Using field study to teach writing and speaking in rhetoric impacts both how technical communication defines itself and its role in the curriculum. This article reviews materials that support field study, describes course assignments, and examines student writing. I find that as field study offers a precise, event-based resource for teaching rhetoric, so rhetoric offers an audience-centered format to bring properties of the field inside.

Abstract This article explores the introduction of science writing into the undergraduate classroom. By asking students to write about science for popular audiences, teachers can illuminate the social and cultural aspects of science that are often lost in the complex prose of scientists writing to their peers. Not much has been written about the place of science writing in technical writing classrooms, though some articles focus on the process of training students to be science staff writers for a newspaper or magazine. But teaching science writing goes beyond professionalization. It has to do with a poetics of science that heightens and enhances our appreciation of the world around us.

This article examines advice from a century ago that anticipates current calls to relocate the value of technical communication. Chemist Ellen Swallow Richards coined euthenics, the science of controllable environment, and then discussed communication technologies to teach scientific principles to the public. She emphasized women's pivotal role as audience and communicator, helping us understand how to enact the practices of symbolic analysis that give value to our work.

(2003). Review of Technical Communication, Deliberative Rhetoric, and Environmental Discourse: Connections and Directions. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 234-236.

(2003). Review of The New Careers: lndiwidual Action and Economic Change. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 230-234.

Abstract In 2002, cable television news programs adopted modular presentation styles visually similar to the design of news website home pages and newspaper front pages. This design convergence of print, television, and the Web is the result of a dynamic media context in which information acceleration is a catalyst for the formation of visual trends across media. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to information design and using grounded theory methodology, this article examines the visual evolution of the news and discusses the study's relevance to technical communication.

Technical writing instruction often operates in isolation from other components of students' communication education, partly as a consequence of assessment practices that lead to a narrow perspective. We argue for altering this isolation by moving writing instruction into a position of increased programmatic perspective, which may be attained through a means of assessment based on educational outcomes. Two models of technical writing instruction, centralized and diffused, are discussed, and we show how outcomes-based assessment provides for the change in perspective we seek.

Reforms in engineering education have caused a shift from the traditional stand-alone course in technical communication for Engineering students towards communication training integrated in courses and design projects that allows students to develop four layers of competence. This shift creates opportunities for realistic and situated learning, but offers challenges for assessment of communication competence at student, course and program levels. On the basis of a detailed definition of communicative competence, three formats for integrated communication training are described: Linked to design projects, integrated in design projects and integrated at program level. Assessment of communication competence in these formats is constrained by their characteristics with regard to student motivation, individual and group work, and situated learning.

This article presents the results of an empirical study comparing writing and engineering instructors' responses to students' technical writing. The study, which identifies a repertoire of 21 categories of response, indicates that the gap between engineering and writing teachers' standards for evaluating technical writing is not as wide as is generally assumed. The differences that do emerge suggest ways that the teachers can learn from each other.

Technical communicators have developed different methodologies for evaluating the effectiveness of their work (whether the information can be used by the intended audience), such as editing, usability testing, and determining the value-added. But, as vastly differing assessments of the same professionally produced technical communication products suggest, at least three broad value systems underlie the assessment practices: characteristic-based (assessing against a set of criteria), task-based (assessing users' observed ability to perform tasks), and results-based (assessing the contribution to the publisher, usually in financial terms). The systems do not overlap with one another; rather, they embody different values about what makes technical communication effective. The most complete form of assessment may involve multiple assessment approaches and triangulated results.

This article reports the findings of a national survey of members of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW). The survey focuses on practices of assessing student classroom work and specifically asked technical writing instructors what they assess, how they assess, and what they would like to do to assess their students optimally. In addition to reporting responses to these questions, the article concludes with recommendations for improving student assessment practices at the departmental, programmatic, and course levels.

In this article, we recommend a research methodology, focus groups, that we have found useful in supplementing other, more commonly used measures of qualitative and quantitative assessment. We explain why focus groups are particularly well suited for assessment, how we have used them in our research to examine teacher and practitioner perspectives of effective technical writing, and how others might use them for evaluating texts, programs, or courses.

