Teaching Professional and Technical Communication: A Practicum in a Book - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1607326795 ISBN 13: 9781607326793

Verlag: Utah State University Press, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

Teaching Professional and Technical Communication guides new instructors in teaching professional and technical communication (PTC). The essays in this volume provide theoretical and applied discussions about the teaching of this diverse subject, including relevant pedagogical approaches, how to apply practical aspects of PTC theory, and how to design assignments.
 
This practicum features chapters by prominent PTC scholars and teachers on rhetoric, style, ethics, design, usability, genre, and other central concerns of PTC programs. Each chapter includes a scenario or personal narrative of teaching a particular topic, provides a theoretical basis for interpreting the narrative, illustrates the practical aspects of the approach, describes relevant assignments, and presents a list of questions to prompt pedagogical discussions.
 
Teaching Professional and Technical Communication is not a compendium of best practices but instead offers a practical collection of rich, detailed narratives that show inexperienced PTC instructors how to work most effectively in the classroom.
 
 
Contributors: Pam Estes Brewer, Eva Brumberger, Dave Clark, Paul Dombrowski, James M. Dubinsky, Peter S. England, David K. Farkas, Brent Henze, Tharon W. Howard, Dan Jones, Karla Saari Kitalong, Traci Nathans-Kelly, Christine G. Nicometo, Kirk St.Amant
 

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tracy Bridgeford is professor of technical communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where she directs the Graduate Certificate in Technical Communication. In 2015, she coedited Academy-Industry Relationships: Perspectives for Technical Communicators and in 2014 Sharing Our Intellectual Traces: Narrative Reflections from Administrators of Professional, Technical, and Scientific Programs. She contributed chapters to Resources in Technical Communication: Outcomes and Approaches, Teaching Writing with Computers: An Introduction, and Innovative Approaches to Teaching Technical Communication, which she also coedited.

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Teaching Professional and Technical Communication

A Practicum in a Book

By Tracy Bridgeford

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2018 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-679-3

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
1 Introduction to Teaching Professional and Technical Communication: A Practicum in a Book Tracy Bridgeford, 
2 Rhetorical Analysis: A Foundational Skill for PTC Teachers James M. Dubinsky, 
3 Teaching Students about Style in Technical Communication Dan Jones, 
4 Teaching Content Strategy in Professional and Technical Communication Dave Clark, 
5 Teaching Genre in Professional and Technical Communication Brent Henze, 
6 What Do Instructors Need to Know about Teaching Information Graphics? A Multiliteracies Approach Karla Saari Kitalong, 
7 Designing Teaching to Teach Design Eva Brumberger, 
8 Designing and Writing Procedures David K. Farkas, 
9 A Primer for Teaching Ethics in Professional and Technical Communication Paul Dombrowski, 
10 What Do Instructors Need to Know about Teaching Collaboration? Peter S. England and Pam Estes Brewer, 
11 Teaching Usability Testing: Coding Usability Testing Data Tharon W. Howard, 
12 What Do Instructors Need to Know about Teaching Technical Presentations? Traci Nathans-Kelly and Christine G. Nicometo, 
13 Teaching International and Intercultural Technical Communication: A Comparative Online Credibility Approach Kirk St. Amant, 
About the Authors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction to Teaching Professional and Technical Communication

A Practicum in a Book

Tracy Bridgeford

Teaching Professional and Technical Communication: A Practicum in a Book grew out of my efforts to create a technical communication pedagogy course for local secondary education teachers, part-time teachers, and graduate students who knew little to nothing about the subject, let alone how to teach it. This book delivers what I didn't have when I first taught technical communication — a practicum that enabled me to see pedagogical approaches in action before stepping into the classroom. This collection is intended to help inexperienced instructors understand the classroom experience of the PTC instructor and how to be professional and technical communication instructors in face-to-face classrooms. Inexperienced instructors refers to instructors from academia with no industry experience, industry professionals with no academic training, or graduate students with neither. To address this gap, I thought it was important to require readings of the landmark essays that provide a theoretical foundation informing pedagogical approaches (see Suggested Readings at the end of this introduction), but which also provide pragmatic knowledge about instruction. Because many of us in the field learned to teach Professional and Technical Communication (PTC) through trial and error, hallway conversations, conference presentations, and discussions with colleagues — all of which address important theoretical information about teaching professional and technical communication — many of the practical aspects of teaching the subject have not been available in print since the 1980s, and so much has changed since those early days.

Although it does not aim to be a compendium of best practices, this collection does provide plenty of practical advice and examples. To that end, I asked contributors to shape their chapters as if they were observers in a classroom recording classroom practice. They describe what teaching a particular PTC competency, such as information design, looks like in actual practice by establishing a scenario; providing a theoretical basis as a foundation for interpreting the scenario; illustrating the practical aspects of applying the approach, method, or practice; and describing assignments or activities that instructors can generalize to use in their own classrooms. Each chapter concludes with a list of questions for pedagogical discussions. It delivers a deeper level of training — a practicum that prepares instructors to walk into the professional and technical communication classroom with confidence. The term practicum can suggest a purely practical approach to teaching, or it can refer to the cumulative knowledge and skills acquired over the course of an education. For this collection, practicum signifies both the theoretical and practical aspects of preparing to teach PTC. This "practicum in a book" guides instructors through the teaching of topics normally covered in service or introductory courses in professional and technical communication.

I begin this practicum in a book by describing the problem-solving approach used most frequently in professional and technical communication classes followed by a description of the various competencies taught in these classes. Technical communication instructors must be aware of the role these competencies play in writing technical documents so they will be better able to guide student learning. These general competencies include audience analysis and purpose, information design, project and content management, style, and ethics. Although I discuss each competency separately, they are typically taught simultaneously. That is, it is difficult to teach ethics without also considering rhetorical devices such as audience and purpose or to teach genre without also addressing design and content strategy. Likewise, it is impossible to teach any of these competencies without also tending to style issues. And given the nature of globalization, it would be difficult to prepare technical documents for international contexts without also considering the impact of these competencies on those audiences. This problem-solving approach helps instructors situate these competencies within a context of social action.

Problem-Solving Approach

Sometime in the 1980s, we moved from a forms-based approach focused on the various parts of a form that students followed like a template with little consideration for the action involved to more socially based approaches that examine the contexts and influences on that document — what I'm calling a problem-solving approach. This approach is a critical thinking method that guides students through the various iterations of a technical document. It asks students to approach their writing from the standpoint of solving a communication problem. For example, while a memo as a form has identifiable, common parts (i.e., To, From, Date, and Subject), it is equally important to consider the various social aspects of that piece of communication and why, for example, this or that word, heading, or design was chosen. Documents grow out of a context and a situation, which affect all aspects of the writing. Social aspects refers to the various contexts in which PTC is involved, such as examining the power relations between the addressee and the writer, or the role of professional and technical communicators in an organization's hierarchy, or how the creation and organization of content (seen as a product) can help define those relationships. These examples demonstrate the value of focusing on the social approaches of PTC in ways that engage students in their own learning and help them develop an awareness of audience, purpose, and situation. Lloyd Bitzer (1968) calls this the "rhetorical situation."

The exigency of a rhetorical situation, Bitzer says, is what calls the writing "into existence" (its purpose or reason for existing) and what informs...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Utah State University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1607326795
• ISBN 13: 9781607326793
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 247
• Herausgeber: Bridgeford Tracy
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar