This study aimed to provide insights on the perceptions of engineering students from two educational paths in Singapore of desired graduate attributes by employers. Research questions: (1) Do graduates from the polytechnic and junior college paths have similar perceptions with regard to the ranking of desirable graduate attributes? (2) If not, in what ways are their perceptions different? Literature review: A review of literature on employers' ranking of desirable graduate attributes revealed mismatches in employers' and graduates' rankings. There has not been any published study on student awareness of employability skills in Singapore in particular. Hence, this study investigated the perceptions of final-year engineering students from two different educational paths of their ranking of graduate attributes. Methodology: The students were asked to rank eight attributes and explain their ranking from an employer's perspective. Results: The findings show that communication, teamwork, and problem-solving were ranked the top three desirable attributes by both groups of students. However, polytechnic students seem to reflect greater familiarity and confidence in tackling workplace requirements compared to junior college students. The implications of the findings are presented.

Research problem: The enhancement of communication skills among engineering students has been a focus within the engineering curriculum for many years. Despite this emphasis, continual published reports document that engineering graduates are not well versed in the areas of written and oral communication when they graduate and transition into industrial-based positions. This study focuses on examining whether game-based pedagogy could serve as a potential tool for enhancing the written and oral communication skills of engineering undergraduates. Research questions: (1) What is the relationship between communication game exposure and oral and written communication skills achievement in engineering students? (2) Do engineering students' perceptions of their oral and written communication skills development associated with participation in communication games align with their achievement in these areas? Literature review: This study examines the ability of games to enhance engineering student communication skills by using the lens of activity theory. This communication theory was chosen because it describes how the creation of a piece of communication goes beyond traditional features such as grammar and syntax to include grappling with the objective or goal of the work, the system within which the product must be completed, and the methods selected to subdivide the work. These same constraints were imposed on the students within this study, in which they were assigned a technical design report and infomercial (or elevator pitch) to assess their oral and written communication skills. Methodology: Three groups of a sophomore-level Introduction to Chemical Product Design course compared non-games, games, and games-plus instructional methods. Student design reports and infomercials were scored by two analysts using reliable and validated rubrics. Team-based performance scores for each of the three sections were compared to determine whether any resulting differences in communication achievement were associated with the incorporation of game-based activities within the classroom. Students' perceptions of their communication skill development were measured through survey instruments and focus groups. The focus group data were content-analyzed by the same two analysts using a coding scheme developed from an emergent qualitative analysis of the focus group data. Results and conclusion: We found that the use of game-based pedagogy within engineering classes can enhance oral and written communication skills even though this method of instruction is not always perceived by students as relevant to their achievement in these areas.

Research problem: Advisory boards provide an opportunity for technical communication programs to connect consistently with industry practitioners and on-campus stakeholders, and yet few recent studies examine best practices for advisory boards in technical communication programs. Research questions: (1) What is the typical makeup of a technical communication program advisory board? (2) What function do these advisory boards serve? (3) What are the typical successes and challenges of starting and maintaining a technical communication advisory board? (4) What are best practices for starting and maintaining a successful advisory board? (5) What are the similarities and differences in how program administrators and board members perceive the benefits and functions of the board? Literature review: Literature on advisory boards in technical and business communication-and in related fields such as communication, journalism, and marketing-reports that advisory boards are beneficial and effective, though many include caveats or recommendations about ways to improve board function. Methodology: To provide perspectives from both sides of the academy-industry relationship, we conducted 18 semistructured phone, Skype, and in-person interviews with program administrators (n = 10) from a host of nationwide programs and with board members (n = 8) from a single advisory board. Results and discussion: The study finds that the typical advisory board involves a mix of industry, faculty, and student members, with an emphasis on industry members. They advise the program about its curricular concerns, often foster students' academic and professional maturation, and support the program in conflicts with university administration. The typical successes of advisory boards included positive curricular amendment and the recruitment of students for jobs and internships, while characteristic challenges included meeting logistics and board members' concerns regarding the program's response to their advice. Program administrators and board members both perceive a board as useful, but some members expressed concern about the uncertainty of their role and influence. The results suggest that all technical communication programs should seriously consider forming an advisory board based on disciplinary best practices, that existing advisory boards should ensure that they have clarified the board's role for their program, and that stakeholders are aware of and attend to their board members' concerns.

Research problem: Although labor statistics document a steady rise in contract, contingent, and entrepreneurial labor, knowledge about the professional communication practices that build and sustain independent careers in the field of technical communication (TC) largely emerges from broad survey analysis, cultural/social critiques, or individual anecdotes. From these statistics and stories, we already know that independent technical communicators face challenges ranging from legal issues to establishing marketing visibility when they start and maintain businesses. Drawing on thick qualitative description from semistructured interviews, this article responds to the need for more systematic research tracing the networking practices, technologies, and relationships that enable entrepreneurial work. Research question: How do established individual entrepreneurs in TC describe the social relationships, networking practices, and networking technologies that shape their careers over time? Literature review: This project extends prior research at the intersections of entrepreneurship, technical communication, and social networks. Entrepreneurial studies research indicates that strong social ties and embeddedness influence venture performance; however, systematic scholarship on the networks or networking practices of independent or entrepreneurial technical communication practice has been limited. Methodology: The project used semistructured interviews to analyze the professional communication practices of eight technical communicators with considerable experience working independently as consultants or small-business owners. We used an online search to identify experienced entrepreneurs in the interdisciplinary field of technical communication. After recruiting participants via email, we conducted semistructured interviews to gather employment narratives, while prompting participants to share information about career-relevant ties, networking practices, and networking technologies. We then analyzed data through two iterative qualitative coding passes. Results and conclusions: Our participants, made up of experienced TC entrepreneurs, have used networking over at least two decades to advance personal business outcomes and evolve technical communication as a field and profession. Findings detail how networking is central to professional social knowledge construction, as TC entrepreneurs establish transactional contact with others, practice learning, and enact exponential reputation-building that addresses the isolation of working outside traditional organizations. Since this is a qualitative study based on self-report, the results are not generalizable but provide a foundation for future larger-scale research building from these qualitative themes.

Research problem: Entrepreneurial passion has been shown to play an important role in venture success and, therefore, in investors' funding decisions. However, it is unknown whether the passion entrepreneurs personally feel or experience can be accurately assessed by investors during a venture pitch. Research questions: (1) To what extent does entrepreneurs' personal passion align with investors' perceived passion? (2) To what cues do investors attend when assessing entrepreneurs' passion? Literature review: Integrating theory and research in entrepreneurship communication and entrepreneurial passion within the context of venture pitching, we explain that during venture pitches, investors make judgments about entrepreneurs' passion that have consequences for their investment decisions. However, they can attend to only those cues that entrepreneurs outwardly display. As a result, they may not be assessing the passion entrepreneurs personally feel or experience. Methodology: We used a sequential explanatory mixed methods research design. For our data collection, we surveyed 40 student entrepreneurs, videorecorded their venture pitches, and facilitated focus groups with 16 investors who viewed the videos and ranked, rated, and discussed their perceptions of entrepreneurs' passion. We conducted statistical analyses to assess the extent to which entrepreneurs' personal passion and investors' perceived passion aligned. We then performed an inductive analysis of critical cases to identify specific cues that investors attributed to passion or lack thereof. Results and conclusions: We revealed a large misalignment between entrepreneurs' personal passion and investors' perceived passion. Our critical case analysis demonstrated that entrepreneurs' weak or strong presentation skills led investors either to underestimate or overestimate, respectively, perceptions of entrepreneurs' passion. We suggest that entrepreneurs should develop specific presentation skills and rhetorical strategies for displaying their passion; at the same time, investors should be wary of attending too closely to presentation skills when assessing passion.

Research problem: Studies how one entrepreneur acquired, applied, and fit frames to her startup venture and stakeholders over one year. Research questions: How do pitchers acquire frames for pitches? How do pitchers apply frames to existing pitches? How do pitchers gauge the fit between the innovation, frames, and stakeholders? Literature review: The literature examined-framing professional communication, developing pitches, and framing pitches-stresses the relationship between framing, agency, and deliberation. However, few studies approach data from the perspective of the pitcher and few frames outside of the problem-solution frame are considered. Methodology: This autoethnography analyzes data from more than 500 pages of field notes, 60 minutes of video-recorded pitch sessions, 25 interviews with pitch stakeholders, and various textual artifacts that pertained to Author 1's nonprofit startup organization, Hacker Gals. Themes in the data were identified and analyzed through the composition of analytic memos. Frames were identified and analyzed through close reading and holistic interpretation. Results and conclusions: The entrepreneur acquired the most influential frames through stakeholder discussion, applied these frames in a way that stacked and made salient multiple frames beyond the problem-solution frame, and judged frame fit by considering the degree to which catchers took up the frames. The study's results suggest that the practice of frame stacking might increase pitch effectiveness by mitigating troubled identifications.

Research problem: This study investigates entrepreneurship as a rhetorical practice and seeks to illustrate how narratives of individuals from different cultures create a discourse of entrepreneurship. We offer theoretical and methodological considerations for comparative international analyses in entrepreneurship research. Research questions: (1) How do the stories that are told by entrepreneurs from different cultures reveal their values? (2) What can those stories tell us about entrepreneurship in different cultures? Literature review: An emerging stream of authors proposes to study entrepreneurship from individual narratives, but studies on entrepreneurship rhetorics are scarce, seldom use an international approach, and rarely cover the cultural aspects. Methodology: We collected entrepreneurial narratives in the US, Spain, and China, and deployed a novel two-fold method to retain cultural nuances and validate translation accuracy. Narrative data were studied based upon the coding, constant comparison, and memo writing used in grounded theory. Results and conclusions: We identify three core metaphorical devices used by participants to structure their entrepreneurial journeys (action and learning, autonomy and money, and exceptionalism and networks), and we suggest that the use of these metaphorical pairs varies both within and across cultures. These findings offer preliminary evidence, for the first time in the literature, that building a rhetorical understanding of entrepreneurship requires that we consider two axes: the individual and the cultural.

This examines the complex relationship between plain language and ethical work in technical and professional communication (TPC). This book is a timely and needed reinvigoration of plain language within TPC research. The author asserts that plain language has been understudied in TPC recently, despite its increasing pervasiveness in engineering, law, health communication, business, and other fields. The author contributes a model to identify bureaucratic, unfamiliar, rights-oriented, and critical (BUROC) situations where using plain language can support ethical communication between writers and readers. To explore this model, he effectively balances TPC ethics theory with concrete descriptions of real-world applications of plain language. The book closely aligns scholarship and practice. TPC is viewed as a rhetorical and humanistic enterprise, and plain language can help to advance the profession's broader ethical commitment to clear, accessible communication.

Research problem: Organizations continue to rely upon virtual teams, yet knowing how, and for how long, individual members' computer-mediated communication (CMC) anxiety affects virtual team interactions and performance outcomes is not well-known. Research questions: (1) What is the relationship between CMC anxiety and virtual team participation? (2) How does this relationship influence the perceptions of individual performance? (3) Does this relationship persist over time? Literature review: A literature review including communication and media structures, input-mediator-output team effectiveness, and individual CMC anxiety elements indicate researchable negative effects upon virtual team interaction and participation in CMC environments. Higher levels of individual CMC anxiety could dampen participation quantity, participation type (task versus social), participation quality, and perceptions of individual performance. Further, the initial negative interactions and behaviors could persist over time. Methodology: This quantitative quasiexperimental study involved surveying, observing, and coding the interactions of 22 virtual project teams (consisting of a total of 110 individuals) over a span of four months. The teams used a CMC tool with shared file space and discussion boards to coordinate database design and implementation work. Data were collected from questionnaire surveys, individual message postings, and team project scores. Individual message postings were coded to measure participation quality (task focus and topic introductions) and participation quantity (message count and words per message). Data were analyzed using repeated-measures multivariate analyses along with follow-up univariate statistical testing. Results and conclusions: The results indicate that individuals with higher levels of CMC anxiety participated less, sent fewer task-oriented messages, introduced fewer novel topics, and were rated more poorly by team members on their performance compared to individuals with lower levels of CMC anxiety. The results also show that CMC-anxious individuals do send relatively more social-oriented messages, perhaps to compensate for typical apprehensive communication behaviors in a virtual team environment. In addition, participation quality and quantity and perceptions of performance by CMC-anxious team members do not significantly improve, even with repeated interactions over CMC. Although study participants evidenced high engagement with the project tasks, the study is limited by its use of student subjects. The study suggests the importance of team leaders and role definitions for virtual teams, to counteract potential unintended effects of CMC technology use masking actual participation and contribution of virtual team members. Future research could investigate the efficacy of interventions for reducing the negative impacts of CMC anxiety in virtual team performance, as well as the influence of individual structures such as CMC anxiety in the use of CMC and team structures in the virtual team environment.

Research problem: Partially distributed teams (PDTs) are virtual teams that consist of at least two distinct geographically dispersed subgroups that communicate mainly through information and communication technology (ICT). As such teams become increasingly prevalent, it is important to understand how to manage them to maximize team effectiveness. The perceptions of effectiveness of PDTs may be significantly decreased when they are characterized by ingroup dynamics, consisting of preferential attitudes and actions toward collocated members, with accompanying conflict and lack of trust in regard to the distant subteam(s). Research questions: Do ingroup dynamics negatively impact perceptions of effectiveness in PDTs and, if so, how strongly? What factors can lessen ingroup dynamics-specifically, can training or reliable ICT support decrease ingroup dynamics? Does organizational context affect these relationships? Does whether or not the PDT is international affect these relationships? Does the number of subgroups in a PDT affect these relationships? Literature review: Social identity theory suggests how ingroup dynamics may emerge and create fault lines between subteams in a PDT. Effectiveness is defined in terms of process performance, which refers to how well the teamwork process has been undertaken. Prior research suggests that ICT reliability and training for work in distributed teams may decrease ingroup dynamics and improve effectiveness. International members, the specific organizational context, and the number of subteams per team might moderate these relationships. Methodology: An online survey of professionals with experience in PDTs was conducted, with two subsamples-one from a single large telecommunications company and one from a mix of organizations. Partial least squares regression was used to build and test a model of the relationships among the variables measured. Results: Ingroup dynamics have a strong negative relationship with perceived effectiveness. Overall, technology reliability and training significantly reduce ingroup dynamics. In the telecommunications company, training increased ingroup dynamics; thus, training may not always be beneficial, depending on organizational culture and the modes and types of training provided by a specific organization. Neither international membership on the team nor the number of subgroups per team was a significant multigroup moderator on any path in our model. Conclusions: These results help to extend social identity theory into this domain as they elucidate specifically that ICT reliability and training promote effectiveness of PDTs and that ingroup dynamics affect the perceptions of effectiveness in such teams. The results give managers guidance on what issues of PDTs to focus on to promote the effectiveness of PDTs.

Research problem: Subgroup formation in global virtual teams could negatively impact team performance due to difficulties in coordination, trust, and team cohesion. Research questions: What role do trust and team cohesion play in the relationship between coordination effectiveness and team performance of global virtual teams with two distinct subgroups? Literature review: Prior research suggests that coordination effectiveness on team performance is most strongly impacted by coordination of knowledge. This effectiveness is mediated by trust and team cohesion. However, we have a poor understanding of trust and team cohesion dynamics on intergroup relationships in global virtual teams. Methodology: A survey was conducted with 14 teams with a total of 112 participants in the US and India. The teams were tasked with evaluating customer-relationship-management best practices for a global environment. Results and discussion: We evaluated how the process of effective coordination for teams composed of two colocated subgroups is mediated by individual perceptions of out-group trust and overall team cohesion. Our findings show that individual trust and team cohesion share a reciprocal impact on each other, suggesting that effective coordination in virtual teams can create a positive feedback loop with trust and cohesion, improving overall project performance. Implications for theory and practice include the virtuous cycle that trust and cohesion create in global virtual team coordination and the necessity of establishing appropriate project coordination systems and processes to promote both aspects and, thus, achieve excellent project performance for colocated subgroups.

Research problem: Web 2.0 applications, such as instant messengers and other social media platforms, are fast becoming ubiquitous in organizations, yet their impact on work performance is poorly understood. Research question: What is the relationship between Web 2.0 use, and work-based communication processes and outcomes in China? Literature review: Literature in the fields of information systems and media and communication research supports the value of Web 2.0 for organizations. However, how Web 2.0 can facilitate the organizational communication process and subsequently improve performance is under-investigated. By adapting and extending the communicative ecology framework and previously published work, we developed and tested a theoretical model to investigate these impacts in the Chinese workplace. Methodology: We conducted a quantitative study using the survey method, with participants randomly selected from a panel database in China. Results and conclusions: We analyzed survey data from 179 organizational employees and found that vertical and horizontal communication contribute significantly to individual and teamwork performance, with high levels of variance explained. In this study, we provide empirical evidence of how Web 2.0 applications enable employees to reach out to collaborators and business partners, thereby boosting individual productivity and team collaboration. The study also highlights the fit between Web 2.0 and the need for organizational horizontal communication in this era of knowledge, information, and creativity. Future researchers should verify the research model in different countries, including local contextual characteristics as either independent variables or moderators.

Research problem: Increasingly, professional and technical communicators analyze, synthesize, and respond to user-generated content, including online consumer reviews of products, as the influence of user-generated content on consumers' purchasing decisions grows. But product reviews vary in the degree to which people perceive them to be credible. Research questions: (1) To what extent does a product review's environment-a retailer or brand site-affect review users' ratings of that review's credibility? (2) To what extent does review valence (positive versus negative) affect review users' ratings of review credibility? (3) What is the strength of the relationship among credibility and its two main components, trustworthiness and expertise? Literature review: Recent research has made clear the spread and the influence of user-generated comments and, thus, the need for sophistication in handling it. Review credibility has two main components: trustworthiness (which equates to honesty or sincerity) and expertise (which equates to accuracy). Prior research also shows the effects of valence (positivity or negativity) in reviews, noting that negative reviews have more influence than positive reviews on readers' perceptions of review credibility and purchasing decisions. Methodology: We tested the effect of a consumer review's environment (brand or retailer site) and the effect of review valence (positive or negative) on the perceived credibility of that review, as well the degree of correlation among credibility, trustworthiness, and expertise. Through an online survey, we exposed respondents to the same review text with different star ratings (4-star and 2-star) in two types of sites: brand and retailer. We asked participants to evaluate the review's credibility, trustworthiness, and expertise. In half of the exposures, participants evaluated a review in the site of a high-credibility company (Apple or Amazon), and in the other half of exposures, participants evaluated a review in the site of a midlevel-credibility company (Dell or Walmart). Results and conclusions: Credibility strongly correlated with both trustworthiness and expertise. Participants rated 4-star reviews as more credible than 2-star reviews on high-credibility sites, but star ratings had no impact on midlevel credibility sites. We found no difference between ratings of reviews displayed on brand and retailer sites for midlevel-credibility companies but a small difference between reviews displayed on brand and retailer sites for high-credibility companies. Professional communicators should attend to reviews posted both to retailer and brand sites. Conclusions: Professional communicators charged with managing user-generated content need not spend resources on channeling it into retailer and other independent review site environments as opposed to brand site environments. Our findings indicate that professional communicators looking to identify credible reviews should attend to review valence, or the positivity or negativity of a review. When managing user-generated product reviews, they should try to make credible content more noticeable to review users.

Research problem: Organizations are increasingly investing in virtual customer communities that reduce communication barriers between organizations and customers. However, little is known regarding how virtual customer communities might affect a firm's learning and innovation activities. Research question: What effects do virtual customer communities have on the relationship between absorptive capacity and organizational innovation? Literature review: Research has shown that virtual customer communities promote knowledge creation and knowledge sharing by facilitating communication within a virtual customer community. We investigate the extent to which interactivity in virtual customer communities influences the relationship between a firm's absorptive capacity (the ability to identify, assimilate, and apply external knowledge) and the extent to which a firm develops incremental and radical innovations. Methodology: We test this model with a quantitative survey-based research design that involves 102 firm-sponsored virtual customer communities. We use hierarchical regression techniques to test our hypotheses. Results: Absorptive capacity is positively related to incremental innovation and negatively related to radical innovation. Furthermore, virtual customer community interactivity moderates the relationship between absorptive capacity and incremental innovation. Conclusions: Virtual customer communities are transforming communication relationships between organizations and customers in ways that influence a firm's learning and innovation activities. One limitation of our study is the use of a single respondent for our survey. We recommend that future research examine how virtual customer communities affect organization-customer communication channels.

