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

The first part of this article shows that research in the history of technical communication has increased in quantity and sophistication over the last 20 years. Scholarship that describes how to teach with that information, however, has not followed, even though teaching the history of the field is a need recognized by several scholars. The article provides and defends four guidelines as a foundation to study ways to incorporate history into classroom lessons: 1) maintain a continued research interest in teaching history; 2) limit to technical rather than scientific discourse; 3) focus on English-language texts; and 4) focus on American texts, authors, and practices. The second part of the essay works within the guidelines to show a lesson that contrasts technical texts by Benjamin Franklin and Herbert Hoover. The lesson can help students see the difference in technical writing before and after the Industrial Revolution, a difference that mirrors their own transition from the university to the workforce.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Information and communication technology (ICT) studies have a wide scope of application, particularly in their attention to the communicative interaction among human beings above and beyond man–machine interaction. The topic of human communication and culture for ICT is a timely one. While studies to date have focused largely on the technical communication aspects of ICT, this special issue proposes to innovate in its emphasis on the impact of the interaction of professional culture, rather than national or corporate, and new media on communication, with particular attention to economic ICT.

This article presents an overview of how the Internet has changed the way employers advertise vacancies and the way technical communicators search and apply for these openings. First, I explore the evolution of how employers have used the internet as a tool for identifying the best candidate for the job. Next, I review seven specific online recruiting strategies used by employers today. Finally, I describe major mistakes made by online job seekers and offer advice on how best to avoid or minimize these blunders. Included is a list of useful job search resources for technical communicators.

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

In this article I argue that technical communicators are in the position to foster users' commonsense understanding of products. The notion that technical communicators can increase the common sense of users is absent in the field of technical communication literature. Reasons for not recognizing the legitimacy of common sense range from its unexamined nature to a belief that it cannot be taught. After discussing different definitions of common sense, I suggest that including scenarios, common metaphors, and language that promotes procedural knowledge in product information can strengthen users' commonsense understanding of the products they use. Moreover, in failing to make use of commonsense appeals, technical communicators are ignoring a sound persuasive strategy.

This study extends the corpus of an earlier qualitative content analysis about women and feminism and identifies the knowledge claims and themes in the 20 articles that discuss gender differences. Knowledge claims are reflected in expressions such as androgyny; natural collaborators; hierarchical, dialogic, and asymmetrical modes; web; connected knowers; different voice; ethic of care; ethic of objectivity; continuous with others; connected to the world; the cultural divide; visual metaphor; andgender-free science. Built from knowledge claims, the themes in the 20 articles include gender differences in language use, learning, and knowledge construction; gender differences in collaboration; and reviews of research about gender differences and political calls for action. Although the 20 articles provide little support for the existence of gender differences, by introducing, discussing, testing, and revising new ideas about women and feminism, they serve as an example of the process of knowledge accumulation and remodeling in technical communication.

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

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

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

This article describes the influence that Extensible Markup Language (XML) will have on the software documentation process and subsequently on the curricula of advanced undergraduate and master's programs in technical communication. XML, an evolving set of standards for storing and displaying information, uses nine components that make up the XML development process. Grouped into content, formatting, and language specifications, these components enhance organizations' ability to manage information more efficiently and accurately. As the XML development process is adopted, the software documentation process will evolve from a self-contained procedure into a more flexible, interactive process in which software documenters must work closely with a wide range of specialists. The changes that XML will have on the software documentation process will likewise have implications for programs in technical communication in the need to address new kinds of job descriptions, skill sets, and career paths of future technical communicators. The article recommends adaptations to existing courses, as well as new elective and required courses.

This article investigates the ways in which a subset of technical communicators acquired electronic literacy from 1978 to 2000, a period during which personal computers became increasingly ubiquitous in the United States in educational settings, homes, communities, and workplaces. It describes the literacy autobiographies gathered from 55 professional communicators participating on the Techwr-l listserv, focusing on the large-scale trends that these autobiographies reveal. To supplement the findings from these autobiographies, the authors conducted face-to-face interviews with four case-study participants: a faculty member, a professional communicator, and two students of different backgrounds majoring in technical communication. The article concludes with observations about the development of technical communication instruction in the twenty-first century.

