The authors report on a study of writing transfer using a relatively novel method. Specifically, they use screencast videos to study the work of a dozen undergraduates who had taken first-year writing and were now enrolled in an interdisciplinary biology class. The authors argue that students were able to adapt to the writing requirements in the biology class because they implicitly understood themselves to be engaged in Carter’s metagenre of “research from sources.” Because students in this study had been asked to engage in that metagenre at least since high school, they believed their writing habits were established well before first-year writing, and consequently they have trouble recognizing the influence of such a course on their subsequent work. The study also revealed that students coordinated multiple texts simultaneously in order to engage in processes akin to what Howard has called “patchwriting” but also similar to the habits of professional writers. Whereas professional writers have well established networks for seeking information, the students in this study worked in relative isolation, using a few sources found haphazardly through library or Google searches. The authors suggest that instructors spend more time helping students develop effective networks of information, including experts and organizations in addition to published sources.

This article reports on results of a nationwide survey of alumni in professional and technical communication. It presents a series of snapshots from the results, including the types of texts written and valued, where those types are written, with and for whom, and with what technologies. A range of implications are explored.

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.

Humans routinely fail to comprehend complexity and anticipate long-term consequences. Systems dynamicists try to overcome these weaknesses by developing computer-supported models that can account for multiple variables in non-linear relationships. Using programs such as STELLA and Vensim, systems dynamicists create stock-and-flow diagrams, equations, and, ultimately, interfaces that enable others to interact with the model. This paper describes how one such model was developed and speculates on roles that technical communicators might play in future projects.

The authors report on a 3-year action-research project designed to facilitate public involvement in the planned dredging of a canal and subsequent disposal of the dredged sediments. Their study reveals ways that community members struggle to define the problem and work together as they gather, share, and understand data relevant to that problem. The authors argue that the primary goal of action research related to environmental risk should be to identify and support the strategies used by community members rather than to educate the public. The authors maintain that this approach must be supported by a thorough investigation of basic rhetorical issues (audience, genre, stases, invention), and they illustrate how they used this approach in their study.

Because communication specialists often lack the power and prestige of other knowledge workers, such as engineers and product designers, managers who direct the work of communication specialists face unique challenges. This study, based on interviews with 11 communication managers, found that their agency and identity were determined both by the structure of the organizations in which they worked and by their use of genres, technologies, and regulatory techniques. With their work undergoing transition because of globalization, outsourcing, and rapid technological change, the stories that these managers tell demonstrate the importance of studying management as it specifically applies to communication specialists.

Many colleges and universities have begun to create structures that foster sustainable partnerships with neighboring communities. As part of such efforts, these institutions often use IText—written texts mediated by information technologies such as the World Wide Web, e-mail, databases, and online bulletin board systems. Using content analysis and interviews, the author explores the ways that IText is used in campus-community partnerships. The author concludes that at this early point in partnership efforts, the best uses for IText are to build trust and share information, even though such uses raise questions about the egalitarian potential of partnership efforts.

Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think. Ed. Stuart K. Card, Jock D. Mackinlay, and Ben Shneiderman. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 1999. 712 pp. Information Design. Ed. Robert Jacobson. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1999. 357 pp. Information Architects. Ed. Peter Bradford. Introduction by Richard Saul Wurman. New York: Graphis, 1997. 235 pp. Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century. Robert E. Horn. Bainbridge Island, WA: MacroVU, 1998. 270 pp. Digital Sensations: Space, Identity, and Embodiment in Virtual Reality. Ken Hillis. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999. 271 pp.

We offer institutional critique as an activist methodology for changing institutions. Since institutions are rhetorical entities, rhetoric can be deployed to change them. In its effort to counter oppressive institutional structures, the field of rhetoric and com-position has focused its attention chiefly on the composition classroom, on the de-partment of English, and on disciplinary forms of critique. Our focus shifts the scene of action and argument to professional writing and to public discourse, using spatial methods adapted from postmodern geography and critical theory.