Research problem: In Ireland, technical communication has developed as an academic and occupational field since the late 20th century. Research on the field in Ireland is limited. Research questions: (1) To what extent do technical communicators in Ireland operate as a community of practice? (2) What steps are Irish technical communicators taking toward professionalization? Literature review: This study uses a theoretical framework that combines symbolic interactionism and communities of practice theories. While traditional professionalization theory uses a structural functionalist approach to the study of occupations, characterizing disciplines as professions depending on whether they meet certain traits (including autonomy, market closure, license to practice, and service orientation), symbolic interactionism prioritizes interactions among individuals. In this sense, it overlaps with the concerns of communities of practice. A community of practice involves a group of people working together, and creating meaning through their interactions. Studying an occupation through this lens foregrounds individual and community identity, and how that is formed and informed by work. Methodology: Mixed methods-a survey, focus groups, and interviews-were used to explore Irish technical communicators' perceptions of aspects of their field: practice, education, value and status, and professional and community structures. Results: The findings indicate that Irish technical communicators exhibit traits of communities of practice (such as joint enterprise and shared repertoires). They also identify with their job title and practice. A key finding is that some Irish technical communicators have a keen appetite for community involvement. This enthusiasm notwithstanding, barriers to professionalization include low visibility of the role in Ireland, limited evidence of professionalizing activity, and the potential for career stagnation.

Research problem: This study investigates the factors influencing students' intentions to use emergency notification services to receive news about campus emergencies through short-message systems (SMS) and social network sites (SNS). Research questions: (1) What are the critical factors that influence students' intention to use SMS to receive emergency notifications? (2) What are the critical factors that influence students' intention to use SNS to receive emergency notifications? Literature review: By adapting Media Richness theory and prior research on emergency notifications, we propose that perceived media richness, perceived trust in information, perceived risk, perceived benefit, and perceived social influence impact the intention to use SMS and SNS to receive emergency notifications. Methodology: We conducted a quantitative, survey-based study that tested our model in five different scenarios, using logistic regression to test the research hypotheses with 574 students of a large research university in the northeastern US. Results and discussion: Results suggest that students' intention to use SNS is impacted by media richness, perceived benefit, and social influence, while students' intention to use SMS is influenced by trust and perceived benefit. Implications to emergency managers suggest how to more effectively manage and market the service through both channels. The results also suggest using SNS as an additional means of providing emergency notifications at academic institutions.

Research problem: This study investigates the phenomenon of user-generated content strategy in an open-source, wiki-based content-management system (CMS) for the repair of technological devices (http://ifixit.com). By “user-generated content strategy,” we mean processes for developing systems for producing, moderating, and encouraging user-generated content. Research questions: (1) What strategies, or holistic means of organizing content, are used to manage repair manual content via an open-source, wiki-based content-management system that relies on content generated by a wide variety of users? (2) What content rules, or logical premises for how and where content is developed, emerge from a qualitative case study of such a CMS? Literature review: Though a wealth of empirical research has been conducted into user-generated content, few studies have focused on the explicit strategies employed by organizations to develop and encourage such content. At the same time, several recent calls by researchers in both academia and industry have indicated a need for such content models. Some of the challenges these thinkers have noted with creating user-generated content strategies include the difficulty of maintaining a consistent strategy across content generated by users who don't necessarily understand what strategies are in place, as well as maintaining a modicum of quality assurance without squelching user participation. Methodology: We conducted a content audit of iFixit's main educational initiative, the Technical Writing Project (http://edu.ifixit.com) to identify strategies iFixit uses to organize content in this initiative. iFixit is an open-source wiki to help users repair their own devices. We supplemented the audit with interviews with student participants in the project and iFixit technical writing staff to find out what technologies and other affordances affected users of the iFixit Technical Writing Project. Results and conclusions: The main user-generated content strategies used by iFixit include allowing users a wide range of means to participate (such as posting comments or developing their own repair guides), using a content moderation queue (or simple interface for seeing all updates to the wiki), ensuring quality assurance of all repair guide content through redundancy (such as making sure experienced users vetted every published guide), and staging (or arranging information in a linear sequence) information in a multimodal fashion (using multiple modes of communication to reinforce the same information). Such strategies represent a commitment by iFixit to opening up practices that are central to creating content, such as repair documentation, to any interested internet user. Lessons for organizations who wish to encourage user-generated content include developing strategies that protect users from the worst consequences of their actions, that encourage participation, and that allow for experienced users to vet new content.

Research problem: Content strategy, whether narrowly focused on the production of web-based materials for customers or managing the data, information, and documentation of an entire enterprise, has become the latest in a series of movements and methods that have sought to improve the integration of professional and technical communication with the marketing, training, and business processes of organizations. Research questions: How is content strategy defined and described in professional and scholarly literature? What do these definitions and descriptions suggest about the direction of the field of professional and technical communication? Literature review: The theoretical foundation of this study is Classical Rhetorical theory which, for thousands of years, has provided critical methods and vocabularies for the analysis of discourse; my purpose in using it here is to rely on a consistent lens that has served professional and technical communicators well. Classical rhetorical principles can give us useful insight into content strategy, the latest in a series of movements that have captured the attention of professional and technical communicators because they have promised to expand the scope of the work and move the work from the fringes of organizational activity to the center. Previous movements include knowledge management, single sourcing, and content management. Methodology: Because content strategy is an emerging area, I conducted an integrative literature review to characterize this emerging field. This involved a systematic search of peer-reviewed and professional literature on content strategy that met specific qualifications, reading and collecting information from each source about its answers to the research question and its authorship, and analyzing those data to find patterns in them. Results and conclusions: Because only two peer-reviewed sources existed on content strategy, the majority of the literature reviewed emerged from the trade press. I survey the definitions of content and content strategy provided by this literature, and found that almost every definition uses content as part of the definition, leading to some lack of clarity in all of those definitions. But three areas of consensus exist among the definitions: that content strategy is: (a) more inclusive of the lifecycle of content (addressing the processes of creating, revising, approving, publishing, and revising material), (b) integrated with technical and business requirements, and (c) largely focused on material used by customers and, therefore, focused on marketing and support documents. It primarily focuses on traditional genres of content and overlooks emerging genres. The literature suggests that content strategy provides a pathway to make the work of technical communicators more central to organizations. But the literature offers only broad advice for doing so, with few examples (other than some specific templates, which primarily benefit those who already have experience with content strategy). The advice primarily comes from authors working in consulting firms and, as a result, might not reflect the challenges that professional and technical communicators who work internally experience.

Research problem: Our study focuses on how students collaborate online to produce specific written genres, using particular collaborative technologies to work together productively, and how instructor feedback and student perspectives on collaborative work influence those activities in online classrooms. Research questions: When composing using collaborative web-based writing applications, do students focus primarily on the interface or the text space? What kinds of expectations about collaborative writing do students bring to the interface and text space? To what extent can we characterize students' acknowledgement of a third space, what we have identified as “communicative interaction?” Literature review: Workplace collaboration is important because organizations increasingly demand effective collaborators, team members, and team leaders, and technologies for sharing, cobuilding, and feedback are readily available to support these activities. Student preparation for workplace collaboration is important because students struggle when they are asked to write together, particularly when the collaborative process involves new technologies, and yet knowledge of collaborative writing strategies and experience with collaborative technologies, such as Google Docs, are the very competencies that organizations expect of them. Methodology: Thirteen groups of 3 to 4 technical writing students and science communication students enrolled in online professional writing courses at a major research university wrote feature specifications and reports on the globalization of the sciences, respectively, using Google Docs within Google Drive. Sixteen of 37 students responded to a set of questions asking them to reflect on their experiences working collaboratively, learning new genres, using the collaborative environment, and revising with instructor feedback. Results and conclusions: We found that students struggled most with adapting their already established collaborative strategies grounded in face-to-face learning situations to an online learning environment, where they felt their means of communication and expression were limited. The results suggest that effective collaborative experiences, properly executed, represent a repertoire of competencies that go well beyond only technical considerations, such as being able to effectively assign roles, set milestones, and navigate the numerous tasks and processes of writing as a team. The small number of students and the single instructor with her own particular feedback style limit the study. Future research includes looking at how different feedback styles influence student collaborative writing.

Research problem: Most technical documents rely on a combination of text and visuals to communicate their messages. To achieve the desired effect of improved processing and comprehension of operating instructions, the text must guide readers in a clear way to the relevant visual information in order to avoid ambiguity and misinterpretation, and to ensure that the reader optimally benefits from the available information.Research questions: (1) How are textual and visual information combined in operating instructions in order to guide the user's attention precisely toward the relevant parts of a household appliance? (2) In what ways can ambiguity arise, and what kinds of strategies can be used to avoid miscommunication and conceptual problems? Literature review: Operating manuals are usually procedural instructions that tell the user how to set up an appliance, how to operate and maintain it, and how to solve any problems. The vast majority of operating instructions are multimodal in that they include visuals of some kind. But previous research has shown that visual representations of instructions can be just as difficult to interpret as textual instructions-especially if the visuals come without textual elaboration. A combination of text and visuals provides opportunities for taking advantage of both by balancing the other mode's limitations. Methodology: Our exploratory qualitative study of a small set of operating instructions identifies and classifies types of references to visuals in the documents, enriched by interviews with the technical writers of these manuals. Besides showing patterns of reference types, we examine the potential ambiguity of some types of references along with strategies to avoid communication failure. Results and conclusions: We identified 10 distinct ways in which links from text to visuals can be established. Line drawings were referred to more than visuals showing display content. The clarity of the link between text and visuals may be affected by the use of spatial expressions (such as left/right) that presuppose an underlying perspective, as well as by the use of semantic and functional information that is not readily accessible to laypersons. Ambiguity can be avoided by using clearly defined labels, specific perceptual information, and by repetition of visual elements in the text. Also, overspecification can be useful for enhancing communication. We conclude that technical writers need to attend to the links between text and visuals in order to support users effectively, avoiding ambiguity by purposeful strategies. Because our study is qualitative and analytic, implications are limited by the scope of our study, and by the lack of empirical user comprehension studies.

