Positioning Programs in Professional and Technical Communication: Guest Editor's Introduction

Because of accreditation, budget, and accountability pressures at the institutional and program levels, technical and professional communication faculty are more than ever involved in assessment-based activities. Using assessment to identify a program's strengths and weaknesses allows faculty to work toward continuous improvement based on their articulation of learning and behavioral goals and outcomes for their graduates. This article describes the processes of program assessment based on pedagogical goals, pointing out options and opportunities that will lead to a meaningful and manageable experience for technical communication faculty, and concludes with a view of how the larger academic body of technical communication programs can benefit from such work. As ATTW members take a careful look at the state of the profession from the academic perspective, we can use assessment to further direct our programs to meet professional expectations and, far more importantly, to help us meet the needs of the well-educated technical communicator.

After nearly a half-century of discussion, STC launched the Certified Professional Technical Communicator (CPTC)™ in 2012 and added the Certified Professional Technical Writer (CPTW)™ in 2013. Although certification excited some members of the community, it has raised questions among other academics and professional technical communicators, and downright resentment among others. But the CPTC was launched within a larger employment environment and in a larger communications industry that already includes certification for business communicators, life science editors, trainers, public relations specialists and, soon, medical writers. This workshop intends to put credentialing of professional communicators within a larger context and explore implications to academic programs in professional and technical communication.

Translation starts with a document in one language and ends with a document with the same meaning in another language. Technical communication entails designing and writing a document from scratch in one language. The answer to the question of “Which, of translation or writing, comes first?” seems relatively obvious – the document needs to be written before it can be translated. However, when looking at translation and technical communication as professions and examining how the professionals are trained, the answer is not quite as clear-cut. In the United States, translators and technical communicators have different qualifications, different skills – in particular different language skills – and have degrees in different fields. Only recently has there appeared a certain convergence between the professions. In Europe, and more specifically in France, the profession of technical communicator is quite recent, as are the corresponding academic programs. Many technical communicators came to the profession from translation. The convergence therefore is perceived as being far greater. The purpose of this paper is to launch a comparative study of the competences or skills of translators and technical communicators, based on the existing European Master’s in Translation (EMT) list of competences for translators. The goal of this study would be to define the core skills for technical communicators, to examine to what extent they overlap with the competences of translators and ultimately, to establish a referential for training programs in technical communication.

Assessment continues to be an important issue for technical communicators in both practitioner and academic contexts. In this article, we investigate methods of program assessment used by corporate learning sites and we profile value add methods as a new way to both construct and evaluate academic programs in technical communication. Our goal is to introduce value added assessment methods as one way to supplement and expand current methods of program assessment. The article initially reviews Return on Investment (ROI) indicators as a widely used model for assessing programs. However, we are critical of these indicators, suggesting that they are biased against technical communication in both practitioner and academic contexts. The article then examines and critiques assessment methods from corporate training environments. These include methods employed by corporate universities and value added process-based assessment methods. The second half of the article profiles value added methods by applying them in a brief assessment of a technical communications certificate program. We conclude that while the program uses ROI indicators as a marketing device, the value the program brings and adds to its university is the “portal” it creates for university and business community collaboration. This value cannot be fully demonstrated solely through the use of ROI indicators. The article then discusses the kinds of programmatic negotiations value added processes require within university contexts that may impose non-value added activities on departments and programs. The article concludes by critically examining the appropriateness of corporate assessment methods for academic contexts.

Background : Environmental impact studies often enlist professional communicators to develop and implement public engagement plans and processes. However, few detailed reports of these public engagement plans exist in either scholarly venues or government reports. This case reviews one public engagement project in transportation planning as implemented by one professional communications firm. Research questions: 1) What communication and engagement strategies do the consultants employ in their public engagement process? 2) How do professional communicators design engagement for diverse citizen groups? Situating the case: A number of cases have revealed the ways professional and technical communicators integrate participatory or user-centered design strategies in public engagement projects. These cases suggest that professional and technical communicators are uniquely positioned to develop ethical and effective public engagement plans for environmental impact studies. Professional and technical communicators are further prepared for this work because of their knowledge about theories of intercultural communication and rhetorical theories of delivery. Methodology: This case was studied over the course of 1.5 years using qualitative research methods, including observations, interviews, and textual analysis. About the case: This case reviews the work of one particular public engagement firm, VTC Communications, as they planned and implemented public engagement in one environmental impact study. This environmental impact study team was tasked with determining the best way to accommodate the increase in rail traffic the city anticipated with the development of the high-speed rail. The public's input was needed to fulfill environmental impact statement (EIS) requirements and to fully understand the community concerns regarding the increased traffic, noise, vibrations, and family/business displacements. VTC Communications was hired to conduct this portion of the environmental impact study, and their work included the development of a range of deliverables and events. Conclusions: This case provides an overview of the process of developing public engagement plans, the deliverables designed, as well as the key goals that guided the development of public engagement. My case suggests that effective public engagement can address intercultural concerns by developing projects that are adaptable, multimodal, and dialogic.

