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December 2001

  1. Online Exclusive: Writing Workplace Cultures
    Abstract

    Globalization, or “fast” capitalism, has changed the workplace and writing in it dramatically. Composition epistemologies and practices, elaborated during the twentieth century in tandem with Taylorized workplace literacy requirements, fail to embrace the complexities of writerly sensibilities necessary to students entering the new workforce. To update these epistemologies and practices, MA students in professional writing were positioned as autoethnographers of workplace cultures, reporting to classmates on organizational structures and practices as they affected discursive products and processes. Their studies produced a database of petits recits on workplace cultures, and their work is analyzed for the ways in which it forecasts subjective work identities of writers in the years ahead. Implications are drawn for composition administration, curriculum design, course design, and collaborative work among academics and writers in private and public spheres.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20011456

November 2001

  1. Teaching with a Questioning Mind: The Development of a Teacher Research Group into a Discourse Community
    Abstract

    Examines the collaborative discourse practices of the Red River Writing Project Teacher Research Group (RRWPTRG) as well as the processes by which this diverse group of classroom teachers developed into a discourse community of teacher researchers.

    doi:10.58680/rte20011743

October 2001

  1. Thinking in Pixels: An Editing System for Electronic Texts
    Abstract

    On-line publication alters the relationship between editor and writer, creating a potentially more collaborative and fluid text. This article explores implications of increased publication options and examines conceptual distinctions among Fixed-Format, Electronic, and Meta-media Editors. We propose a keyboard editing/commenting technique that will work across platforms and software programs and in every mode of electronic communication including simple e-mail. This ASCII based system uses only four symbols in various combinations to convey all of the print editor's marks and also allows the editor or reader to insert comments in the immediate context. The result is increased efficiency and flexibility for writer and editor or teacher and student.

    doi:10.2190/cuh4-txtf-3129-6nmy

July 2001

  1. From the Margins to the Center: The Future of Annotation
    Abstract

    This article describes the importance of annotation to reading and writing practices and reviews new technologies that complicate the ways annotation can be used to support and enhance traditional reading, writing, and collaboration processes. Important directions for future research are discussed, with emphasis on studying how professionals read and annotate, how readers might use annotations that have been produced by others, and how the interface of an annotation program affects collaboration and communication on revision. In each area, the authors emphasize issues and methods that will be productive for enhancing theories of workplace and classroom communication as well as implications for the optimal design of annotation technologies.

    doi:10.1177/105065190101500304
  2. Ethics of Engagement: User-Centered Design and Rhetorical Methodology
    Abstract

    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.

    doi:10.1207/s15427625tcq1003_3
  3. The Reader Written: Successive Constructions of Self and Text in Encounters with Everyday Writing
    Abstract

    A researcher (Schwebke), in collaboration with her supervisor (Medway), investigated the production and reception of a corpus of documentary exchanges in which condominium owners voiced their opposition to renovations proposed by their board of directors. During the course of the research, which included textual analysis, interviews with owners and management, and readings with disinterested outside parties, the texts became radically unsettled, changing their meaning with each fresh stage of the process. The social reality that underlay and was referred to by the texts became equally indeterminate. Encounters with both texts and everyday readers were pervasively intertextualized; each new conversation was felt to be conducted in the presence of a growing collection of eavesdroppers. The two sets of outside readers—a group of “ordinary folks” and an academic—became virtual participants in the ongoing construction of meaning, with academic and everyday perspectives merging in unusual combinations. The analysis draws on Bakhtinian and poststructuralist perspectives to elucidate this experience.

    doi:10.1177/0741088301018003005

May 2001

  1. Chester Drawers, Martian Luther King, and Privately Owned Citizens: Beginning Writers Teaching the Teacher
    Abstract

    Considers how rhetoric, cognitive awareness, and competing cultures of community college composition students challenge instructors. Discusses issues such as: updating the definition of “student”; historically dynamic biculturalism; collaboration versus negotiated meaning; destabilizing knowledge; inventing the student; and mastering the art of persuasion. Concludes that instructors must be aware that theories, ideologies, and pedagogy influence students and therefore must be current.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc20011969

April 2001

  1. Technology, Collaboration, and Dialogue: A Librarian's View
    Abstract

    Review Article| April 01 2001 Technology, Collaboration, and Dialogue: A Librarian's View Helene Williams Helene Williams Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2001) 1 (2): 425–428. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-1-2-425 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Helene Williams; Technology, Collaboration, and Dialogue: A Librarian's View. Pedagogy 1 April 2001; 1 (2): 425–428. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-1-2-425 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2001 Duke University Press2001 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Roundtable: The Dialogic Classroom: Teachers Integrating Computer Technology, Pedagogy, and Research You do not currently have access to this content.

    doi:10.1215/15314200-1-2-425
  2. Transformations in Technical Communicat ion Pedagogy: Engineering, Writing, and the ABET Engineering Criteria 2000
    Abstract

    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.

    doi:10.1207/s15427625tcq1002_3

February 2001

  1. Centering in on Professional Choices
    Abstract

    I examine my involvement with writing centers as an example of how we can look at the choices we’ve made within our areas of expertise to see why they attract us. In my case, the flexible, collaborative, individualized, non-evaluative, experimental, non-hierarchical, student-centered nature of writing centers is an excellent fit. An earlier version of this article was delivered as the Exemplar’s Address at the Fifty-first Annual CCCC in April 2000.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20011426

