This article develops a framework for rhetorical inquiry that builds on the concept of wicked problems as conceptualized through social policy and design studies research. Responding to technical communication scholarship that calls for increased engagement with public issues and controversies, the author specifically discusses a writing course that used the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill as a basis for teaching problem-based rhetorical invention, document production, interdisciplinary collaboration, and professional development. The framework described in this article ultimately offers a heuristic for students to research and write about ill-defined problems that must be addressed in time but that demand sustained engagement over time—activities that begin in the classroom but ideally continue to develop throughout their personal and professional lives.

Abstract The authors argue that technical communication instructors are in a particularly apt position to teach social media as key to students’ lives as technical communicators and future professionals. Drawing on the concepts of reach and crowd sourcing as heuristics to rearticulate dominant cultural narratives of social media as deleterious to students’ careers, the authors offer a case study of an introductory professional and technical communication pedagogy that helped to disrupt uncritical deployments of social media. Keywords: crowd sourcingpedagogyreachsocial media ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors give many thanks to Dr. David J. Reamer and the students enrolled in his technical writing course at the University of Tampa for their feedback and comments on the student documentation published on Instructables. The authors also appreciate thoughtful and engaged reviewer comments that helped us to develop this article. Notes Students are not misguided in their concerns about social media use and its connection to employment, and perhaps even university admissions practices. As of May 13, Citation2013, the National Conferences of State Legislatures reports that social-media privacy protection laws are being introduced or are pending in 36 states. These states are seeking to stop the practice of employers and universities from requesting logins and passwords of employees or students to their social media sites. According to the conference, four states already have such protections, including Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah (para 1). These same laws are under debate as both industry and regulatory finances groups argue for the veracity of having access to social media outlets in order to monitor employee discussions of sensitive financial information (Eaglesham & Rothfeld, Citation2013, para 1). In the particular semester discussed, students all used Instructables to ensure they were working with the same interface and design features and to allow for more robust user-testing. We understand that some students in professional and technical writing courses might be eager to learn about and use social media for their professional development, but we see this position as equally capable of reinforcing the binary of good/bad that is worthy of complication. Neither position affords human agency because technology is the determinant factor in either a student's success or failure. Additional informationNotes on contributorsElise Verzosa Hurley Elise Verzosa Hurley is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric, Composition, and Technical Communication at Illinois State University. Her research interests include technical and professional communication pedagogy, visual rhetoric, and multimodal composition. Her work has appeared in Kairos. Amy C. Kimme Hea Amy C. Kimme Hea is Writing Program Director and Associate Professor of Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English at the University of Arizona, and author of Going Wireless: A Critical Exploration of Wireless and Mobile Technologies for Composition Teachers and Researchers.

Using Ivanic’s (2004) framework, the study of 20 elementary teachers examines the relationships among teachers’ beliefs about writing, their instructional practices, and contextual factors. While the district-adopted curriculum reflected specific discourses, teachers’ beliefs and practices reflected a combination of discourses. The nature of the professional development tended to reinforce particular discourses, but occasionally offered an alternative. The three cases revealed how teachers negotiated the tensions among various discourses. Beth exemplified a skills discourse, but demonstrated beliefs about writing as communication; however, she did not articulate tensions between the discourses and followed the district, skillsinfused curriculum. Amber borrowed from skills, traits, process, and genre discourses without resolving potential contradictions, resulting in instructional practices that had little coherence. Jackson, who brought in his own writing as a hip-hop artist, illustrated the social practices discourse as well as creativity and genre discourses to create an enhanced version of a district-adopted curriculum. Implications for practice include raising teacher’s awareness of the contradictory discourses that surround them.

This article reviews insights from place-based education and ecological models of writing to show how these theories can work together to shape locally focused composition pedagogies. From place-based education, the researcher takes an emphasis on physical specificity, and from ecological models of writing, the researcher takes an emphasis on discursive constructions of places. Both orientations to place are applied to an undergraduate professional writing class in Houston, an environment that illustrates vividly how unique physical changes interact with competing discourses in the present moment. The researcher describes a revision to a major writing assignment and discusses a need for assessment criteria that allow instructors to see the value of place-based and ecological models of writing.

