In Technical Communication and the World Wide Web, editors Carl Lipson and Michael Day attempt to present a realistic picture of the many-sided task of writing for the Web. All things considered, i...

This paper explores the growing popularity of animated software agents as a rapidly evolving technology for supporting website users and particularly the tendency among designers to figure them as young women. While designers claim that animated/personified interfaces are more intuitive and natural than the traditional point-and-click interfaces that users encounter, this paper aims to show how virtual humans can enact familiar scripts about women's work, circumscribe the range of possible roles and personalities for women, invoke service to others as the primary context for women's work, and objectify women through a not-so-subtle process of linking technology-as-tool to the idea that women are tools, fetishized instruments to be used in the service of accomplishing users' goals. In conclusion, this study develops our field's tools for critiquing technical communication texts and interfaces by focusing attention on the implications of how technologies for interacting with website users are designed.

In 1974, the traffic-accident data archive maintained by the Department of Transportation for the state of Iowa was transferred from a primarily paper-based system to a mainframe computer. Data reg...

As distributed work begins to shift the nature of practice for technical communication professionals in the workplace, faculty need new frameworks to help prepare students for roles that involve negotiating, supporting, and facilitating virtual global collaboration. This paper identifies key areas of metaknowledge appropriate to these new frameworks by synthesizing a review of current scholarship on such collaborations and a case study of students participating in a cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural team project.

In this introduction, I review the topic of the special issue, distributed work: coordinative, polycontextual, cross-disciplinary work that splices together divergent work activities (separated by time, space, organizations, and objectives) and that enables the transformations of information and texts that characterize such work. After reviewing the literature on distributed work, I introduce the articles in this special issue.

Abstract This article presents findings from a recent study of mediated writing in a technical writing firm to examine distributed work conditions and how they affect the practices of individual technical writers. Distribution of labor, texts, and technologies for producing documentation creates complex information environments that writers must negotiate. In doing so, they practice two kinds of expertise central to technical writing as a profession—technological and rhetorical skill. This article examines how those skills are affected by distributed work.

In this article, we argue that mentoring of technical communication students must occur within the classroom. In our survey of students, we found that most students felt they had not been mentored. In our ethnography, we found that although students could define the term “mentor”, many were conflicted about its value. This confusion made students less likely to seek out or recognize mentoring opportunities. Students recognized mentoring practices that teachers implemented; however, they did not necessarily identify those practices as “mentoring”. We conclude that confusion arose from students' ambiguous views about mentoring and the lack of standard mentoring practices in the humanities. Therefore, teachers who intend to mentor in the classroom must (a) be more explicit in implementing elements that distinguish mentoring from teaching (e.g., intent and involvement), (b) extend an invitation to students to be mentored, and (c) help students develop a professional identity.

Abstract Abstract This article reports on classroom research designed to answer questions about authority—how institutions and disciplines, broadly conceived, influence teachers' ability to abnegate authority and how students' experiences influence their perceptions of authority in a business writing and a first-year composition class. The theoretical framework is derived from research about institutional and disciplinary influences on these two areas of study. This framework and our results lead us to speculate about the ways in which our students' experience of the institution and expectations of the classes and their intentions for using the material taught in the classes may have thwarted our attempt to share authority in our classrooms. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We gratefully acknowledge the help of our undergraduate and graduate associates, MO and JB. They not only attended every one of our classes but also conducted our interviews. This particular study would not have been possible without them. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJean LutzJean Lutz, also an associate professor of English, directs two technical communication programs at Miami University. She is coeditor of The Practice of Technical and Scientific Communication. She has published in collections and journals, including College English and Research in the Teaching of English.Mary FullerMary Fuller, associate professor of English and Director of the Ohio Writing Project, has coauthored Literature: Options for Reading and Writing and published essays in collections and journals, including National Middle School Journal, Writing Program Administrator, and National Writing Project Quarterly.

