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Recommends focus groups as a useful research methodology for supplementing other, more commonly used measures of qualitative and quantitative assessment. Explains how focus groups can be used to examine teacher and practitioner perspectives of effective technical writing. Provides suggestions on how focus groups can also be used for evaluating texts, programs, and courses. (PM)

Presents the results of an empirical study comparing writing and engineering instructors' responses to students' technical writing. Indicates that the gap between engineering and writing teachers' standards for evaluating technical writing is not as wide as is generally assumed. Concludes that the differences that do emerge suggest ways that the teachers can learn from each other. (PM)

Reports findings of a national survey of members of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing. Focuses on practices of assessing student classroom work and what technical writing instructors would like to assess. Finds that technical communication instructors engage in positive practices that allow them to offer their students multiple and varied feedback and assessment. Concludes with recommendations for improving student assessment practices at the departmental, programmatic, and course levels. (PM)

Considers how theoretical foundations in website design courses can facilitate students learning the genres of Internet communication. Proposes ways that theories can be integrated into website design courses. Focuses on two students' website portfolios and ways they utilize genre theory and activity theory discussed in class to produce websites in two different fields. (SG)

Considers if teaching technology is problematic for technical writing instructors. Presents ideas of 64 Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW) members who were queried on their roles as teachers of technical writing in relation to the demands made upon them to also be teachers of technology skills. Concludes with a call for more research. (SG)

Answers Carl Herndl's call for furthering critical approaches to research in professional communication by forwarding Kenneth Burke's concepts of symbolic action, dramatism, and the pentad. Illustrates, through an analysis of data gathered in a case study of technical writers, how Burke provides educators with tools that can produce more varied terministic screens for how critical researchers conceptualize, interpret, and analyze workplace communication. (SG)

Presents a bibliography with almost 700 entries--teaching related journal articles and books published in the year 2000. Gives references to a range of topics from collaboration in the classroom to research on human factors and knowledge management to the practice of project management. (SG)

Describes technical communicators' abilities to learn about software within organizational constraints and resources. Notes that these writers' tactics for learning software included using it themselves, talking to co-workers, studying program specifications, learning from comments on internal reviews, and studying old manuals. Evaluates each tactic for its usefulness in creating rich knowledge. (SG)

Argues that the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer provides a useful theoretical framework from which to discuss ethical issues in the technical communication classroom. Analyzes a previously published case study to demonstrate how hermeneutics can shed light on the ways that writers can be unconscious of ethical problems in their own writing. Presents some suggestions for pedagogical applications. (SG)

Discusses a study of the authors' initial semester matching technical communication students with teams of engineers in a capstone, client-based experience. Notes incredible growth in students' abilities to discuss design, teamwork, and client projects within the pre- and post-surveys. Concludes that there is the potential in moving toward a more inclusive pedagogy. (SG)

Notes that while many technical communication instructors declare the benefits of client projects, too often instructors do not prepare students to interact with clients. Reviews a qualitative case study that demonstrates the difficulty students can have interacting with clients. Relates how students may not always be prepared to listen or respond to clients in transactional or "real world" writing projects. (SG)

Explores the effect of classroom-workplace collaborations on student learning. Explores how classroom-workplace collaborations help to teach professional genres. Examines how they replicate workplace activity and convey features of workplace genres and how they serve as transitional experiences for students. Examines students' reactions to the feedback they received during the projects. (SG)

Presents a bibliography of books, articles, review essays, and reviews on technical writing published in 1999. (SG)

Considers how visual metadiscourse provides design criteria for authors when considering the needs and expectations of readers. Notes the author's discussions of textual metadiscourse in technical writing classes since 1995. Notes an improvement in the cohesion and considerateness of student writing after rethinking their role as writers and the necessity of writing for relationship. (SG)

Identifies 163 texts from a database of over 25,000 citations collected from five technical communication journals between 1988 and 1997. Notes that the texts--points of reference--represent the research, theory, and practice of technical communication. Concludes that the points of reference demonstrate that technical communication has an identity that emerged in the 1980s as practice, teaching, and research converged. (SG)

Argues for what activist technical writing research might look like, lays out an understanding of institutions that is helpful for influencing public policy, and illustrates promises and problems of both positions by using a case study focused on local HIV/AIDS policy making. Suggests that professional writing researchers can impact policy by helping change the processes by which policy gets made. (SC)

Examines a 1994 General Accounting Office (GAO) report on sexual harassment at U.S. service academies to determine how power structures affected the report writers' rhetorical choices. Identifies what is valued and devalued in the report's contents. Describes Congress's reaction to the report and speculates on the report's impact on public discourse and subsequent social action. (SC)