Research problem: In light of the growing popularity of LinkedIn as a self-promotional tool for the job search process, this paper examines the rhetorical structure of LinkedIn Summaries. Research questions: (1) Which rhetorical moves are found in the Summary sections of LinkedIn profiles? (2) Do the Summary sections display similar patterns of textual organization? (3) What strategies do the writers of the Summary sections deploy to achieve these rhetorical moves? Literature review: This paper has a genre analytic theoretical orientation of approach, whose underlying assumption is that genres sharing the same purposes and context of use are likely to have similar organizational patterns and to deploy similar strategies to achieve these purposes. Previous research on LinkedIn has focused on characteristics of the service and its impact on interactions, but not as a medium used in the classroom. A much deeper literature exists on job application letters, which concludes that a job application uses similar rhetorical moves, or discoursal units that perform distinct communicative functions, to a sales promotion letter. The moves include: introducing candidature, establishing credentials, essential detailing of candidature, indicating value of candidature, offering incentives, enclosing documents, using pressure tactics, soliciting response, and ending politely. Methodology: It is a study that analyzed the rhetorical structure of LinkedIn Summaries of 50 professional résumé writers in the US from a genre analytic perspective. Results and conclusions: The LinkedIn Summary shares many moves in common with the job application letter. Moves that were found in all or nearly all of the texts were establishing credentials, identifying target market and detailing service; an additional move, not seen in job application letters, was also identified-that of personal branding. However, a rigid organizational structure was not seen. The results and the methodology used to obtain them will be of use to students and others wishing to use LinkedIn to promote themselves to potential employers. The study is limited to one particular professional group in one region, but there is ample scope for further research looking at LinkedIn profiles in other professions and other parts of the world.

Research problem: Deciding whether to accept or reject contract clauses in software purchasing contracts is a complex communication-related task, which is likely faced daily by a multitude of software purchasing professionals in a variety of organizations. Research question: What are the effects of viewing contract clauses as video clips, compared to viewing clauses as text only, in terms of cognitive effort, communication ambiguity, and correctness in the acceptance or rejection of clauses in software purchasing contracts? Literature review: The literature on the Media Richness and Media Naturalness theories suggest that viewing contract clauses as video clips should reduce cognitive effort and communication ambiguity. However, while Media Richness theory suggests that correctness in the acceptance or rejection of clauses in software purchasing contracts should increase with the use of video clips, Media Naturalness theory suggests a neutral overall effect. Methodology: An experiment was conducted in which student participants were asked to either accept or reject 20 clauses from a software contract, placing themselves in the position of buyers. Of the 20 clauses, 6 were intentionally deceitful and potentially harmful to the buyer. Approximately half of the participants reviewed the contract clauses as web-based text, and the remaining as web-based video clips. Results and conclusions: Viewing contract clauses as video clips was associated with significantly less cognitive effort and less communication ambiguity than viewing the clauses as text only. Counterintuitively, increases in perceived cognitive effort and communication ambiguity were associated with more successful identification and rejection of deceitful contract clauses. The combination of these competing effects led to an overall neutral effect of the medium on the correctness in the acceptance or rejection of clauses. These findings are consistent with expectations based on Media Naturalness theory, particularly its compensatory adaptation proposition, and inconsistent with expectations based on Media Richness theory.

Research problem: The widespread adoption of component content management in organizations calls for a comprehensive summary of the territory of this phenomenon. A summary provides stakeholders in component content management with a sense of how the practice has evolved and its implications to research, theory, and future practice. The last such review was published in 2003. This integrative literature review is intended to fill the gap in the literature by describing the current state of component content management as presented in the current publications. Research questions: How is “content” currently defined, described, and approached in the component content-management literature? What processes and tools are organizations adopting to achieve the goals of component content management? Literature review: The theoretical orientation of this review is Rhetorical Genre theory, which allows for classifying individual components as a genre characterized by granularity, reusability, and potentiality. Component content management gained recognition in the mid-1990s when early adopter organizations were looking for more efficient and effective approaches to reusing information between similar products or versions of the same product. Developments in the 2000s include a surge of publications focused on defining and describing component content management; new best practices for implementing a component content-management initiative; evolving processes and technologies for creating highly engineered, modular content that can automatically adjust to specific user requests and device capabilities; and collaborative efforts to integrate content creation and management strategies across organizational units. Scholarly and trade publications increasingly explore different concerns; whereas scholarly publications tend to offer critical perspectives on component content management, trade publications tend to describe processes and technologies and articulate best practices. Both focus on the goals of component content management, such as single sourcing, content reuse, multichannel publishing, and the structured content components required to achieve these goals. Methodology: To answer the research questions, we reviewed the body of literature on component content management. To do so, we searched library databases, Google, and Amazon.com for articles and books in both the scholarly and trade literature; we also sought out publications by well-known voices in component content management who direct successful consultant and/or research organizations. We then classified selected publications in relation to research questions and identified themes within each research question. The review did not explore other types of content management. Results and conclusions: Current component content-management literature suggests that component content management has evolved from a practice focused on single sourcing and reuse strategies for product documentation to a mature discipline concerned with designing pre-sales and post-sales information products for a multitude of devices and delivery channels. In recent years, trade publications have led the way to standardizing the discipline's core concepts, methodologies, processes, and technologies, such as structured content, structured authoring, single sourcing, component-based content strategy, Extensible Markup Language authoring tools, and component-content-management systems. Scholarly publications, however, have had comparatively little impact on advancing the discipline of component content management because only a handful of publications have focused on the topic and almost no crosstalk exists between these publications and the trade literature. Several questions about the practices of component content management still need to be answered, particularly in the areas of multilingual communication and content quality and usability. Based on the results of the literature review, we call for a coherent, robust, and ambitious component content-management research agenda that addresses topics such as content quality and usability, the diffusion of content-management systems, and global content management and that leads to studies that both advance scholarship and improve component content-management practice.

Research problem: Over the past decade, the popularity of fantasy sports games has grown dramatically. A fantasy sport is a simulation game in which game players act as owners to build, manage, and coach imaginary teams that compete against one another, based on statistics generated by actual players or teams of a professional sport. In line with this, we have seen the emergence of various forms of media content being produced directly for those who participate in fantasy sports games-the most prolific example of this is writing for fantasy sports. This study aims to establish an understanding of how fantasy sport articles are currently being constructed by assessing the contributions of professional journalists and amateur writers. Research questions: RQ1: If the standardization of written discourse genres stems from the reciprocity between generic conventions and the responses to situations, then what are the differences between the discourse strategy used by professional journalists and that by their amateur counterparts in fantasy sports writing? RQ2: What are the writers' rhetorical goals and the reader-writer relationships they wish to establish through the fantasy sports texts? Literature review: This study is rooted in the notion of genre, a communicative event through which the writer and reader interact to make meanings in a particular context. Communication of fantasy sports involves the production of content that provides readers with news, analysis, and opinions about-and knowledge of-matters that concern the games, thus creating pools of intelligence which other fantasy sports players can use, add to, argue against, or ignore. This amateur-produced content and resulting knowledge communities formed by fantasy sports players have led to a genre development that professional communicators should examine because it reflects so much technical documentation and instructions have migrated into user-generated spaces. “The move” in genre analysis is a meaningful rhetorical unit that is related to the communicative purpose of a social activity and that contributes to the text's overall strategy within its situational context. Moves operate in coherence rather than isolation in a text. Methodology: A discourse analysis was conducted on 60 fantasy sports texts (30 by professional journalists and 30 by amateur writers) randomly selected from a few specific sources in 2012. A custom move scheme was devised for analyzing fantasy sports texts in this study. The results were analyzed using a chi-square test. Results and discussion: Results reveal significant differences between the discourse strategy used by professional journalists and that by amateur writers. These differences include amateur writers differing to some extent in their rhetorical goals from professional journalists as they offer media consumers a more balanced spread of information, that professional journalists place a substantially lower value on making predictions, that amateur writers and professional journalists share similar regard in terms of the appropriate amount of casualness to include in their writing although amateur writers are more included to build casualness in their articles, and that the use of writing techniques to invite further connection or engagement from readers is being underutilized by both professional and amateur writers. The major implications for the professional communicators are the insights into user-generated content, an approach in which organizations increasingly rely on for their product and service documentation.

Research problem: The study attempts to study how an empowered Chinese public coped with and interpreted the environmental crisis of the ConocoPhillips oil spill and how ConocoPhillips reacted to the growing influence of social media. Research questions: In what ways did the Chinese public exercise its new power through social media in addressing the ConocoPhillips Oil Spill Incident? How did a multinational company like ConocoPhillips act during the crisis and react to the voices of the public through new media? Literature review: Social media has caused a power shift in China by allowing the ordinary Chinese public who used to be the silent majority to expose scandals and express their opinions about crises with greater freedom. At the same time, pressure is growing on corporations to exercise social responsibility, through responding to economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary expectations that society has. Stakeholder theory indicates that only by meeting the needs and expectations of the individuals and groups who can affect or are affected by the firm's objectives can a firm survive and succeed. In developing countries, corporate social responsibility is characterized by a lack of systematic and institutionalized approach, with stakeholders, such as the public and community, being neglected for a long time. Methodology: Researchers conducted a thematic analysis of 932 microblog and blog entries about the ConocoPhillips Oil Spill Incident in China that were published on leading Chinese social media websites between June 2011 to February 2013. Results and discussion: The study found that the oil spill sparked an uproar of anger and criticism in the Chinese online community. Most posts on microblogs and blogs engaged in finding the causes and laying the blame for the oil spill. The overwhelming majority of the Chinese public attributed the crisis to the faulty laws and inaction on the part of the Chinese government regulators, to ConocoPhillips, and the Chinese joint venture partner China National Offshore Oil Corporation's failure to undertake due responsibilities. In response to mounting online criticisms, ConocoPhillips exhibited little interest in engaging with the Chinese public and showed poor communication in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The study's theoretical contribution lies in combining CSR and Stakeholder theory with Discourse Power theory. Practical implications to multinational corporations seeking long-term business development in the developing country contexts, such as China, are that managers need to engage in responsive listening, actively participate in online conversations, and constantly scan the social media environment to manage its relations with the general public. Particularly, firms experiencing crises can gain the public's emotional support by communicating emotion-laden messages through social media.