January 2001

  1. Collaboration in technical communication: a qualitative content analysis of journal articles, 1990-1999
    Abstract

    In this qualitative content analysis, I examined 55 articles with keywords relating to collaboration published in the 1990-1999 issues of five major technical communication journals. I considered the frequency, types of research, and themes in the 55-article collection. My analysis reveals differences in the authors' discussions of collaboration depending on whether the collaboration occurred in the classroom or the workplace. I also found that most of the 55 articles were more concerned with collaborative practice than with theoretical discussions of collaboration. Suggestions for future research include investigating how experienced workplace collaborators and experienced teachers of collaborative skills in technical communication courses solve the nonroutine problems that occur when practice becomes difficult. From these investigations, researchers might determine what constitutes expertise in collaboration.

    doi:10.1109/47.946462
  2. Information Technology and Organizational Change
    Abstract

    The profession of technical communication is in transition. While a few might argue that we are in danger of being swallowed up by large, institutional realignments, it seems more likely that the future workplace (as characterized by Senge, among others) will put communication, culture, and collaboration at the center of work. However, in order for the profession to exploit these opportunities, we must understand the impact of integrated information technology (IT) on organizations. I summarize the interaction of corporate culture, leadership/management, human resources, and advanced networking and web-based applications (more commonly called an Intranet) for the successful integration of new IT products into an established and well-defined organization. Background research for this paper was conducted as part of an Army Summer Faculty Research and Engineering grant.

    doi:10.2190/0lre-8dkq-jf8e-49re
  3. Critical Discourse in a Student Listserv: Collaboration, Conflict, and Electronic Multivocality

December 2000

  1. When Teaching Informs Research: Learning from Our Students
    Abstract

    Considers how faculty research can arise from student inquiry and be enhanced by faculty-student collaboration. Suggests ways that faculty who wish to do research or must do it to satisfy institutional expectations may be able to integrate it into their classroom teaching roles. Concludes that “learning from our students” is a win-win situation.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc20001945

September 2000

  1. Ramus 2000
    Abstract

    This article reviews studies on Ramus amd Ramism published between 1987 and 2000 under the headings: Biographical and General Studies, Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Scientific, and Ramism, this latter subdivided by geographical areas. It finds that the study of Ramus is in a very healthy state, particularly through international collaboration, though there are still considerable problems for scholars in securing access to the different versions of his works. Ramus is now presented primarily as a teacher and educationalist. The debate about Ramus's "humanism" has produced new work on his classical commentaries. Attempts have been made to achieve better definitions of Ramism.

    doi:10.1353/rht.2000.0002
  2. Triviale Künste. Die humanistische Reform der grammatischen, dialektischen und rhetorischen Ausbildung an der Wende zum 16. Jahrhundert par Volkhar Wels
    Abstract

    Reviews 459 Hésiode se trouvent souvent éclipsés par J.-P. Vemant et J. Svenbro, qui en viennent à constituer alors, bien malgré eux, une sorte de vulgate critique nommée de façon très caricaturale "la critique contemporaine". Toutefois, si l'on donne à cette étude un enjeu plus actuel, suggéré par l’auteur lui-même, lequel prétend rendre une profondeur historique aux sciences de la communication et ainsi leur permettre d’assurer leur propre identité (p. 22), on lui reconnaîtra le mérite de constituer les débuts de la rhétorique grecque comme objet d’investigation moderne et non pas, comme c’est en général le cas dans les travaux de néorhétorique ou de néosophistique consacrés à cette question, comme simple instrument d’une théorie moderne de la communication. Dès lors, antiquisants et spécialistes de communication pourront tirer profit de cette perspective "ethno-logique", qui leur fournit de très stimulants sujets de collaboration. Marie-Pierre Noël Université de Paris-Sorbonne Volkhar Wels, Triviale Künste. Die humanistische Reform der grammatischen, dialektischen und rhetorischen Ausbildung an der Wende zum 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Weidler Buchverlag, 2000) Studium Litterarum. Studien und Texte zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte, Bd. 1, 332 pp. Une couverture un peu terne, une mise en page correcte, mais peu appétissante 03 et un contenu clair, concis, remarquablement complet. La synthèse offerte par Volkhard Wels offre non seulement un exposé très bien articulé de la réforme spectaculaire du trivium aux XVe et XVIe siècles, mais aussi une abondante bibliographie recensant les études les plus récentes sur une matière souvent difficile. Une bonne nouvelle, en somme, pour les chercheurs chevronnés comme pour les étudiants. Le livre de Wels inaugure une nouvelle collection, destinée tout d’abord au public allemand. Axé sur la réforme pédagogique 460 RHETORICA en Allemagne au XVIe siècle, il prend partout en considération le contexte international. L'auteur a fait une sélection parfaitement justifiée dans la masse des textes qui s'offrent au chercheur qui aborde l'humanisme. Traitant en particulier de Valla, d'Agricola, d'Érasme, de Vivès, il offre des citations toujours choisies en fonction de son propos général, qui est de montrer la nouvelle articulation des artes sermocinales effectuée à cette époque, réponse pédagogique à une nouvelle conception du langage. Le noyau de l'ouvrage est constitué par l'oeuvre du Praeceptor Germaniae, Philippe Melanchthon, ami et allié de Martin Luther. Sans négliger les premières versions des oeuvres rhétoriques et logiques du dernier, l'auteur fonde ses analyses en priorité sur les Elementa rhetorices (1531) et les Erotemata dialectices (1547). Consacrant la partie finale de son ouvrage à l'application pratique des préceptes, l'auteur se montre réceptif à l'essence du message humaniste, selon lequel la théorie n'a de valeur que dans la mesure où elle mène à l'analyse et à la composition du discours. La conception humaniste du langage s'est développée à travers la contestation de la pédagogie "scolastique". Voüà pourquoi l'ouvrage de Wels s'amorce avec le célèbre échange épistolaire entre Hermolao Barbaro et Pic de la Mirándole, repris à nouveaux frais par un élève de Melanchthon, Franz Burchard. Ce débat fondamental sert de leitmotiv à l'auteur, qui l'exploite habilement comme élément structurant de son étude. La lettre de Burchard revient ainsi pour assurer une articulation souple entre l'examen de la grammaire et celui de la dialectique humanistes, et encore vers la fin, où est cité un beau passage dans lequel Burchard illustre l'utilité et le pouvoir de l'éloquence en la rapprochant de la peinture (CR, IX, 692). La construction limpide de l'ouvrage moderne réfléchit de la sorte l'enseignement rhétorique de son protagoniste: on sait quelle importance Melanchthon accordait à la clarté de l'exposé et à la structuration transparente des textes. Le passage où sont comparées éloquence et peinture se trouve dans un chapitre récapitulatif, intitulé Die Okonomie des Triviums. Wels y montre qu...

