Within a Technical Communication classroom, policywork has been used to teach students the vital discursive and conceptual skills valued by technical fields. However, given the move of technical communicators into the public sphere, these skills can and should be expanded to include diverse practices and modes of thought. As such, this article…

This article presents follow-up information to a previous publication regarding ways to increase emphasis on research skills in undergraduate Technical Communication curricula. We detail the ways our undergraduate program highlights research by requiring majors to complete senior thesis projects that culminate in submission to an online…

The nuclear power industry is undergoing a renaissance, led by initiatives from the Obama administration and several states. In light of this development and the growing information economy, it is crucial that the public be well-informed, effective, and responsible regarding important technological issues. For this reason, undergraduate education,…

There is little research on the use of titles in academic articles, and even less on different types of titles. In this article Crosby's taxonomy of titles [1] is brought up-to date and extended. Twelve types of titles are distinguished. The author argues that it would be helpful to discuss these different types with student writers.

Teachers often test course materials by using them in class. Usability testing provides an alternative: teachers receive student feedback and revise materials "before" teaching a class. Case studies based on interviews and observations with two teaching assistants who usability tested materials before teaching introductory technical writing…

This pilot study obtained baseline information on verbal and visual rhetorics to teach microscopy techniques to college biology majors. We presented cell images to students in cell biology and biology writing classes and then asked them to identify textual, verbal, and visual cues that support microscopy learning. Survey responses suggest that…

The use of visual representation to learn science can be traced to Louis Agassiz, Harvard Professor of Zoology, in the mid-19th century. In Agassiz's approach, students were to study nature through carefully observing, drawing and then thinking about what the observations might add up to. However, implementation of Agassiz's student-centered…

The purpose of this article is to evaluate value-add methods and activities applied to organizational communication college-level course work. Graduate organizational communication faculty are aware that their classes serve as direct preparation for students entering business and professional careers. The knowledge learned and the skills acquired…

This study analyzes the performance and attitudes of technical writing students in PowerPoint-enhanced and in non-PowerPoint lectures. Four classes of upper-level undergraduates (n = 84) at a mid-sized, Southern university taking a one-semester technical writing course were surveyed at the beginning and end of the course about their perceptions of…

Previous research has indicated that engineering faculty do not follow best practices when commenting on students' technical writing. However, it is unclear whether the faculty prefer to comment in these ineffective ways, or whether they prefer more effective practices but simply do not enact them. This study adapts a well known study of response…

The author has taught a distance education version of the undergraduate technical communication service course at Boise State University since 1997 and shares the strategies he has found to decrease the time instructors spend teaching online, thereby enabling them to use the time they do have to enhance their students' online experience. These…

Over a period of 10 years, we have developed a sustainable process of online portfolio assessment that demonstrates both reliability and validity, using both qualitative and quantitative measures. The sustainable cycle is that, each semester, we assess a random sampling of the students' work that they have posted, as per our instructions, in an…

Universities and colleges are investing millions of dollars in information technology infrastructure to support teaching, research, and service, and thousands of dollars annually in faculty training programs. And yet, many college graduates entering the workforce lack adequate technology skills. To ascertain the frequency of faculty adoption of…

Carolyn Miller's oft-cited "Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing," published in 1979, tries to give technical communication faculty more cultural capital in English departments controlled by literature professors. Miller replaces a positivistic emphasis in technical communication pedagogy with rhetoric. She shows how technical knowledge is…

Individual students in two different sections of an undergraduate civil engineering laboratory were tasked with preparing three professional-quality laboratory reports. The teaching assistant and/or instructor used established criteria to grade the first two reports prepared by students in one section. The first two reports prepared by students in…