Research problem: No study has explored how incorporating personas into heuristic evaluation of products, namely websites, affects the kinds of findings reported and the recommendations presented by usability evaluators. Research questions: (1) Do findings resulting from heuristic evaluations of a website without the use of personas differ from findings resulting from heuristic evaluations of the same website with the use of personas? (2) Do findings from persona-based heuristic evaluations in which evaluators develop their own personas differ from findings from persona-based heuristic evaluations in which evaluators are given personas? (3) If findings and recommendations are different, how do they differ? (4) How does the use of personas affect the evaluators' confidence in the findings of a heuristic evaluation? Literature review: First, previous research of heuristic evaluation has concluded that although heuristic evaluation is inexpensive and does not require advance planning, it has several shortcomings, including its too-intense focus on minor issues and its inability to capture all usability issues. Second, data-driven personas, which have long been a resource in user-centered design, have been suggested as a way to improve or enhance heuristic evaluation, and several studies suggest that usability professionals are indeed using personas in their evaluations. However, no empirical study has assessed heuristic evaluations that include personas. Methodology: In this exploratory study involving three sections of an advanced technical writing course, groups of evaluators conducted a heuristic evaluation of a website. Each section was randomly assigned a different condition with which they would conduct the heuristic evaluation: (a) a traditional heuristic evaluation, (b) a persona-led heuristic evaluation in which the personas were given to the evaluators, or (c) a persona-led heuristic evaluation in which the evaluators themselves created their own personas. Each group wrote a report identifying the major problems with the website and provided recommendations to solve the identified problems. The evaluators completed pretesting demographic surveys and posttesting confidence surveys. Results and discussion: This exploratory study found few detectable differences in the findings reported by groups that used personas in heuristic evaluation and groups that did not use personas. The groups that used personas were more likely to report findings related to navigation than the groups that did not use personas, while the groups that did not use personas were more likely to report findings related to design than the groups that used personas. The groups that created their own personas were more likely than the other groups to include complex issues in their reports and include language that directly references users and user needs. All groups were confident in their findings.

This book focuses particularly on the needs for preparing presentations for engineering and technical topics and audiences. It is written in a constructive manner, with criticisms of default-structured practices tempered with an understanding of complexities of technical and engineering contexts. Readers from different audiences can also appreciate how the book is organized and presented in terms of a small number of slide rules. Reviews of literature compiled in chapters throughout the book include many theoretical and practical works relevant to advice on the communication of presentations. The bibliographies thus encompass a powerful curriculum of scholarship that educators or managers can also use to inform the preparation of technical or engineering presentations. The persuasiveness of the recommendations in this book are supported by the research covered and by the examples shown. The book also provides a roadmap for preparing slides in the context of slide software applications used prevalently among technical and engineering organizations.

Research problem: Subversive environmental texts, those that strive against hegemonic discourse, such as the book Ecodefense, have a long history of use by radical environmentalists as a means for recruitment and distribution of best practices. This study aims to investigate the role of plain language in the subversive text Ecodefense, and consider some ethical implications of plain language by conducting a close textual analysis. Research questions: (1) Is the subversive text Ecodefense an artifact of plain language? (2) If Ecodefense is written in plain language, what does that suggest about the inherent ethicality of plain language? Literature review: Plain language refers to clear expression designed to help users achieve desired goals. In the sense that it is a communication practice, it is guided by standards put forth by various agencies and bureaucratic bodies. In the sense that it is a movement, plain language is characterized by the proliferation of organizations advocating for plain language practices in society. This study is rooted in the investigation of the ethical practices of social movements. It considers the ethics of plain language practices when they are put toward subversive ends and explores the ethical value of plain language itself. Methodology: Ecodefense is analyzed using the Center for Plain Language's (CPL) Plain Language checklist and Writemark's criteria for documents, which includes consideration of the audience, structure, language content, and design of a text, as well as usability testing. Results and conclusion: Analysis shows that Ecodefense is partially representative of plain language use and practice under the CPL's standards, and appears somewhat more fully representative under Writemark's standards, which are designed for use by a trained assessor. Analysis further suggests that adherence to checklist-driven language practices may unwittingly enable an ethic of exigence; thus, research is needed into the ethical implications for list-driven, or standards-based, rhetoric in order to ensure that plain language practices consider long-term implications for users and for organizations that employ these practices.

This collection of 11 narratives is a well-crafted assemblage of stories that illustrate diverse experiences in the technical communication academic program offices at colleges and universities across the country. This book is intended for those who are responsible for creating and administering technical communication programs and aims to provide its readers with lessons learned from the field. The readers of this book will come away with some thoughtful points to consider as they work within the framework of their own academic resources, whether it involves multidiscipline departmental influences, or resistance to change from long established traditions.

Research problem: This study provides insight into practitioners' reasons for choosing a particular language (English versus the local language) in the genre of job ads in countries where English is a foreign language (EFL countries). Scholarly publications and public discourse have suggested reasons for language choice, but these were not based on the perspectives of practitioners. Research questions: (1) What reasons do Dutch job ad writers give for using all-English, all-Dutch, or partly English ads and what genre factors inform these reasons? (2) To what extent do the reasons given by Dutch job ad makers for using all-English,P all-Dutch, or partly English ads complement reasons mentioned in publications on job ads? Literature review: Genre theory identifies three factors as important determinants of genre: contextual factors (such as characteristics of the organization and the sector in which the genre is produced), reader-writer factors (characteristics of the genre's target audience and author), and textual factors (the genre's content, structure, and wording). The reasons mentioned for the use of all-English job ads are that English is the organization's corporate language and that the organization is looking for English-speaking candidates. The reasons given for the use of job ads in the local language are that English is less clear than the local language and that English words are strange and exaggerated compared to equivalents in the local language. Among the reasons mentioned for the use of partly English job ads are that English words attract more attention than equivalents in the local language and that English job titles sound more modern and have more status than equivalent job titles in the local language. Methodology: In this qualitative study, we conducted 25 interviews with practitioners who designed job ads in the Netherlands, selected because they had recently placed an all-English, an all-Dutch, or a partly English job ad in a Dutch newspaper. They were asked an open-ended question about their reasons behind the language used in the job ad they placed. Interview data were labelled and categorized; subsequently, patterns were identified across categories. Results and conclusions: The interviews showed that all three types of genre factors-contextual, reader-writer, and textual-underlie practitioners' language choices. Practitioners mentioned the same types of factors that were mentioned in publications on job ads, but gave a greater variety of reasons for language choice. Of the reasons mentioned by the practitioners, the large majority were not given in publications. These findings underline the importance of obtaining text producers' perspectives and can be used to sensitize both novice and experienced professional Human Resources writers to the relevance of genre factors in language choice. A limitation of the present study is that the desired effects of language choice mentioned by the respondents were not verified with the target group of the job ads. Therefore, future research on language choice in workplace writing should test whether particular language choices in job ads actually achieve the recruitment effects Human Resource Manager professionals expect.

Research problem: As a follow up to an earlier article, this study compares Fortune 500 website homepage design in 2013 with the results of a similar study in 2008, providing an updated overview of homepage design practice that reflects the many technological advances that have influenced web design during the intervening period. The findings are useful for those wanting to know the state of homepage design in 2013, whether as current practitioners or researchers. Research questions: (1) What are the current homepage design practices of Fortune 500 companies? (2) What are the current Web 2.0 technology practices of Fortune 500 companies? (3) What changes in homepage design have occurred for Fortune 500 companies? (4) What are the differences in homepage design and Web 2.0 technology practices between the 100 largest and 100 smallest Fortune 500 companies? and (5) Is homogeneity in design increasing amongst Fortune 500 homepages? Literature review: Three key areas guided my analysis of homepages. (1) Usability research, which suggests guidelines for design based on aggregated performance of users, such as locating the search box in the upper right and for directing mobile users to an alternate site designed for mobile access. (2) Design practice studies, which suggest guidelines for design based on aggregated analyses of websites, such as having links to employment information and investor information on the homepage. (3) Design patterns: libraries of patterns to provide designers with responses to design problems, such as using collapsible panels or module tabs to reveal and conceal content on a page. These libraries also provide guidelines for design, such as using fat menus or sitemap footers to structure navigation. Methodology: Using content analysis, every Fortune 500 homepage in 2013 was analyzed for 68 major design elements in these categories--navigation, content links, support for specific types of users, visual design, multimedia, and web 2.0-and the results were analyzed. Results and conclusions: The homepages displayed greater homogeneity in design than a similar study in 2008. Overall, 12 elements-(1) corporate logo in the top left of the page; (2) link to an “about us” section containing company information; (3) link to information for those seeking employment; (4) horizontally oriented main navigation; (5) link for contacting the company; (6) link for information for investors; (7) link for terms of use or legal disclaimers; (8) link to privacy information; (9) link for news or a press room; (10) multimedia use; (11) links that do not appear on the page initially, requiring interaction; (12) search box, located in the upper right of page-were present on 80% or more homepages, and 6 elements-(1) web 2.0 features; (2) an image that can be clicked on as a focal point; (3) link to a sitemap; (4) link to Twitter; (5) link to Facebook; and (6) dropdown or pulldown menu-were present on 50% to 79% of pages. Between 2008 and 2013, many practices have changed, such as increases in page length, the overall number of links, the number of links to social media sites, and the number of sites with search boxes. Certain design choices-such as mobile options for sites, links to social media sites, and links to site maps-were more prevalent in the largest 100 companies than the smallest 100 companies.

