The paper argues that virtual communication spaces such as the World Wide Web (WWW) offer unique opportunities for collaboration within technical writing classrooms. Three common types of project scenarios are identified, along with the discourse communities and collaborative relationships that are supported and emphasized by each project scenario. A technical writing assignment is described that emphasizes the benefits of students collaborating within the WWW, an emerging, real world discourse community. In describing this assignment, we redefine collaboration to include activities used by WWW site developers and designers.

Professional technical writers have a role to play as instructors in technical writing programs, as they are experts in the tools, procedures, and policies of a professional documentation department. When a writer enters the classroom, the writer, the writer's employer, the students, and the academic institution all benefit. Preparing to teach a course is not difficult, as the article explains.

The paper discusses applying computer networks to cooperative distance learning for technical communication education. It first outlines applications of communication technologies employed in distance learning, and describes the design strategies of the applications. The paper's main focus is on the CORAL (Cooperative Remotely Accessible Learning) system for promoting cooperative distance learning currently under development in Taiwan. The CORAL system is a collective and collaborative project intended to integrate four major components in concept and construction: an interactive learning environment, educational foundations and implications, domain knowledge; and research efforts. One of CORAL system's goals is to aid science and engineering students in learning communication technology courseware. The CORAL development process, including its design approach, structure, courseware, and evaluation, is reported. Research issues are also addressed.

Business information systems are usually written and presented in English, with graphics designed from a western cultural perspective. Online help and error messages are likewise written and displayed in English. To exploit global marketplace opportunities, business systems must be designed to accommodate a range of cultural conventions, with printed documentation and online help translated into local languages. The paper discusses major considerations in the translation of online documentation from English to Chinese. It describes the particular approach taken by one major software company and evaluates its efforts from the users' perspective.

The article discusses designing electronic writing classrooms and the various decisions that classroom designers face during this complex task. In particular, it considers four key stages in the design process: establishing a plan, developing a room design, working within budgets, and maintaining a smoothly running computerized classroom. The article provides specific suggestions in these four stages informed by sound instructional goals appropriate to the teaching of technical communication.

The paper describes the implementation of a learning community involving a technical communication course and an accounting course. Students are simultaneously registered in all the courses constituting the learning community. The learning community approach to writing instruction can be viewed as one way to implement writing across the curriculum with the following distinguishing features. First, students are registered simultaneously for both courses; the communication skills taught in one course are simultaneously reinforced in another course. Second, the faculty of the two courses interact extensively to deliver skills (e.g., communication skills) in a coherent manner across the two courses. We describe the development of a theoretical framework for connecting the two courses. This theoretical framework guided implementation decisions such as the choice of communication skills to be covered in the accounting course, the design of assignments, and the design of evaluation criteria. While we focus on the integration of an accounting course with a communication course, the learning community approach and the implementation steps are applicable to other disciplines.

The article discusses how assignments using the Internet can be integrated in an introductory technical communication course without compromising two fundamental pedagogical goals of the course: teaching students how to gather data and how to evaluate it. Three traditional introductory technical communication course assignments (instructions, literature review, and analytical report) that utilize Internet resources to achieve these two goals are described.

In the section I teach of Technical Writing at Plymouth State College, students learn to handle the content, form, and style of scientific reports by writing about a snowpack (accumulated snow on the ground). In this context, snowpack study requires students to learn and apply only elementary concepts of snow physics, but it establishes common experiences in science for students with non-scientific backgrounds. During an initial field trip, students examine the layers in a snowpack and observe the various characteristics of snow. For two weeks after the first field trip, students study local weather history and learn basic concepts of snow science, snow stratigraphy, and snow metamorphism. Based on their new understanding of snow, they hypothesize changes that have occurred in the snowpack, and they learn to identify types of snow particles in the field. Then they return to the snowpack to make a second set of observations. During the second field trip, they reexamine the snowpack, compare their hypotheses with actual conditions they observe, and account for persistence and change in the snowpack. At each stage in the snowpack study unit, students write up their findings in a series of technical reports, then write essays in which they examine their personal experience in snowpack study and assess the snowpack