Understanding the law and its impact on the practice of technical communication has been an important scholarly thread in technical and professional communication (TPC) for more than two decades. Technical communicators recognize the impact of their work on stakeholders as well as the potential liability issues associated with composing technical communication documents. While this scholarship is widespread, relatively few pedagogical resources are available to prepare students for success in a litigious world or to guide instructors in teaching legal writing. This article offers a case study of a legal writing course that prepares TPC students to develop legal literacy and succeed in the workplace.

Based on survey responses from eighty-five scholars on the job market from 2013 and 2019, this article examines mentoring for the job market in rhetoric and composition and technical communication. Respondents indicate needs for job market mentoring; more transparency about the job market itself; and more extensive, integrated support throughout graduate programs. The article concludes with actions that can be taken to improve the job market experience in rhetoric and composition and technical communication programs.

This study examines the skills that recent technical communication graduates and managers believe technical communication students need before entering business and industry as new technical communicators. Through questionnaires and interviews with recent graduates and managers of technical communication departments as well as an analysis of the participating schools' curricula, this study suggests areas where technical communication may need more preparation, including business operations, project management, problem-solving skills, and scientific and technical knowledge. Further research is needed at local, state, and national levels to analyze technical communication undergraduate curricula along with responses from recent graduates of technical communication programs and managers of technical communication programs. Only through continued research can we ensure that future technical communicators receive an education that eases their transition into the world of business and industry.

Technical communication certificates are offered by many colleges and universities as an alternative to a full undergraduate or graduate degree in the field. Despite certificates’ increasing popularity in recent years, however, surprisingly little commentary exists about them within the scholarly literature. In this work, I describe a survey of certificate and baccalaureate programs that I performed in 2008 in order to develop basic, descriptive data on programs’ age, size, and graduation rates; departmental location; curricular requirements; online offerings; and instructor status and qualifications. In performing this research, I apply recent insights from neosophistic rhetorical theory and feminist critiques of science to both articulate, and model, a feminist-sophistic methodology. I also suggest in this work that technical communication certificates can be theorized as a particularly sophistic credential for a particularly sophistic field, and I discuss the implications of neosophistic theory for certificate program design and administration.

This paper reports the findings of an exploratory study of engineering students' perceptions of reflection and independent learning before and after taking a mandatory technical communication course titled Professional and Technical Oral Communication for Engineers in their first semester of study at a university in Hong Kong. Three kinds of research instruments were used to generate data for analyses: pre- and post-questionnaire surveys, semi-structured interviews, and students' reflection and self-access records. The study's findings show encouraging results in three ways: (1) the course participants were generally receptive to the ideas of reflection and independent learning in the context of technical communication; (2) those who had had prior experience in reflection and independent learning continued to appreciate the value they brought to learning; and (3) the course participants' pre-conception that reflection and independent learning were only `one-man shows' was changed and they began to value the involvement of their `significant social others' in these learning pursuits.