    doi:10.1353/rht.2000.0004
  3. INSTRUCTIONAL NOTE : Overcoming Student Resistance to Group Work
    Abstract

    Discusses several methods the author uses to overcome students’ negative attitudes about working in small groups. Discusses preliminary activities (including a class discussion and direct instruction). Describes the group assignment, including a general overview, specifics of the assignment, and ways to overcome common group work problems.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc20001928

June 2000

  1. A survey of the co-op writing experiences of recent engineering graduates
    Abstract

    This article reports on a survey of 162 recent engineering graduates about their writing experiences during co-op. Specifically, the survey obtained data about how much time they spent writing, to what extent they engaged in collaborative writing, what kinds of documents they wrote, and the purposes and audiences for those documents, whether they believed their employers valued writing ability, and what strategies they perceived as most helpful in learning to write like engineers. Data were analyzed in terms of engineering specialty and gender. The findings are presented, along with implications for teaching and future research.

    doi:10.1109/47.843642

March 2000

  1. Communication in cross-functional teams: an introducton to this special issue
    Abstract

    We are pleased to bring you this joint issue of Technical communication and IEEE transactions on professional communication on communication in cross-functional teams. This special issue is a result of a collaborative effort between two leading organizations in the field of technical communication—the Society for Technical Communication and the IEEE Professional Communication Society. The topic of the special issue seems particularly appropriate given the nature of this joint venture.

    doi:10.1109/tpc.2000.826413
  2. Using Letters for Process and Change in the Basic Writing Class
    Abstract

    Shows how letter writing can motivate basic writers. Describes how the author began teaching his first remedial writing class with a class-wide engagement in letter writing. Discusses how the class developed an active, collaborative, engaged, and inclusive spirit as students learned to put expression first and polishing later.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc20001887
  3. WHAT WORKS FOR ME: Revision and Process: “Round Robin” Group Writing
    Abstract

    Offers 4 brief descriptions from college writing teachers of activities they use successfully. Describes using a “round robin” process for group writing and revision; addressing stylistic and grammatical issues by using anonymous student writing; “showing” versus “telling” words; and using film to model “larger” meaning in personal narrative.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc20001896

January 2000

  1. An evaluation of the social perspective in the development of technical requirements
    Abstract

    Uses a qualitative methodology to examine how discourse norms and socialization processes affect the development of technical requirements. Our exploratory investigation of how government personnel develop and review technical requirements indicates that discourse norms and academic technical writing socialization processes affect the technical writing process. Technical writers perceived that requirements in work statements became less precise as more requirements were coordinated in team-based designs. In essence, we found that, in team-based designs, interpretation conflict and technical diffusion were important dimensions when writing and coordinating technical requirements. Our findings suggest that collaborative technical writing is a complex and difficult process in team-based designs where integration and persuasion skills dominate.

    doi:10.1109/47.888813
  2. Eighth graders, gender, and online publishing: A story of teacher and student collaboration
    doi:10.1016/s8755-4615(00)00027-x

