This article proposes the Canon to Code (C2C) Auditing Framework for evaluating generative (artificial intelligence) AI output through classical rhetoric, arguing that AI's characteristic failures—guessing instead of knowing, politeness instead of credibility, and confidence instead of judgment—revisit problems that rhetoric has addressed since antiquity. Developed using a rulemaking methodology and drawing on classical rhetorical theory, this framework presents 10 auditing rules that operationalize rhetorical principles into evaluation criteria for AI-generated content, focusing on accuracy, transparency, and accountability. It offers content auditors, technical communicators, and compliance professionals a theoretically grounded method for distinguishing AI output that meets audience needs from output that simulates credibility through pattern matching.

This study investigates how chronic pain is represented in widely used pain assessment scales. Through a thematic analysis, four overarching themes are identified: pain is framed as a linear continuum, depicted as a progressive bodily obstacle, normalized to a baseline of zero, and characterized as a predictable condition. The design of these scales oversimplifies the complexities of chronic pain into a linear narrative that can potentially marginalize patient experiences and lead to treatment delays. This research advocates for a shift toward patient experience design (PXD) to develop more nuanced, human-centered assessment tools that better capture the fluidity of chronicity.

Since its release in late 2022, ChatGPT and subsequent generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools have raised a wide variety of questions and concerns for the field of technical communication: How will these tools be incorporated into professional settings? How might we appropriately integrate these tools into our research and teaching? In this review, we examine research published in 2023–2024 addressing these questions ( N = 28). Overall, we find preliminary evidence that GAI tools can positively impact student writing and assessment; they also have the potential to assist with some aspects of academic and medical research and writing. However, there are concerns about their reliability and the ethical conundrums raised when they are used inappropriately or when their outputs cannot be distinguished from humans. More research is needed for evidence-based teaching and research strategies as well as policies guiding ethical use. We offer suggestions for new research avenues and methods.

We use a continuous improvement model to evaluate an information design assignment by analyzing 120 student drafts and finals alongside instructor feedback. Using data from across sections ( N = 118), we illustrate a process focused on improving student learning that other technical and professional communication program administrators and faculty can follow, while also offering insights into ways programs can assist a contingent labor force with improving pedagogical practice. This study provides insights into assignment design through data-driven evidence and reflective work that is necessary to help continuously improve a service course and to assist students in meeting learning outcomes.

Work in industrial contexts is confronted with various risks, which are further amplified by the trend toward Industry 4.0. Approaches are needed to examine safety communication (SC) in such changing environments. Existing studies focus on individual SC means and quantitative evaluation measures. This article proposes a qualitative approach for analyzing SC with which a process chain in a metal-working company is investigated. The results reveal that SC is implemented as a complex system of communicative means. Weaknesses in this system entail several problems at the level of both workplaces and process chains. Due to a lack of digitalization, SC does not meet the requirements of Industry 4.0. Several task areas for communication professionals are identified in optimizing SC. These include content preparation for existing SC means according to work contexts and related tasks, creating digital SC content, and increasing the companies’ resilience to novel risks.

The rhetorical challenges and deliberations of scientific authors writing climate change assessment reports have received scant scholarly attention. As our interviews with 21 authors reveal, authors engage with multiple stakeholders who bring diverse scientific, political, economic, and cultural interests and perspectives. They must remain aware of politically motivated climate change denial and scientific illiteracy while remaining committed to producing policy relevant rather than policy prescriptive statements. These challenges lead to intense rhetorical negotiations over the lexical and visual features of a document they hope will deflect denial and contribute to meaningful policy solutions.

Rhetorical theory has frequently relied on metaphors of place and positioning as heuristics to build better arguments. This article utilizes one such metaphor, that of stasis theory, as a method by which we might change the terrain of the conversation surrounding the climate crisis. As an example, the author does a rhetorical analysis of a recent agricultural report from the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment and finds that, rather than using traditional questions of conjecture and quality, the authors of the report focus on questions of procedure and definition to reframe the discussion surrounding the climate crisis. Drawing from the rhetoric in this report, the author suggests that technical communicators might similarly produce more fruitful conversations around the climate crisis if they focus on what to do (procedure) and redefining the crisis as a local issue (definition).

