One Page Schedule

January 9

Topic: Definitions and introduction

Read for Class:

The pieces that you’re reading are insta-classics in the field of TPC. For each of these skim them enough to get some of the major points. Yes, they are mostly quite old, and that’s because TPC scholars lost interest in trying to define the field. But you need to have a sense of them because we’re going to use them in the class. You can find the articles in the library databases.  The book chapters are linked as *.pdf files.

Do for class:

Please bring three questions that the readings raised for you. (typed up or hand written but written down on something that you can turn in).

Please take a moment to click through the course website (which is still very much in progress but has the bones of what you’ll be doing and reading).

In class:

  • group discussion about expectations of the course
    • brief overview of the course
  • mini lecture of TPC and “theoretical” origins
    • historical TPC
    • rhet-brick??
    • content knowledge versus teaching writing knowledge versus teaching knowledge
  • discussion of the readings
    • definitions of TPC

January 16

Topic: Frameworks and Philosophies

Read for Class:

      • Porter, J. E., & Sullivan, P. A. (2007). “Remapping curricular geography”: A retrospection. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 21(1), 15-20.
      • Cook, K. C. (2002). Layered literacies: A theoretical frame for technical communication pedagogy. Technical Communication Quarterly, 11(1), 5-29.
      • Russell, D. R. (2007). Rethinking the articulation between business and technical communication and writing in the disciplines: Useful avenues for teaching and research. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 21(3), 248-277.
      • Tillery, D. (2001). Power, language, and professional choices: A hermeneutic approach to teaching technical communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 10(1), 97.
      • Henschel, S., & Meloncon, L. (2014). Of horsemen and layered literacies: Assessment instruments for aligning technical and professional communication undergraduate curricula with professional expectations. Programmatic Perspectives, 6(1), 3-26.

Do for class:

Be prepared that I will be calling on folks at random to provide a short summary and then a provocative question about each of these. Also these have quite a bit of jargon that may or may not explained to non-experts so write down whatever you don’t understand.

In class:

      • discussion of readings
        • visualization exercise (between frameworks and definitions)
        • how these influence teaching or not
        • connection to the definition readings from last week
      • talking about our pedagogical approaches

January 23

Topic: Writing and Work 1

Read for Class:

Do for class:

Hit the library databases. Find a research based article published in 2016 or 2017 that looks at writing and the world of work and be prepared to share what you found and how it relates to what we’ve been reading. Confine your search to the following journals:

  • IEEE, Transactions of Professional Communication (IEEE) (careful on this one that you don’t use the proceedings)
  • Journal of Business and Technical Communication (JBTC)
  • Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (JTWC)
  • Technical Communication (TC)
  • Technical Communication Quarterly (TCQ)

N.B. Do a little chatting among yourselves so that we have a diversity of articles.

  • In class:
        • good writing discussion  (based on student responses)
        • discussion of student findings from researching writing and work
          • discussion of readings and connection to the assignments from the service courses

     

N.B. On 1-26 at 4:00pm EST, I’ll be facilitating (along with some other great folks) a faculty office hours online via webex (link to follow). You are welcome to join in. We will be discussing classroom activities and exercises. Learn more about Faculty Office Hours.

January 30

Topic:  Service Course

Read for Class:

Do for class:

      • bring to class two potential research questions based on the data from the “what is good writing?” student prompt. These questions can be interrelated or they can be stand alone. They can also include or relate to other knowledge that you have or work that you are doing. The goal here is to work on formulating better research questions and how those questions work with the data.

In class:

Guest Speaker: Joanna Schreiber, Georgia Southern University

  • discussion of the special issue on the service course
  • review of textbook assignment

Due: Textbook review

February 6

Topic: Teaching Strategies

Read for Class:

  • Miller, c. R. (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70, 151-167.
  • Miller, C. (2015). Genres as social action (1984), revisited 30 years later (2014). Letras & Letras, 31(3), n.p.
  • Genre summary of sorts from Genres across borders
  • Wolfe, J. (2009). How technical communication textbooks fail engineering students. Technical Communication Quarterly, 18(4), 351.
  • Morrison, R. (2017). Teaching toward the telos of critical thinking: Genre in business communication. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 80(4), 460-472.

In class:

      • discussion of textbook review as it relates to teaching strategies
      • collaboration (How to Build a Successful Team  *.pdf file)
        • good and bad discussion
        • role playing
      • discussion of outcomes, writing outcomes, and matching those to assignments

February 13

Topic: Assessment and Feedback

Read for Class:

For Still & Koerber and Taylor, be certain that you read the methods and the results. Skim the rest.

Do for class:

      • do some research on your own and bring to class what you feel is a really good source on rubrics, e.g., why you may create one, how you create one, how you use it. You can pick a single angle or choose to go more broad. The key here is to research.
      • look through the textbook reviews posted here in a Google drive folder with the intent of looking at them as research artifacts. Kind of like we did with the “good writing responses” make some notes on common ideas.
      • coding assignments: it is a list from an ongoing project of common assignments. These are from a series of professional/technical writing courses. Your job is to start coding them. To do quantitative analysis (what’s the most common assignment), the qualitative data has to be made quantitative and that’s done by assigning a common code to like things. So even if someone calls the resume and cover letter two separate assignments, it’s actually one (that’s a cleaning of the data move) and then it can be coded something that you can remember and is descriptive (e.g., job). Just like the various types of reports could all be coded reports. Don’t do them all, but do at least 75 of them to get the feel on how this sort of research work works.  (file was emailed to you)

In class:

Guest speaker:  Sara Doan, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

      • types of feedback and approaches (summative vs. formative)
      • compiling textbook topics
      • looking at common assignments and such (spreadsheet) and google search

February 20

Topic: Case Week

Read for Class:

Classroom Related

Do for class:

Look at the sample syllabi and assignments. Be prepared to discuss some strengths and weaknesses of them .