2000

  1. Some Millennial Thoughts about the Future of Writing Centers
    Abstract

    When most writing centers in the United States were being founded and developed, colleges and universities had very few entities they labeled “centers.” Today, however, centers are cropping up with increasing regularity. At our own institutions, we have (between us) Centers for Humanities, Centers for Advanced Materials Research, Centers for Cognitive Studies, Centers for the Study of First Americans— even a Center for Epigraphy. It seems worth pausing to consider this phenomenon: Where are all these centers coming from, and why are they proliferating so rapidly? One strong possibility: Centers create spaces for the kind of work that needs to be done in higher education, work that is difficult or impossible to do within traditional disciplinary frameworks. In almost every case, for example, the previously mentioned centers allow for interor cross-disciplinary research and scholarship, and at their best they encourage highly productive forms of collaboration. Furthermore, they often initiate projects designed to bring college and community closer together. In short, these new centers seem to us one of the major signs of stress on old ways of taxonomizing and creating knowledge. Their growing popularity signals, we think, one institutional response to changing educational demands, populations, budgets, and technologies. We are well aware that these are difficult times at most community colleges, colleges, and universities, and that faculty and staff in many writing centers must spend an inordinate amount of time struggling to provide basic services. Nevertheless we wish to emphasize those opportunities that we believe are available to writing centers, even those that are in various ways marginalized on their campuses. The opportunities that we will discuss involve four potentials that we see for institutional refiguration: the refiguration of institutional space, of concepts of knowlWork Cited

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1466
  2. The Importance of Innovation: Diffusion Theory and Technological Progress in Writing Centers
    Abstract

    In writing centers, technological progress requires collaboration among stakeholders who have varying degrees of expertise with pedagogical applications of instructional technologies. In “Cyberspace and Sofas: Dialogic Spaces and the Making of an Online Writing Lab,” Eric Miraglia and Joel Norris share an impressive list of individuals who collaborated to create and implement Washington State University’s OWL: Bill Condon, Writing Programs Director; Gary Brown, Associate Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning; Lisa Johnson-Shull, Director of the Writing Lab; Norris, Assistant Director of the Writing Lab; Miraglia, Learning Technologies Specialist for the Student Advising and Learning Center; Toby Taylor, an undergraduate student with expertise in graphic design; and Pete Cihak, an undergraduate who focused on North, Stephen. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” College English 46 (1984): 433-46.

    doi:10.7771/2832-9414.1465

December 1999

  1. Collaborative Projects in a Technical Writing Class: A Cost/Benefit Analysis
    Abstract

    Investigates both students’ and instructors’ perspectives on issues dealing with complications of using collaborative groups. Ascertains whether the costs of collaborative writing projects outweigh the benefits. Explores ways in which teachers can maximize benefits and minimize costs. Concludes that collaborative projects are necessary and that problems can be minimized through careful planning and close monitoring.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc19991873

September 1999

  1. What Works for Me: Classroom Activities That Have Stood the Test of Time
    Abstract

    Presents five activities: (1) transforming—requires that a student put aside a first draft and create a new piece on the same subject in a different genre; (2) meaningless words—encourages deleting unnecessary words; (3) group work; (4) definitions quiz; and (5) audience, synthesis, and the thematic analysis—considering these three when writing on a certain topic.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc19991864
  2. Supporting deliberative democracy: Pedagogical arts of the contact zone of the electronic public sphere
    Abstract

    I participate in a teaching and learning collaborative called Intercollegiate Electronic Democracy Project (IEDP). The project's goal is to enable students' participation in democratic culture through rhetoric and public writing. Using Internet and Web technology, we inhabit an electronic public sphere where both teaching and learning are collaborative, connecting teachers and students from many institutions across country, and where pedagogy, public issues, and politics intersect. From perspective of rhetoric and composition, IEDP embraces three topics important to our field: computers and writing; public discourse, especially deliberative rhetoric; and multiculturalism, specifically contact-zone theory and pedagogy. This essay elaborates some implications of this nexus. While much of pedagogy I discuss reflects strategies successfully used in IEDP, its implications extend to similar projects that engage students in electronic public sphere. Ever since Mary Louise Pratt challenged teachers to develop pedagogical arts of contact zone (40), many teachers have become more sensitive to multicultural dynamics of their classrooms, and they have begun to chart what Richard E. Miller calls the uncharted realms of teaching and studying in contact zone (407). There have been theoretical projects such as using contact zones as a basis for rethinking and reorganizing English studies (Bizzell); efforts such as those that address challenges posed by asymmetrical power relations in classroom (Miller) and differences in cultural perspectives and values (van Slyck); and investigations of specific contact-zone phenomena such as students' strategies for coping with dominant discourses (Canagarajah) and the politics of style (Lu). These developments signify our ability to respond to multicultural classroom conditions by accommodating educational needs and desires of all students. Nowadays, however, classroom per se is no longer sole site for teaching, learning, writing, and speaking. With growing interest in public discourse and civic participation among students-and with rapidly increasing

    doi:10.1080/07350199909359260
  3. Common Ground: Feminist Collaboration in the Academy
    Abstract

    Placed within the context of the academic environment, this multi-focused book identifies students as active contributors and learners; faculty as researchers, teachers, and learners; and administrators as a synthesis of all three modes of collaboration. While focusing on the mutuality of educational enterprises, Common Ground raises provocative questions about the dynamics of gender and cooperation at various levels of academia. It reveals the transformative power of collaboration by challenging traditional notions of single authorship and beliefs about knowledge as individually owned and acquired. By offering different perspectives on feminism and collaboration, this book establishes the basis for re-thinking Romantic notions about creativity, re-conceptualizing conventional ideas regarding competition, and re-reading traditional hierarchies and authoritarian relationships.