This program profile describes how a writing center embedded within a major school of business negotiates its unique positionality. Tracing both the successes and shortcomings of a writing initiative tasked with improving the school’s quality of writing, the profile offers a number of insights on both WAC and writing center work, including how to enact curricular change, encourage faculty to incorporate writing into their classes, maintain programmatic continuity with frequent turnover of graduate student administrators, and consult effectively with undergraduate students. Several sites of analysis are addressed, as the initiative seeks to remain committed to its mission while encountering various challenges.

be written as one paragraph, and should not contain displayed mathematical equations or tabular material. The abstract should include three or four different keywords or phrases, as this will help readers to find it. It is important to avoid over-repetition of such phrases as this can result in a page being rejected by search engines. Ensure that your abstract reads well and is grammatically correct.

This study explores a comprehensive sample of experimental and quasi-experimental research within five leading technical communication journals over a 20-year period. Exploratory studies can overview how a method has evolved within a field, highlighting how it has advanced understanding of communication and identifying areas for further inquiry. Research questions: (1) How has experimental research in technical communication journals developed over the 20-year period? Specifically, how much is being published, which journals publish experiments, what topics are being explored, and what fields are informing this research? (2) What content characterizes experimental research in technical communication? Specifically, how explicit are the research questions/hypotheses, are the results of pilot studies reported, what are the sample sizes and populations used, and what measures do researchers use? (3) Who publishes experimental research in technical communication? Specifically, which authors and affiliates are most associated with experimental research, and how does the sample's gender and authorship distribution compare to existing research? Literature review: We first address how scholars have assessed research in technical communication and how these findings implicate experimental research. We then review features of other exploratory studies that inform this study's design. Methodology: We conducted a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 137 experiments, a comprehensive sample identified from a corpus of 2,118 refereed papers published from 1992 to 2011. We coded 14 variables related to the causal relationships that the experiments addressed and who produced the research. We subjected the data to multiple statistical measures, including contingency table analysis and correspondence analysis. Results and conclusions: Over the 20 years, the journals published experimental research at a consistent rate. This could indicate that these methods have a stable presence in the field, or a discouraging sign that output is not on the rise despite calls from leading scholars. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication (TPC) emerged as a strong producer of experiments, publishing 45% of the sample. TPC was also associated with most recent experiments, assuming this role from Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, which was associated with early experiments. In addition, TPC, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, and Technical Communication correlated with experiments on collaboration, pedagogy, and intercultural communication, respectively. The results also revealed that recent experiments reported significantly more explicit research question/hypotheses and pilot studies, an encouraging sign for the quality of future experiments. Finally, Spyridakis published the most experiments over the past 20 years, and researchers at the University of Washington and the University of Twente were the top affiliates associated with output. The configuration of both of these institutions' programs, which seem to align with a traditional science model, might suggest how the evolution of technical communication programs impacts the type of research that its affiliates produce. Our results are limited by the small, though comprehensive, sample and the exploratory natures of measures like correspondence analysis. Future research could use the proposed framework to investigate the evolution of other research methods in technical communication, strengthening our body of knowledge.

As Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) utilized in workplaces, classrooms, and community organizations continue to proliferate, it follows that the kinds of knowledge necessary to assemble those technologies in order to engage in effective professional communication are becoming increasingly complex. This article details a study conducted of two student teams engaged in a service-learning class in which they were tasked with producing high-quality digital products---a mini-documentary and a simple, but interactive website---for client organizations---an art classroom in a local public school and a mentoring initiative within a local non-profit. The main findings of this study are that students mobilized a variety of resources and created a flexible network of technologies, knowledges, people, and modes of communication in order to address issues pertinent to their clients. In addition, I argue that the most important resource students mobilized was knowledge itself, indicating that one of the most important aspects of digital composing may be in-depth, practical knowledge of technologies, modes, and the genres they involve. Ultimately, the implications of this limited, classroom-based case study are that a situated understanding of how to assemble knowledges for the effective design of communication within a given communication infrastructure may be more important than access to the most cutting-edge modes and technologies, especially when working with resource-poor organizational clients.

We understand "community literacy" as the domain for literacy work that exists outside of mainstream educational and work institutions.It can be found in programs devoted to adult education, early childhood education, reading initiatives, lifelong learning, workplace literacy, or work with marginalized populations, but it can also be found in more informal, ad hoc projects.For us, literacy is defined as the realm where attention is paid not just to content or to knowledge but to the symbolic means by which it is represented and used.Thus, literacy makes reference not just to letters and to text but to other multimodal and technological representations as well.

Research problem: Indirect communication is prevalent in business communication practices. For information systems (IS) projects that require professionals from multiple disciplines to work together, the use of indirect communication may hinder successful design, implementation, and maintenance of these systems. Drawing on the Speech Act Theory (SAT), this study investigates how direct and indirect speech acts may influence language comprehension in the setting of communication problems inherent in IS projects. Research questions: (1) Do participating subjects, who are IS professionals, differ in their comprehension of indirect and direct speech acts? (2) Do participants display different attention processes in their comprehension of indirect and direct speech acts? (3) Do participants' attention processes influence their comprehension of indirect and direct speech acts? Literature review: We review two relevant areas of theory-polite speech acts in professional communication and SAT. First, a broad review that focuses on literature related to the use of polite speech acts in the workplace and in information system (IS) projects suggests the importance of investigating speech acts by professionals. In addition, the SAT provides the theoretical framework guiding this study and the development of hypotheses. Methodology: The current study uses a quantitative approach. A between-groups experiment design was employed to test how direct and indirect speech acts influence the language comprehension of participants. Forty-three IS professionals participated in the experiment. In addition, through the use of eye-tracking technology, this study captured the attention process and analyzed the relationship between attention and comprehension. Results and discussion: The results show that the directness of speech acts significantly influences participants' attention process, which, in turn, significantly affects their comprehension. In addition, the findings indicate that indirect speech acts, if employed by IS professionals to communicate with others, may easily be distorted or misunderstood. Professionals and managers of organizations should be aware that effective communication in interdisciplinary projects, such as IS development, is not easy, and that reliance on polite or indirect communication may inhibit the generation of valid information.

Last semester I gave a talk to a small group of graduate students and faculty in the Department of Animal and Food Sciences in the College of Agriculture on my campus. As one of several invited speakers for the department's graduate seminar series, the purpose, I was told, was straightforward: model an effective presentation for the students. I teach courses in technical and professional communication so I imagined it might also be useful to discuss presentation strategies. I concluded by giving an overview of my own research interests---broadly, visual communication---and briefly described a project I am working on related to scientific graphics and historic public health maps.

This position paper proposes the undertaking of a systematic research agenda on the tangled questions of accessibility, technology, and disability from the perspective of Technical Communication field. O'Hara (2004), Oswal and Hewett (2013), Palmeri (2006), Porter (1997), Ray and Ray (1999), Salvo (2005), Slatin and Rush (2003), Theofanos and Redish (2003 and 2005), and Walters (2010), have approached accessibility issues in various Technical Communication contexts and have emphasized the need for more attention to accessibility in our research, teaching, and practice. Likewise, the major journals in our field-- Technical Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly and the IEEE Transactions in Professional Communication ---have also published at least one special issue EACH on the topic of accessibility. While all this sporadic research has appeared on accessibility-related topics in different venues, this research has not yet gained the type of traction one would generally expect from an area with such a growth potential. As a user-centered discipline, we also ought to remember that presently 57.8 million Americans have one or more disabilities. Among the U.S. veteran population alone, 5.5 million are disabled. And, if we consider the reach of our Technical Communication work via the World Wide Web, this planet has 1 billion people with disabilities who can be affected by our accessibility research (National Center for Disability, 2013).

Over the last 2 decades, the nations that once comprised the Soviet Union have begun to play an increasingly important role in the global economy. As a result, today's technical and professional communicators could find themselves interacting with co-workers, colleagues, and clients in these nations. Being successful in such contexts, however, requires an understanding of the cultural, historic, educational, and economic factors that have affected and continue to shape technical and professional communication practices in these countries. This article provides an overview of the literature that has been published on technical and professional communication practices in the former USSR as well as reviews educational factors that have contributed to such practices. Through such an examination, the article provides readers with a foundation they can use to engage in future research relating to technical and professional communication practices in post-Soviet states.

Globalization promises a world without boundaries that will increasingly necessitate the exchange of international and intercultural business communication. In this globalization process, a significant proportion of future economic growth (and the exchange of messages associated with this development) is projected to be centered in Asia, with a shift in such growth and power away from the United States and Europe. Following Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, mainland China and, to a lesser extent, India are moving to upscale positions on value-added chains in global industries. New major Asian players (e.g., countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) are replacing the United States and Europe, who are taking on downscale positions. In addition, the Middle East, because of global dependence on it for oil, is a critical player in international business. With this shift in global trading patterns, we must focus on Asia in order to gain an up-to-date understanding of business communication in global contexts. But previous research and theory have been directed toward business communication in the United States and, to a lesser extent, in Europe.

Past research in intercultural business communication has laid a partial foundation for explaining Asian business communication. Asians are classified as high-context communicators and speak English in intercultural communication. Nevertheless, the relationship of language and culture on communication behaviors has remained unclear. To address this gap in the research, this study compares the communication behaviors of business professionals from two prominent Asian cultures—Japanese and Hong Kong Chinese—when these professionals participate in intercultural and intracultural decision-making meetings. The study reveals some differences in communication behaviors between the two cultural groups in both the intracultural and the intercultural meetings. Although both groups generally reflected their high-context communication orientations, they exhibited some deviations from the general discourse patterns, especially in the ways in which they expressed disagreements.

This study questions the conventional view of the indirectness of Chinese communication. Drawing on qualitative interviews with Finnish and Chinese business professionals, the authors examine the effect of cultural identity on the directness of the communication of Chinese professionals who work for internationally operating Finnish companies located in Beijing and Shanghai, China, and who use English as the shared language with their Finnish colleagues. Three components of cultural identity (i.e., vocation as an international business professional, fairly young age, and the use of English as the business lingua franca) are particularly relevant in the participants’ professional communication and stimulated its openness and directness. The study finds that the evolution of English as the business lingua franca can be detected in the signs of convergence identified in Chinese and Finnish professional communication.

Telework—the performance of paid labor activities at sites other than conventional workplaces and through the use of communication technologies—has not been considered a legitimate work form in China. Analyzing in-depth interviews thematically, the authors found that teleworkers from the post-80s generation not only legitimized their work form pragmatically and morally but also elevated it as a better choice for more achievement, flexibility, autonomy, efficiency, and professional development. Although they evaluated their choice positively, these teleworkers also acknowledged the unique challenges in cultivating guanxi (building relationships) and careers in China when working remotely. The authors suggest that telework in China offers a contested site for studying the dialectic tensions between traditional Chinese values and Western business discourses.

Abstract We justify and describe our development of the Service Learning Opportunities in Technical Communication (SLOT-C) Database. The database broadens the range of organizations that instructors and students have for client-based communication projects. We argue in support of incorporating service learning into classes and facilitating partnerships among university instructors, their students, and nonprofits. We report strategies we learned for working with student interns and IT experts and strategies we developed as we worked with usability-test participants. Keywords: client-based communication projectsiterative designservice learning opportunitiestechnical communicationuser-centered design ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We sincerely thank the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication for awarding us a research grant in 2009 to build this database. We greatly appreciate Sam Singer, whose expertise in databases and Web development made the concept become a reality. We would also like to thank Stewart Whittemore, who contributed ideas in the early planning stage. Notes Waterfall design involves creating a design to which you are firmly committed early in development and letting all design decisions flow from the initial plan. Iterative design is more flexible, allowing the plan to change as needed in response to feedback. Additional informationNotes on contributorsSusan A. Youngblood Susan A. Youngblood teaches technical and professional communication at Auburn University, and many of her classes feature service learning. Her research addresses vulnerability, accessibility, and competing needs in communication, particularly in online environments. Jo Mackiewicz Jo Mackiewicz teaches editing at Auburn University. Her research applies linguistics to technical communication and focuses on politeness and credibility in evaluative texts such as tutoring interactions, editing sessions, and online reviews.

In this article we propose a Janus-faced approach to survey design—an approach that encourages researchers to consider how they can design and implement surveys more effectively using the latest web and database tools. Specifically, this approach encourages researchers to look two ways at once; attending to both the survey interface (client side; what users see) and the database design (server side; what researchers collect) so that researchers can pursue the most dynamic and layered data collection possible while ensuring greater participation and completion rates from respondents. We illustrate the potentials of a Janus-faced approach using a successfully designed and implemented nationwide survey on the writing lives of professional writing alumni. We offer up a series of questions that a researcher will want to consider during each stage of survey development.

