Critical Power and Power Tool Power in Tech. Writing

The problem the authors explore in Critical Power Tools relates to the need for a greater level of critique when it comes to methods for implementing effective technical communication pedagogy. As Scott, Longo, and Wills claim, “Cultural studies approaches can help us and our students review technical communication as regulated by and enacted by power” (p. 13). Recognizing the presence of this power dynamic in our practices as teachers is the first step, in the author’s minds, to being able to critically analyze the meanings and reasoning that are perpetuated in our technical writing classrooms.

By using the ideas of famous theorists, the authors are able to apply the thinking used by such famous scholars as Foucault, De Certeau, and Habermas to establish the basic point that it isn’t enough to simply know what to teach and how to teach, but also teachers should understand methods for translating critique into “ethical civic action” (p. 15). Since technical writing has typically been viewed as best taught through a transmission relationship between teachers and students, the authors show that much of the greater meaning embedded in pedagogy gets ignored and taken for granted by the teacher so that they are left unable to articulate the true reasons for communicating in technical settings in a way that goes beyond wrote understandings of forms.

The first section of Critical Power Tools focuses on theories that apply to technical writing. Slack, Miller, and Doak outline student’s transitions “from neutral conduits to implicated translators to responsible authors” (p. 22) to emphasize the fact that students play a crucial role in deciding and forming technical communications-based genres. Dilger talks about how the goal of making technical communication highly user-friendly in fact undermines the intelligence of users and creates users who are complacent in the process of understanding not only what they are doing, but also how and why they are doing it (p. 22).

The section rounds out with discussion surrounding the streamline nature of usability and how email emulates American societal goals of efficiency and minimal distractions. Katz explains that instead of creating a perfect work environment by making communication more fluid, the advent of email has also brought with it new considerations surround how a worker’s time is suppose to be spent and what constitutes the difference between reading work emails and private emails—or those that one is paid to read and those that are just otherwise present in the same inbox (p. 23).

By understanding these situations from a critical theory perspective, the authors believe students would be enable to have a greater foundational understanding of these issues surround technology and usability and therefore will become much more responsible users/authors of various technical dispatches. Some questions that occurred to me as I read are:

·      What do you all think about email and whether or not one should be allowed or able to access private emails during work time if they are appearing in the same inbox?

·      In what scenarios might it be okay for a worker to manage and decide how they use their computer time on their own?

·      Are there situations in current times that you all might see as allowing for workers to do as they please as long as work continues to be done?

·      Have any of you ever felt like something has been made “too” usable?

Getting Started: Understanding Contexts for Development in Electronic Writing and Communication

The article I read, Selber, Johnson-Eilola, and Selfe’s, “Contexts for Faculty Professional Development in the Age of Electronic Writing and Communication,” first appeared in Technical Communication in 1995 and details the discussion that took place among the three scholars at a symposium offered to program administrators. The symposium centered on understanding three different contexts in which the authors believe teachers and students alike can begin to better understand the nature of technical communication.

Most notably, the main points for consideration offered by the authors of this synopsis are that technology consists of a complex set of socially situated practices that involve a variety of different groups and that digital technologies can be innovative, but only when understood as consisting of more than a mere set of skills or strategies which constitute proficiency.

While my article was short in length, it does highlight three main contexts that teachers and students can understand in order to better enable themselves the chance to become proficient teachers and learners of technical communication. By having an expanded sense of tech. comm. as a profession, teachers and students, the articles believes, would begin to see that computers are more than neutral carriers of information but are also devices capable of bringing up more complex issues of ownership, ethics, and information flow that when considered thoughtfully, can help people realize the “larger organizational, rhetorical, social, and ideological contexts” (p. 501) that make tech. comm. more than a bag of skills to be gained.

Understanding the previous context also helps with the development of student and teacher understandings of technical literacies as being more about literacy and less about computers. This, the authors claim, should help account for the “rhetorical and humanistic traditions that inform technical communications studies” (502). Ultimately, this should lead to more effective pedagogies and increased preparation on the part of teachers in their course designs and initiations of the use of computers for tech. comm.

The final suggestion is that a robust exchange takes place interdisciplinarily to create an environment where scholars inform each other of their ideas and critique their ideas to understand the underlying ideological implications and power relations that are embodied by certain aspects of technically proficiency. Through an understanding of these three contexts, Selber, Johnson-Eilola, and Selfe conclude that the field of technical communications can be best enabled to become enriched by the inclusion of computer-based technologies instead of hindered by such a curricular inclusion.