Focusing only on the famous and celebrated has skewed military and political history; focusing only on Oliver Evans, Lauchlan McKay, John W. Griffiths, Joseph Crane, and John H. Patterson could similarly skew our sense of American technical communication in the nineteenth century. Exploring the written work of an ordinary American mechanician of the nineteenth century, William Stillman of Rhode Island, could help balance our appraisal of nineteenth-century American technical communication. Reviewing the writing and graphics in his 1851 Miscellaneous Compositions, as well as his 1839 lock patent and 1836 bank lock instructions, reveals Stillman's ambidextrous abilities in using both text and graphics to communicate; abilities similar to his more famous fellow citizens. However, the three-dimensional qualities of his 1839 patent graphic reveals an unusual ability to mimic the biological methods in which the human eye sees three dimensions.

Technical communication professionals have been considering the value of faculty internships in technical communication. Whether professional societies, or industry, will fund such internships on any large scale is still in question. I believe that faculty internships are a superb option for professional development and that the benefits to the profession of technical communication accruing from them justify their support. This article reviews the debate about this topic and then describes some benefits derived from a faculty internship I served in 1991.

The problems in technical communications are related more to logical structure than to language. Structure problems occur at document, section, paragraph, and sentence levels. Editing is most effective if it deals with structure first. Structure deficiencies can be detected by applying a range of logical analysis criteria to each text part: looking at the nature and quality of its content and the use of the appropriate discourse sequence. The nature of the content determines where the text part belongs in the section or elsewhere in the document structure. Sufficient definition eliminates vagueness. The correct discourse sequence determines the internal structure of the text part. Lists, headings, classifications, and organograms must comply with the laws of categorization and relevant logical criteria, including some arrived at by lateral thinking.

This study uses qualitative content analysis to discuss current perspectives in technical communication pedagogy. It examines the 1990-94 issues of five major scholarly journals—a collection of 563 articles—to identify 98 articles mentioning teaching in undergraduate technical communication courses. Influenced by differing theoretical and practical approaches, the 98 articles were classified according to four pedagogical perspectives: (1) the functional perspective, based on empirical research and workplace experience; (2) the rhetorical perspective, based on scholarship in the humanities and influenced by rhetorical theory; (3) the ideological perspective, also based on scholarship in the humanities but influenced by critical theory; and (4) the intercultural and feminist perspective, a bridging perspective based on both empirical research and critical theory. This article discusses the four perspectives in terms of the educational goals of communicative competence (the ability to use language to succeed in the workplace) and social critique (the ability to question existing social structures and to envision cultural change).

Computer-mediated communication on the Internet offers new challenges and opportunities for technical communication. The cases of Lotus MarketPlace and the Clipper chip illustrate the specialized nature of technical communities on the Internet and suggest that when technical messages are not overly complex, the process of reposting may widen community appeal but also promote inaccurate information. Yet, when technical messages are highly complex, audiences may not repost such messages; this preserves accuracy of information but at the same time limits how many people will read the information. Finally, these cases strengthen recent arguments that rhetorical delivery is an increasingly important component of technical communication.

When working with graphics and illustrations, technical communicators face ethical questions at almost every step. The visual rhetorics available offer help with evaluating visual components but little guidance on ethical issues. This article presents examples of ethical conflicts, describes some of the prominent visual rhetorics, and discusses ethical issues that need to be addressed. Some steps for improving ethical awareness related to graphics and illustrations are suggested.

Supra-textual design encompasses the global visual language of a document and operates in three modes: textual, spatial, and graphic. The rhetoric of supra-textual design includes structural functions that provide global organization and cohesion and stylistic functions that affect credibility, tone, emphasis, interest, and usability. Supra-textual rhetoric extends to other documents through conventional codes and through sets and series. Because writers may not control the end product of supra-textual design, intention may also be a rhetorical factor.