Globalization is radically transforming technical communication (TC) both in the workplace and in higher education. This article examines these changes and the ways in which TC programs position themselves amid globalization, in particular the ways in which they use emerging global partnerships to prepare students for global work and citizenship. For this purpose, the authors report on a Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication-supported exploratory study of current partnership initiatives in TC programs. The study indicated a high level of activity, planning, and interest in global partnerships and revealed a range of creative and innovative partnerships that systematically integrate new opportunities for experiential learning, collaborative international research, and civic engagement in a global context into programs and their curricula. Partnerships also emphasize cultural sensitivity, equal partner contribution, and mutual benefit, thus offering alternatives to emerging global trade visions of higher education. The article also identifies key challenges that partnerships face, suggesting implications for programs and the field as a whole to facilitate successful partnerships.

Globalization is radically transforming technical communication (TC) both in the workplace and in higher education. This article examines these changes and the ways in which TC programs position themselves amid globalization, in particular the ways in which they use emerging global partnerships to prepare students for global work and citizenship. For this purpose, the authors report on a Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication-supported exploratory study of current partnership initiatives in TC programs. The study indicated a high level of activity, planning, and interest in global partnerships and revealed a range of creative and innovative partnerships that systematically integrate new opportunities for experiential learning, collaborative international research, and civic engagement in a global context into programs and their curricula. Partnerships also emphasize cultural sensitivity, equal partner contribution, and mutual benefit, thus offering alternatives to emerging global trade visions of higher education. The article also identifies key challenges that partnerships face, suggesting implications for programs and the field as a whole to facilitate successful partnerships.

Online access and interest in technical communication are increasing on a global scale. The time is therefore right for instructors to consider offering online courses to students located around the globe. Providing effective online courses for such a diverse audience, however, is no simple matter. This article provides an overview of the global market in online education. It presents information and approaches that can help with the development of online courses for international delivery as well as the training and professional development of the instructors, U.S.-based or otherwise, who teach them.

Instead of focusing on technologies of online delivery, specific course design, or reporting on the successes or lessons learned of an online or distance education course, in this essay I focus on the readiness of technical communication teachers for teaching in online settings. Using ideas gleaned from cultural geography, specifically the concept of reading and interpreting landscapes, I develop a framework for instructors to determine their willingness, readiness, and preparedness to teach online. The final section of this essay provides an example of using this framework based on my explorations into my readiness to teach online. I find that self-selection for online instruction is a critical step in developing powerful instructional settings and allows technical communication teachers to cross or remove existing boundaries within their own pedagogical practices.

Instead of focusing on technologies of online delivery, specific course design, or reporting on the successes or lessons learned of an online or distance education course, in this essay I focus on the readiness of technical communication teachers for teaching in online settings. Using ideas gleaned from cultural geography, specifically the concept of reading and interpreting landscapes, I develop a framework for instructors to determine their willingness, readiness, and preparedness to teach online. The final section of this essay provides an example of using this framework based on my explorations into my readiness to teach online. I find that self-selection for online instruction is a critical step in developing powerful instructional settings and allows technical communication teachers to cross or remove existing boundaries within their own pedagogical practices.

Online access and interest in technical communication are increasing on a global scale. The time is therefore right for instructors to consider offering online courses to students located around the globe. Providing effective online courses for such a diverse audience, however, is no simple matter. This article provides an overview of the global market in online education. It presents information and approaches that can help with the development of online courses for international delivery as well as the training and professional development of the instructors, U.S.-based or otherwise, who teach them.

Current localization practices suffer from a narrow and static vision of culture resulting in usability problems for IT product and design. To address this problem, this article compares user localization efforts of mobile messaging technology in two different cultural contexts with a new methodology of cultural usability. It calls for expanding the scope of localization practices and linking user localization efforts to the IT product design cycle.

This article explores the transfer of U.S. technologies to three maquilas, or joint U.S.–Mexican manufacturing facilities in northern Mexico. Drawing on case study methods, it focuses on the rhetorical strategies that Mexican engineers and manufacturing personnel used to translate U.S. technologies and corresponding documentation for their Mexican contexts. It also suggests ways U.S. technical communicators can adapt their documentation to be more effective for these U.S.–Mexican intercultural rhetorical contexts.