Cybervetting, or the review of job applicants’ social media accounts, is a common practice. This study investigates the use of a typology to increase students’ self-awareness by asking them to assess their social media presence. The majority of Facebook users concluded they post content that is appropriate for potential employers, while most Twitter users concluded they post questionable content. Yet most Facebook users restricted access to their accounts, while most Twitter users left them public. When subsequently asked about the prospect of changing posting behavior, students with questionable content were more open to change, supporting the potential viability of the typology.

This study details a method for mHealth app development and user experience design (UX) evaluation, which generates a comprehensive list of stakeholder-users, acknowledges UX barriers, advocates multiple methods, and argues that developers should address the UX needs of each stakeholder-user in a complex health-care system. A case study of a research project on an mHealth app for women who are considering prevention of or treatment for osteoporosis assists to elaborate and define the method. To find any measure of success, a fully functional app for older users should be integrated into the entire health-care system.

In increasingly online higher education environments, instructors must develop positive and community-oriented learning environments, equivalent to, if different from, face-to-face learning experiences. Connectivism and communities of inquiry are complementary theories that facilitate the design and development of online learning and enable online learners to connect with peers. This article discusses two pedagogical interventions that encourage connectivism and foster communities of inquiry in online technical communication programs: (a) a face-to-face orientation workshop at the beginning of an online program and (b) a peer-review activity in a research methods graduate course. The article explains the development, deployment, and evaluation of the activities.

The small amount of work on workplace writing assessment has focused almost entirely on student readiness for professional writing or included case studies of employer expectations for new writers. While these studies provide insight into current pedagogies for technical writing and writing instruction in general, the main conclusion to be drawn from them is the unsatisfactory number of recent graduates who display workplace readiness. In this article, we explore writing assessment research in both the academy and the workplace and attempt to identify ways in which the academy’s assessment practices lead, lag behind, or simply differ from writing assessment in the workplace. This comparison will serve to identify not only where the academy might improve pedagogy in its curriculum for technical communication in order to best prepare students for workplace writing but also where the workplace might learn from the academy to improve its own hiring and training procedures for technical writers. In this case study, we used Neff’s approach to grounded theory to categorize rater feedback according to a ranking system and then used statistical analysis to compare writer performance. We found that the direct test method yields the most predictive results when raters combine tacit knowledge with a clearly defined rubric. We hope that the methods used in this study can be replicated in future studies to yield further results when exploring workplace genres and what they might teach us about our own pedagogical practice.

When games are approached as a pedagogical methodology, the homologies between games and technical communication are highlighted: pedagogy that teaches people to play and succeed within certain confines; classroom assessment that provides meaningful feedback to encourage self-improvement; instructional design that incorporates gaming theory and game design principles; and usability to ensure optimum success. This article provides an overview of these topics for instructors to consider when designing a technical writing course as a game.

A corpus of current editions of statistics textbooks was assessed to compare aspects and levels of readability for the topics of measures of center, line of fit, regression analysis, and regression inference. Analysis with lexical software of these text selections revealed that the large corpus can be described well by three index variables that summarize the lexical and grammatical complexity of the textbook excerpts. Assessment of those three variables indicates that substantial differences exist in the readability of the topics within textbooks with respect to lexical and grammatical complexity. This analysis suggests that general readability of introductory statistics topics within textbooks varies substantially and it is a recommendation that instructors: (1) be prepared to provide additional support for topics that are more grammatically and lexically complex, and (2) be aware that they can input their instructional materials into LexTutor VP or Coh-metrix as a quick screen for possible readability issues.

Several government agencies are seeking quality improvement in environmental policy documents by asking for the implementation of Plain Language (PL) guidelines. Our mixed-methods research examines whether the application of certain PL guidelines affects the comprehension and perceptions of readers of environmental policy documents. Results show that the presence of pronouns affects inferential comprehension of environmental impact statement summaries (EIS summaries), but that the effect varies with the reader's education level. Further, headings in question phrasing affect a reader's perception of familiarity and reliability of EIS summaries. A reader's perceptions of EIS summaries and attitudes toward the organizations creating the documents are also affected by overall design features. PL guidelines on the use of pronouns and question headings are not fully supported by our research and need further validation with regard to comprehension. This article ends with a call for further research.