Acquaintance with the writing of nurses would help instructors design assignments for nursing students who enroll in basic technical writing courses. Based on secondary research, samples of nursing documentation, and interviews with seventy-six bedside nurses, thirty nurse managers, and five nurse consultants, this study discusses the importance of writing tasks for nurses and describes the most common documents nurses generate. Good writing skills for nurses improve healthcare delivery and promote empowerment in a predominantly female profession. However, most of the bedside nurses and all the nurse managers and consultants believe nurses have significant writing problems. This article suggests instruction in six communication principles and several types of assignments that would help prepare nursing students in technical writing courses for future writing activities.

The evolution of technical communication conventions in America is more anthropologically complex than the traditional linkage to the scientific plain-style tradition suggests. Analysis of leading ideas in early 20th-century engineering writing textbooks and other primary sources demonstrates that disciplinary discourse conventions develop from an intricate nexus of human motivations, beliefs, and social activity. This article explores currents in American social and intellectual history that explain this complex, sophisticated view of language, which combines a rhetorically sensitive formalism with the ideas of professional literacy and cultural reading to facilitate communication with various audiences and to reinforce the status and dignity of the emerging profession.

Technical communication is being integrated into the pre‐college curriculum at an accelerating pace. However, few curriculum materials have been developed for the pre‐college level. This annotated bibliography is a partial attempt to address this lack. The entries have been divided into two categories: Pre‐College Level Material and Adaptable Post‐Secondary Material.

In a world of interlinked economies and communication networks, the translation of pragmatic documents is prevalent, important, and increasingly costly. This article treats concepts and practices of pragmatic translation, summarizes interviews with translators and professors of translation conducted in Morocco in the spring of 1994, and makes recommendations regarding language study for technical communicators and the teaching of translation in professional and technical communication programs in the United States.

Advancing technology, demands for cost control, and world‐wide expansion in distance education programs challenge technical communication teachers to find ways of delivering quality technical writing courses by distance. One distance platform, described here, is working successfully at Texas A&M University. Examining, applying, and testing existing distance theory in developing distance versions of technical writing courses is an emerging research field in technical communication.

Recently, a new operatorial perspective on language has emerged [1]. As a result, a specific, analogical solution within such an approach is being developed [2]. This article describes that position briefly and sketches how such a perspective can lead to a theoretical justification of selected elements of established technical writing practice.

Several recent journal articles, especially the one by Charles Sides [1], have questioned the form and function of technical communication. Based on actual experience with three organizations in Oregon, this writer proposes a need to rethink what we teach our technical writing students and how we go about designing assignments that“… simulate the reality of a work environment” [2]. This article will explore the types of technical writing skills which are increasingly in demand and then will offer several strategies for teaching these skills at the college level.

In 1917 Frank Aydelotte, an English professor at MIT, became AT&T's first outside writing consultant. Because many of its older, better-educated male employees had been mobilized to fight World War I, the company found itself with numerous young, poorly-educated employees. Drawing on the humanistic approach to writing instruction that he had developed at MIT in his book English and Engineering, Aydelotte created a year-long program at AT&T that taught employees to think and write about issues important to their work. The course is important for two reasons: first, it offers insight into the kinds of early consulting work that English professors did, and, second, it shows that Aydelotte's humanistic approach to technical communication worked as well in business as it did in academic settings.

To study the affective states of technical communicators, we administered a survey to examine three areas: first, the traditional facets or aspects of job satisfaction; second, any possible differences between male and female technical communicators in job satisfaction; and third, any influences on job satisfaction such as job stress that might be unique to the technical communication profession. To ensure the reliability and validity of the measures, the survey included the Job Descriptive Index (JDI), the most widely used measure of job satisfaction in the world. The sample from the Society for Technical Communication's (STC's) membership list yielded 323 usable responses. Our analyses included: a comparison of our subjects' responses to national norms for all occupations, an examination of male and female differences on satisfaction measures, and the use of various appropriate statistical procedures to select only the most significant results for discussion. The results indicate that technical communicators are satisfied with their compensation and opportunities for promotion, but they are dissatisfied with the work itself, their supervision, and their co-workers. No significant gender differences occurred. Implications are discussed.