Research problem: Although much research exists on virtual worlds, very few studies focus on professional virtual worlds used for working in a global setting. Research questions: (1) How do global managers currently use and experience professional virtual worlds (Virtual Worlds) as a communication media for global work? and (2) How do these Virtual Worlds support global and professional communication in a geographically distributed context? Literature review: We reviewed Virtual World literature in the area of social sciences, education, and games. Little research has been conducted on Virtual Worlds for workgroups. But those studies support the assumption that Virtual Worlds are suitable for global distributed work as a collaboration and communication medium. Methodology: With an explorative and qualitative interview research approach, we conducted 47 semi-structured interviews with virtual world vendors, researchers, and managers using virtual worlds in their work. Data were analyzed based on Grounded Theory Analysis methods. Results and conclusions: The results show four different use cases applied for professional Virtual Worlds: small team meetings, trainings, community building, and conferences. Furthermore, our findings confirm Virtual World literature that states that the professional Virtual World as a communication and collaboration tool supports geographically distributed work as well as visualization and learning in a global context.

Research problem: This corpus comparison study examines the occurrences of <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> as used in British and New Zealand engineering lectures in order to discover its frequency and functions and to consider its role in professional communication. Research questions: Is <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> as frequent in the academic genre of university lectures as in other genres of spoken English? (1) Does <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> have the same functions in British and New Zealand engineering lectures as found in a previous study at an American university? (2) Does a better understanding of the different ways that <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> is used in lectures have pedagogical implications for professional communication, especially for English as an additional language learners? Literature review: Previous studies show <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> mainly functions as a ‘”minimizer’” (merely, only, simply) in university lectures in America, and functions the same in British and New Zealand university lectures on engineering. <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog Just}$</tex></formula> also functions as part of a metadiscursive frame (let me <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> explain), and stance (the speaker's attitude toward the content communicated: don't <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> copy down what I've done). In response, English as an additional language learners can learn to recognize and distinguish the different functions of <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> and use them appropriately. Methodology: The researcher used a corpus linguistics methodology to determine the frequency of <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> and a discourse analysis method to see if the functions of <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> identified in a previous study of the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English applied to the corpus of British and New Zealand engineering lectures. These lectures are all part of the Engineering Lecture Corpus, which was started at Coventry University and includes AUT University in New Zealand. Results and discussion: The frequency of <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> in British and New Zealand engineering lectures was high: it occurred in the top 50 words in the wordlists of both sets of lectures. <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog Just}$</tex></formula> was used in British and New Zealand engineering lectures the same way as in the American university, functioning mostly as a “minimizer,” often to reduce the imposition of what was being said or asked. It occurred much more frequently in the British engineering lectures than the New Zealand ones, often in short stretches of discourse. Its “locative” meaning, used when indicating a precise location, occurred more often in the New Zealand Electrical Engineering lectures and in the British Civil Engineering lectures. A study of the different ways that <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> functions, and the frequency with which it is used in spoken academic English should lead to a better understanding of its function in professional communication. The limitation of the study was the sample size, and the fact that it was an opportunistic sample taken from a limited number of lecturers in a limited number of universities. While adopting the functions used in the American study was a limitation, the additional category of <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> used in multiword units was uncovered. Limitations of the unavailablilty of recordings to determine pronunciation differences was also noted, with examples provided to show possible misunderstandings. Future research would examine an expanded data sample, providing better representation of the language of lectures in the UK and New Zealand within and outside the subdisciplines of engineering, and investigating the ways that the pronunciation of <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> affects its meaning. Other spoken academic and general corpora, such as the British Academic Spoken English corpus and the spoken components of the British National Corpus and the Corpus of Contemporary American English could be studied for comparison purposes of the frequency and functions of <formula formulatype="inline" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex Notation="TeX">$\,\font \frog = w52tim\hbox{\frog just}$</tex></formula> .

Effective ways of teaching technical communication skills to engineering students have been much discussed. This article reflects on one setting, a first year course in Technical Communication at a university in Sweden, where electrical engineering teachers, language and communication teachers and student counsellors work in close, team-based cooperation using a project model which requires the students to analyse, implement and communicate technical problems. The paper discusses the change in this course - from an EAP course primarily prioritizing language training which ran parallel with a project course - to one unified ICL course. The progression is described through the changes in the organization of the course, and the article focuses on one learning activity: interdisciplinary tutorials on project reports. Through a pilot study where these sessions were video recorded and mapped, we conclude that the presence of different roles became an asset for the range of what the students see as relevant for their project report. In particular, the technical report genre was critically analysed, including problematic areas such as textual sequencing and display of technical problems; data visualisation and commentary; and referencing.

