Wrapping Up My Thoughts on "Solving Problems"

Part four of Solving Problems in Technical Communication focuses on developing knowledge about the field of communication. This section follows a section pertaining to approaches to the technical writing field and in my view, adequately provides analyses which turn the theories of how to interact within the technical writing field, as detailed in part three, into practical methods for approaching the field as a technical communicator or teacher of technical communications.

Part four begins with an emphasis on understanding methods to transfer knowledge and information about technical writing to others in the field. From a quick look through the table of contents for this section, it appears as if the editors of this collection arranged the articles in a manner that examined different modes of understanding for the technical writing field. The forth section has articles specifically about genre, knowledge creation, information design, new media, collaboration, and international environments for technical writing that for me, together, represent a small portion of the considerations that are necessary for technical communicators to be aware of in order to be able to come up with the best appropriate means for completing any given technical communication tasks.

This point, that technical communicators can only really be briefed on a few of the circumstances surrounding their technical communication, is one that I feel resonates throughout the book as a message that reminds readers that just because they might feel as if they “know” how to technically communicate, doesn’t necessarily mean that what they know how to do in one context will still be applicable in another. This, I believe, is one reason why scholars like Henze believe that it is beneficial for communicators to understand how different genres can necessitate different responses than others. As Henze explains, “Genres can help technical communicators diagnose a document user’s needs and produce documents that respond to those needs in situationally appropriate ways” (p. 337). This is a sentiment I agree with and would only amend to extend beyond “documents” to include any type of medium used for communication.

Ultimately, after finishing this book and the articles in it, I wonder to myself, how could teachers of technical communication better decide what areas to focus on when teaching students? Is it acceptable to simply rely on what I, as a teacher, believe to be the most important areas to focus or is their some need to have a baseline understanding of certain aspects of technical communication that might supersede teaching, say, ideas surrounding new media? I ask because I just don’t believe a semester is a large enough space in time to teach even the different considerations explored as the subject of the articles in part four, let alone those subjects in addition to a model based on forms and reports. What do you believe the single most important piece of information people should learn in a technical communication class?

Understanding the Tech Comm Field in Terms of Practical Solutions to Common Problems

Selfe and Selfe’s article that begins the Johnson-Eilola and Selber text, Solving Problems in Technical Communication, provides readers with a heuristic for understanding the field of technical communication. Designed for those interested in mapping the field of technical writing and inspired by the wonder of a student looking for a concrete way to describe who profession, Selfe and Selfe first explain the elusiveness of providing a concrete definition for technical communication and offer readers ideas for systematically using text clouds to produce easily digestible data sets from written documents (p. 20).

By creating text clouds, the authors of this article explain how technical communicators wishing to answer the question, “What are the boundaries, artifacts, and identities of technical communication” (p. 21)? can use available computer programs to create a unique, yet distinct, model for understanding the values of their area of interests. To understand text clouds, though, is to interpret ideas from a given position and requires, according to Selfe and Selfe, that users of these creative representations understand the rhetorical implications of such a creation either as a creator of text clouds or end-consumer (p. 33).

The examples this article relies on to make their point are ones centered around the recognition of five key steps to determining whether or not a text cloud represents data in a way that becomes useful to users. While these steps are heuristic in nature, the authors first model them abstractly outside of a specific context and then offer a concrete example of these steps being used to better understand a data set comparable to those one might face in the technical communication profession.

Since this articles main focus is to provide a heuristic method for understanding the field of technical writing, I can see why the authors avoided contextualizing word clouds in terms of how they can be taught as effective tools for our own students’ uses. Also, even though this article focuses rightfully so on the rhetorical implications revolving text clouds, I found myself wondering at some point whether or not I was reading an article that should be interpreted through the lens of a teacher attempting to pick up strategies for teaching effective technical communications or if I was reading about how I myself should consider text clouds when I enter the professional world of technical communication. After looking back through the article with this idea in mind, I see minimal references to student/teacher relationships inside the technical communications classroom and instead believe that I find this article to be geared more towards those wishing to improve their own skills as professional technical communicators.

This led me top the question of how I might include word clouds in my own lesson plans for a technical communications class so that students were able to realize how useful the creation of these infographics can be? Should this type of representation or model for understanding be taught in the contexts of other infographic-type models for meaning making? Or maybe in a tech comm class instead the focus would be on teaching students how to effectively interpret word clouds and how to assess the underlying rhetorical implications of such a representation? Maybe there are other ways to include word clouds without overtly teaching them as having a five step heuristic model for interpretation/creation……and if there are, what might those heuristic models look like?