Research problem: Most of the previous research into corporate websites has focused on the users' point of view and their perception of usability and interactivity as the two predominant website characteristics, and has shown that interactivity plays an important role in consumers' perceptions of, and responses to, these sites. This study explores corporate websites from a different view-that of the company-and investigates the organizational motivation to adopt new interactive features on corporate websites. Research question: What are the critical factors influencing the firm's adoption of online innovations related to interactivity on their websites? Literature review: Many dominant theories in information technology (IT) that guide most research on IT adoption at the firm level include the diffusion of innovations theory (which seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures) and the technology, organization, and environment framework (which identifies three aspects of an enterprise's context that influence the process by which it adopts and implements a technological innovation). But other research streams can contribute to the Theory of Technology Adoption at the firm level, including Institutional Theory (which is a widely accepted theoretical posture that emphasizes rational myths, isomorphism, and legitimacy) and the model of Iacovou et al.(which analyzes interorganizational systems' characteristics that influence firms to adopt IT innovations). Methodology: A conceptual model with supporting propositions was tested using an online questionnaire. Data were collected from 138 firms in Switzerland and Germany and analyzed with multiple regression analysis. Results and conclusions: Complexity, perceived benefits, top management support, and information intensity are the drivers that play important roles in the diffusion of innovation related to interactivity on corporate websites, and support our conceptual model.

To prepare students for careers postgraduation, many academic programs have added components, such as service-learning projects (civic oriented, real-audience tasks) and client projects (real-audience corporate or nonprofit tasks), which aim to acclimate students to the expectations of “real world” clients while they are still in the relatively “safe” domain of the classroom. The two studies reported in this paper examine whether participating in client projects as part of regular technical communication classes aids students in internships and later on the job. Research questions: Overall question: How does legitimate peripheral participation in client projects give students opportunities for learning beyond the end of the client project? Literature review: Service-learning and client projects are intended to benefit students by offering real-world audiences and complex experiences with professional practitioners. Client projects help students face these challenges when moving from school to work, such as acculturating into the organization or completing tasks designed for purposes other than the learner's development. Methodology: To evaluate experiences on a particular client project, study one surveyed six students with open-ended questions about their experiences on it. To explore how the client project prepared them for internships, study two used semistructured interviews with interns and supervisors, observations of interns at work, and documents that interns created. Results and conclusions: Through recursive analysis, client projects emerged as being important in students' internship experiences. Students participate in client projects in ways that support their learning and development as members of a community of practice in internships and on the job. This learning is gradual and varied. One particular finding for teachers is that rather than shield students from client interactions, it may be helpful to promote frequent, structured interactions with clients to better prepare students for the workplace.

Research problem: Examines how Korean entrepreneurs in an entrepreneurship program revised their English-language slide decks for their competitive presentations (“pitches”) by reusing content from professional communication genres, including their own documents and feedback from potential stakeholders in their target markets. Research question: As entrepreneurs learn to pitch ideas to unfamiliar markets, how do they revise their slide decks by reusing content from other professional communication genres? Specifically, what strategies do they follow when reusing content? Literature review: The professional communication literature demonstrates that reuse tends to take place in documentation cycles where documents are set in interaction with each other and that reuse itself involves rhetorical choices. Yet such reuse strategies have not been examined in existing studies of entrepreneurial pitches in marketing and technology commercialization. Methodology: In an exploratory qualitative study, researchers textually analyzed 14 sets of five related document genres in the archives of an entrepreneurship program. These genres represented a full cycle of activity: application to the program, initial pitches, initial feedback from program personnel, detailed feedback from representative stakeholders in the target market, and revised pitches. Interviews and surveys of program personnel further contextualize the data. Results and conclusions: Entrepreneurs reused content from professional communication genres, including those that they had generated as well as those generated by market stakeholders. However, reuse went simply beyond accepting and copying feedback; as they learned to make their pitch arguments, these entrepreneurs had to weigh this feedback and engage with it critically. This reuse can be characterized as Accepting (repeating verbatim or in close paraphrase); Continuing (extending lines of argument); and Resisting (rebutting lines of argument). These findings suggest that entrepreneurs need all three strategies as they refine their pitches for their target markets.

Research problem: This study investigates the difference in perceptions within the family-owned businesses of messages received from family members and outsiders to assess the role that relational familiarity (the amount of prior experience two people share communicating with each other) plays in internal business communication in these settings. Previous research has shown that this relational familiarity-along with experience with the communicative medium, the message topic, and the business context-lead to channel expansion (the ability to reduce uncertainty from a message with limited communicative cues) for business communicators. But the impact of relational familiarity on communication competence and personal biases between family members-which could impact the ability of relational familiarity to achieve its intended goals-has yet to be fully explored. Research questions: (1) Does increased relational familiarity between communicators lead to increased perceptions of message effectiveness and appropriateness in lean media settings? (2) In family business settings where familial biases may be prevalent, is increased relational familiarity linked to perceptions of increased sender likeability and lowered message negativity? Literature review: Channel Expansion Theory, which proposes that communicators can overcome the limitations of a medium by using their personal experience, guides this study. Previous research found that with personal experience with the communicator sending the message, a message receiver can enhance the limited capacity of a medium to convey cues that aid in understanding the message. Four perceptual variables-message effectiveness, message appropriateness, message negativity, sender likeability-result in benefits accrued from channel expansion and relational familiarity, such as reduced uncertainty and equivocality about the message topic. Methodology: A quasiexperimental setting was designed to elicit messages from business co-workers using email. Message senders were instructed to describe the same business problem in order for the recipient to understand the problem and decide how to proceed. Eighty-three family business owners, managers, and employees received one message from a family member belonging to the same business and one message assigned at random from a nonfamily member working elsewhere (a stranger). The 83 message receivers were asked to complete instruments measuring their perceptions of the messages. Results and conclusions: Results suggested that the relational familiarity between communicators played a significant role in improving message effectiveness and message appropriateness. Sender likeability was also enhanced when family members correctly identified the source of the message. The findings suggest that family members can benefit from channel expansion, though not as many members as expected, and that complex problem and task descriptions were communicated using lean media (communication channels that inhibit sending messages infused with communicative cues) and are perceived as most effective when described by familiar others.

Research problem: For many organizations, high-quality technical information products for global audiences are becoming an increasingly important part of doing business. Component content management attempts to facilitate the creation of such information products. A growing number of technical communication groups are adopting the strategies, standards, and technologies of component content management. This integrative literature review examines the impacts of component content management on the quality of multilingual information products. Research questions: How are the impacts of component content management on multilingual quality conceptualized? How do best practices address the impacts of component content management on multilingual quality? Literature review: Two divides characterize component content management and multilingual quality. The divide between the academy and industry is marked by different levels of interest in quality, particularly its practical aspects. The divide between technical communication and technical translation and localization is defined by the lack of communication between the representatives of each field that leads to a narrower understanding of multilingual quality. Therefore, a comprehensive picture of the impacts of component content management on multilingual quality requires combining the perspectives of scholarly and industry authors in technical communication and technical translation and localization. Activity Theory provides an approach for bridging the divides and creating such a comprehensive picture. Methodology: To provide such a comprehensive picture, I systematically reviewed literature sources on component content management and multilingual quality in scholarly and trade sources in technical communication and technical translation and localization, then classified all selected publications by their relationships to the research questions, themes within them, and characteristics of the source. Results and conclusions: Contradictory conceptual understandings exist on the impacts of component content management on multilingual quality. While some sources praise benefits of component content management, particularly increased consistency and the promise to provide additional adaption possibilities, other sources focus on the challenges of using it, especially a lack of context, text segmentation, and human resources. Although best practices offer some suggestions for overcoming these challenges, the suggestions do not resolve them sufficiently and do not reconcile the contradiction between consistency and adaptation of information products based on the different expectations of audiences around the globe. This study is limited by the fact that it primarily focused on English language publications. Future research needs to be conducted collaboratively by stakeholders in academia and industry and from technical communication and technical translation and localization.

Research problem: Gauging the quality of product reviews through helpfulness votes is problematic for a variety of reasons. We examine potential characteristics of review quality that span review credibility, informativeness, and readability to contribute to better ways of assessing review quality. Research question: Do specific review characteristics improve reviewer users' perceptions of review quality? Literature review: Studies from information systems, electronic marketing and commerce, and technical and professional communication suggest that characteristics of reviews fall into three areas, each with specific characteristics of quality. Findings from these studies suggest the 11 characteristics of review quality within those three areas as potential contributors to review quality. The first area is credibility, a construct consisting (in part) of expertise; we tested these potential specific characteristics of credibility: an assertion of a relevant role, of use of a prior model, of other products in the brand, of a similar product, of having conducted research on the product, and of having tested the product. The second area is informativeness, which is a review's diagnosticity. We tested these potential specific characteristics: a general recommendation, a specific recommendation, a statement about the product's value, and a statement about the extent to which the product met expectations. The third area is readability, which is (in part) comfort of reading, and has this specific characteristic: the use of headings. Methodology: We conducted a quantitative study using a survey distributed though SurveyMonkey Audience, a service that samples from a pool of 30 million respondents. Using control and experimental versions of 11 product reviews, we gauged participants' perceptions of review quality on a five-point scale. We looked for significant differences in participants' perceptions of quality using Pearson's chi square. Results and conclusions: We received 829 responses to include in the analysis. We found the following significant at the p > 0.05 level: a statement about reviewer's prior experience with a similar product (credibility). We found the following significant at the p > 0.01 level: A statement about researching the product, for example, online research (credibility), a general recommendation about the product (informativeness), and formatting with headings (readability). We found the following significant at the p > 0.001 level: a statement about the extent to which the product met expectations (informativeness) and a specific recommendation about the product (informativeness). Using these results, companies can better locate quality reviews; reviewers can increase the quality and, therefore, salience of their reviews; and communication specialists can help reviewers write and revise reviews for improved quality. Future research on review quality could investigate other potential characteristics of credibility, informativeness, and readability.