The tools and techniques utilized in the technical communications profession are constantly improving and changing. Information Technology (IT) organizations devote the necessary resources to equip and train engineering, marketing, and sales teams, but often fail to do so for technical documentation teams. Many IT organizations tend to view documentation as an afterthought; however, consumers of IT products frequently base their purchasing decisions on the end user documentation's content, layout, and presentation. Documentation teams play a unique role in IT organizations as they help to build and create a public identity through end user manuals and the corporate website, as well as maintain intellectual knowledge through knowledge sharing and management. The technical communicator “ makes sense” of complex engineering specifications by creating user-friendly manuals for the layman. The practitioner who compiles and records this complex information is a valuable resource to any IT organization. Therefore, on-going training for technical documentation teams is essential to stay competitive in the fast-paced technical market. Technical communicators in IT organizations who only write end user manuals are becoming a rarity. Research indicates a marked trend toward technical writers in multiple roles and varied responsibilities that include web design and development, and business systems analysis functions. Although these added roles and responsibilities require training on some of the newer software tools and more complex programming tools, technical communicators are experiencing difficulty keeping pace with these tools. This article discusses technical documentation teams in IT organizations and provides an on-going training assessment to help technical documentation managers identify their team's strengths and weaknesses. In addition, measures and results from a study conducted at eight IT organizations, are provided to show the effect of how the integration of on-going training for documentation teams enhances individual competency and improves team performance.

A recent British national intelligence-based Assessment (2002) illustrates how one government agency communicated science to serve its policy goals. This article analyzes some of the values that drive science, public policy, and national intelligence, and traces how those values affected the Assessment writers' goals and communication strategies. Through close reading of the Assessment's foreword and first section, this study shows how the writers shaped scientific and technical information to satisfy their disciplines' values and to naturalize their “proper perspective” on the policy case. Further analysis of similar documents will extend current research on scientific rhetoric, multidisciplinary collaborative writing, and public communication.

To teach students how to write for the workplace and other professional contexts, technical writing teachers often assign writing tasks that reflect real-life communication contexts, a teaching approach that is grounded in the field's contextualized understanding of genre. This article argues to fully embrace contextualized literacy and better teach workplace writing, technical writing teachers also need to contextualize how they assess student writing. To this end, this article examines some of workplaces' best assessment practices and critically integrates them into an introductory technical writing classroom through a method called student-centered assessment instruments. This method engages students, as workplaces engage employees, in the assessment process to identify local requirements for writing tasks. Aligned with theory and practice, this method is not only an effective classroom assessment method, but becomes an integrated part of students' genre-learning process within and beyond the classroom.

A comparative evaluation of two user guides—the document traditionally used by a company and a model document designed on the basis of research results and recommendations—was carried out using a number of complementary approaches focusing on the user. The quality and suitability of these documents for the target audience were assessed in terms of content, structure, presence of certain organizational devices (such as headings) and pictures included. The results revealed that the model document was more attractive, more efficient, and better adapted to users' needs, thanks to its modular organization (being structured according to “functions”), a large number of pictures, the presence of headings, and rationalization of the vocabulary used.

Over a period of 10 years, we have developed a sustainable process of online portfolio assessment that demonstrates both reliability and validity, using both qualitative and quantitative measures. The sustainable cycle is that, each semester, we assess a random sampling of the students' work that they have posted, as per our instructions, in an online portfolio. During the reading, the faculty score the documents for 11 variables, including writing, content, audience awareness, and document design. We achieved validity by a modified online Delphi that led to a redefinition of the construct of technical communication itself; we achieved reliability by adjudication resulting in adjacent scores. The results of our assessment meet the requirements of ABET and result in a continual cycle of improvement for our technical communication curriculum. Results from three semesters show an improving correlation between the course grade and the overall, holistic portfolio score.