Abstract Beginning with the premise that consultants occupy a strategic position for observing how research results are generated, applied, modified, or ignored in technical communication practice, this article reports on a project using interviews with seven successful consultants to gather insights into the creation and circulation of new knowledge in our field. The interviews revealed a surprising degree of uncertainty about the state of research in technical communication and the relationship of formal research to workplace experience.

This article presents an argument for and offers illustrations of service learning in technical communication courses and curricula. Alongside traditional internships that prepare students as future employees, service learning provides students with an education in engaged citizenship. This article reviews service-learning literature, discussing specifically the advantages of projects to students, faculty, and the community. The authors also describe three projects in which instructors and students integrated service learning and technical communication in innovative ways.

(2002). Review of Writing Centers and Writing Across the Curriculum Programs: Building Interdisciplinary Partnerships. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 476-478.

This article proposes a model for critically engaging technology in technical communication graduate curricula. While computers and writing studies concentrates on academic writing, the development of the field provides a model for engaging technological issues in professional and classroom contexts. Technical communicators have an ethical as well as intellectual responsibility to engage the interface between technology and culture. This article describes one example, a graduate class in information architecture, as a model for engaging the nexus of literacy, technology, and culture.

Abstract Issues related to technological literacy can provide a useful frame for thinking critically about computer-based instruction in technical communication. This article identifies issues of technological literacy related to performance, contextual factors, and linguistic activities. When considered collectively, these issues provide technical communication students with a mechanism to identify and analyze a range of perspectives associated with technology and communication.

Abstract This article brings to light a topic that surfaces regularly among technical writing practitioners and theorists but is rarely addressed in the literature of the field. Stuart Selber deals with it in his 1997 essay "Hypertext Spheres of Influence" (see especially page 30), but a check of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) Bibliography for the last two years produced only one recent article obviously devoted to it (see Mitra). The topic centers around this question: Is teaching technology problematic for technical writing instructors? Voices are heard here of 64 ATTW members who were queried on their roles as teachers of technical writing in relation to the demands made upon them to also be teachers of technology skills. Answers are presented and examined in terms of "teacher lore," the informal sharing of teacher experiences and opinion/feeling about those experiences. The article concludes with a call for more research to clarify the roles teachers of technical writing should be playing in an age where technological determinism—shown by a tendency to turn a technical communication course into a software tools course—can be seen as a threat to effective teaching of complex workplace rhetoric.

Abstract Technical communicators of the new millennium will need to develop certain skills to succeed in international online interactions (IOls), and computer classrooms with online access can help students to develop these skills through direct interaction with materials and individuals from other cultures. This article presents exercises instructors can use to help students develop these particular skills.

Abstract Advances in computing technologies, growth of business involvement on the Web, and our culture's affinity for image-intensive communication have forced technical communicators to become more involved with making and using a wide variety of images in their compositions. Too often our theories about how to write and read images are limited to a functional view, which stresses objectivity, ignores interpretation, and sees design as preset layout formulae. Combining current graphic design theory with rhetoric's understanding of techne, I argue for a configural view of images that stresses their artificiality and cultural significance and articulates design in strategic terms.

(2002). Reviewing Issues: The Techne of Medicine in JAMA. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 224-227.

Frustrated by textbooks that push technical communication students prematurely into workplace scenarios, as well as theories that condemn techne in order to advance a particular agenda, we offer a perspective on techne that respects the formative-not professional-situation of technical writing students and emphasizes the importance for technical writers to attend to history, artistry, and well-developed social relations in their work. We offer historically grounded, creative meditations on techne that emphasize its manifold nature: it is conversational, ingenious, cunning, full of trickery, and unpredictably artistic. Such meditations can replace overly complex workplace scenarios in technical communication classrooms, particularly when an instructor wishes to emphasize knowledge making rather than the mechanics and politics of document production.