Research problem: Although organizations have been exerting a significant effort to leverage policies and procedures to improve information security, their impact and effectiveness is under scrutiny as employees' compliance with information security procedures remains problematic. Research questions: (1) What is the role of information security climate (ISC) in cultivating individual's compliance with security policy? (2) Do individual affective and normative states mediate the effect of ISC to increase security policy compliance intention while thwarting employees' security avoidance? Literature review: Drawing upon Griffin and Neal's safety climate model, which states the effect of safety climate on individual safety behaviors that lead to specific performance outcomes, we develop an ISC model to empirically examine the efficacy of security climate in governing employee's policy compliance. The literature suggests that there could be practical reasons for employees not to observe the security policies and procedures. These go beyond the simple lack of use or negligence, and include rationalizing security violation, particularly in light of the fact that they are under pressure to get something done without delays in daily work. To empirically address such employee behavior, we employed the term, security avoidance in this study-an employee's deliberate intention to avoid security policies or procedures in daily work despite the need and opportunity to do so. Methodology: We surveyed IT users in South Korea about individuals' perception about various organizational/managerial information security practices in the work environment. Results and discussion: The results from 581 participants strongly support the fundamental proposition that the information security climate has a significant positive impact on employee's conformity with the security policy. The study also reveals that the security climate nurtures the employee's affective and cognitive states through affective commitment and normative commitment. These, in turn, mediate the influence of security climate on employee policy compliance by facilitating rule adherence among employees while, at the same time, inspiring self-adjusted behaviors to neutralize their deliberate intents of negligence. Overall, the findings support our view that the creation of strong security climate is the adequate alternative to a sanction-based deterrence to employees' security policy compliance, which limits the presence of security avoidance. The implications to theory are the multidimensional nature of ISC construct and its linkage to a systematic view of individual level information security activities. The implications to practice are the ISC's favorable role of discouraging employee's security avoidance while inducing the security policy compliance intention at the same time, given the limit of sanctions.

This study explores the characteristics of authors who have published in technical communication journals between 2008 and 2012 to generate insights into who is actively contributing to scholarship in the field. These insights drive a broader discussion regarding programmatic implications and interdisciplinary approaches to research. Research questions: (1) Who is publishing in technical communication journals? In which departments are they housed and in which departments did they receive their Ph.D. training? (2) What relationship exists between an author's departments (current and Ph.D.) and the publication venues he or she chooses? (3) What relationship exists between an author's department (current and Ph.D.) and the type of research he or she produces? (4) What relationship exists between an author's department (current and Ph.D.) and collaboratively authored articles? Also, is there a relationship between doctoral training outside the US and collaboratively authored articles? (5) Among authors with Ph.D.'s in technical communication, is there a relationship between doctoral program and research output (collaboratively authored articles and research method)? Literature review: All disciplines, especially maturing disciplines, must examine and evaluate the research its scholars produce in order to identify trends that signal growth and areas that require additional growth. Previous research indicates that departments in which people trained and where they work influence the research profiles of individuals, and by extension, the field. This is particularly true in technical communication, whose research features a plurality of methods, a positive attribute of the field. However, an uneven distribution of research methods used in the field also presents potential areas for growth. Methodology: A data set of 674 authors who have published in the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication (TPC), Technical Communication Quarterly, and Journal of Business and Technical Communication (JBTC), between 2008 and 2012 was coded for current department, Ph.D. department, department with a technical communication degree program, research method, and collaboratively authored articles. Data were analyzed using contingency table analysis and correspondence analysis. Results and discussion: Authors from English departments constitute nearly 30% of the sample; authors from information systems and technology departments and management, business, and economics departments made up more than 20% of the total sample. A little over 20% of the sample received a Ph.D. degree in technical communication. Authors from information systems and technology departments and management, business, and economics departments are highly associated with TPC. Authors from English departments and writing departments were associated with TCQ and JBTC. TC is associated with authors from education departments and human-centered design departments. Authors from information systems and technology departments and management, business, and economics departments were associated with surveys and experiments. Authors from English departments were associated with case study and mixed methods research. Non-US authors and ones from engineering, computer science, linguistics, information systems and technology, and management, business, and economics departments were all highly associated with collaboratively authored articles. These results provide insights into which disciplines are most influential and opportunities to consider the approaches and training of our diverse population of scholars in an effort to build a cohesive body of research. The results are limited by the time frame of the study, and future studies could examine a more extensive sample to examine shifts in authorship characteristics over time.

Research problem: In recent years, many businesses have become involved in internationalized projects, yet understanding the dynamics of engineering communication in virtual dispersed teams is limited. Research questions: How do the factors mentioned in the literature function in an international engineering project? Are there factors that enhance or constrain the work in an engineering setting that are not mentioned in previous studies? Literature review: Existing knowledge on the contextual factors that affect virtual international professional communication is mainly built on the study of the communication practices of students or business professionals who are not engineers. Results of that literature have identified factors that enhance communication for dispersed virtual teams (which include cross-cultural training, using appropriate communication technology, face-to-face communication opportunities, respect for partners, regularly scheduled meetings, a common language, a common discipline, and cross-cultural understandings though popular media). There are factors that challenge communication for dispersed virtual teams (which include differing cultural assumptions, differing cultural communication styles, US Government export control regulations, proximity and time issues, and differing levels of perceived power and influence). Methodology: This study involved observing international engineer meetings in the US and the UK and interviewing 19 engineers leading an international design team. The participants worked for the same international company with about half from the US and half in Great Britain. Results and discussion: Many of the factors identified in general professional communication studies held true for this context. But some features were unique to an engineering environment that the literature had not previously mentioned, including iplanning for and working with intercultural dispersed virtual engineering teams and that people need to consider many complexities of culture that affect communication practices. Because this study observed one team in the context of only two cultures, future research may determine whether these factors are more widely found in other teams, workplaces, and cultures. Future research may also determine the relative levels of influence of the contextual factors on international dispersed virtual engineering teams. In addition, the study of engineers learning to communicate in international settings may be illuminating.

Research problem: Collaborative writing has dramatically changed with the use of cloud-based tools, such as Google Docs. System quality-both functional (i.e., what services the system provides) and nonfunctional quality (i.e., how well the system provides the services)-influences user satisfaction with these tools. Research question: Do functional and nonfunctional quality influence user satisfaction in cloud-based systems that support collaborative writing? Literature review: The intersection of literature from collaborative writing and system quality presents the theoretical foundation for this study. The literature on collaborative writing suggests that technology facilitates and constrains collaborative writing, while the literature on cloud computing highlights the challenges in ensuring various aspects of quality. Furthermore, literature on system quality emphasizes the importance of the different facets of quality (i.e., functional and nonfunctional) and their impacts on user satisfaction. Methodology: We conducted a survey of 150 undergraduate students enrolled in an information systems course at a large urban university. Results: The results show that functional and nonfunctional quality play a critical role in shaping user satisfaction with cloud computing and that nonfunctional quality has a stronger impact than functional quality. Implications: To ensure satisfaction with cloud computing, organizations need to provide adequate development and maintenance resources to ensure both types of quality, and they need to recognize that nonfunctional quality plays a key role in shaping user satisfaction with cloud computing.

Research problem: The question: How Korean entrepreneurs in an entrepreneurship program revised their slide decks for their presentations (“pitches”) in response to professional communication genres representing feedback from potential stakeholders in their target markets is examined. Research questions: As entrepreneurs learn to pitch ideas to unfamiliar markets, how do they revise their slide decks for their pitches when interacting with other professional communication genres that represent the concerns of market stakeholders? Specifically, what changes do entrepreneurs make to the claims, evidence, and complexity of arguments in their pitches? Literature review: The professional communication literature demonstrates that the revision process tends to take place in documentation cycles where documents are set in interaction with each other. Yet such revision processes are not studied in detail in existing studies of entrepreneurial pitches in marketing and technology commercialization. Methodology: In this exploratory qualitative study, researchers textually analyzed 14 sets of five related document genres in the archives of an entrepreneurship program. These genres represented a full cycle of activity: application to the program, initial pitches, initial feedback from program personnel, detailed feedback from representative stakeholders in the target market, and revised pitches. Interviews and surveys of program personnel further contextualize the data. Results and conclusions: Entrepreneurs revised their claims and evidence based on their dialogue with their target market. Some of the entrepreneurs altered their slides to make more complex arguments rebutting stakeholders' concerns. These findings suggest that entrepreneurs engage in dialogue with their target markets, but their engagement tends to be guided by tacit, situated experience rather than through an explicit, systematized approach.

Research problem: Adding contextual information to a core message has been shown to be critical in improving communication quality, especially in computer mediated communication. This paper models how people contextualize messages in the face of changing communication complexity. Research question: Can changes in communication complexity that occur during the communication process explain and predict contextualization? Literature review: Theories of human communication and studies of computer supported collaboration suggest that communication complexity reflects potentially problematic conditions resulting from 1) the difference in perspective and context held by the collaborators; 2) the incompatibility between the message representation and the way it is interpreted and used by the receiver; and 3) the intensity of information exchanged between communicators. We use this definition as a basis of for developing a measure of cognitive communication complexity. The literature further suggests that higher communication complexity induces higher contextualization. Methodology: First, we conducted a pilot study to develop and validate measures of communication complexity. Second, we conducted a laboratory experiment, in which 258 participants working in pairs collaborated on a sixteen-step assembly task. They used a tailored system that structured each message as core (the essence of the message) and context (additional information that explains the core and the sender's perspective). We used unbalanced panel data analysis to examine the repeated measures of contextualization and communication complexity associated with each step of the task. Results and discussion: We found that collaborators respond to changes in communication complexity at the expense of higher collaborative effort. We offer a cost-benefit framework in which, at the step level, people contextualize to reduce the communication complexity, and at the task level, they additionally consider the impact of contextualization on task performance. The main limitation of this study was the need to structure the communication between collaborators, to control and measure contextualization. Future research can adapt and extend our measure of communication complexity to less structured communication.