Learning using computers and technology, in general, has lead to scholarship like that done by Robey, Khoo, and Powers, as they, in 2000, would write about the importance of recognizing the situatedness of the technical communications field. Also, Selfe and Hawisher, in “A Historical Look at Electronic Literacy,” further expand, in 2002, upon ideas surrounding literacy and the reality that literacy means more than the ability to use, but also means understanding the values and meanings underlying communications and methods of technical communication via computers.

A question I wondered during my reading is how much do you think that the arguments in this article ended up shaping the trajectory of the field of professional writing? Another question I wondered about is to what extend did Selfe shape her career by retooling the same argument for different contexts? My assumption is that she did an excellent job informing a number of fields about the need to consider the social and contextual implications of their pedagogies.

Overall, I found this article to be a likely place where the exploration of the underlying implications of the situatedness of the tech comm. field really took off, leading to much of what we think we know today about being rhetorically aware of our students’ past experiences and future needs.

Applied Theory: Corporate Intranets

In the final article of chapter four in Dubinsky's Teaching Technical Communication, Lisa Ann Jackson provides a practical example of the importance of focusing web design on the needs of users instead of overlooking user input in the name of “‘making information available to people who might need it’” (p. 273). Jackson argues that ignoring elements of design like repetition, the need for simplicity, and adherence to an intuitive structure takes away from any attempt by a company to make information available because overlooking aspects of design in such a way makes it so users are more likely to abandon an intranet structure than to continue toiling (p. 273).

Jackson’s article, “The Rhetoric of Design: Implications for Corporate Intranets,” applies theories of user-centered design as they are postulated by Robert J. Johnson in order to show how crucial an adherence to the wants and needs of users can be to the success of a corporate intranet structure. Originally published in the year 2000, Jackson encourages designers of intranets—or communication systems designed to be used and accessed by members of certain discourse communities—to recognize Johnson’s advice to see users as “involved in the actions of practice and production” (Johnson 59), which Jackson reframes by quoting Cate Corcoran’s suggestion “that developers ‘figure out who is communicating and what information they are exchanging’” (p. 272).

The examples use by Jackson are all drawn from corporate settings that use massive amounts of information. Large-scale information management needs to be systematically organization so inefficient use is reduced , Jackson claims (p. 269). Without some type of convention, even possibly a grammar book or a company style guide, Jackson shows how companies like Sun Microsystems can face challenges from users who feel that greater attention to the previously mentioned features of design would “facilitate employees’ use of the intranet and guide them to the information they seek” (p. 274).

The application of a user-centered theory of design is clearly established as important to Jackson and other scholars. While her examples are taken from corporate situations around the year 2000, other articles in chapter four also establish how a user-centered approach works and the greater aspects that make it a viable theory for basing technical and professional communication instruction. Janice C. Redish defines information design through a user-centered lens and echoes Johnson and Jackson’s claims surrounding the importance of having a “clearly visible, separable, and easily identified” (p. 216) web page design. Barbara Mirel elaborates on the definition of usability in general so that Jackson’s article appears as only a practical application of Mirel’s conceptions of usability and those established by Johnson in User-centered Technology.

While chapter four focuses on web design, I wonder how much these principles can still be applied today? Are our notions of design and the general need to adhere to certain concerns regarding contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity (C.R.A.P) (Non-designer’s Book of Design) still being actively taught and considered by students in technical and professional writing? Are these features being taught so the rhetorical implications of design are the central focus, like when Jackson’s article was written, or is there a new way to situate the importance of C.R.A.P.? Finally, I wonder, is design something better taught in other classrooms or is it an integral part of technical and professional communication instruction? Jackson would argue that design is central to technical writing instruction, but is that so at WSU?

I personally agree with all of chapter four and also heavily favor a user-centered approach to understanding technology and the best methods for communicating technically and professionally. With underlying structures of communication adhered to, I believe users are more inclined to participate in an intranet and are also more likely to be able to learn the discoursal standards associated with corporate intranet communication expectations, thus encouraging greater user participation. 

Tech Writing Development as a Field

Below is a link to the Prezi I created:

http://prezi.com/zll1zxj59qov/the-rise-of-technical-writing-instruction-in-america/?kw=view-zll1zxj59qov&rc=ref-50792815&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Blog 1.A: Preliminary Course Objectives

• Familiarize students with different genres

• Enable students to understand basic differences in conventions across genres

• Promote the analysis of different writing tasks, purposes, contexts, and audiences

• Encourage the recognition of methods for communicating information that reflects an awareness of different writing tasks, purposes, contexts, and audiences