To paraphrase John Tukey, the beauty of working with data is that you get to "play in everyone's backyard." A corollary to this statement is that working with data necessitates collaboration. Although students often learn technical workflows to wrangle and analyze data, these workflows may break down or require adjustment to accommodate…

This article describes an interdisciplinary, partially online honors course entitled Video Game Theory and Design. The article reviews the literature surrounding video games and technical communication and then outlines the learning objectives for the course. The authors describe individual and team-produced assignments and suggest game design…

Using a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) model of education, an English composition instructor designed an honors section of first-year composition to evaluate current best practices in the field of teaching writing to STEM undergraduates. The students, all first-year engineering majors, conducted guided research on best…

Responding to the call for the contemplative teaching of writing initiated by O'Reilley (1993) and extended by Kirsch (2008; 2009), Kroll (2013), Kroll (2008), Wenger (2015), and Harrison (2012), among others, this article explores the theoretical considerations, practical components, challenges, and adaptability involved in teaching a…

In this paper, we discuss the multi-faced role of English writing in the international workplace. Drawing upon previous research, we point out that English, as the main lingua franca, supports a variety of writing practices in the workplace, and so it presents both significant value and challenges for internationally operating individuals and…

An approach is described that gradually transitions second-year organic chemistry students to writing full "The Journal of Organic Chemistry" ("JOC") style lab reports. The primary goal was to introduce students to and build rhetorical skills in scientific and technical writing. This was accomplished by focusing on four main…

This article traces the history of Mary Schuster's career in technical writing and communication from 1968 when she took a position in the Publications Department at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to her work at "Technical Communication Quarterly" ("TCQ") in 2003 and forward. She discusses the…

The present article describes and evaluates collaborative interdisciplinary group projects initiated by content lecturers and an English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) instructor for the purpose of teaching technical writing skills in an aeronautical engineering degree program. The proposed technical writing model is assessed against the results of a…

This paper describes how an intelligent chip architecture has allowed a large cohort of undergraduate (UG) students to be given effective practical insight into integrated circuit (IC) design by designing and manufacturing their own ICs. To achieve this, an efficient chip architecture, the "Superchip," was developed, which allows multiple student…

Carter (2007) identifies four meta-genres associated with writing activities that can help students learn discipline-specific writing skills relative to standards within a given field: these include problem solving, empirical approaches to analysis, selection of sources to use within research, and production of materials that meet accepted…

Pedagogical and scholarly representations of collaborative writing and knowledge construction in technical communication have traditionally recognized consensus as the logical outcome of collaborative work, even as scholars and teachers have acknowledged the value of conflict and "dissensus" in the process of collaborative knowledge…

Discusses collaborative design in the context of developing a "Toolbook" hypertext intended to introduce graduate students to the fields of rhetoric and professional communication. Examines the new grammar and rhetoric of hypertext, discusses the importance of document planning within an emergent design, and argues for a functional aesthetic. (SR)

Describes the use of a personality assessment tool, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, to facilitate effective collaborative writing on the job and in the classroom. (PRA)

Many business and technical writing students find classroom discussions of professional ethics interesting and enjoyable. However, when trying to incorporate the content of discussions directly into their writing practices, they often experience difficulties linking ethical concepts to writing process. This article discusses how instructors can…

Considers how many students walk into the class with an array of technical communicating perspectives that open the door for practical experiences. Believes that a technical communicator employs the ethnographic process for the purpose of creating technical documents. Presents an ethnographic framed assignment that requires a collaboratively…