The sixth edition of this book provides a valuable guide applicable to businesses small, medium, and large. The book contains 24 content-rich chapters, four appendices of additional resources and tools, a handy list of acronyms and abbreviations, an extensive bibliography for further reading, and a detailed index, as well as a compact disc (CD) full of usable forms and documents described in great depth in the book. Internalization and application of the tools and practices presented in this book should help any US business write successful proposals that win a variety of types of contracts both domestically and internationally. Overall, this book is an exceptional resource for companies of all sizes-not just small ones-looking to create successful proposals. One notable problem with the text is its incredible length. This book is a total of 716 pages of single-spaced text that would take approximately a week of five hours of reading per day for an employee to finish (figuring two minutes per page, plus time to peruse the CD), and it is unlikely the average employee or manager has that kind of time to spare. Another issue is that it does not provide any information for a foreign business looking to do business with the US. Though the general business advice and proposal writing strategies contained therein seem as if they would be equally applicable to an internationally-based company, a separate chapter or at least a section in Chapter 22 on such concerns would make the book more universally appealing and could enable greater international sales of it. Aside from those concerns, however, this book is a highly valuable tool crafted by an experienced professional.

The author of this book provides a successful rhetorical analysis of Lysenkoist discourse by examining two speeches given by T.D. Lysenko in 1936 and 1948. Stanchevici (who is from Moldova, which was once a part of the Soviet Union) uses his background and education in professional writing and rhetoric to add unique insights to this analysis. The book begins with an introduction to Lysenkoist science, categorizing its rhetoric as political propaganda that sustained itself by its opposition to Mendelian genetics. The author provides a thorough background on Lysenkoist themes. These themes include: the orrespondence of Lysenkoism and classical genetics to Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialism, the fitting of Lysenkoism and genetics into the dominant ideology of Stalinist Russia. The author achieves his overall purpose in showing how Lysenko's manipulative rhetoric was able to prevail over Mendelian genetics for a time. Stalinist Genetics provides readers with a thorough analysis and background in order to understand the controversy surrounding Lysenkoism. In a time where politics are intertwined with many aspects of our lives, this book reminds scientists and rhetoricians of the danger of manipulative rhetoric and the negative influences that can result when combining politics and science. REFERENCES [1] Z. Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1969, Trans. by I.M. Werner

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Space does not permit us to express adequate thanks to those who contributed essays for this special issue, nor to the more than 30 other scholars whose proposed essays we could not include. We hope that many of them will publish the work they proposed in this or other journals. Thanks also to the TCQ editors who helped and encouraged us throughout the development of the issue: Scott Mogull, Ken Baake, Ryan Hoover, Brent Henze, and the patient and kind Amy Koerber. Our humble thanks finally to the wise and generous scholars who served as reviewers of proposals and manuscripts: Michael Bokor, Daniel Ding, Sam Dragga, Richard Hunsinger, Robert Johnson, Kyle Mattson, Mya A. Poe, Jingfang Ren, Julie Stagger, and Huatong Sun. Additional informationNotes on contributorsHuiling Ding Huiling Ding is an assistant professor of professional communication at North Carolina State University. She has published in Technical Communication Quarterly; Rhetoric, Globalization, and Professional Communication; Written Communication; China Media Research; Business Communication Quarterly; Rhetoric Review; and English for Specific Purposes. Gerald Savage Gerald Savage is a professor emeritus from Illinois State University. He has published in numerous journals and essay collections and has coedited several books, including Negotiating Cultural Encounters: Narrating Intercultural Engineering and Technical Communication, coedited with Han Yu and forthcoming from Wiley-IEEE.

This index covers all technical items - papers, correspondence, reviews, etc. - that appeared in this periodical during the year, and items from previous years that were commented upon or corrected in this year. Departments and other items may also be covered if they have been judged to have archival value. The Author Index contains the primary entry for each item, listed under the first author's name. The primary entry includes the co-authors' names, the title of the paper or other item, and its location, specified by the publication abbreviation, year, month, and inclusive pagination. The Subject Index contains entries describing the item under all appropriate subject headings, plus the first author's name, the publication abbreviation, month, and year, and inclusive pages. Note that the item title is found only under the primary entry in the Author Index.

Research problem: This study provides insights into the role that a leader plays in improving relational capital, thereby motivating team members' citizenship behaviors in distributed teams. We address the following research questions: (1) What is the role of inspirational leadership in cultivating relational capital (i.e., reciprocity and commitment) in distributed teams? (2) Are team members' citizenship behaviors (i.e., knowledge sharing and interpersonal helping) influenced by relational capital in distributed teams? (3) How does technology support for cognitive and affective contextualization facilitate leaders to improve organizational communication? Literature review: The purpose of the review was to provide a theoretical background for the variables in this study. Based on the relevant theories on relational capital, leadership, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and contextualization, this study reviewed how previous studies link these theories to one other, and proposed the positive relationship between leadership, relational capital and OCBs, as well as the moderating relationships of technology support for contextualization. Methodology: The researchers conducted a quantitative survey with 141 respondents in a major university in Asia. The subjects were part-time graduate students pursuing their master's degree. Researchers administrated a paper-based questionnaire along with a cover letter explaining the study's objectives. Responses indicating teams that were situated in only one location and their role as team leaders were removed from the analyses. Participation was completely voluntary. The researchers chose partial least squares to test the hypotheses since it has fewer restrictive assumptions and its ability for analyzing measurement and structural models. Results and discussion: This study highlights the importance of inspirational leaders in cultivating two kinds of relational capital, namely commitment and reciprocity. This study also explores the differential values of contextual information from the cognitive and affective dimensions. A key result is that the effect of inspirational leadership on reciprocity is strengthened when there is technology support for cognitive contextualization. At the same time, technology support for affective contextualization has a direct impact on commitment. These findings provide empirical support for affective and cognitive contextualization in distributed organizational communication, and suggest a way for distinguishing between reciprocity and commitment. This study concludes by illustrating the positive effects of commitment on citizenship behaviors, such as knowledge sharing and interpersonal helping. The implication of this study is that when teams are physically dispersed, there should be more emphasis on leadership with inspirational attributes to get their team members to perform beyond standard requirements. In addition, this study provides leaders and organizations with an opportunity to reflect on the appropriate technology that can be adopted to compensate for insufficient communication. The limitation of this study is that each respondent represents his/her working team. As a result, it may introduce bias to the findings. In addition, self-reported measures may also cause common method bias. Future research could consider the addition of objective measures and longitudinal work to reduce the possibility of common method bias, and investigate how work behaviors change over time.

This article describes the rationale and efficacy of a graduate-level teaching module providing loosely structured practice with real archives. Introducing early career scholarsto archival methods changed their beliefs about knowledge, research, teaching, and their discipline(s). This case study suggests that archives can be productive training spacesfor all writing studies researchers.

We understand "community literacy" as the domain for literacy work that exists outside of mainstream educational and work institutions.It can be found in programs devoted to adult education, early childhood education, reading initiatives, lifelong learning, workplace literacy, or work with marginalized populations, but it can also be found in more informal, ad hoc projects.For us, literacy is defined as the realm where attention is paid not just to content or to knowledge but to the symbolic means by which it is represented and used.Thus, literacy makes reference not just to letters and to text but to other multimodal and technological representations as well.

Recent scholarship on global online courses points to the need to examine the issue of social context in an online global learning environment. To explore global learners' cultural perspectives on the social climate of an online class, we first review the social presence theory—which can be used to examine the social climate in an online classroom, and explain factors that contribute to learners' social presence. Then we report findings of a survey conducted among a group of Chinese business students and discuss specific aspects of an online business communication class which might contribute to enhancing global learners' sense of social presence in an online environment. We conclude the study by explaining the present study's implications for delivering effective online business and technical communication courses with global learners and recommending strategies for increasing global audiences' social presence in an online class created by the instructor and the online community.

Ecological inquiry (EI) in research of academic and workplace writing explores interactions between individuals and environments as these entities interpenetrate. This article provides a brief history from the past 3 decades of developments in writing theory. It then outlines the key tenets of EI, highlights how EI is compatible with other models, and presents new and interesting possibilities afforded by this type of inquiry.