The classical Greek discourse on techne has much to offer technical communication teachers concerned about the relationship between theory and practice, but this potential has not yet been realized. Plato's and Aristotle's discussions about the relationship between techne and rhetoric, for example, encompass questions about the rhetorical goals of the speakedwriter and about the role of theory in teaching rhetorical art that are of continuing relevance to the modern discourse on technical communication. The aim of this article is to identify several points upon which a fruitful dialogue between ancient and modern discourses can begin. First, I supply some background on how the term techne was used up through the fourth century BCE. Then I discuss how the modern discourse on technical communication (including material from popular textbooks) both converges with and departs from Plato's and Aristotle's statements on the relationship between techne and rhetoric. Finally, I point out areas for further discussion as teachers of technical communication continue to reflect upon and refine their pedagogies.

Teacher preparation is often ignored. Unfortunately, the result is often formulaic or prescriptive teaching that leaves students unprepared for the complex situations they will encounter in the workplace. In this article, I argue for a more deliberate emphasis on teacher training by reinvigorating techne as a concept that is far more than instrumental or prescriptive. If we prepare prospective teachers to master the fechne of teaching, we encourage them to become user-centered, reflective practitioners who understand the critical need for situational uses of knowledge.

(2002). Techne and Politeia: Langdon Winner's Political Theory of Technology and Its Implications for Technical Communication. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 230-234.

(2002). A Fantasy-Theme Analysis of Arthur Barlowe's 1584 Discourse on Virginia: The First English Commercial Report Written about North America from Direct Experience. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 31-59.

(2002). Review of Rhetoric, the Polis, and the Global Village: Selected Papers from the 1998 Thirtieth Anniversary Rhetoric Society of America Conference. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 99-101.

(2002). Review of Literacy Theory in the Age of the Internet. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 88-89.

This article proposes a theoretical frame for technical communication peda- gogy based on six layered literacies: basic, rhetorical, social, technological, ethical, and critical. The layered literacies frame advocates diverse instruction in technical communication programs, ranging from the ancient art of rhetoric to the most contemporary of technologies, from basic reading and writing skills to ethical and critical situational analyses. The article also suggests how the frame can be applied to a program of study or individual course in order to establish teaching objectives; develop course and lesson activities; and assess pedagogical materials, students, and programs.

(2002). Review of Twentieth-Century Rhetorics and Rhetoricians: Critical Studies and Sources; and Living Rhetoric and Composition: Stories of the Discipline. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 102-104.

(2002). Review of Untying the Tongue: Gender, Power, and the Word. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 96-98.

Graduate education in technical communication should provide students with an expansive view of the field. Toward that end, we offer a three-dimensional framework that represents technical communication as a robust, diverse, complex whole. Although the framework aims towards coherence, it embraces contradiction. That is, the framework represents a totality but does not purport to be the only possible representation. Key to the framework is our belief that the gap between theory and practice can actually be productive. Almost all binaries encourage overly simplistic understandings. But we should not allow the goal of remediating the binary to close off the important tensions that can allow the field to advance. This very gap is actually one of the few sites in which new ideas and approaches can be forged.

Abstract This article explores the shift from observation of users to participation with users, describing and investigating three examples of user-centered design practice in order to consider the new ethical demands being made of technical communicators. Pelle Ehn's participatory design method, Roger Whitehouse's design of tactile signage for blind users, and the design of an online writing program are explored for the creation of a dialogic design ethic. The development of effective collaborative design methods requires meaningful communication between users and designers, and dialogic ethics can guide the development of effective and humane technological design methods.

Applying abstract ethical principles to the practical business of building a code of applied ethics for a technical communication department teaches students that they share certain unarticulated or even unconscious values that they can translate into ethical principles. Combining abstract theory with practical policy writing can teach technical communication students to become increasingly aware of ethical actions without restricting ethics solely to abstractions or rules.

Abstract This article proposes retrospective narrative justifications combined with classical concepts of habit formation as a theory of ethics appropriate for practicing technical communicators. To explicate the theory, the article draws on Alasdair Maclntyre's ethical theory, which involves habit formation and narrative theory; on apologia and account-giving theory; and on traditional ethical stances, such as the teleological and deontological doctrines. Special attention is given to the ends-means relationship and the tension between individual and corporate identity in technical communication environments.

