Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Jan 2011 Open Access

Open Source Communities in Technical Writing: Local Exigence, Global Extensibility

Trey Conner University of South Florida St. Petersburg ; Morgan Gresham University of South Florida St. Petersburg ; Jill McCracken University of South Florida St. Petersburg

Abstract

By offering open-source software (OSS)-based networks as an affordable technology alternative, we partnered with a nonprofit community organization. In this article, we narrate the client-based experiences of this partnership, highlighting the ways in which OSS and open-source culture (OSC) transformed our students’ and our own expectations of traditional hierarchies\nin technical writing classes and work. The integration of OSS into technical communication classes shifted our work toward distributed symbolic-analytic issues and practices. Specifically, our engagements with OSS/OSC increased student awareness of the political and cultural significance of OSS and proprietary technology systems, and flattened traditional educational and client-student hierarchies. In this way, OSS/OSC offers ways to attune local pedagogy and practice to global developments in technical writing, and provide today’s technical communication students with the experiences needed to succeed in the workplace of tomorrow.

Journal
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Published
2011-01-01
DOI
10.2190/tw.41.4.e
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Topics
writing pedagogy technical communication
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