Client-based technical writing classes have the potential to help students practice a smooth transition between school and work because they allow the side-by-side examination and negotiation of standards of writing for faculty and technical clients. However, this potential is often not realized. This article reports the results of two case studies using interviews and surveys to examine the evolution of the standards of clients and faculty throughout one semester as well as student perceptions of those standards. The results suggest that three factors help students understand standards in a way that is conducive to effective school-to-work transition: standards negotiation, teacher awareness of client standards, and perceived overlap in teacher–client standards at the end of the semester.

(2006). Teaching Intercultural Communication in a Technical Writing Service Course: Real Instructors' Practices and Suggestions for Textbook Selection. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 191-214.

Charettes offer a productive way of combining theory and practice to address some of the difficult matters of getting students to see and perform technical communication as students, professionals, servers, and citizens. This collaborative activity helps students prepare for an increasingly modular professional world by revealing the contingent rhetoricity of professional autonomy. Charettes can help technical writing programs and students integrate service and civic learning into the curriculum by using indigenous professional genres that actively demand stakeholder participation. The intensity and pragmatic force of charettes can assist students in building their ethos while working with fellow stakeholders. The wide range of possible documents involved in the process associated with charettes can help technical communication students and teachers explore the connections between rhetorical exigencies and genre and put their skills to good use in a culture where many are looking for new ways to build critical citizenship.

Examing the discourse surrounding the charcoal iron industry between 1760 and 1860 in North America, this article suggests that, prior to the industrialization of work, technical communication took place in a prediscursive setting, an oral and physical world that we can just manage to glimpse even as we watch it recede. The letters of Robert Erskine written in 1770 illustrate the prediscursive methods of technical communication. By the 1860s, a flood of governmental, professional, and commercial publications appeared, each signifying the disappearance of this prediscursive world. This transition from prediscursive to discursive methods may mark one of the largest changes in the history of technical communication.

Abstract This article examines two cases of technical documentation occurring outside of institutions. Using a framework derived from de Certeau's (1984) distinction between strategies and tactics and Johnson's (1998) concept of the user-as-producer, I analyze communities surrounding Muir's (1969) How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive! A Manual of Step by Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot and Champion's (2000) Build Your Own Sports Car for as Little as £250. These communities engage in tactical technical communication, especially in the form of technological narratives that participate in broader cultural narratives about technology.

This article critically analyzes how technical communication practices both construct and are constructed by normalizing discourses, which can marginalize the experiences, knowledges, and material needs of people with disabilities. In particular, the article explores how disability studies theories can offer critical insights into research in two areas: safety communication and usability. In conclusion, the article offers ways that disability studies can intervene in the pedagogy of usability, communication technology, linguistic bias, narrative, and discourse communities.

Abstract Drawing from the critical cultural theory of Arjun Appadurai, this article interrogates the concept of culture underpinning much intercultural technical communication research. Appadurai suggested that intertextual connections between the cultural and the economic, political, demographic, and historical aspects of the globalizing world are essential for understanding cross-cultural communication. The cultural theory offered in this article opens the way for further cultural studies research to be of use in intercultural technical communication theory, research, and pedagogy.

An economistic version of cultural studies is important to technical writing scholarship presently because capitalism's broad trends find manifestation in and are affected by local practices like scientific and professional communication. By examining their own field against the backdrop of macroeconomic eras and pressures, technical writing theorists can obtain a better understanding of the sociocultural context in which their discipline is situated, and they can better map methods of effective political action for technical communicators.

Abstract This article explores the ways that the discourse of usability might support a socially oriented pedagogy within technical communication. Specifically, it explores two approaches to usability—user-centered design and distributed usability—and suggests that the conversation between these approaches can ground socially responsive discussions of technology and technical communication. As such, the discourse of usability provides a field-specific means to address increasing calls for socially situated pedagogies within the field of technical communication.

(2005). An Interview With Donald A. Norman. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 469-487.