This study investigates whether Iconic Linkage—the use of the identical wording to present the same information recurring in a text—can improve the usability of user guides. Iconic Linkage is a writing strategy that potentially allows users to work more quickly and effectively and which promotes better retention of information. The usefulness of Iconic Linkage was tested in a laboratory-based usability study that combined: 1) objective task-based evaluation; and 2) users' subjective evaluations of a software program used in recording parliamentary debates. A post-test survey designed to test subjects' retention of information contained in the user guides was also administered. The study shows that Iconic Linkage significantly improved usability of the user guide: in all tasks, subjects worked more effectively and made fewer mistakes; while in the three timed tasks, subjects completed the tasks much more quickly. Subjects also gave higher ratings for the software and their retention of information was noticeably improved.

Individual students in two different sections of an undergraduate civil engineering laboratory were tasked with preparing three professional-quality laboratory reports. The teaching assistant and/or instructor used established criteria to grade the first two reports prepared by students in one section. The first two reports prepared by students in the other section were peer evaluated by assigned fellow students within the same laboratory section using identical grading criteria. The peer evaluated section had a higher class average than the teaching assistant/instructor graded section on the fist two reports. The third report prepared by students from both sections was graded by a professional educator/architect without knowledge of a student's class section. The peer evaluation students also had a higher class average on the third report, suggesting that the peer evaluation process may have positively contributed to those students' writing skills.

Students in business communication classes are expected to write various types of documents. Research has illustrated that undergraduate student writing skills have not improved even though most states have begun writing proficiency tests at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. By the time students enroll in college, students are expected to be proficient writers. In some cases, this is true. In far too many cases, students continue to need writing development. In business communication classes, these weaknesses cannot be ignored. This article's purpose is to give guidance to instructors to motivate their students to produce better written products. The difficulty is how to do this most effectively. The authors present some ideas on how to improve student writing through some creative teaching and evaluation strategies.

The antecedents of literary autobiography as we know it today emerged during the 17th century against a backdrop of the rise of empirical science and inductive method. An arguably older form of autobiography—the portfolio—has, unlike the literary biography, languished on the periphery of academia during our time. While it should not be controversial to say that possession of an heuristic bent is one mark of a successful education (since learning how to think, that is learning how to be open, alert, engaged, is the fundamental mission of the student), the portfolio has been ignored in part because of its modern connotation as a ‘marketing’ tool but perhaps more significantly because as a heuristic methodology it is a threat to the centrality of the pedagogue. I argue that the portfolio deserves at very least a re-evaluation throughout academic (to say nothing of quotidian) life as an indispensable tool of the spirit of pedagogy. Like the autobiography, it is validated by the belief that gathering data or details about individual lives has to precede drawing general conclusions or seeing any overarching patterns.

Assessment continues to be an important issue for technical communicators in both practitioner and academic contexts. In this article, we investigate methods of program assessment used by corporate learning sites and we profile value add methods as a new way to both construct and evaluate academic programs in technical communication. Our goal is to introduce value added assessment methods as one way to supplement and expand current methods of program assessment. The article initially reviews Return on Investment (ROI) indicators as a widely used model for assessing programs. However, we are critical of these indicators, suggesting that they are biased against technical communication in both practitioner and academic contexts. The article then examines and critiques assessment methods from corporate training environments. These include methods employed by corporate universities and value added process-based assessment methods. The second half of the article profiles value added methods by applying them in a brief assessment of a technical communications certificate program. We conclude that while the program uses ROI indicators as a marketing device, the value the program brings and adds to its university is the “portal” it creates for university and business community collaboration. This value cannot be fully demonstrated solely through the use of ROI indicators. The article then discusses the kinds of programmatic negotiations value added processes require within university contexts that may impose non-value added activities on departments and programs. The article concludes by critically examining the appropriateness of corporate assessment methods for academic contexts.

What is the influence of demographic variables such as gender and educational level on the reader feedback collected under the plus-minus method? To answer this question, an analysis was made of the problems detected in four public information brochures. The average amount of feedback per participant did not vary among the four brochures, but the severity of the problems did. Male participants mentioned more problems than female participants, but the problems detected by female participants were on average more severe. Highly educated participants detected more problems than participants with a lower level of education. No differences in problem types mentioned were found between male and female participants, and only one difference was found between the two educational levels: Highly educated participants focused more strongly on the structuring of information. In general, brochure characteristics had more effect on the types of feedback collected than the two demographic participant characteristics.

