Technical and Professional Writing Commons^™

The Role Of Occupational Branding In The Professionalization Of Technical Communication, Chelsea Thomas

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the relationship between professional identity and professional status by exploring the quest for professionalization within technical communication. An established professional identity is crucial to an occupation's professionalization process, as it enables members of a given field to create a common sense of being and facilitates a recognizable personal and collective identity. Such recognition is vital to an occupation's rise to professional status, as it creates a distilled image of the ideal practitioner for outsiders and forms the basis upon which claims of expertise may be made. By constructing the meaning surrounding their profession, members are able to …

Sexy Technical Communication, Tamara Powell, Jonathan Arnett, Monique Logan, Cassandra Race, Tiffani Reardon

2016 Faculty Bookshelf

Sexy technical writing…we’ve got to be kidding, right? But no, we aren’t. Good technical writing is powerful and clear and gets the job done. It brings people together and solves problems. Good technical writing purrs and hums like that BMW you plan to be driving someday.What’s not sexy about that? On the other hand, poor technical writing skills may lead to a lifetime of asking people if they want fries with that…or worse, selling vacuum cleaners door to door. There’s no need to ask what’s not sexy about that!

WE – your textbook authors – are a team of dedicated …

The Why, How, And Best Practices Of Creating, Editing, And Maintaining A Professional Blog, Elizabeth Haas

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Agro/Hort 403/803: Scientific Writing And Communication—A Peer Review Of Teaching Project Inquiry Portfolio, Brian M. Waters

UNL Faculty Course Portfolios

Scientific writing is a skill that is useful for science students, since many of them will write about their research in a thesis, dissertation, or in journal articles. The goal of my course is to provide students with practice and training in scientific writing so that after they take the course they are confident and ready to write drafts independently. The class uses many learning activities, such as reading, writing, peer reviewing, revising, and class discussions. However, the first two iterations of the course did not have built-in ways to practice sentence and paragraph editing, or to gauge quality of …

The Write Stuff - Winter 2016 (Vol. 13, No. 1), Research Medical Library

Write Stuff 2016

• Publishing patient information in case reports
• Changes to NIH grant policies, grant application forms and instructions, and SF424 guidelines
• Microsoft Word 2013: Tips for using Comments, Change Tracking, and other features
• Citing unpublished material in a research paper
• Winter and spring schedule for the Research Medical Library webinar program
• Unusual terms used in scientific writing and publishing: Uniform requirements/ICMJE recommendations

Personas: A Strategy For More Inclusive And Usable Reproductive Health Tracking Technologies, Anna R. Paul

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

In this report, I argue for the inclusion of personas in the development process of technologies that are designed to allow users to collect and track their health information. Personas provide a profile of a user and their needs, goals, and contexts. This tool can help designers to better understand their users, in order to create better, more usable end products. I examine one particular self-tracking technology, smartphone applications that allow users to record information about their menstrual cycles. Many of the most popular period tracking applications available today only meet the needs of a narrow user group, resulting in …

"Unblackboxing" Technology Through The Rhetoric Of Technical Communication: Biometric Technology And Ghana's 2012 Election, Isidore Dorpenyo

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

In this project, I seek to “unblackbox” technology; by which I mean, I seek to, in the words of Latour, “open up” or “debug” the biometric technology used by Ghana for its 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. Through the process of “unblackboxing,” I demonstrate the value of technical communicators to technology studies by analyzing technical documents that accompanied the biometric verification device which was adopted and used by Ghana to conduct its 2012 presidential and parliamentary elections. I argue in this dissertation that technical documentation does not merely accommodate users to technologies, but also it provides avenues to articulate broader …

“Uh Oh. Cue The [New] Mommy Wars”: The Ideology Of Combative Mothering In Popular U.S. Newspaper Articles About Attachment Parenting, Julia Moore, Jenna Abetz

