Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Oct 1991

Technical Writing in a Technological University: Attitudes of Department Chairs

Norbert Elliot New Jersey Institute of Technology ; Margaret Kilduff New Jersey Institute of Technology

Abstract

Technical writing will become increasingly important to the nation's engineering interests in the 21st century. To meet a national agenda of competitiveness, writing program administrators must build courses and programs that are sensitive to unique institutional perceptions about writing. By means of a quantitative and qualitative methodology, the present study describes the perceptions of technical writing held by department heads at a technological university. Using a combined survey method and structured interview process, we investigate how department chairs felt about the contents, instruction, and assessment of a technical writing course. We also investigate perceptions about writing products and processes. Based on our experiences with the survey, we call for writing program administrators to study the institutional context for courses and programs in technical writing.

Journal
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Published
1991-10-01
DOI
10.2190/hl9k-3wl3-nnvk-up2d
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Closed
Topics
writing pedagogy assessment writing program administration technical communication
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (3)

  1. SMITH (1997)
    Intertextual Connections to “A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing”
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  2. THOMPSON (1996)
    Competence and Critique in Technical Communication: A Qualitative Content Analy…
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication
  3. Elliot et al. (1994)
    The Assessment of Technical Writing: A Case Study
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication

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