This article examines the communicative categories and linguistic features of university textbook prefaces. The textbook preface is a highly interactive genre, with a double purpose: informative and promotional. The analysis of the genre moves and of their realization reveals that the preface is used by the author both to help the audience use the book and to convince them of the value of the book. This twofold purpose accounts for the most relevant features of prefaces: the frequent use of textual metadiscourse and the pervasive presence of evaluation. The criteria used in the preface to evaluate the textbook are related to the audience's expectations about introductory textbooks: novelty, usefulness, accessibility, comprehensiveness, importance, and interest.

As proposed in the classic work by Hervey Cleckley, M.D.— The Mask of Sanity—a psychopath typically meets sixteen diagnostic criteria. Every one of them applies to Richard Hickock as he is revealed by Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, a nonfiction novel about the murder of Kansas farmer Herbert W. Clutter and his family forty years ago. It transcends the boundaries of traditional journalism by closely examining the entire constellation of antisocial personality traits that Hickock exhibits. Drawn in large part from jailhouse interviews, Capote's portrait of Hickock breathes life into the psychiatric literature, thus rendering intelligible the mental evaluation provided by the physician who examined the accused in preparation for his upcoming trial. In so doing, Capote's best-selling masterpiece serves as a case study of a psychopath, one that conforms to established medical authority while maintaining its popular appeal.

Are technical writers able to predict the results of a reader-focused text evaluation? In this article we report a study with fifteen technical writers, who were asked to point out the reader problems in a public information brochure. The brochure was also evaluated with thirty readers from the target audience (using a combination of the plus-minus method, a questionnaire, and user protocols). The results of both kinds of text evaluation show little overlap. The technical writers only predicted a small proportion of the reader feedback, and produced a lot of new problem detections. In addition, there was little agreement among the technical writers with regard to their problem detections.

In learning how to write, one has to cope with many demands on language proficiency, organization skills, and intellectual ability. A checklist of what is required can help to clarify all these demands and to turn them into manageable items or units for practice, implementation, and evaluation. The skills involved in designing and applying checklists resemble those required for dealing with the writing tasks on campus and/or at work. The focus of this article is on using checklists to improve the skills of one kind of writing—the report, among students from two faculties in a tertiary institute. The reports are for different purposes, situations, and readers. The article will discuss the different approaches in adopting a checklist to facilitate the report-writing process. It will highlight using students' work or authentic materials as an input to their own learning and helping them to integrate the skills learned with their work on the campus and in the workplace.

Evaluation of Samuel Chandler Earle's 1911 presentation to the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education demonstrates Earle's role as a key player in the shift of a technical writing course which combined both the goals of an engineering curriculum with the ultimate, real-world needs of the graduated engineer. Earle's Tufts Experiment, discussed in his paper, “English in the Engineering School at Tufts College” [1], would not only provide the impetus for a decade of discussion among engineering and English educators, but would provide, in part, the impetus for the Committee on English, a committee Earle would chair, charged with studying engineering English offerings in the United States.

Although there is much literature that describes collaborative writing projects in undergraduate courses, little is reported about such projects for graduate students. This article reports the results of a collaborative writing project in a graduate course in usability testing. Because the graduate students were sophisticated practitioners in career positions in technical and professional communication, the instructor made the assumption that the normal requirements of journal checks, conferences, and self- and group-assessment tools would not be needed. The results proved otherwise. An analysis of the two teams' efforts—both product and process—establishes the need for structure and guidance for graduate collaborative writing projects, regardless of the audience's professional experience.

For three years, the School of Business explored writing across the curriculum (WAC) approaches for developing written communication skills of undergraduate business majors. In selected classes, instructors stressed links between understanding concepts and being able to write clearly about them, improved design of assignments, and improved feedback to students. Instructors participating in this study concluded that a WAC approach improved the quality of student writing and the applications of course concepts. They also concluded that these improvements carried over to subsequent courses. Students reported using more care in revising drafts and more attention overall, to writing in certain settings. Their attention peaked when the instructor emphasized writing. A minority of students maintained, however, that writing should be evaluated only in writing classes taught by English faculty and that evaluation of writing should not be used to determine the grades they receive on assignments or for the course itself.

Evaluation of five editions of John M. Lannon's Technical Writing (1979–1991), one of the top-selling technical writing texts available to educators today, demonstrates not only where technical communication has been, but also where it is going. Lannon's book (and his comments in an interview) begins to shed some light on how one man's textbook on technical communication responded to social conditions in the 80s.

This article describes the design and evaluation of a formal writing assessment program within a technical writing course. Our purpose in this base-line study was to evaluate student writing at the conclusion of the course. In implementing this evaluation, we addressed fundamental issues of sound assessment: reliability and validity. Our program may encourage others seeking to assess educational outcomes in technical writing courses.

Technical writing will become increasingly important to the nation's engineering interests in the 21st century. To meet a national agenda of competitiveness, writing program administrators must build courses and programs that are sensitive to unique institutional perceptions about writing. By means of a quantitative and qualitative methodology, the present study describes the perceptions of technical writing held by department heads at a technological university. Using a combined survey method and structured interview process, we investigate how department chairs felt about the contents, instruction, and assessment of a technical writing course. We also investigate perceptions about writing products and processes. Based on our experiences with the survey, we call for writing program administrators to study the institutional context for courses and programs in technical writing.

This article reviews previous research on the effects of certain structural cues, called signals, that affect a reader's comprehension of expository prose. It concludes that the inconsistent results of many studies may be due to inadequate methodologies that have failed to control for confounding variables, such as text length and difficulty, reader familiarity with the topic, and timing of comprehension tests. Further, accepted signal types (headings, logical connectives, and previews) have not been sufficiently examined for their individual effects, perhaps creating unidentified disordinal interactions that could preclude the possibility of researchers identifying significant effects. This article concludes with recommendations for more valid research methodology to be used in prose assessment studies. The next issue of this journal will present Part II of this article, which details a new study of signaling effects for readers of expository prose, a study that is based on the refined methodology suggested in this article.

Scientists and engineers have to present technical information effectively. But when they do it, they face language difficulties which are beyond formal grammar as taught at school. To overcome this problem, we designed a systematic course for technical writing aimed at breaking such language barriers by planned channeling of the scientific message. The course was designed to improve the communication skills of scientists and engineers. In keeping with this goal effective writing criteria were defined and formal presentation conventions were described. Because Hebrew is the common language in Israel, problems of Hebrew structures were presented. The massive infiltration of vocabulary and syntactic elements from foreign languages into scientists' Hebrew style were addressed. An evaluation apparatus was also applied and future prospects of the course were discussed.

This article describes a computer-based writing assistant called REVISE, which implements some “Plain English” guidelines in an easy-to-use, efficient computerized tool. Some existing computer-based writing systems are reviewed and some problems with these systems are discussed, particularly in the area of the human-computer interface. The article describes the design principles that formed the basis of REVISE and how REVISE improves upon some of the difficulties noted in the existing systems. A preliminary evaluation of the effectiveness of REVISE is described. Some limitations of REVISE are discussed as are directions for future research and development on computer-based writing aids.

The computer's ability to store and process large volumes of material can be very helpful in writing criticism and evaluation. By using this technological capability, evaluative decisions made by an instructor can be processed quickly and transformed into typewritten commentary. This article describes a method for storing anticipated instructional comments in computer memory and retrieving those comments for the purpose of providing both evaluative and reinforcing feedback to students. In this manner, the computer aids the instructor by improving the speed of encoding those comments into written form.

To evaluate Technical Communication faculty requires understanding of the distinctive nature of the research, teaching, and service performed by faculty in the field. This article documents the work situations and accomplishments of a cadre of twenty-four accomplished faculty members in Technical Communication. The study group, identified by a prior survey of 275 people in technical writing, composition, and rhetoric, provides an empirical basis for defining the kinds and quantities of work that currently can be expected in the field. The article thus helps to provide empirically-based guidelines and criteria for evaluation. Included also is a discussion of other relevant research on faculty evaluation.

