Technical and ethical professional preparation for technicalcommunication students

It is suggested that students can learn the fundamentals of project leadership, team writing, and production of a major document if the teacher plans and structures the assignments for the project leader so that the project leader and the student writers share the same understanding of the document, know the lines of authority for decisions, and see how individual parts fit into the whole. The principles of cooperation necessary to complete the project also engage the students in issues of professional ethics     

Devising Collective Knowledges for the Technical Writing Classroom: A Course-Based Approach to Using Web 2.0 Writing Technologies in Collaborative Work

Technical and professional writing pedagogies have traditionally understood collaborative writing as an aggregate, cooperative venture between writers and subject matter experts. In contrast, this tutorial argues that Web 2.0 technologies offer technical and professional communication pedagogies more advantageous conceptions and practices of collaborative writing. The tutorial analyzes how new media technologies create a different collaborative writing environment and then discusses how these environments help collaborative writing methods create an alternative writing situation. The study concludes by examining the outcomes of student Web 2.0 research projects and by offering technical and professional writing instructors new pedagogical strategies for teaching collaborative writing.      

The technical article assignment: a work-world method for teachingaudience analysis

The journal article is a uniquely effective case assignment for teaching technical communication students a central, work-world, writing demand faced by all professional writers: accurately defining and effectively writing to multiple, hierarchical audiences. The author examines how two technical communication students successfully construct journal articles based on research from analytical reports completed earlier in the term. The students analyze their target audience(s) and revise their reports into technical articles by assessing their purposes in writing the article; by selecting the most appropriate journal and audience for the article; and by adjusting the article's topical slant, organization, content, and style to fit both the target journal's editorial needs and the interests of its audience(s)     

Improving the Effectiveness of Virtual Teams: A Comparison of Video-Conferencing and Face-to-Face Communication in China

As virtual teams become more and more important in organizations, understanding how to improve virtual team relational development and meeting outcomes is vital to project success. The objective of this study was to investigate how the dialogue technique that facilitated building of shared understanding in virtual teams can be used to enhance virtual team relational development and decision outcomes in a Chinese cultural context. The results from an experiment demonstrate that the adopted dialogue technique can indeed help team members develop their team relations and enhance their perceived team meeting outcomes. Video-conferencing virtual teams with shared mental models may be engaged as effectively as traditional face-to-face teams. Moreover, this study reveals that the dialogue technique can enhance face-to-face team outcomes. Therefore, the findings of this study have both theoretical and practical implications for helping teams develop shared understanding of effective communication and enhance decision-making outcomes in the Chinese cultural context.      

“Is it theirs, mine, or ours?” Ownership,collaboration, and cultures [collaborative work]

Document ownership attributions often have direct consequences for evaluation, in both classrooms and workplaces. But when writers work collaboratively, ownership attributions are not straightforward. This study, about how and why collaborative writers make such attributions, reports that interviewed workplace writers emphasized product criteria (quality and liability), while surveyed student writers emphasized process criteria (teamwork and workload). A review of previous research suggests that such a difference may result from cultural differences between the academy and the workplace. That analysis further suggests how both instructors and practitioners could help newcomers make successful transitions to professional writing, by foregrounding ownership attitudes     

Metaphor, frame, and nonverbal communication: an ethnographic studyof a technical writing classroom

Professional educational philosophers C.A. Bowers and D.J. Flinders (1990) describe the classroom as an ecology comprising interrelated linguistic and cultural patterns that determine how information is communicated in the classroom. their classroom ecology model centers on the observation of three interconnected areas: the metaphors that the teacher and the textbook use to introduce students to the formal and informal curriculum, the manner in which the teacher frames student expertise and classroom relationships, and the nonverbal communication between teacher and students. Using Bowers and Flinders' model, a technical writing class taught by a teacher who emphasizes relationships, understanding and acceptance, and collaboration was studied. The teacher's metaphorical language, framing of instruction and student relationships, and nonverbal language are shown to reflect a rhetorical approach to technical writing, a caring approach to teaching, and a supportive, community environment for learning. This ethnographic study provides a snapshot of how one teacher defines technical writing and how he answers the question of how is should be taught     

From start to finish: approaches to introductions and conclusionsin technical writing textbooks