    doi:10.2307/358976
  4. Reading Cultures: The Construction of Readers in the Twentieth Century
    Abstract

    Molly Abel Travis unites theory with an analysis historical conditions various cultural contexts this discussion reading reception twentieth-century literature United States. Travis moves beyond such provisional conclusions as the produces reader or the produces text considers ways twentieth-century readers texts attempt to constitute appropriate each other at particular cultural moments according to specific psychosocial exigencies. She uses overarching concept in and out of both to differentiate implied by from actual to discuss such in-and-out movements that occur process reading as alternation between immersion interactivity between role playing unmasking. Unlike most theorists, Travis is concerned with agency reader. Her conception agency reading is informed by performance, psychoanalytic, feminist theories. This agency involves compulsive, reiterative performance which readers attempt to find themselves by going outside selfengaging literary role playing hope finally fully identifying self through self-differentiation. Furthermore, readers never escape a social context; they are both constructed actively constructing that they read as part interpretive communities are involved collaborative creativity or what Kendall Walton calls collective imagining.

    doi:10.2307/358979

August 1999

  1. Editors’ Introduction
    Abstract

    Traditionally, university faculty have been evaluated and promoted according to their ability to produce sole-authored publications. The age of copyright also pushed to discourage acknowledgement of contributions made by others. However, it has long been acknowledged that new scholarship is based on citation, and social researchers contend that all thought is socially meditated and therefore collaborative. The issue becomes more complicated when research is conducted in conjunction with classroom teachers, whose classroom practices and insights are imperative to the observer’s analysis, and should, therefore, be co-authors.

    doi:10.58680/rte19991683
  2. “If Anything is Odd, Inappropriate, Confusing, or Boring, It’s Probably Important”: The Emergence of Inclusive Acedemic Literacy through English Classroom Discussion Practices
    Abstract

    Describes the role of class discussion and a teacher’s particular discourse moves in the development of an inclusive learning culture in a high school English literature course with a rigorous academic curriculum. Focuses on how the teacher transformed previously tracked gifted and talented and general students’ understandings of what counted as being a reader while negotiating collaboration.

    doi:10.58680/rte19991685

May 1999

  1. What Works For Me: A Grocery List and Audience Analysis
    Abstract

    Offers four brief descriptions from composition/writing teachers of class activities that work well for them, addressing using a grocery list to help students understand why audience awareness is important; using group work to help students analyze literature; having students define and describe good writing; and helping students with specified punctuation and sentence patterns.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc19991848

April 1999

  1. Women and Feminism in Technical Communication: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Journal Articles Published in 1989 through 1997
    Abstract

    This qualitative content analysis identifies 40 articles about women and feminism published in five technical communication journals in a period of nine years, beginning with the publication of Mary Lay's award-winning “Interpersonal Conflict in Collaborative Writing” in 1989. Along with numeric trends about the frequency of articles about women and feminism in technical communication journals, this study also identifies major themes, all of which concern inclusion: through eliminating sexist language, providing equal opportunity in the workplace, valuing gender differences, recovering women's historical contributions to technical communication, and critiquing previously uncontested terms and concepts. The study concludes that although research about women and feminism has been accepted as part of the scholarly purview of technical communication, the ways in which this research has influenced workplace or classroom practice are unclear.

    doi:10.1177/1050651999013002002

March 1999

  1. Using genre theory to teach students engineering lab report writing: a collaborative approach
    Abstract

    Beginning Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) students often have difficulty learning the genre of lab report writing. This difficulty can be alleviated through genre theory strategies and research, which writing center consultants, for example, can use to focus on the specific form and content of engineering writing, which then can be taught to students in a writing center environment. Genre theory provides a means (1) for humanities writing center consultants to learn specific characteristics about engineering writing, (2) for interdisciplinary collaboration between writing professionals and engineers to take place, and (3) for students to have increased opportunities to learn the discourse of their field. All of these benefits are enhanced by discipline-specific writing programs that support and facilitate them. In addition, the collaboration provides a stimulating, fluid, creative environment in which to discuss engineering writing, an environment which reflects the changing needs of engineering education as a result of technological advancements. As technology continues to influence engineering education, prompting evolutions in both technical and communication skills and knowledge, genre theory and interdisciplinary collaboration will continue to gain importance as strategies for initiating students into the communication demands of their field. The discussion focuses on the integration of genre theory with writing instruction in the ECE Department at the University of South Carolina. This integration stimulated interaction among ECE faculty, composition and rhetoric faculty and students, and ECE students.

    doi:10.1109/47.749363

January 1999

  1. Software engineering across boundaries: student project in distributed collaboration
    Abstract

    Geographically distributed software development projects have been made possible by rapid developments primarily within the data communication area. A number of companies recognize that distributed collaboration has great potential for the near future. The article describes the empirical study of a cooperative student project located at two different geographical sites. The project was carried out at two universities: one in Sweden and one in Finland. The initial goals were to give the students the opportunity to learn about the practical aspects of cooperation between two geographically separate institutions and to study specific problems anticipated by the teachers with regard to communication, coordination, language, culture, requirements' handling, testing, and bug fixing. The article focuses on communication and coordination within the cooperative project, as these were identified as the most significant problem areas. We also thought that these areas were the most interesting and the ones most likely to lead to improvements. The article not only describes our findings but also gives hints about what to think about when running similar projects, both with respect to project related issues and teaching issues.

