than obscures, this struggle. Finally, the case includes recommended readings and a guide for individual and group activities for implementation in either an undergraduate- or graduate-level technical communication course.

New forms of computer-mediated, online learning can benefit from new forms of assessment that fit the medium and the pedagogical style of the online environment. This paper investigates students' learning styles and learning strategies in taking online collaborative exams. Applying constructivist and collaborative learning theories, the collaborative examination features students' active participation in various phases of the exam process through small group activities online. Students' learning strategies, including deep learning and collaborative learning, are investigated using a 1 3 field quasi-experiment to compare the team-based collaborative online exam with the traditional in-class exam and with the participatory exam, where students participate in the online exam processes individually. Data analysis using results from 485 students indicates that collaborative examinations significantly reduced surface learning in exam study, enhanced interactions and the sense of an online learning community, and increased perceived learning. The results also suggest learning predispositions were significantly correlated with exam study strategies, and provide indications of their effects on learning strategies.

Channel expansion theory predicts positive relationships between knowledge-building experiences and perceptions of a medium's capacity for conveying complex information. To date, channel expansion has only been tested in a pair of studies focused upon perceptions of a single medium-email. The present investigation replicates the initial tests of channel expansion theory, assesses the validity of the theory for two additional media, examines whether differences in media explain additional variation in richness perceptions, and analyzes the relationships between expansion predictors and dimensions of richness across three media. Data from 529 organizational media users revealed the following: (1) knowledge-building experiences with a medium, communication partner, topic, and social influences are positively related to perceptions of a medium's richness, (2) these relationships are fairly consistent across email, telephone, and face-to-face, (3) differences in richness are attributable to differences between media, and (4) expansion variables appear to be selectively related to richness dimensions and these relationships vary across media.

<para xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> Much of the empirical research on the effectiveness of different instructional designs has focused on declarative tasks, where a learner acquires knowledge about a certain topic. It is unclear to what extent findings for learning declarative tasks (which are not consistent on all aspects) carry over to learning procedural tasks, where a learner acquires a certain skill. In this paper, we describe an experiment studying a specific kind of procedural instructions, namely exercises for the prevention of repetitive strain injury (RSI), taking information modality (text versus picture versus film clip) and difficulty degree of the exercises (easy versus difficult) into account. In the experiment, participants had to learn RSI exercises and were asked to execute them. The results showed that an instruction in a picture lead to the shortest learning times followed by an instruction in a film clip. An instruction in text led to the longest learning times. For the amount of practicing the exercises during the learning phase, it was found that the participants in the film clip condition hardly engaged in practicing the exercises during the learning phase. The participants in the picture condition engaged in a moderate amount of practicing of the exercises during the learning phase. The participants in the text condition engaged in the most practicing during the learning phase. The results concerning the execution times showed that an instruction in a picture led to the lowest execution times followed by an instruction in a film clip. The instruction in text led to longest execution times. Finally, for the amount of correctly executed exercises, it was found that learning from a film clip led to the highest learning performance, both for easy and for difficult exercises. Learning from an instruction in text led to a fairly good learning performance, both for easy and difficult exercises. Learning from a picture led to a good learning performance for the easy exercises, but the performance dropped for the difficult exercises. </para>

Hofstede's cultural dimensions model has been widely used as a basic explanatory and predictive model in a variety of business studies, including studies addressing information management and electronic communication issues. This study aimed at assessing Hofstede's model by looking into a key issue for information management and electronic communication-information overload. The study compared information overload-related data from the US and New Zealand. The sample involved 108 MBA students who held professional or management positions. Data analyses employed comparisons of means and partial least squares (PLS)-based structural equation modeling techniques. Information overload perceptions in the two countries appear to differ significantly. This finding seems to be inconsistent with the relatively small differences in cultural dimension scores between the US and New Zealand, and with those two countries being placed in the same country cluster in Hofstede's model. The results call into question the adequacy of Hofstede's model as a basis to explain information management phenomena.