Proponents of computerized text-analysis (CTA) systems like Bell Laboratories' Writer's Workbench contend that the computer's analysis of a text's surface features can help students become better writers and editors. Several colleges and universities have already integrated the new technology into their writing programs, and others will consider doing so in the future. Teachers of technical writing, however, ought to investigate carefully the capabilities and limitations of CTA before applying it to the technical writing classroom. Not even the most sophisticated of today's computers can detect the basic grammar and punctuation errors that bedevil student writers. Moreover, the computer's evaluation of a text's readability and style is untrustworthy and lacks a sound theoretical and pedagogical foundation; indeed, the machine's quantitative-based analysis of writing style might do some students more harm than good. Finally, there is no empirical evidence that CTA helps students become better writers.

Each semester, undergraduate technical writing students at The University of Texas at Arlington learn to adapt and present written material orally and visually by participating in a three-or four-day simulated professional meeting. Each student gives a ten-minute oral presentation, followed by a five-minute question-and-answer period. Presentations are grouped in panels of five papers; each panel is moderated by a session chairperson. Students receive copies of the schedule and presentation abstracts prior to the opening sessions. Presentations are evaluated by the students and the instructor for technical content, visuals, and delivery using a standardized evaluation checklist. Students learn to analyze and speak to a heterogeneous audience; to distinguish the strengths and weaknesses of presentations and visuals; and to convey assessments to others in a professional manner.

To teach an in-house public speaking course, the instructor defined the purposes of the course to: 1) make available the training in the skills needed to make an effective presentation, 2) select the effective visual aids to be used in the presentation, 3) learn effective techniques of body language, 4) organize facts and ideas for the presentation, 5) construct the presentation for maximum impact, 6) analyze an audience, 7) establish rapport with the audience and keep its attention, and 8) improve speech, gestures, delivery, and timing. In addition, the instructor must consider the following aspects of the course: the schedule, the size of the class, the number of sessions, the texts, the methods of instruction, and the evaluation of the course. Included are the course of study and the assignments.

A specification for a material thing is an accumulation of statements of characteristics of that thing. Each statement must contain information about the method of evaluation of the characteristic. The nature of the characteristic governs the form of its statement, but this form may be modified by the nature of the parent document or by house rules.

Current research in the plain language movement has failed to establish definitive criteria for document comprehensibility. Analysis of conventional approaches to comprehensibility assessment reveals a dichotomy of values, one objective, the other subjective. Because these two approaches have fallen short of providing any cohesive frame of reference, the author proposes that future research efforts be directed into a potentially supplementary one: document legibility analysis. Legibility is integrally related to the concept of comprehensibility. Because legibility analysis provides a point of synthesis for the objective and subjective modes of traditional research, it may also provide new insight into the delineation of factors affecting document comprehensibility.

This paper discusses a method to improve the oral communication competencies of technological students that has been utilized successfully at the University of Missouri-Rolla, the main scientific/engineering school of the University of Missouri system. Methods of individual instruction are explored, including personal assessment of strengths and weaknesses, individualization of course goals, time management, and the reduction of communication anxiety. Methods of group instruction are also detailed, including different types of oral presentations the technologist might be expected to make, building a professional attitude, the professional portfolio, and out-of-class speaking experience. Two premises form the basis for these methods. First, that a strong individual approach will significantly increase competencies in oral communication while reducing anxiety. And second, that emphasizing a professional attitude will encourage the student to work to his capacity in improving his competencies, and will prepare him to be a more effective professional.

This is an evaluation of the undergraduate technical communication major in the Department of Rhetoric, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, 1979. Three audiences received the questionnaire: technical communication graduates, potential employers, and members of the Society for Technical Communication. The questionnaire was designed to determine perceptions of technical communication courses, rank-ordering of competency areas, and listing courses that should be required for all technical communication majors. The results are reported and discussed in this article.

Phoenix area personnel managers regarded all of a selected list of topics representing different aspects of writing as important; however, physical layout was judged to be the least important relatively. The most important problems in written communication were related to organization, contents, and spelling. Physical layout, typing, and punctuation were rated as least important. Formal procedures for assessing writing skill of potential employees were regarded as only moderately important for the recent college graduate and the experienced manager. The managers suggested that writing skill (or a lack of it) as revealed in the application blank is important in the hiring process, and that the degree of such skill manifested by managers after employment is very significant in the promotion process. Writing skill is assessed during performance appraisal in some companies, and most supervisors encouraged the development of employee writing skill.