    doi:10.1109/47.807967
  2. The gender impact of temporary virtual work groups
    Abstract

    Much knowledge work involves temporary work teams. Increasingly, these teams are not face-to-face but virtual teams. The paper explores the gender impact of virtual collaboration as compared to face-to-face teams. Descriptive statistics are used to show the different perceptions of the group experience based on gender and on face-to-face versus virtual team experiences. Women in the virtual groups perceived that the group stuck together more and helped each other more than did the men. Also, the women were more satisfied with the virtual group than men and felt that group conflict was readily resolved. In comparing the experience of women in the virtual groups to women in the face-to-face groups, the face-to-face women were less satisfied with the group experience than their virtual counterparts and perceived that conflict was smoothed over.

    doi:10.1109/47.807966
  3. Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance by Cheryl Glenn
    Abstract

    Short Reviews Cheryl Glenn, Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997) xii + 235pp. Glenn's purpose in Rhetoric Retold is feminist and cartographic: to remap the history of rhetoric by putting female rhetoricians and rhetorical practices solidly on the map. She challenges patriarchal rhetorical history at the center by including the voices of women who practiced rhetoric from the margins. Her hope is to revitalize "rhetorical theory by shaking the conceptual foundations of rhetorical study itself" (p. 10). Glenn's method derives from historiography, feminism, and gender studies. She uses "resistant readings...of the paternal narrative" and "female-authored rhetorical works" as well as "broad definitions of rhetoric" (p. 4). Her rationale for subject selection appears in Chapter One. Thereafter, she develops each historical chapter by overviewing cultural conditions of the period, describing women's place in those worlds, sketching the nature of patriarchal rhetoric at the time, then presenting the rhetorical activities of some exceptional women who were able to speak and write from the margins. Whenever she can, she highlights significant "points of contact" across all of the subjects she considers. Chapter Two examines pretheoretical sources of rhetorical consciousness in ancient Greece. Her reading of Sappho and female Phythagorians (Theano, Phintys, Perictyone) present rhetorical avenues that mainstream tradition never explored. She details public (argumentative) rhetoric (Corax, Gorgias, and Isocrates), then treats Aspasia as a silent heartbeat at the center of Pericles's intellectual circle. Aspasia was as likely a source of inspiration to Socrates and Plato as was Diotima. Glenn examines© The International Society for the History of Rhetoric, Rhetorica, Volume XVII, Number 1 (Winter 1999) 89 RHETORICA 90 tradition (Cicero and Quintilian), challenging this tradition with voices from the margins. Here we meet Vergima, Cornelia, Hortensia, Amasia Senta, Gaia Afrania, Sempronia, Fulvia, and Octavia. In Chapter Three Glenn details Christian cultural dynamics, calling the Bible the "ur-text of history, wisdom, and doctrine" (p. 75). She discusses inheritance laws, conceptions of women's bodies, the theoretical equality of men and women in the eyes of Christ, yet the practical inequality of doctrine and of Christian institutional piety. Examining representations of women in medieval literature (imaginative, Marian, inspirational), Glenn contends that women never received "the full range of human feelings or characteristics" (p. 86). Women appear as inferior to rational men, some of whose (Augustine, Jerome) rhetorical practices (ars poetica, ars dictaminis, ars praedicandi) Glenn treats next in some detail. She shows how a small group of religious women achieved some release from the cultural hold, such as Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, whose unusual rhetorical practices Glenn tells in illuminating detail. In Chapter Four Glenn overviews the general nature of Renaissance culture, tracing the patriarchal bias of laws, the nature of women's work both outside and inside the home, the inferiority of women's bodies when compared to men's, and more. She situates classical and Christian humanism, showing the usefulness of humanistic education in society and religious life. Some special English women, according to Glenn, received humanistic training, and she traces their (modest) literary accomplishments. She contrasts these women to the fake representations of women in literature; some women appear overly assertive (Edmund Spenser's Britomart, Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth), while others appear willfully disobedient (Juliet, Desdemona, the Duchess of Malfi). Such images reinforced women's exclusion from the public world of traditional Ciceronian rhetorical practice, though the entry of educated women became more probable as rhetoric and poetics converged in early English rhetorics that focused on style and eloquence. Glenn shows how three exceptional woman each used their own versions of rhetorical eloquence to make an impact on the public Reviews 91 from the margins—Margaret More, Anne Askew, and Queen Elizabeth I. In Chapter Five Glenn stresses the performative value of her project: the "promise that rhetorical histories and theories will eventually (and naturally) include women" (p. 174). She presents "four ways...[to] work together to realize...[these] performative...goals": we must recognize our common ground, "explore various means of collaboration", reevaluate the notion of "silence", and recognize the unlimited opportunities for research in this area (p. 174-78). This was a difficult...

    doi:10.1353/rht.1999.0026
  4. Listening to Their Voices: The Rhetorical Activities of Historical Women ed. by Molly Meijer Wertheimer
    Abstract