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Through critique of concordance, we argue that popular U.S. newspaper articles about attachment parenting perpetuate the ideology of combative mothering, where mothers are in continuous competition with one another over parenting choices. Specifically, article writers construct a new, singular metaphorical mommy war between pro-attachment parenting and anti-attachment parenting proponents by prepackaging attachment parenting and its debate, advocating for attachment parenting through instinct and science, and rejecting attachment parenting because of harm to children, relationships, and mothers. A minority of articles, however, avoided reifying this pro-/anti-attachment parenting mommy war by exploring the complexities of parenting beyond prepackaged philosophies. We explore the …

Delimitación Y Desarrollo De Las Lenguas De Especialidad: Actuales En La Definición De Los Géneros Discursivos En Las Lenguas Con Propósitos Específicos, David Sánchez-Jiménez

Publications and Research

This article presents a theoretical review of the evolution of Languages for Specific Purposes and explores its future development. The first part of the article defines Languages for Specific Purposes. The second part presents its objective in which it reviews the different evolutionary stages of this approach since it began in the early 20th century. Lastly, the article concludes with a review of its current problems and discusses the possible changes in the future.

Extending Writing In The Disciplines (Wid) To Train Mechanical Engineering Gtas To Evaluate Student Writing, Nancy Barr

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Beyond first-year composition, the undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum provides few opportunities for students to develop technical writing skills. One underutilized path for students to strengthen those skills is the required sequence of laboratory courses, where students write reports that are evaluated by graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), many of whom speak English as a second language. Historically, engineering GTAs have not been trained in formative assessment techniques to help students improve their technical writing skills. This dissertation details a comprehensive study of a GTA training program implemented in a large mechanical engineering department. Situated within the field of Writing Across the …

Glenside Fire Company Website Modernization, Jennifer Clark, Irene Patterson, David J. Cox Jr.

Senior Capstone Theses

Glenside Fire Company #1, known as GFC, is one of five volunteer fire companies operating in Cheltenham Township, providing services not limited to fire suppression, search and rescue, emergency medical services assistance, and fire safety education. GFC was looking to create a new website in order to promote volunteer firefighting, recruit new members, and fundraise, as well as provide a place where current members can keep records of events and trainings, using a public and member-only view. The website was created using a Bootstrap framework, in order to maximize usability across many platforms. The website will be easily updated with …

Are We Prepared For The Future? A Case Study On The Education Of Journalists, Victoria Black

Senior Theses

Throughout my college experience at the University of South Carolina as a journalism major, I heard about one thing for four years – senior semester. Senior semester for journalism majors is a set number of classes the student must take his or her senior year, either the last or second to last semester before graduation. It includes four specific classes on reporting, producing, writing and web management. But there is a catch. The four classes do not meet for specific class periods. Students in senior semester meet Monday through Friday from 8:45am to 6:00pm, producing a 4:00pm newscast every day. …

I Want All The Words! How Gestalt Principles And Plain Language Can Help You Become An Effective Document Designer, Jennifer M. Turner, Jessica Schomberg

Library Services Publications

Librarians across library types and departments frequently provide training materials to each other, library technicians, and student workers. For these materials to be effective, they must contain accurate information and should also follow guidelines for usable document design. Good design makes documents easier to use, helps documents stand out from other pieces of information, and lends credibility to document creators. A few simple tips, such as following Gestalt principles and using plain language, can improve document usability. The presenters will demonstrate how making these and other changes will improve the accessibility and functionality of library training materials. They will also …

Enc 2210 Technical Writing For Health Science, Johanna Hillen

Service-Learning Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Communication Risk And Strategy In Temporary Organizations, Shelley R. Mcivor

Theses

Communication is a critical and emerging metric for successful outcomes in the high-stakes field of project management. Professional management societies have quantified financial losses caused by ineffective communication. Consulting project management exemplifies a maximum communication risk environment - misunderstanding threatens project finances, strict deadlines, and technical benchmarks - exacerbated by the complexity of a temporary organization structure.