This essay presents analyses of two of the ten site visits of computer classrooms (CCRs) conducted between 1998 and 2003. The two sites are located institutionally within departments of English of two U.S. university campuses. The two CCRs examined here were: (1) observed on site by the author in 2000 and 2001; (2) analyzed according to a set of criteria established before the on-site analyses; and (3) photographed. In addition, a digital writing-rhetoric and/or technical writing faculty member was interviewed in person during each site visit. The analysis, part of a book-length project, provides partial data for determining some kinds of physical and architectural/design issues that existed in selected CCRs in the early 2000s and in a number of similar digital environments today

In light of growing interest in technical communication around the world, cross-cultural teaching opportunities may challenge basic assumptions about teaching and learning for both teachers and students. A faculty-development project in the People's Republic of China illustrates various ways facilities, educational practices, and worldviews from each side of the exchange require significant compromise. A negotiated, student-centered classroom environment may be a significant strategy for instruction in such settings.

(2005). Figures of Speech as Persuasive Strategies in Early Commercial Communication: The Use of Dominant Figures in the Raleigh Reports About Virginia in the 1580s. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 183-196.

Florence Nightingale is usually pictured as an angelic nurse tending to British soldiers in military hospitals during the Crimean War. Although Nightingale was indeed a tender of soldiers, she was also an administrator, advocate for the common soldier, and proponent of the use of statistics and information design. This article examines Nightingale's rose diagrams, which she designed following her service as the director of nurses at a field hospital in the Crimean War. When the war ended, Nightingale was asked by the queen to write a report on the poor sanitary conditions and make recommendations for reform. When, after six months, the government did not act on the reforms, Nightingale decided to write an annex to the report, in which she would include her invention, the rose diagrams. Nightingale's ultimate success in persuading the government to institute reforms is an illustration of the power of visual rhetoric, as well as an example of Nightingale's own passionate resolve to right what she saw as a grievous wrong.

Composing hypertext documents can be an enriching path into the world of technical communication. In learning to produce hypertext, students are introduced to an important form of written composition that encompasses not only text generation, but also visual communication and information architecture. In this article, I provide a rationale for teaching hypertext composition and then some specific curricular suggestions in two parts, one for teaching beginners, and one for teaching more advanced students.

(2004). An Interview with Edward R. Tufte. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 447-462.

This article examines the concept of techne in relation to situatedness. Techn� is conceived as techniques for situating bodies in contexts. Although many theorists and practitioners in technical communication are working from ecological and posthuman perspectives with regard to interface designs, this article argues for extending those perspectives to workplace and classroom situations. Starting from a Heideggerian reading of techne, the article moves toward the concept of post-techne, which remakes pedagogical techniques for writing and inventing in institutional contexts.

Abstract With demographic and social trends in mind, technical communicators should be examining the online communication needs of elderly people who may share certain characteristics with other Internet users, particularly the disabled community. Although education, universal design, and accessibility initiatives help us address many of the developmental and cultural barriers elderly Internet users face, this article examines some current offerings, analyzing the growing elderly audience to better incorporate usability into Web design.

Although service-learning has the potential to infuse technical communication pedagogy with civic goals, it can easily be co-opted by a hyperpragmatism that limits ethical critique and civic engagement. Service-learning's component of reflection, in particular, can become an uncritical, narrow invention or project management tool. Integrating cultural studies and service-learning can help position students as critical citizens who produce effective and ethical discourse and who create more inclusive forms of power. Rather than being tacked on, cultural studies approaches should be incorporated into core service-learning assignments.

Abstract This article argues that technical communicators are uniquely poised to function as public intellectuals. To demonstrate this point, the author offers the example of her work on a major AIDS prevention program report. Situating this work within the history of technical communication, the current discussion of rhetorics of risk, and the writing classroom, the author argues that technical writers don't have simply the opportunity to engage in textual activism; in many cases they have no alternative.

Although the concept of community has been advanced in technical communication as a moral reference point for civic rhetorical action, this concept is typically used in romantic, redemptive, and essentializing ways. This article argues for a radical and symbolic/rhetorical view of community, regarding it a discursive construct purposefully invoked by technical writers for strategic reasons.

Abstract Technical communication practices have been changed dramatically by the increasingly ubiquitous nature of digital technologies. Yet, while those who work in the profession have been living through this dramatic change, our academic discipline has been moving at a slower pace, at times appearing quite unsure about how to proceed. This article focuses on the following three areas of opportunity for change in our discipline in relation to digital technologies: access and expectations, scholarship and community building, and accountability and partnering.