    Reviews 91 from the margins—Margaret More, Anne Askew, and Queen Elizabeth I. In Chapter Five Glenn stresses the performative value of her project: the "promise that rhetorical histories and theories will eventually (and naturally) include women" (p. 174). She presents "four ways...[to] work together to realize...[these] performative...goals": we must recognize our common ground, "explore various means of collaboration", reevaluate the notion of "silence", and recognize the unlimited opportunities for research in this area (p. 174-78). This was a difficult book to write. Feminist rhetorical scholars have already identified at least three limits such revisions must observe: any feminist account of the history of rhetoric cannot stand alone, but must be continuous somehow with mainstream rhetorical histories; simply inserting "exceptional women" into an otherwise unrevised traditional account is insufficient; and only by exposing the cultural oppressions that silenced women can we hope to break their hold. Glenn succeeds brilliantly in balancing these demands as she makes the best connections she can among new kinds of (feminist) interdisciplinary research, while observing a time limit necessary for publication. Her accomplishment is significant, even though there are probably readers who will want to set the record straight about this historical person or that fact, or to join the pieces of the story more amply. Nonetheless, the space her work creates teems with opportunities for research and for insights about possible rhetorical selves for us all. MOLLY MEIJER WERTHEIMER Pennsylvania State University Molly Meijer Wertheimer, ed., Listening to Their Voices: The Rhetorical Activities of Historical Women (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997) 408 pp. Studies of women's contributions and challenges to the rhetorical tradition are still sparse but, thankfully, growing. Listening to Their Voices: The Rhetorical Activities ofHistorical Women constitutes a welcome addition to this blossoming field. Edited by Molly Meijer Wertheimer, Listening to Their Voices comprises an RHETORICA 92 impressive array of eighteen articles on women's rhetorical activities in contexts ranging from Ancient Egypt to twentiethcentury Europe and America. Authored by American scholars (with the exception of one Canadian), these articles greatly increase the available research on women in the history of rhetoric. The range of historical periods and cultural contexts that the articles address underscores the neglected richness and diversity of women's contributions to rhetoric, as well as the extent of all that remains to be recovered and reinterpreted. Notably, the collection stretches the realm of rhetorical activity beyond its traditional focus on public, argumentative speech or writing to include, in particular, the non-traditional genres of private letter­ writing and conversation. The inclusionary diversity of Listening to Their Voices reveals, as Wertheimer notes in her introduction, a feminist appreciation of difference and multiplicity (p. 4). At the same time, this collection is well-unified. Its unity stems, most fundamentally, from the authors' joint assumption that the study of women's rhetorical activities is worthwhile and important to the history of rhetoric. As well, the articles demonstrate a consistently fine historical contextualization of the women rhetors and rhetoricians they discuss, uniformly avoiding the imposition of contemporary social categories on these women of the past, highlighting instead the cultural and political realities which motivated and shaped their rhetorical activities. In some cases, these activities are presented as those of an "exceptional" woman who was "able to be heard in the male public sphere" (p. ix). More intriguingly, in my view, several of the studies foreground the practices of communities of women as well as rhetorical activities addressed to contexts beyond the "male public sphere". The volume is divided thematically into four main sections, an organization that allows us to perceive non-chronological links between the articles' differing historical points of focus. I will review each section in turn, commenting only—in the interests of brevity, not of ranking—on several but not all of the articles. The first section, entitled "Making Delicate Images", includes three articles that highlight the difficulties of recovering the rhetorical roles and contributions of women within a patriarchal tradition. Cheryl Glenn, for example, relocates Aspasia "on the rhetorical Reviews 93 map" by sifting through and reading against the "powerful gendered lens" of references to her in male-authored texts (p. 24...

    doi:10.1353/rht.1999.0027
  5. Whose Ideas?: The Technical Writer's Expertise in Inventio
    Abstract

    Compelling arguments from researchers studying the rhetoric of science have convinced both scientists and humanists that technical writing involves invention, or discovery of the available means of argument. If we agree that inventio is crucial to technical writing, however, we encounter a problem: namely, that the rhetor engaged in invention as part of a technical writing process does not necessarily have expertise in the subject matter of the composition. What, then, is the expertise that the technical writer contributes to the invention process? Working from the notion that knowledge is an activity rather than a commodity [1], I argue that a technical writer's expertise in invention lies in an ability to adapt rhetorical heuristics to situations of interdisciplinary collaboration. This focus expands our understanding of how invention works when the goal of communication is producing knowledge across disciplinary boundaries, rather than winning an argument with persuasive techniques.1

    doi:10.2190/73vw-ybuc-yhxw-wu0c
  6. Web‐based training: An overview of training tools for the technical writing industry
    Abstract

    This article provides technical training managers with an overview of the range of Web‐based training solutions available to their organizations. The solutions range from individual drill and practice opportunities to live collaborative group learning. This article defines four broad categories and characterizes each. The most popular type, Web/computer based (W/CBT), is analyzed and four levels of W/CBT programs are presented. Included are tables summarizing considerations for selecting a development approach.

    doi:10.1080/10572259909364650
  7. Pedagogy, architecture, and the virtual classroom
    Abstract