The context of work in a temporary organization adds layers of ambiguity to project communications - an ill-structured domain in technical communication terms. Formal study of communication in temporary organizations is relatively new. Recent studies are derived from engineering and business management perspectives. …

Establishing A Department Wiki To Construct Knowledge And Community In A University Setting, Jasmine Chanel Williams

Theses and Dissertations

To navigate graduate school, students rely on a social network from instructors to peers, this network is not omnipresent. In a nontraditional university setting, synchronous physical meetings can disrupt social engagement. At a commuter campus like the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR), the Professional and Technical Writing (PTW) MA students need an accessible, online community enabling asynchronous collaboration to improve understanding of important theoretical concepts in rhetoric. The web 2.0 technology, wiki, is a knowledge management tool and social software that may aid students in understanding rhetoric. Because there is not currently a rhetoric wiki available, one must …

Engineer As Writer And Woman: Gender, Identity, And Professional Discourse, Jennfer C. Mallette

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As students, academics, and professionals, women entering engineering disciplines still encounter barriers that may impede their success. In this environment, what is the role of writing in the development of a professional identity, and how does it function as an avenue or a barrier to professional success? Using an ethnographically-informed case study approach, this dissertation focuses on the experiences of three women--a biological engineering student, an industrial engineering academic researcher, and a civil engineering professional--to examine how these women use writing to construct an engineering identity, take action within their discourse communities, and to demonstrate their technical expertise and ability. …

Landscapes Of Research: Perceptions Of Open Access (Oa) Publishing In The Arts And Humanities, Julia Gross, John Charles Ryan

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

It is widely known now that scholarly communication is in crisis, resting on an academic publishing model that is unsustainable. One response to this crisis has been the emergence of Open Access (OA) publishing, bringing scholarly literature out from behind a paywall and making it freely available to anyone online. Many research and academic libraries are facilitating the change to OA by establishing institutional repositories, supporting OA policies, and hosting OA journals. In addition, research funding bodies, such as the Australian Research Council (ARC), are mandating that all published grant research outputs be made available in OA, unless legal and …

A Corpus Based Analysis Of Noun Modification In Empirical Research Articles In Applied Linguistics, Jo-Anne Hutter

Dissertations and Theses

Previous research has established the importance of the nouns and noun modification in academic writing because of their commonness and complexity. However, little is known about how noun modification varies across the rhetorical sections of research articles. Such a perspective is important because it reflects the interplay between communicative function and linguistic form.

This study used a corpus of empirical research articles from the fields of applied linguistics and language teaching to explore the connection between article sections (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion; IMRD) and six types of noun modification: relative clauses, ing-clause postmodifiers, ed-clause postmodifiers, prepositional postmodifiers, premodifying nouns, and …

Writing About Writing And The Multimajor Professional Writing Course, Sarah Read, Michael J. Michaud

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article connects the pedagogy of the multimajor professional writing (MMPW) course with two important contemporary discussions in composition studies: the pedagogy called writing about writing (WAW) and the conversation about the transferability of rhetorical knowledge from school to work. The authors argued that the capaciousness of the WAW approach accommodates the best of genre-based and client-based pedagogies for the MMPW course and provides a framework for expanding the course beyond skill-based outcomes to include preparing students to be learning transformers. The article includes two iterations of what a writing about writing -- professional writing course can look like.