Discusses how United States national policy regarding sexual harassment exemplifies the Foucauldian paradigm in its attempt to regulate sexuality through seemingly authorless texts. Proposes a user-centered approach to policy drafting that values the knowledge of workers as users and makers of workplace policy. Argues that regulation through such "discursive technologies" need not lead to the effects of domination that Foucault recognized. (SC)

Considers how the emergency medical service's run reports are important analytically because they represent the practices and interests of the multiple professions engaged in caring for critically ill or injured patients. Examines the historical evolution of a shared medical form and its impact on the professionals who use it. (SC)

Analyzes the clinical protocol within the rhetorical framework of the drug development and approval process, identifying the constraints under which the protocol is written and the rhetorical form, argumentative strategies, and style needed to improve and teach the writing of this document. (SC)

Presents a three-year experiment in integrating technical editing students into a multidisciplinary engineering design project that developed several way of helping students apply classroom learning to practical problems. Discusses how engineering students formed Integrated Product Teams and the technical editing students provided editorial support. Indicates strategies and techniques for best integrating the technical editing students. (SC)

Gives a theoretical rationale for a portfolio evaluation project and describes a directly applicable structure and procedure for such a project. Discusses how the task of assessing the efficacy of technical communication service courses provides an opportunity to learn more about student and faculty needs and to update and improve curriculum. (SC)

Evaluates the effectiveness of presenting Web-based assignments within the technical communication service course. Provides support for centering more instruction within the environment of the Web. Defines types of learning students experienced using the site and presents samples of student work representing a wide range of skill development that support moving instruction to the Web in immediately useful ways. (SC)

Focuses on disciplinarity and underlying pedagogical goals in technical writing classrooms by describing a search engine assignment sequence which promotes literate practices in three short reports: (1) a preview/instruction report; (2) an analysis/evaluation report; and (3) a narrative review of a research activity. Concludes with implications for these types of classroom practices. (SC)

Explores how technical communicators arrive at their attitudes toward the future and the effects of such attitudes toward current practice. Argues for a critically informed, open-minded approach to the future, an approach that encourages an honest self-criticism within the discipline of technical communication. (SC)

Questions the widespread, largely uncritical importing of corporate paradigms into the technical-writing classroom. Calls for the university to remain separate from the corporation in its purpose. Describes a recently developed senior seminar that challenges students' assumptions about their own and others' scientific and technical writing. (SC)

Helps technical communicators explore the potential of virtual-learning environments for their courses and to provide a point of entry into this burgeoning but rather unstructured field of inquiry through a 23-item annotated bibliography of books and journal articles published between 1995 and 1998. Provides a structured overview of approaches to conceptualizing, designing, developing, and evaluating virtual-learning environments. (SC)

Concludes that creating online instructional sites by hand with the help of an HTML editor is generally preferable to using "course-in-a-box" software because instructors can select the components needed to support their pedagogy and construct successful learning experiences for their students. (RS)

Discusses Industrial and Digital Age educational models, needs, and expectations of adult and traditional learners for Internet-based education; knowledge management and its impact on technical communication; the Universal Campus Network and the nature of Web-based education in the near future; elements for success for Web-based distance education in technical communication; and the future directions in electronic communication. (RS)

Presents demographic information about students taking two online courses at two institutions. Discusses changes in learning environments that accompany the move to the virtual classroom. Points out potential problems in delivering courses with new technologies. (RS)

States that the periodic engineering report (a fixture of engineering classrooms and engineering practice) can become a source of conflict when North American engineers collaborate with colleagues abroad. Relates experiences of a writing consultant on such a project. Finds differences in tone and reader expectations caused misunderstandings. Uses contrastive rhetorical analysis to identify problems in both conception and translation. (PA)

States that technical writers in the global pharmaceutical industry write for two audiences: regulatory agencies and healthcare practitioners. Contends that information products that address these audiences must balance the competing forces of business interests, market penetration, and the cultural variables of products so tied to people's beliefs. Finds that audience analysis remains the key to crafting effective pharmaceutical documents. (PA)

Presents a case study of an experienced professor's comments on a design report in a first-year engineering class. Compares these comments with the commenting styles of technical-writing teachers. Finds the comments are highly directive and at odds with the preference for facilitative comments prevailing in composition studies. Notes that differences in genre conventions explain much of the discrepancy. (CR)

Builds on arguments in risk communication that the predominant linear risk-communication models are problematic for their failure to consider audience and additional contextual issues. Argues that "risk" is socially constructed. Argues for an approach that involves the public in fundamental ways at the earliest stages of the decision-making process in risk assessment. (CR)

Designs a technical-communication course for software-engineering majors to take concurrently with their capstone project course in software design. Studies effects of writing on students' user-centered beliefs and design practices and on usability of their product. Suggests the synergy of this interdisciplinary approach sensitized students to user-centered design. (PA)