Technical and Professional Writing Commons^™

Rhetorical Principles On Uncertainty For Transdisciplinary Engagement And Improved Climate Risk Communication, Kenneth Walker

Poroi

No abstract provided.

Lamberti -- Constructed Reader Real Emotion.Pdf, Adrienne Lamberti

Adrienne Lamberti

No abstract provided.

Write Place At The Write Time: A Study Of How Writing Contexts Affect Rates Of Productivity And Perceptions Of Success In Creative Writing, Sydnie R. Long

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-current

This research explores the writing contexts of a few creative writers in an effort to learn more about the habits and conditions with which creative writers prefer to work. My goal is to observe how different contexts affect the success or productivity a writer experiences. I will build my project off the central question, is there a correlation between writing contexts and success in writing? From there, I will divide the project into three subsections guided by four subquestions aiming to explore where and how writers write, and gain an insight to their views on what success and productivity mean ...

An Integrated Curriculum For Technical Writing In Higher Education In China, Feifei Zhong, Gene Hou

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

This study aims to develop an effective curriculum plan to improve technical writing in higher education in China. The paper first investigated the deficiency in the curriculum design in China for English technical writing by comparing the required courses offered in Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU) in China with those in Old Dominion University (ODU) in US. Questionnaires and interviews were then conducted among studying abroad Chinese students, visiting scholars, English as Second Language (ESL) instructors as well as engineering professors. The collected data revealed that the oversea Chinese students were struggled more with higher order concerns in writing than lower ...

The Visual And Performing Arts In The Technical Communication Classroom: Reinforcing The University's Internal Community Literacy Via Service-Learning, Richard L. Ward

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This report details a class taught that was an exploration into the value of STEAM or science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics within the confines of Technical Communication as it applies to the business and industry of theatre. It was an experiment in service learning as it could be tied into the Arts via differing technai, as described by John Wild in “Plato’s Theory of Texnh a Phenomenological Interpretation,” demonstrating a necessity for Arts as they pertain to STEM-centric universities. This report discusses a section of Technical and Professional Communication taught at Michigan technological University that consisted of twenty-five ...

On The Same Page: Theory, Practice & The Ela Common Core State Standards, Jessica Lauer

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This research sought to examine how writing was happening in high schools. States across the country, including Michigan, began implementing the Common Core State Standards in 2010. The standards place a heavy focus on informational texts particularly as a student reaches high school. The standards also suggest that writing should be a shared responsibility among teachers, acknowledging the importance of cross-disciplinary writing skills. Using a grounded theory approach to analyze the semi-structured interviews conducted with eight English teachers in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, this research revealed a disconnect between theory and practice when it comes to how educational standards ...

Iowa High School Journalism Project, Julia Davis

Honors Theses at the University of Iowa

The Iowa High School Journalism Project is a collaboration between five different high schools across the state of Iowa, and lead by IowaWatch. The goal of the project is to make the voices of high school journalists heard across the state of Iowa, in amplify important issues within the high school sphere. For this project, high school students reported on two issues: mental health resources available to high school students and the lack of diversity in Advanced Placement (AP) classes. My job as an honors student and manager of the project was to combine the original reporting that students provided ...

Writing Other Futures: A Conversation About Science Fiction, Anindita Banerjee, Rachel H. Haywood Ferreira

World Languages and Cultures Publications

CentraI to The Other Trans-Atlantic is the contention that kinetic art was a species of realism, reflecting the new socioeconomic realities emerging in the geographies considered by our project. In seeking to test the hypothesis that the pervasive curiosity, if not enthusiasm, for science and technology, as refracted through the lens of innovative artistic practices, led to the embrace of optical and kinetic forms, we,the editors, wondered if we might find correlating interests in other artistic languages and cultural forms. In trying to understand the way in which these forces (industrialization, scientific discovery, etc) changed everyday life and therefore ...

The Modern Church Communicates: Rhetoric And Hypertext In Church Website Design, Edward Palmer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Internet and the World Wide Web have supplanted many paper-based information systems. People turn to the web to locate local services in the same way they find ecommerce sites such as Amazon. Churches of all sizes must develop effective and attractive websites to attract new members and inform existing members. These two groups form distinct audiences that must be correctly targeted by the website content. Other churches may visit to gather ideas for their programs; they are a third group of site visitors. Organization of hypertext on the web requires skills that are different than writing for print. Technical ...

Grace Hopper And The Marvelous Machine: Lessons For Modern Technical Communicators From The Mark I Ascc Manual, Jessica Meyr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Women's technical writing achievements often go unrecognized, both due to the invisibility of technical writing professionals in general, and a lack of famous technical communication role models in particular. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze and present an early major work in the technical writing of Rear Admiral "Amazing" Grace Hopper, inventor of the compiler and an important figure in computer science history. Although Hopper is arguably best known for popularizing the idea of the "computer bug," her achievements in computer science extend from invention of the software compiler to tireless promotion of the programming language COBOL ...