These questions alone were enough to make me at least consider the purpose of having this article appear first in Johnson-Eilola and Selber’s collection. Since this text is designed to be a book offering practical models for solving tech comm problems, maybe the idea of easing into practical applications was abandoned in order to focus on real-world possibilities. If so, I’m quite fine with that, but what I am attempting to note is how the seemingly abrupt beginning to this collection struck me as dissimilar to the organization of other texts with relatable topics of consideration. Nevertheless, I ultimately agree with Selfe and Selfe’s conclusions and find myself wanting to come up with some meaningful way to include rhetorical consideration of various representations in my own technical communication classes.

Framework for Tech Comm Research Methodologies Critique

Appearing within the section of Critical Power Tools titled, “Research,” Jeffrey Grabill’s article, “The Study of Writing in the Social Factory: Methodology and Rhetorical Agency,” presents a practical framework for being critical of the cultural and ideological underpinnings of the tech comm field. Building upon the conceptual ideas found in Bernadette Longo’s chapter four article, Grabill explains how critical research methodologies need to develop through community based projects that are, as Longo would put it, “firmly grounded in coherent theoretical rationale” (p. 127), so that material and theoretical culture can develop together to promote better practices in tech comm classrooms (p. 155-156).

Grabill first helps readers understand his argument by clarifying the definitions for the terminology he is borrowing as components from, and for, a framework for critical analysis. Using James Porter and Patricia Sullivan’s critical research framework (p. 153), Grabill elaborates their framework’s distinction between method and methodology in order to show where the complexities of having methodologies lies, focusing on the fact that particular approaches to different situations are already really on a dominant ideology (p. 154). This is important as it allows Grabill to establish where a gap in the research occurs. Mainly, he identifies a lack of application of rhetorical cultural studies to the tech writing field, a field Grabill identifies as key to the formulation of the professional environments we enter.

Grabill continues examining the lack of critique present in research methodologies by claiming the importance of agency to those who will participate in professional communications after their studies (p. 159). The author therefore wishes that tech writings and communicators will be able to critical examine the research they do and understand how their own research, and the agency that accompanies the act of generating new research, reflects the ideology and reality as researchers perceive them. To understand how methodology impacts research practice, Grabill asks readers to focus on seven categories to determine the extent to which a given piece of research might be jaded by the biases and ideologies of a researcher.  Two of the suggested areas of focus warrant discussion on behalf of the author as crucial to the development of the other points. By understanding how research methodologies are initiated, how accessible they are, who participates in the research, how to understand audience, consider local politic, promote effective communications, and encourage ideas for sustaining the validity of one’s research, Grabill believes one can attain, “new and different understandings of a project and should be understood to have epistemological value, not just procedural value” (pp. 161,166).

The main realization I believe Grabill wishes for readers to gain is one that recognizes the usefulness of applying theoretical frameworks to practical situations in order to critically understand the factors that determine the true meaning of a given context for tech comm. In focusing on the development of ideas surrounding access and community, this article comes to a close with an example of why it is so important we understand our role as participants in the cultural construction of the communities we work in by expressing the drawbacks of miscommunication and a lack of communal understanding (pp. 163, 165). Since research is always already tied to methodology and ideology, the importance of a critical approach becomes evident as scholars work to enhance methods for understanding and studying “rhetorics of the everyday” (p. 167).

What I am left wondering is how might Grabill suggest tech comm pedagogy change in order to reflect a new or more developed understanding of the way our methodologies of teaching, and research, reflect our own ideologies and perceptions? In other words, is there a concrete method for reassessing our various practices that moves beyond just making us realize we have agency (power) and extends into more informed, responsible, ethical decisions as educators? How might I blend my need to assist students in becoming critically aware thinkers with the need to provide them with clear instruction on seemingly formulaic structures and forms for communication?

I suppose with more than one semester’s time to teach students about critically aware tactics of tech comm we as educators would be in a position that would allow for a greater depth of development regarding what is taught and how it is being taught. I tend to imagine the tech comm classroom as one that is already overwhelmed with the varying needs of students as they pertain to the copious amount of scenarios they should be familiarized with before they graduate and enter the workforce.