The varied treatments, introductions and conclusions receive in technical writing textbooks are explored from the dual perspective of the students who must incorporate the advice into their work and the professors who must present the material to students. The books attempt to focus on specific techniques for generating clear, concise writing, delineate methods of authorial analysis and offer student and professional examples of technical reports. It is concluded that these textbooks are successful when the structure of introductions and conclusions is tied closely to the context of the actual report     

Quality improvement in technical documents and presentations:application in the classroom

When the professional who teaches technical communication uses quality control techniques that are common in industry, technical reports and presentations show continual improvement. These techniques emphasize participative management, which in the classroom means student involvement in improving the process of writing a technical paper or making a technical presentation. Another effective technique derived from industrial management is applying quality control at checkpoints during the process instead of relying on control points at its end. A third improvement technique used by successful Japanese managers encourages and rewards suggestions to an extent unmatched even by the best US programs. The author describes the application of these industrial management techniques in the technical communication classroom. She reports that these techniques help create a strong classroom culture that helps students improve the quality of their work     

Engineering and technology student perceptions of collaborative writing practices

Results are presented from an assessment of student perceptions of collaborative writing practices before and after taking an upper division professional writing class. While most of the classes introduced students to these writing practices, several did not. The assessment was both quantitative and qualitative. Whether or not they had prior experience in the classroom, all students generally reported that they are likely to seek out opportunities to use both peer review and collaborative writing processes once they enter the workplace. However, students who are exposed to these practices in a classroom setting are more likely to report that they intend to continue these practices in the workplace.     

The influence of textese on adolescents’ perceptions of text message writers

Text messages are characterised by a casual language style, ‘textese’ (e.g., c u on thurs). This study investigated adolescents’ perceptions of the use of different levels of textese in digital messages which varied in their intended recipient (friend, teacher). Grade 8 students in Australia (N = 90, aged 13–14 years) each read six text messages purportedly written by a fellow student, and rated the extent to which they agreed (on a 7-point Likert scale) that the message writer was intelligent, paid attention to detail, used an appropriate writing style, and was friendly. Overall, participants rated message senders most favourably on all measures when they used no textese, and least favourably when they used high levels of textese. This pattern was even stronger when messages were addressed to teachers rather than same-aged friends. The findings suggest that adolescents are sensitive to both writing style and recipient when considering digital messages.     

Seven habits of highly effective writers

“The seven habits of highly effective people” (S. Covey, 1989) has become a classic precisely because Covey's principles are applicable to both personal and professional responsibilities-from building a stronger relationship with one's family to becoming a more effective leader within one's business organization. I have tried to suggest some ways that Covey's paradigm might help us rethink the way that we approach the writing process. This article is my interpretation of how we can apply Covey's seven habits to writing. The habits are: (1) be proactive; (2) begin with the end in mind; (3) put first things first; (4) think “win/win”; (5) seek first to understand, then to be understood; (6) synergize; and (7) sharpen the saw (i.e. self-renewal)     

Collaborative writing in the workplace

The author suggests that when technical experts team up to produce technical documents, dividing the workload horizontally, with each team member handling a separate chapter or section, does not work very well. He maintains that stratifying the project vertically, with a project team leader, a data gatherer, a writer, an editor, and a graphics person, is a more efficient and more effective method of collaborative writing. The process is quicker and the product is better because team members get to do what they are best at     

Professional communication and Poe's “The PurloinedLetter”

At first glance, there seems to be very little in common between professional communication and a nineteenth-century detective story. However, there is a strong link between Poe's “The Purloined Letter” (E.A. Poe, 1975) and the successful practices of today's professional communicators, particularly technical writers and editors. In the story, Poe's writing methodology and his main character's investigative advice both offer useful guidelines for successful professional communication. “The Purloined Letter” is a formulaic detective story about Dupin, a witty detective who solves the case of a stolen letter, a case previously unsolved by the French police. Dupin uses intimate knowledge of human logic and reasoning to find the stolen letter. His method is contrasted with that of the French police who had spent months unsuccessfully searching for it. Dupin's means of finding the letter is a series of significant courses of action that can be applied to effective professional communication strategies. The article summarizes Dupin's advice and how it can be applied to effective technical communication today     