    Teaching through the Web requires instructors to reconsider their previous assumptions about the nature of teaching, lecture, testing, and student/teacher interaction. Teaching technical writing online, however, raises additional issues. How can a technical writing instructor create an online workplace in which professional‐level collaboration can occur, while also allowing for purely academic instruction and discussion of theoretical issues? This article will address these issues in relation to the author's design and development of his Digital Rhetorics and the Modern Dialectic, specifically, how instructors must assume different roles as designers and then as teachers of online courses; how useful dialectical exchange on the Web that mimics (and sometimes surpasses) face‐to‐face, in‐classroom discussion can be created; and how technical writing instructors can foster productive online collaboration. This article will be a mixture of theory and practice—leaning a little more toward the practice, making it of immediate use to someone who has just been asked to teach a class online for the first time and is seeking help.

    doi:10.1080/10572259909364646
  8. Are Our Courses Working?: Measuring Student Learning
    Abstract

    This article describes an assessment carried out in collaboration with the administrators of a large freshman English course. The assessment team worked with instructors to identify course goals and to design tasks that the instructors felt would fairly assess the extent to which the students achieved the goals. Students who did and did not take the course were both pre- and posttested on five central goals: critical reading, argument identification, differentiation of summary and paraphrase, understanding of key terms used in the course, and practical strategies for writing academic papers. Results of the assessment failed to indicate any substantial improvement on any of the five course goals for students who took the course. These results contrasted with positive outcomes obtained by the same assessment team with introductory history and statistics courses. The article concludes with reflections on why instructors may fail to recognize that their courses are not working.

    doi:10.1177/0741088399016001002

December 1998

  1. Instructional Note Using the Talk Show to “Talk Back” to O’Connor’s “Good CountryPeople”
    Abstract

    Describes how a teacher of a college introductory-literature course used role-playing, a talk-show format, and reader-audience participation to help students make collaborative meaning for, and to promote students’ active engagement with a Flannery O’Connor short story.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc19981818
  2. Making the Student, Making the Grade: Fostering Dialogue through Accountability
    Abstract

    Describes a first-year college composition course and the daily preparatory writing assignments, “inquiry response papers,” that form its core. Describes how these assignments, in which students respond to their homework reading, have led to a collaborative, dialogic classroom where students realize and express their own voices, and have fostered a more intrinsic motivation within students.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc19981815

September 1998

  1. Collaborative Teaching in the De–Centered Classroom
    Abstract

    Describes the authors ongoing collaborative teaching and encourages instructors to try it. Points out various ways that collaborative teaching can take place. Examines values and assumptions underlying collaborative teaching. Presents results of a case study looking at major benefits to classes and students, major benefits to instructors, and problems encountered.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc19981802
  2. Landmark Essays on Bakhtin, Rhetoric and Writing
    Abstract

    Contents: Part I:Theory, Language, Rhetoric. C. Schuster, Mikhail Bakhtin as Rhetorical Theorist (1985). R.A. Harris, Bakhtin, Phaedrus, and the Geometry of Rhetoric (1988). J. Klancher, Bakhtin's Rhetoric (1989). T. Kent, Hermeneutics and Genre: Bakhtin and the Problem of Communicative Interaction (1991). K. Halasek, Feminism and Bakhtin: Dialogic Reading in the Academy (1992). M. Bernard-Donals, Mikhail Bakhtin: Between Phenomenology and Marxism (1994). M. Cooper, Dialogic Learning Across Disciplines (1994). K. Halasek, M. Bernard-Donals, D. Bialostosky, J.T. Zebroski, Bakhtin and Rhetorical Criticism: A Symposium (1992). Part II:Composition Studies, Pedagogy, Research. J.S. Ritchie, Beginning Writers: Diverse Voices and Individual Identity (1989). J.J. Comprone, Textual Perspectives on Collaborative Learning: Dialogic Literacy and Written Texts in Composition Classrooms (1989). G.A. Cross, A Bakhtinian Exploration of Factors Affecting the Collaborative Writing of an Executive Letter of an Annual Report (1990). D.H. Bialostosky, Liberal Education, Writing, and the Dialogic Self (1991). T. Recchio, A Bakhtinian Reading of Student Writing (1991). M. Middendorf, Bakhtin and the Dialogic Writing Class (1992). N. Welch, One Student's Many Voices: Reading, Writing, and Responding With Bakhtin (1993). H.R. Ewald, Waiting for Answerability: Bakhtin and Composition Studies (1993).

    doi:10.2307/358371

August 1998

  1. "Hypertext Conceals Itself, It Announces Itself": Rhetoric and Collaborative Writing in the Electronic Classroom

June 1998

  1. The dynamics of collaborative design
    Abstract

    The University of Colorado at Denver's Internet Task Force has been conducting developmental research on the collaborative learning and participatory design process while creating and implementing the School of Education's Web page and mediated learning environment. We developed a design and learning process model that is appropriate for designers working in groups in academic or corporate environments. Critical features are authentic tasks, knowledge development, generating research questions and reflection.

    doi:10.1109/47.678554

May 1998

  1. Writing across Culture: Using Distanced Collaboration to Break Intellectual Barriers in Composition Courses
    Abstract

    Describes how instructors at two different colleges in Montana (a tribal college and a distant community college) collaboratively teach composition courses (using the same reading and assignments, and doing peer revision for each other). Describes how this approach breaks through cultural, ideological, intellectual "containments;" engages in academic discourse; and enters into new discourse communities.

    doi:10.58680/tetyc19983859