Instructors of business and technical communication courses continually search for ways to improve their classroom and professional training exercises. Toward that end, this investigation examines two methods of conducting an employment interviewing training exercise for interviewees. Specifically, instructor-facilitated and peer-facilitated interviewing exercises are compared. Data collected from interviewing classes show that students preferred the instructor-facilitated over the peer-facilitated training exercise. Advantages and disadvantages of the instructor-facilitated exercise are discussed, and suggestions for further examination are offered.

Although editors make extensive use of the computer in their work. Most editors still mark changes on paper using traditional editing symbols. There are, however, compelling reasons for editors to begin marking copy on the computer. We consider online editing from the perspective both of editors and their employers. We then focus on one aspect of online editing: the mark-up models embodied in various editing tools. We demonstrate that the different mark-up models and their particular implementations have major implications for the editing process, including the quality of edited material and the worklife satisfaction of editors and writers. We conclude by recommending that the technical communication community exert its influence on software developers and corporate technology planners to encourage the development and adoption of online editing tools that will be congenial to editors.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>

This paper examines the dominant metaphors that define and describe three basic components of hypertext (texts, nodes, and links), arguing that they contribute in central ways to the current treatment of this technology in technical communication. It includes a brief overview of the way metaphors filter computer-based tasks and functions, a discussion of hypertext metaphors of identity and the realms from which they are commonly appropriated, and some corollary implications for students and teachers of technical communication. In general, this paper contends that hypertext design choices are both productively and unproductively shaped by social as well as technological forces.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>

That readers read within roles has long been argued by literary theorists and more recently by technical communication theorists. Yet few scholars have attempted to put their theories to a test. The study reported in this paper attempts to do by using a conversation analysis tool called ethnomethodology. In an experimental setting, subjects were videotaped reading and responding to a set of instructions. Their responses indicate that: readers will often choose to play a role different from the one embedded in a text, especially if the text role offends them in some way; readers with similar education and interest may display different reader roles, making these roles difficult to predict; and within a single reading, a reader may change roles frequently. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the findings and the appropriateness of ethnomethodology for reader-role research.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>

MA students in professional writing and editing researched technical writing in specific workplace cultures. Their research is interpreted in light of recent theory on authorship as a cultural rather than individual phenomenon. Students' constructs for understanding their own writerly selves are discussed, as are constructs that emerged for the interpretations of selves and others in workplace cultures. Teaching technical authorship meant addressing such constructs, implicating issues of status, affect and effect, representation, and expertise.

Humanistic Aspects of Technical Communication. Ed. Paul M. Dombrowski. Amityville, NY: Baywood, 1994. 239 pp. Part of Baywood's Technical Communication Series, Jay R. Gould, ed. Composition Theory for the Postmodern Classroom. Ed. Gary A. Olson and Sidney I. Dobrin. Albany: State University of New York. 1994. 360 pp. Publications Management: Essays for Professional Communicators. Ed. O. Jane Allen and Lynn H. Deming. Amityville, NY: Baywood, 1994. 251 pp. Designing and Writing Online Documentation: Hypermedia for Self‐Supporting Products, 2nd ed. William Horton. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994. 439 pp. with index. On‐the‐Job Learning in the Software Industry: Corporate Culture and the Acquisition of Knowledge. Marc Sacks. Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1994. 216 pp.

This article reports the results of survey research designed to determine how students feel about peer assistance and group writing. In general, the results are quite favorable, although more problems surface regarding fully collaborative projects than peer criticism. Statistical analysis of both objective and open-ended items yields suggestions for design and management of collaborative projects in technical communication classes.

In teaching a technical communication course, I introduced document design principles before discussing traditional verbal rhetoric. A comparison of the writing of two students—a competent writer and a weak one—before and after the design discussion indicates that a basic understanding of design principles helped them improve document macrostructure. They saw the need to involve the audience, to provide an introduction and a forecast, and to organize and highlight information using headings. The design discussion, however, appears to have had little effect on document microstructure. Although more research needs to be conducted to better understand the relationship between verbal and visual rhetoric in technical communication, integrating document design principles early appears to be a promising pedagogical technique.