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

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

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

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

The role of the technical communication practitioner stems from the need for members from two distinct professions to connect; for example, engineers have created some new technology, and users who are (assumedly) unfamiliar with the technology want or need to understand that technology. The article presents an interface between the two professions which proposes a reconceptualization of the relationship between technicians/engineers and users. This reconceptualization can and should be provided by technical communicators who create a culture which encompasses both the technician and the user. In addition, this reconceptualization parallels the means originally proposed by C. P. Snow (1959) to mend the rift between the sciences and the humanities.

XML is a recent Web design language that will enable technical communicators to produce documentation that can reuse information and present it across multiple types of media for diverse audiences. However, little is understood about how XML will impact technical communication in terms of theory, academic research, and pedagogy. In this article, I argue that XML requires more interdisciplinary approaches toward the teaching and research of technical communication, particularly with respect to the integration of technical and rhetorical knowledge.

Budget and time constraints often force technical communicators to produce manuals that are less than affective. One reason is the time they take to analyze their document's users. Normally, user analysis involves demographic, or organizational, or psychological approaches or combinations. Rarely will they evaluate the culture of the user and determine what that means for developing the document. Typically, localization will edit the document for cultural elements, but that is an expensive and time-consuming process. This article discusses the cultural elements in developing a document and shows, through a comparison of two mythical cultures, how the document will differ when organized for those two cultures.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The article provides a framework for organizing and structuring the research of historical researchers who analyze technical and scientific publications. Because historical research spans both decades and centuries, an effective research methodology is essential. The framework consists of a multifaceted 10-step method for studying the written discourse of scientific and technical communication, specifically for interpreting historical data obtained from articles published in technical and scientific journals. The method is a reliable means for making sense of the enormous body of data that awaits historical researchers in the volumes of scientific and technical discourse already published.

Using a qualitative approach to data collection and analysis, the article discusses some of the findings from a larger study on collaboration and the role of gender. We profile three student engineering teams as they participate in processes leading to the submission of a report for a team-based technical communication course. While some theorists suggest that gender can play a significant role in achieving a successful team dynamic, our study only partially supports that claim. A synopsis of two women from two predominantly male teams reveals glimpses of what the literature describes as traditional gender-linked behaviors by both men and women, but the all-female team does not conform to stereotypical patterns and their behaviors call into question the existence of these interactional styles. We suggest that factors other than gender and independent of a team's gender composition exert a greater impact on collaboration. Nevertheless, the study does caution against assigning women to predominantly male teams, since when a team's social structure is mostly male, traditional gender-linked interactional behaviors as well as manifestations of the culture of engineering are more likely to emerge. Overall, the study underlines the importance of examining specific face-to-face interactions to see how behavior is situationally produced in order to more fully understand the interactional strategies open to individuals.

The connection between language and empiricism is a central issue in technical writing and communication, more so than in other fields. Our field deals with technical and scientific knowledge which is oftentimes very definite and objective, yet there has been increasing recognition over the past few decades that this knowledge is socially constructed and rhetorically negotiated. Debates have ensued over the rhetoricity of technical communication in contrast to its empirical and instrumental aspects. W. V Quine, one of the most influential American philosophers of the twentieth century, however, rejected the distinction between empirical knowledge and knowledge stemming from language and social negotiation. Understanding technical writing and communication through the lens of Quine's theory ameliorates the tension between instrumental and rhetorical/humanistic views of technical discourse by recognizing the validity of both views and integrating the two. This understanding in turn will facilitate our pedagogical interactions with technical and scientific majors.

If you wish to start an undergraduate professional and technical writing program at a small liberal arts college, you will find good arguments for your project in the educational writings of Sir Francis Bacon. Unlike other Renaissance Humanists, Bacon located the New Learning (what we now call the humanities) within the related contexts of scientific discovery and invention and professional training and development. His treatise, The Advancement of Learning, proposes to draw knowledge from and apply knowledge to the natural and social world. Bacon's curricular ideas can benefit emerging PTW programs in the humanities in three ways: They make a convincing apologia for most English departments and writing programs, wed humanistic education to public service, and provide a rich but practical theoretical framework for program development and administration.