(2001). Guest Editor's Column. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 245-249.

While many technical communication instructors declare the benefits of client projects, too often instructors do not prepare students to interact with clients. This article reviews a qualitative case study that demonstrates the difficulty students can have interacting with clients. Interviewing, listening, and seeking clarification are behaviors that may help students identify client concerns and miscommunications more effectively.

Abstract Educational settings tend to provide highly specialized contexts for learning. In contrast, workplaces are increasingly multidisciplinary, presenting challenges often not considered in the technical communication curriculum. Our technical communication program is addressing this issue by building partnerships with programs in mechanical engineering and industrial engineering. In this article, we discuss a study of our initial semester matching technical communication students with teams of engineers in a capstone, client-based design course. We focus on challenges the students faced in the multidisciplinary, client-based experience. Based on our initial results, we suggest that academic and professional settings could do more to address the types of challenges identified. We call for a more inclusive pedagogy, one that expands the boundaries of technical communication and welcomes multidisciplinary experience in shared contexts.

The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, the organization that accredits engineering programs in the United States, has shifted its focus to the documentation of student learning outcomes. This shift has prompted changes in the work of technical communication departments and programs that serve engineering, from the development of new courses to increased collaboration between technical and non-technical faculty. This article traces the development of ABET'S Engineering Criteria 2000 and identifies the effect of EC 2000 on technical communication now and in the future.

Professional technical communication often takes place within a larger organizational structure, a structure defined and constrained by both external (national or disciplinary) and internal (organizational) cultures. Thus, theories that help technical communicators analyze and understand organizations can be of especial importance. This bibliography overviews theories of organization from the viewpoint of culture, using five themes of organizational research as a framework. Based on this framework, each section introduces specific theories of international, intercultural, or organizational communication, building upon them through a series of related articles, and showing how they can be applied in the field of technical communication.

This article argues that the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer provides a useful theoretical framework from which to discuss ethical issues in the technical communication classroom. The article analyzes a previously published case study to demonstrate how hermeneutics can shed light on the ways that writers can be unconscious of ethical problems in their own writing. Finally, some suggestions for pedagogical applications are presented.

(2001). Research Tactics for Constructing Perceptions of Subject Matter in Organizational Contexts: An Ethnographic Study of Technical Communicators. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 59-95.

Visual metadiscourse can provide design criteria for authors when considering the needs and expectations of readers. The linguistic concept of metadiscourse is expanded from the textual realm to the visual realm, where authors have many necessary design considerations as they attempt to help readers navigate through and understand documents. These considerations, both textual and visual, also help construct the ethos of authors, as design features reveal awareness of visual literacy and of the communication context. Visual metadiscourse complements textual metadiscourse in emphasizing the necessity of rhetoric in technical communication.

Identified in this article are 163 texts selected from a database of over 25,000 citations collected from five technical communication journals between 1988 and 1997. The texts—points of reference—represent the research, theory, and practice of technical communication.

Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think. Ed. Stuart K. Card, Jock D. Mackinlay, and Ben Shneiderman. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 1999. 712 pp. Information Design. Ed. Robert Jacobson. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1999. 357 pp. Information Architects. Ed. Peter Bradford. Introduction by Richard Saul Wurman. New York: Graphis, 1997. 235 pp. Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century. Robert E. Horn. Bainbridge Island, WA: MacroVU, 1998. 270 pp. Digital Sensations: Space, Identity, and Embodiment in Virtual Reality. Ken Hillis. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999. 271 pp.

This article recommends strategies academics can use to contribute to an issue of great interest in industry: how best to define, measure, and achieve quality documentation. These strategies include contextualizing quality definitions, advocating the use of multiple quality measures, conducting research to identify specific heuristics for defining and measuring quality in particular workplace contexts, and partnering with industry to educate upper management about those heuristics and the benefits of promoting technical communicators to the strategic role of organizational “gatekeepers of quality.”