Background: Entrepreneurship has undergone significant transformations in the past decade due to crowd-based models of innovation and the increasing popularity of crowdfunding. Crowdfunding provides an alternative to the way entrepreneurs traditionally raise start-up and operational funds for a venture. Moreover, with crowdfunding platforms, citizens and communities are increasingly able to engage in entrepreneurial work not only for profit but also to address social and civic problems. Problem: Given the expanding boundaries of entrepreneurship, it is increasingly important for professional and technical communication teachers to prepare students to be ethical entrepreneurs and embody a widening array of rhetorical skills. Our teaching case addresses the question of how we might incorporate new and emerging forms of entrepreneurship, such as crowdfunding, into the professional and technical communication classroom in ways that foreground the social, civic, and ethical dimensions of that work. Situating the case: To address this question, we first situate our teaching case in relevant literature from professional and technical communication and social entrepreneurship, and then compare it with similar cases of crowdfunding being used for educational purposes. How the case was studied: We describe what we observed before, during, and after teaching a project structured thematically around civic crowdfunding. We had two sources of data: (1) a collection of teaching materials, including syllabi, day-to-day lesson plans, project prompts, in-class activities, correspondence between instructors, and informal teaching logs used to record impromptu reflections throughout the course of the semester; and (2) the civic crowdfunding project materials produced by students. About the case: Two distinct but related problems have motivated the development of this teaching case: (1) the context of 21st-century entrepreneurship has rapidly changed as a result of new approaches, including crowdfunding; (2) this shift has also led to an increased emphasis on civic and social matters of concern, which have increasingly become more important in contemporary business models. Ultimately, we seek to understand how entrepreneurial writing projects can meld commercial and financial motivations with civic exigencies, direct participation, and stakeholder engagement. As such, this civic crowdfunding sequence takes place over two phases: (1) students conducted primary and secondary research on a local problem or exigency and used this as evidence for a white paper and a project proposal; (2) students developed a feasible solution to this problem which then formed the basis for crowdfunding campaign materials, including a Kickstarter page, campaign video, and branding materials. Results: Our results focus on two projects that clearly foreground a social and civic mission; we point to these two projects not as perfect examples, but rather as illustrative cases of how students engaged crowdfunding as a form of civic entrepreneurship. Conclusions: Our teaching case has demonstrated the need to prepare students not only to pitch venture ideas for a small audience of investors, but also to consider how to identify and frame problems, construct stories about these problems as pressing matters of concern and, ultimately, develop ethical relationships with stakeholders and increasingly diverse investors.

Academe-industry relations are an ongoing topic in the conversation on technical communication. Key issues in the conversation include alignment between academic curricula and industry needs, the effectiveness of the preparation provided by academic programs, and the alignment of interests between the two groups. However, no study has attempted to empirically assess the extent of the academic and industry alignment empirically. We explore this issue here and are guided by the following questions: (1) What content areas are covered by both peer-reviewed and trade publications?, (2) What content areas are unique to each type of publication?, and (3) Who is the intended audience of the content? To assess this alignment, we coded for three major content areas in a random sample of 348 articles published between 1996 and 2013 in four leading peer-reviewed Journals (IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Technical Communication, and Technical Communication Quarterly) and one publication for practicing technical communicators (Intercom). Results suggest that professional publications tend to publish process-oriented articles, articles focused on technology and professionalization, and articles intended for writers/content developers. Scholarly publications tend to publish product- and education-oriented articles, articles focused on assessment and research design, and articles intended for academics. This, in turn, provides insights into differences in the conversations of practicing professionals and academics.

Typical model curricula in engineering disciplines assume that training in communication will occur early in the student's academic career in the course taken to meet the general liberal arts requirements of the university. This paper argues that this assumption defines communication as a preliminary skill to be learned as a prelude to technical study. An alternative view perceives increasing sophistication in the technical disciplines as requiring a simultaneous increase in sophistication in communication. The Program in Scientific and Technical Communication at the University of Washington is designed according to the latter view. The courses address the needs of engineers as these needs emerge and change across the academic and professional life of the engineer.

The author discusses his experience as a graduate student in the Technical Communication Program at Oklahoma State University (OSU). He discusses activities that he found particularly valuable being an intern, namely, participating in the Society for Technical Communication (STC), writing for publication, and giving oral presentations.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Outcomes-based assessment provides data for programs to demonstrate student learning as a result of their enrollment in the program and to assess courses and curriculum. This chapter reports on the process used to develop an outcomes assessment initiative for the Multimedia Writing and Technical Communication Program at Arizona State University. The authors discuss details on the development of outcomes, the mapping of outcomes to the curriculum, the use of electronic portfolios to assess student writing using Phase 2 scoring procedures, and how results from the first three semesters of implementation are being used to evaluate and improve the program’s curriculum.