Effective Literacy Instruction Across The Curriculum At The Secondary Level In Indiana, Paul Michael White

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to discover school- teacher- and student-level factors that describe effective literacy instruction at the secondary level of high-performing schools. A sub-question of the study focused on whether high-performing schools practiced “literacy across the curriculum.” National data suggest only about one-third of secondary-level students in the United States read at a proficient level. A recent trend to improve secondary-level student literacy has been to emphasize literacy development in all content areas. A mixed-method approach was used for this study. A linear regression was executed for all middle and high schools in Indiana for spring 2011, …

Enc 4931 Grant Writing, Johanna Hillen

Service-Learning Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Understanding The Rhetorical Engineer, Zachery W Koppelmann

Open Access Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to describe the development of the Purdue School of Mechanical Engineering Writing Enhancement Program and its definition of good engineering writing. Based on the work with the Mechanical Engineering Faculty and the Writing Enhancement Program, it was determined that good engineering writing is aware of its need to address specific rhetorical contexts and expectations. The Writing Enhancement Program was created to provide additional writing instruction to undergraduate mechanical engineering students Purdue University. Its development did not follow standard writing across the curriculum methods; it was developed following a modified writing center methodology. The modifications …

Volume 105 Issue 26, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

The Southwestern - Archive

No abstract provided.

Volume 105 Issue 25, Southwestern Oklahoma State University

The Southwestern - Archive

No abstract provided.

Assessing Writing On The Job: Toward Development Of A Workplace Writing Curriculum, Betty J. Scull

Theses and Dissertations

In a nine-week online survey, the perceptions of 86 nonacademic workplace salaried employees concerning the kinds and frequencies of documents written, and the writing knowledge and skills needed to effectively perform writing tasks in their jobs, were studied. The primary objective was to determine if employees understood concepts of audience and audience analysis. The results suggest that the majority (64 percent) of participants are not familiar with audience or audience analysis concepts. In addition, most participants stressed the importance of Lower Order Concerns (LOCs) &mdash elements such as sentence structure, punctuation, word choice, and spelling &mdash over Higher Order Concerns …

Decoding Quantitative Language, Steven Cosares, Evelyn Burg

Open Educational Resources

We all need some “quantitative literacy” in order to communicate effectively. This means being able to read, write or speak intelligently in a medium where some quantitative information is a part the discussion, proof, or argument. The readers of these materials are expected to have sufficient wherewithal to understand this language so as to draw appropriate conclusions. Developing this type of literacy requires practice. It means using everyday language to describe the ways in which quantities relate to one another.

Using Latent Semantic Analysis To Detect Non-Cognitive Variables Of Academic Performance, Daniel Richard Aalderks

Theses

This thesis explores the possibilities of using latent semantic analysis to detect evidence of intrapersonal personality variables in post-secondary student essays. Determining student achievement based on non-cognitive variables is a complex process. Automated essay scoring tools are already in use today in grading and evaluating student texts based on cognitive domain traits, but at this time are not utilized to analyze non-cognitive domains such as personality. Could such tools be configured to detect non-cognitive variables in student essays? Key concepts in this proposal—personality traits, latent semantic analysis, automated essay evaluation, and online cinema reviews—are explored followed by a literature review …

Mapping Ms-Ptc Programmatic Core Competencies To Emerging Professionalization Standards: Are Our Students Fully Prepared?, Faye Newsham

Theses

This paper explores evaluation of graduate student preparedness for work in technical communication and emerging professionalization standards by way of an alumni survey. This paper argues that these core competencies can be evaluated and aligned and provides an example confirming both the New Jersey Institute of Technology Masters of Science in Professional and Technical Communication (NJIT MS-PTC) and the Society of Technical Communication (STC) Body of Knowledge (BOK) and core competencies used in STC certification. The study was conducted through the month of October 2013 and queried alumni of the NJIT MS-PTC program. This paper seeks to suggest a method …

Technical Illustration: The Changes And Challenges Presented By Advancements In Technology, Cindy Caudill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates the changes and challenges technology has created in the field of technical illustration. Technical illustration includes the fields of technical drawing as well as scientific and medical illustration. Previously, technical illustrators learned and used traditional illustration methods, without the aid of computers. However, technology has rapidly entered the field and has changed the education, work environment, skills, and role of the technical illustrator. I note both the benefits and disadvantages that current technical illustrators are facing in their work. I explore both sides of the digital media and traditional art debate while focusing on the technical illustrator's …