Playing With Usability: Why Technical Communicators Should Examine Mobile Games, Alexandra Cata

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how technical communicators can look to free, successful mobile games for mobile User Interface (UI) and User Assistance (UA) inspiration and design techniques. The purpose of this thesis is to provide an overview of major game studies theories and situate them within technical communication theory and practices. Technical communicators can leverage game studies theories to augment existing technical communication theories and practices. Specifically, I examine cognitive learning theory in game design, game usability, playability, and user-centered design, and how these theories relate to technical communication, rhetorical, mobile UI/UA, and general usability theories and methods. Additionally, I ...

Rhetoric Of Typography: Cross-Cultural Perceptions Of Typefaces For Technical And Visual Communication, Michael Peterson

All Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Since the early 2000s, scholars have been conducting research to determine whether typefaces influence a reader's response to a document. Some areas of research have included the role of gender, age, or other demographics on typeface perception. However, the role of culture in academic discourse on the rhetoric of typography has been largely underexplored, and this is concerning given the ease with which technical documents can be delivered to cultures around the world with a couple of clicks on a computer.

I developed my research topic to explore whether Koreans perceive typefaces differently from non-Koreans and to discover what ...

Feminist Theory And Technical Communication, Olivia Duffus

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

This essay explores feminism, socially-constructed norms, and the relationship between feminism and technical communication. It argues that undergraduate technical communication programs should include courses that study feminist history and theories as related to the field, claiming that studying feminist theory will improve user-centered design and broaden students' spheres of influence as professionals.

Author Biographies, Leigh G. Dillard

Papers & Publications: Interdisciplinary Journal of Undergraduate Research

Biographies of authors featured in Volume 5 of Papers & Publications.

Forematter, Leigh G. Dillard

Papers & Publications: Interdisciplinary Journal of Undergraduate Research

Forematter for Volume 5 of Papers & Publications.

Analysis Of Media In Rwanda: Internship With The New Times, Rhiannon Snide

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This report examines the effects and expectations of media in Rwanda today, specifically in reference to the New Times daily newspaper. I spent one month interning with the New Times as a news writer, spending approximately 45 to 50 hours a week with the institution. Within this month, I was able to use both primary research and secondary research to analyze the role of media in Rwanda’s society today. Interviews with head editors of the New Times and conversations with paid journalists from the New Times provided me with much of the information specific to the news outlet, while ...

Publishing Information For Authors, Paul Royster, Sue Ann Gardner, Linnea Fredrickson

Library Conference Presentations and Speeches

Publishing: What Authors Ought to Know, by Paul Royster

Copyright for Scholarly Authors, by Sue Ann Gardner

Mechanics of the Manuscript: What Happens Next? by Linnea Fredrickson

Visual Detail And Its Effects On Character Attachment In Video Games, Carl Sommer

Open Access Theses

The video game industry has been experiencing a trend toward independent game developers making their own games, as well as large companies opening smaller divisions to work on smaller games. This can be looked at from a purely financial perspective, given that smaller games will inevitably consume a smaller budget; however, there is also good reason to believe there can be substantial creative benefits to companies indulging in this trend. This research is concerned with the effect that visual detail can have on a players emotional attachment to characters in video games-otherwise known as character attachment. While intuition may often ...

Troubles At Coal Creek: Rhetorics Of Writing, Research, And The Archive, Sumner Stevenson Brown

Masters Theses

Digging through the past can uncover painful truths. As such, historiography that does not acknowledge negotiated spaces, cultural erasures, and flexible frameworks may fall short. It may limit both breadth and depth of the past, thereby (re)producing erasures, whereas a reflexive theoretical framework delivers not only depth and breadth, but it also adds texture and dimension to historical writing and research processes. It is for these purposes that the value of alternative methodologies is not situated at the margins of the rhetorical canons. Instead, it is embedded in the very core of the canons, defined as an element that ...

Explaining Dynamic Interactions In Wiki-Based Collaborative Writing, Mimi Li, Wei Zhu

Writing and Linguistics Faculty Research and Publications

This article reports a case study that examined dynamic patterns of interaction that two small groups of ESL students exemplified when they performed two writing tasks, i.e., Research Proposal (Task 1) and Annotated Bibliography (Task 2) in a wiki site. Group A demonstrated a Collective pattern in Task 1, but switched to an Active/Withdrawn pattern in Task 2. In contrast, Group B exhibited a Dominant/Defensive pattern in Task 1, but switched to a Collaborative one in Task 2. These patterns were substantiated by group members’ ongoing task approaches in terms of “equality” and “mutuality,” reflected via the ...