Socializing technology is the rhetorical goal of technology transfer. Specialists from all walks of the technical communications profession can participate in this goal by involving themselves in key processes such as developing market awareness, creating inreach and outreach programs, and facilitating collaborative ventures. By broadening the market for our services in the technology transfer movement, we will increase the scope and value of our skills in a high-visibility endeavor that will be on the national agenda for years to come.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>

Technical communication scholars have argued that communication skills can be used to promote and enhance ethical uses of technology. This essay articulates a related view: technical communicators should remain cognizant of the ways that technologies can inhibit ethical communication practices. The author proposes a framework for evaluating the degree to which communication technologies promote ethical communication. This framework's applicability is then demonstrated in an explication of the ethical problems associated with “Caller Identification.”;

One meaning of postmodernism is the recognition and inclusion of the previously excluded and suppressed. Recent developments of a generally humanistic nature in technical communication—the rhetoric of science, social constructionism, and feminist and ethicist critiques of science—are instances of such recognition. These developments deflate some traditional assumptions about and privileges associated with scientific and technical knowledge and practice, while they elevate previously denied aspects. Thus, surprisingly, postmodernism reveals itself in technical communication as the resurgence of humanism.

Drawing on arguments by Carolyn Miller, Steven Katz, and others, this essay claims that teaching ethics is particularly important to technical writing. Next, the essay outlines a classical, sophistic approach to ethics based on the theories and pedagogies of Protagoras, Gorgias, and Isocrates. This sophistic approach emphasizes the Greek concept of nomos, internal and external deliberation, and responsible action or articulation. The final section of the essay discusses possible problems and pedagogical applications of sophistic ethics in the contemporary technical writing classroom.

Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition. Lester Faigley. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1992. 285 pages. Literacy and Computers: The Complications of Teaching and Learning with Technology. Cynthia L. Selfe and Susan Hilligoss, eds. New York: MLA, 1994. 387 pages. Dazzle ‘Em with Style: The Art of Oral Scientific Presentation. Robert R. H. Anholt. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1994. 200 pp. The Chicago Manual of Style: The Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers. 14th ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993. 921 pp. Science and Technical Writing: A Manual of Style. Philip Rubens, ed. New York: Henry Holt, 1994. 513 pp.

With over 150,000 environmental educators and communicators in the United States, environmental communication has become one of the fastest‐growing areas within scientific and technical communication. Environmental communicators are frequently called upon to facilitate or otherwise participate in deliberations about environmental policy in which the role of the public is a central concern. This article poses four models for public participation and presents a case study of the application of one model to regional deliberations about environmentally sustainable development.

Approaches to using visual language in a cultural context can be placed on a continuum, with global (universal) on one end and culture-focused on the other. Each approach reveals contrasting assumptions about three central design issues: perception, aesthetics and pragmatics. The global approach is characterized by attempts to invent an objective, universal visual language or to define such a language through perceptual principles and empirical research. The culture-focused perspective is founded on the principle that visual communication is intimately bound to experience and hence can function only within a given cultural context, to which designers must be sensitive. While the modernist, universal approach has been losing ground to the postmodern, culture-focused approach, the two complement each other in a variety of ways and, depending on the rhetorical situation, offer pragmatic benefits and drawbacks.

Considers the social and political ideologies that affected the design of illustrations of the female body in English Renaissance medical manuals. Through a semiotic analysis, we examine medical illustrations explicitly tied to female bodies-anatomical illustrations of female genitalia, a clitorectomy and a hymenectomy-to show that the ways in which a body or surgical procedure was visually represented served to create the "other". We learn, by extension, how social and political ideologies affect the decision-making of modern-day technical communicators.