"Higher Education in the Digital Age" (edited by William G. Bowen) is divided into two sections. The first section includes adaptations of Bowen's presentations at The Tanner Lectures at Stanford University in 2012. The second section includes discussion responses from respected colleagues, and Bowen's response to the same. This unique structure enables the reader to be involved as an insider to this debate - a witness not only to the author's assertions but also to the lively discourse that ensues in response. The reviewer feels this book is provocative in addressing pressing issues that can no longer be ignored. Bowen's assertion that the time at hand to begin a transformation is supported by research, and the data support the dire need for a resolution to the student debt crisis and productivity problem in higher education. The gaps in the research he presents, particularly involving MOOCs, invite technical researchers to take advantage of this timely opportunity, not only to continue the conversation but to seek solutions to the viability he proposes. Bowen,s concern that public opinion of higher education matters and his insistence that institutions and educators must come together to lead the change while they can is an important call to action for IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication readers in particular.

In "Online Education 2.0: Evolving, Adapting, and Reinventing Online Technical Education," editors Keith Grant-Davie and Kelli Cargile Cook investigated how online pedagogy and learning have changed and how have faculty, students, and programs evolved over the last ten years. The book reviewer feels this is an interesting collection of articles that addresses fiscal, technological, and theoretical questions to help audiences who are addressing a virtual landscape in which online education is expanding to include more schools, levels of education, and a more diverse population of students. It is a helpful text for a wide-variety of audiences - administrators, scholars, and online instructors - to help them understand where online instruction has been, and where it is headed. As one who advocated early for developing quality online education as an alternative to face-to-face instruction, the reviewer suggests that one read the text to garner new insights into training, mentoring, and practice, regardless of whether you are a seasoned online educator, a novice, or somewhere in between. Each of us has lessons to teach as well as to learn, and this text will help guide your understanding of how to navigate the virtual landscape.

Research problem: Both the function and the appearance of annual reports have changed over the last few decades. These multimodal reports now include many types of information that serve different functions. In this study, the effects of several information types on stakeholders' attitudes toward annual reports and the companies that published them are measured. Literature review: Not much is known about how stakeholders read annual reports. The literature is not conclusive on the relative importance of several information types in these reports. Most studies investigate the impact of part of the information in annual reports and ignore the combined impact of the information types. Whether the potential investors are more affected by the financial review, the future strategy narrative or by pictures, such as a picture of the CEO, is unknown. Methodology: An experiment (2 × 2 × 2 between subjects design) was conducted to test the effects of a good financial review versus a poor one, a good future strategy versus a poor one and a picture of the CEO smiling versus that with a serious facial expression. The effects on potential stakeholders' attitudes toward the information, on their attitudes toward investing in the company, and on their perceptions of the corporate reputation are measured. Results and conclusion: The results show significant effects of all three information types. A good financial review, a good future strategy, and a serious facial expression have beneficial effects on the potential stakeholders' attitudes and on the corporate reputation. More important, however, the results show that the information types should be aligned with each other. A smiling facial expression, for example, is only beneficial if the content of the other information types is good.

Research problem: Corporate websites have been the subject of several research endeavors, and most of the research has focused on usability and interactivity. Since the emergence of the term Web 2.0, more websites have added social features to their base functionality, and this new type of interactivity has yet to be investigated. This study explores the research evolution in this field. Research questions: How has research on interactivity in corporate websites evolved? How can prior research be categorized? In each category, which of the research challenges has little or no research support? Literature review: Our approach to the topic is guided by four major streams of research-(1) the diffusion of innovations theory; (2) the technology, organization, and environment framework; (3) the institutional theory; and (4) the model from Iacovou et al. The analysis of the evolution of corporate websites showed three common types of corporate websites classified by their purpose and interaction intensity. Corporate websites hereby often benefit from the inclusion of design principles and patterns induced by the term Web 2.0. While examining the characteristics of corporate websites, usability and interactivity were found to be most important with reference to positive user response. Therefore, we clarified the concept of web-based interaction and reviewed the research on consumer response. Methodology: To gain a deeper understanding of the evolution of research on the interactivity in corporate websites, our study conducted a systematic and exhaustive literature review in which we identified and categorized several research issues. We conducted a qualitative analysis of 166 articles and classified relevant contributions by research issue and category. Results and conclusion: Among the identified research issues concerning interactivity that facilitates communication of the organization, only relationship management emerged as a dominant issue. Research issues concerning interactivity that facilitates e-commerce could be found most and they tend to focus on two main areas: decision support systems and recommendation agents on sales-oriented e-commerce websites and loyalty, satisfaction, and trust as key variables. Research issues concerning interactivity for interpersonal communication mainly focus on the user's individual motivation and successive behavior, and contain many different references to computer-mediated interaction and online communities. Research issues in the field of designing for interactivity discuss interface design questions and focus on numerous website characteristics and their impact. Given those issues, we make suggestions for future research that would explore the organizational behavior related to innovation diffusion on corporate websites.

Research problem: Many Asian universities have begun reforms to enhance educational competitiveness in our globalizing economy. This study aims to ascertain the status of English communication education and English-medium instruction at a Korean engineering school and to offer workable suggestions for English communication training for Korean graduate engineering students. Research questions: Should English communication education be offered at the graduate level in Korean engineering schools? How could English communication education be improved for Korean graduate engineering students? Literature review: Studies of English communication education for graduate engineering students indicate that English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students have English needs to publish internationally and English needs for English-medium instruction classes and for after graduation. Furthermore, individual assistance and e-learning programs might strengthen English communication education and academic writing for EFL graduate engineering students. Methodology: An evaluation study was conducted at an institution that has been leading the wave of English as the language of instruction. We collected data from documents as well as through surveys of faculty and students in graduate engineering programs. Results and discussion: The study was conducted at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. The results showed that students' English fluency is critical for the success of using English as a medium of instruction. To facilitate this fluency, universities need to establish an English communication center that provides a comprehensive, systematic approach to English language training. Faculty also need the services of such centers. It is also advised that a thesis writing course be customized according to students' actual writing and communication abilities and enhanced with collaboration between engineering faculty and English education faculty.

Research problem: This study explores the use of bibliometric indicators to objectively evaluate IEEE scientific journals from two different perspectives: (1) journal impact and diffusion and (2) the academic reputation of journal authors. Research questions: (1) Which journals are better at selecting articles with high scientific impact (measured by average citations per article), and publishing authors with strong reputations (measured by h-indices)? (2) Does the impact of journal articles correlate positively with the reputations of their authors? and (3) Can bibliometric indicators provide a simple way for journal editors to monitor journal performance in a manner complementary to traditional ISI impact factor (IF)? Literature review: This paper reviews literature on citation analysis, a bibliometric method of measuring impact based on the number of times a work is cited, and explains such bibliometric indicators as CPP, Hirsch index, and IF which measure the impact of a journal, and introduces a new indicator called h-spectrum to objectively measure the reputation of a journal's author group. Methodology: This quantitative study performed citation analysis on 250,000 authors in 110 IEEE journals using citation statistics from the Google Scholar, Web of Science, and Scopus databases to construct the h-spectrum indicator. The authors used automated filtering techniques to exclude questionable author data. Results and conclusions: The first phase of analysis indicated significant differences among IEEE publications in journal impact, and found that the h-index and CPP were suitable for evaluating journals except in their most recent five years where annual rankings are proposed instead. The second phase of analysis found that h-spectra distributions of author reputation differ among journals in a single year, and are generally stable for a single journal over five years. Maps were constructed to locate journals graphically based on the complementary indicators of impact and reputation, and to show changes in impact and reputation over time. The maps indicated that journals with high impact tend to have authors with high reputations but the opposite is not necessarily true. Suggestions were made to explain different combinations of high and low impact and reputation for journals. The use of maps complements IF and provides a simple tool to monitor journal reputation at the time of most recent publication. The study is limited by assumptions about the value of citations, the reliability of search engine statistics, and the homogeneity of IEEE journal citation practices, as well as the failure to account for coauthors, article age, and authors who publish multiple times per year in the same journal. Future research could examine non-IEEE journals and normalize subfields within IEEE journals to avoid favoring fields that use more citations.

Research problem: The project management of virtual teams differs from that of traditional ones. Traditional project risks, such as complexity, the uncertainty of factors influencing the project, and the high interdependency of project tasks must be managed alongside changed temporal, geographic, and cultural dimensions. Only a few studies have investigated the effect of critical technological issues, such as wrong tool selection or limited internet access on performance as well as team and team member satisfaction in virtual work settings. Research questions: How do critical technology-related issues concerning the selection and use of web-based tools influence the performance and satisfaction of virtual project teams? Literature review: Instead of categorizing virtual teams as a type of team that contrasts with traditional or face-to-face teams, the focus has shifted to virtualness as a characteristic present in all teams. Project teamwork is often integrated in university degree programs in order to prepare students appropriately for real-life projects. While these student teams are often not geographically spread across countries, they have a high degree of virtualness because of their diverse team composition, the necessity for working at different places, and the limited face-to-face meeting opportunities. Performance, effectiveness, and satisfaction are central issues in the evaluation and measurement of project teams: Team performance is often evaluated on the basis of acceptance of a specified output by a customer. Through specific mediating processes, team performance can alternatively be assessed by inquiring the team's perception on their performance. Effectiveness can be defined as the achievement of clear goals and objectives and it is often related to the team's performance. Finally, satisfaction can be defined as having three dimensions-satisfaction with the team, the satisfaction of meeting customer needs, and general satisfaction with extrinsic rewards and work. Technology use is substantial for distributed teamwork and can be assessed by the extent to which it supports communication, collaboration, and project-management tasks. Methodology: Fifteen teams were observed and interviewed over a two-year period. The resulting data were analyzed using a Grounded Theory approach, which revealed how the selection and use of tools for communication, collaboration, and project management in the different project activities influenced the team's performance. Results and conclusions: Our results contribute to practice by providing a number of guidelines for the management of virtual teams as well as knowledge required by companies wishing to launch projects with virtual teams. Differing performances of teams can, in many cases, be attributed to such conditions as: internet availability and bandwidth; lack of training for certain tools; the selection and appropriate use of tools; integrated tool support for task management; as well as the promotion of transparency about progress made. It was found that restrictions in internet access of even a single member within a team limited the team's technological choices, which affected the team's performance.