In class:

guest speaker: Jonathan Maricle

  • discussion of building cases/scenarios
    • lawn mower company example (through personas of stakeholders and same document)
  • revisiting assignments (and outcomes)
    • working toward a draft assignment
    • working toward a syllabus

N.B. On 2-22 at 4:00pm EST, I’ll be facilitating (along with some other great folks) a faculty office hours online via webex. You are welcome to join in. We will be discussing pedagogical research. Learn more about Faculty Office Hours.

February 27 SCCI (Lisa out of town)

Topic: Classroom research 1

Read for Class:

  • Verzosa Hurley, E., & Kimme Hea, A. C. (2014). The rhetoric of reach: Preparing students for technical communication in the age of social media. Technical Communication Quarterly, 23(1), 55-68.
  • Manion, C. E. (2012). Sharing an assessment ecology: Digital media, wikis, and the social work of knowledge. Technical Communication Quarterly, 21, 25-45.
  • Wang, J. (2013). Moving towards ethnorelativism: A framework for measuring and meeting students’ needs in cross-cultural business and technical communication. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 43(2), 201-218.
  • Pedagogical Research Categories in TPC (*.docx)

Research related:

In class:

I will be out of town at a conference. Your job is to simply read and take some notes. Pay particular attention to what you feel the strengths and weaknesses are of these three articles. Make note of questions you have about the research related readings.

and take a breath from completing your syllabus assignment

Due: Syllabus, assignments, exercises by March 2 at 9:00am

 March 6

Topic: Classroom Research 2

Read for Class:

Skim all around. Except the diagram. Look at the diagram.

Classroom related

Do for class:

  • Be prepared to do in an in-class exercise that describes your approach to research (like your methodology, methods, practices, literally how you get started)
  • Bring a short paper that attempts to connect the readings from this week to the readings from 2-27. Your goal is to not summarize the research, but attempt to summarize how/why I had you read these as it relates to your upcoming research assignment. Your paper should end with three good questions about what you read, concerns about how they go together, questions about your upcoming assignment, questions about the research process….in short just three well informed questions connected to the topic.
  • Come up with one research question/problem based on the syllabi and/or assignments coding you looked at earlier in the term

In class:

Guest Speaker: Ashley Patriarca

      • doing pedagogical and programmatic research
      • debrief syllabus assignment
      • teacher persona and classroom management
      • rubrics
        • mini-presentations from students

March 13: Spring Break

Nothing to do for this week except to give yourself a break

March 20

Topic: Service course at USF

Read for Class:

In class:

guests: Tanya and Mark

      • USF approach
        • what areas do you see for improvement
        • My Reviewers
      • discussion of different types of courses and their usefulness
      • Discuss case creation and assessment instrument

Due: Problem-based scenario, assignment, and assessment instrument by Friday, March 23

March 27

Topic: Writing for Work 2

Read for Class:

You can skim these for this week. But be certain you’re walking away with how and in what ways these pieces are important to teaching practices.

  • Friess, E. (2013). Rhetorical appeals of professional designers in decision-making sessions. Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on, 56(4), 313-331.
  • Gulbrandsen, K. (2012). A new paradigm: Authorizing a rhetorical ground in technology transfer. Technical Communication Quarterly, 21, 87-104.
  • Andersen, R. (2014). Rhetorical work in the age of content management: Implications for the field of technical communication. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 28(2), 115-157.
  • Brumberger, E. (2007). Visual communication in the workplace: A survey of practice. Technical Communication Quarterly, 16(4), 369-395.
  • Ford, J. D. (2004). Knowledge transfer across disciplines: Tracking rhetorical strategies from a technical communication classroom to an engineering classroom. Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on, 47(4), 301-315.

Do for class:

In class:

      • case presentations
      • discussion of readings particularly in light of Ashley’s visit and in light of the curriculum at USF

April 3

Topic: Teaching Roundtable

Tanya, Mark, Katie, Meredith S., TBA

Do for class:

Bring some ideas of what y’all want to talk about/cover in the next two weeks of class.

In class:

      • first half of class will be a teaching roundtable with instructors to answer your questions and to simply talk about pedagogical challenges
      • Pedagogical research design informal presentations and what additional questions are raised by your questions

Due: Pedagogical Research Design

April 10

Topic: Student topics and exercises

Read for Class:

Do for class:

In class:

April 17

Topic: Student topics and exercises 

Read for class:
Do for class:
In class

Due: PTC Textbook revisions

April 24

Topic: Wrapping things up, revising our definitions and moving forward

Read for class:
In class
      • course evaluations
      • revisiting our definitions particularly in light of the Writing Made a Thing reading
        • debrief of textbook assignment
      • discussion of the readings as they relate to the course and to your next steps

We often convene immediately following class for a celebratory event at a local establishment. Please consider joining in.