Suggests that current theories about how even the simplest elements of graphical design function in professional communication do not adequately convey the complexity of the element's actual role in communication. By showing how producers of computer interfaces rely on the possibility of multiple interpretive trajectories in the use of any sign and how users of such signs respond in ways that are far from being totally predictable, we argue that it is best to think of the communication act not as a simple exchange of information between two minds (producer and user) but rather as a field of possibilities that requires flexibility and an experimental attitude from both the producer and the user. Examining theoretical developments in the history of physics and cognitive science, we contend that the dominant paradigms of understanding communication-the old cognitive (or computational) model and the social constructionist model as currently employed in the fields of composition and technical communication-fall short of accounting for even fairly straightforward exchanges of information. In place of the communication triangle that both of the old models rely upon, we offer a new model that uses the concept of "consensual domains" as the basis for a general theory of rhetoric. As a starting point for our investigation, we present the history of a still evolving sign-the trash-can icon in the user interface of the Macintosh operating system-from the perspective of a single (also still evolving) human user.

American document design process models reflect the assumption that comprehension and usability are the most important characteristics of effective documents, but it is increasingly evident that other cultures value other communicative features of documents and that purposes and intentions vary across cultures. This case study examines the responses of four sets of American readers (three sets familiar with American document design research and practice and one set of content specialists-engineers by training) to the visual aspects of an annual report. The original document was prepared for a mid-sized Japanese corporation and published and distributed in Japan; the American version is an almost literal translation of the original document from Japanese to English, with no changes in visuals, graphic design or format. Protocol analyses of readers' responses revealed distinct patterns of expectations and preferences based on (1) cultural biases, (2) degree of familiarity with the American document design model, and (3) ignorance of Japanese culture and corporate communicative practices. This study raises questions about the effectiveness in terms of cultural sensitivity of what we have called the "American" document design process model and usability testing procedures, and calls for extensive collaborative research designed to describe and analyze current practice in international settings.

Defines and critiques three cultural models for structuring and using information: accumulation, circulation and association. In these "economies", information is something to be hoarded (as accumulation), moved (circulation) or connected to other pieces of information (association). By examining the ways information acts like financial economies of the past, present and near-future, technical communicators gain crucial social and political perspectives normally not considered in the design and use of information spaces.

Technical writing tries to be "objective" and "audience-oriented", but it neglects an element of persuasion known in ancient rhetoric as "ethos". This concept translates from the Greek as "character", but that English word does not convey the concept's richness; nor does the Latin "persona", a term sometimes used to describe the narrative voice in technical prose. "Ethos" is the root of "ethics", which tends to objectify values and choices, alienating them from the people making them. In this paper, I suggest that an understanding of "ethos" in all its richness can help writers of technical prose to produce work that, in relation to traditionally "objective" prose, is both more readable and more ethical.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>

The subject of ethics in graphic design has been only lightly treated in the literature regarding issues in technical communication. Because there is great potential for deception, conscious or unconscious, through graphic design, readers and writers of technical communication should develop an ethical sense and apply it to technical design.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>

This study surveys scientific and technical communicators to determine their perceptions of their role as interviewees in the performance appraisal interview. The results reveal that interviewees think the appraisal process is unreliable and invalid, that managers do not stimulate growth and development in the appraisal interview, and that subordinates have little influence concerning what goes on in the department. Other results are discussed in the article.

Evaluation of Samuel Chandler Earle's 1911 presentation to the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education demonstrates Earle's role as a key player in the shift of a technical writing course which combined both the goals of an engineering curriculum with the ultimate, real-world needs of the graduated engineer. Earle's Tufts Experiment, discussed in his paper, “English in the Engineering School at Tufts College” [1], would not only provide the impetus for a decade of discussion among engineering and English educators, but would provide, in part, the impetus for the Committee on English, a committee Earle would chair, charged with studying engineering English offerings in the United States.

Time and money limitations normally make it impossible to do usability testing on every document, particularly by the method of controlled observation of users performing set tasks. I describe approaches that are intended to make the feedback from testing useful to more writers than just those who wrote the tested documents, and that gradually improve the corporate wisdom available to writers. Methods of approaching these goals include judicious selection of what to test and how, special empirical studies on issues of general importance, improving the quality of a company's prescriptive rules, and better ways of making new knowledge known and available to writers.