Training new technical writers

Many organizations hire new technical writers regularly as their business expands, or hire temporary technical writers to cope with a heavy workload period. Although it is assumed that such people are hired for their writing skills, they still must be trained quickly in four areas: how business is done in the organization, the process used to produce information, the style of writing preferred, and the technical tools available and how they are to be used. The author shows one way of structuring such a training program. It is based on an actual course developed over a period of three years. It is concluded that a good training program requires considerable forethought and subsequent modification to keep up with change, an organized coordinator, a dedicated set of teachers and a process that can be readily learned and modified again by others as turnover occurs     

Active and interactive learning online: a comparison of Web-basedand conventional writing classes

This study examines how students enrolled in two Web-based sections of a technical writing class performed compared to students enrolled in a conventional version of the class. Although no significant difference in student performance was found between the two learning conditions, our data reveal intriguing relationships between students' prior knowledge, attitudes, and learning styles and our Web-based writing environment. One finding that we focus on is that reflective, global learners performed significantly better online than active, sequential learners, whereas there was no difference between them in the conventional class. Our study highlights the complexity of effective teaching and the difficulty of making comparisons between the online and the classroom environments. In particular, we maintain that the transfer of active learning strategies to the Web is not straightforward and that interactivity as a goal of instructional Web site design requires significant elaboration     

四倍频Nd：YAG激光器制作光纤布喇格光栅

报道用四倍频Ｎｄ：ＹＡＧ激光器产生的２６６ｕｍ的光波．在高掺锗光纤中成功地写入了ＦＢＧ的实验结果。     

Leadership of information systems development projects

How best to lead an information systems project team continues to be an open issue. For three decades, the research literature has contrasted between the leadership of the "chief programmer" led team to that of the "egoless" software team with little clarity as to what is appropriate leadership and under what circumstances. Software project teams, like other knowledge teams, are characterized by distributed expertise, the reliance on methodologies, high levels of collaboration, as well as the need to meet the expectations of a diverse set of stakeholders. We propose a theoretical model of information systems project team leadership that focuses on empowering and directive leadership practices and investigate whether this leadership is more effective than the use of traditional coordination mechanisms; we also test whether these relationships are moderated by factors such as task uncertainty or professional experience. We test this model using data from 69 software development teams. Our results indicate that empowering leadership has an important impact on team performance but only under conditions of high task uncertainty or team expertise.     

Engineering style: striving for efficiency

Strategies for improving stylistic efficiency of technical writing are presented. The strategies, in contrast to the myriad of advice on how to improve sentence style, create sentence flow and give the prose a character that propels readers along. Improvements in stylistic efficiency come from aligning word order with readers' expectations so as to restrict the reader's interpretive latitude     

Describing collaborative forms: a profile of the team-writingprocess

The paper examines collaborative writing practices students in the Air Force Institute of Technology's Graduate School of Logistics and Acquisition Management use to produce team-authored theses. In analyzing how student writing teams plan, execute, and assess writing activities, the researchers identify and describe some of the forms that collaboration takes, thereby successfully connecting their work within a broader research continuum concerning collaborative writing, particularly when applied in academic settings     

Genre knowledge and teaching professional communication

Recent years have seen increased attention to the examination of the genres that people use in professional communication. C. Berkenkotter and T.N. Huckin's book “Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication” (1995) is an important contribution to this discussion. Their view of genre has important implications for the teaching of professional writing. Their view gives us an insight into the ways in which people both acquire and use genre knowledge as they participate in the knowledge-producing activities of their field or profession. It shows us how important the process of genre acquisition is in the learning of disciplinary genre knowledge. Linguistic knowledge is necessary for effective communication, but it is not sufficient for writers to achieve their goals. Just as important, writers need to understand the underlying views, assumptions and aims of a field. They need control of the rhetoric through which they are expressed. They also need to understand the history, knowledge and expectations of their particular area, and to locate their writing clearly within the context of this work. The notion of genre can provide students with the tools for both recognizing and adapting to the changing genre landscapes that their professional lives will travel across. While we cannot hope to predict all of our students' possible future genre needs, we can help them ask questions of texts, of contexts, and of themselves, so they can produce and understand the kinds of texts which they need to control in their professional lives