Abstract Technical communication practices have been changed dramatically by the increasingly ubiquitous nature of digital technologies. Yet, while those who work in the profession have been living through this dramatic change, our academic discipline has been moving at a slower pace, at times appearing quite unsure about how to proceed. This article focuses on the following three areas of opportunity for change in our discipline in relation to digital technologies: access and expectations, scholarship and community building, and accountability and partnering.

This article presents the history, purposes, outcomes, and significance of the CCCC Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication during its first five years. It analyzes the topical areas and research methods of the 34 dissertations nominated for the award from 1999 to 2003, as well as the evaluations of the judges. Methods of the nominated dissertations are interpretive (41%) and empirical (59%), but many dissertations combine methods. In the empirical category, qualitative methods (17) outnumber quantitative methods (3). The most frequent topical areas are workplace practice (8), rhetoric of the disciplines (7), and information design (6). Topics that are not widely investigated include issues of race and class and international communication.

The debate over certification of technical and professional communicators has occurred with periods of relative intensity and quiescence for more than twenty years. This article surveys the historical developments of the debate; describes the arguments for and against certification; surveys technical communication curricula and theoretical arguments for literacies, standards, and competencies; and examines various efforts to study certification, including a description of published documents regarding certification.

There have been many attempts to assess the state of research in our field. This article is our attempt to both (1) synthesize recent analyses, opinions, and conclusions concerning the status of technical communication research and (2) propose an action plan aimed at redirecting our field's agenda for its research. We explore these questions: What are the recent research trends in our field? What is and is not promising about our recent approaches to research? Where do we need to go next? What are the critical components for a new agenda for our research?

Because of accreditation, budget, and accountability pressures at the institutional and program levels, technical and professional communication faculty are more than ever involved in assessment-based activities. Using assessment to identify a program's strengths and weaknesses allows faculty to work toward continuous improvement based on their articulation of learning and behavioral goals and outcomes for their graduates. This article describes the processes of program assessment based on pedagogical goals, pointing out options and opportunities that will lead to a meaningful and manageable experience for technical communication faculty, and concludes with a view of how the larger academic body of technical communication programs can benefit from such work. As ATTW members take a careful look at the state of the profession from the academic perspective, we can use assessment to further direct our programs to meet professional expectations and, far more importantly, to help us meet the needs of the well-educated technical communicator.

Abstract This article reports United States salary data from the April 2003 survey of Society for Technical Communication members who identify themselves as educators. It provides analysis of salary data based on type of institution, rank, tenure status, experience, education level, sex, and age. It also reports on benefits, administrative responsibilities, job satisfaction, and program size.

Analysis of the academic job market in 2002-2003 reveals that 118 nationally advertised academic jobs named technical or professional communication as a primary or secondary specialization. Of the 56 in the "primary" category that we were able to contact, we identified 42 jobs filled, 10 unfilled, and 4 pending. However, only 29% of the jobs for which technical or professional communication was the primary specialization were filled by people with degrees in the field, and an even lower percent (25%) of all jobs, whether advertised for a primary or secondary specialization, were filled by people with degrees in the field. Search chairs report a higher priority on teaching and research potential than on a particular research specialization, and 62% of all filled positions involve teaching in related areas (composition, literature, or other writing courses).

Don Cunningham, the founding editor of The Technical Writing Teacher and a founding member of ATTW, recalls key moments in the history of ATTW and its journal, and the people who shaped the organization in its early years.

Abstract This article traces the development of Technical Communication Quarterly (TCQ), beginning with the first issue in the winter of 1991, through the 2003 issues. As co-editor of TCQ, charged with the manuscript review process, I shepherded more than 350 manuscripts through evaluation and about one-fourth of those through publication. In this article, I explain that process and how it changed when The Technical Writing Teacher became TCQ and what features our reviewers now believe make a successful TCQ article.

Abstract This article explores the writing of archaeologists to argue that the metaphor of context-as-rhetorical-situation may understate the power that context has to shape scientific discourse. The author offers instead the metaphor of context-as-active-agent in the rhetorical situation—one that sometimes reifies values that are dangerous to the archaeologists' belief systems. As scholars of technical writing, we must develop a greater understanding of the subtle but powerful influences that context wields on the writing we read and help to produce.