Vocational rehabilitation facilities can vary greatly from the standpoints of the client populations they serve and the services they provide. Therefore, to be maximally effective, training manuals for the staff at vocational rehabilitation facilities must be developed at the individual facility at which the staff training is taking place. This…

Articles in these proceedings of a conference of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication represent the views of professional communicators and academicians who share a concern for providing breadth and quality of preparation for present and future technical communicators. The 10 papers discuss the following topics: (1)…

As part of an ongoing effort to understand the processes people employ in reading technical material and the ways in which computer based job aids can assist people in doing complex tasks, a study was conducted to determine how subjects engaged in an assembly task use a detailed and hierarchically organized information structure (Hypertext) to…

A heuristic procedure can be used to teach organizational skills to students of technical writing. Designed to allow students on their own to explore ways that numbers can be used to give a definite shape to technical information, its central feature is a matrix composed of a series of control numbers (horizontal axis) and organizing concerns…

To document the writing practices, opinions, and perceptions of a particular segment of professionals in the work force, a study surveyed Department of Defense middle managers working for the United States Air Force. Self-report questionnaires were completed by 234 middle managers who had completed a one-week formal in-house writing program, and…

An exploratory study investigated technical communications in aeronautics by surveying aeronautical engineers and scientists. The study had five specific objectives: to solicit the opinions of aeronautical engineers and scientists regarding the importance of technical communications to their profession; to determine their use and production of…

Enhancing the awareness of (1) the organization of "typical" computer projects, (2) the communication that emerges from those structures, and (3) the problems that technical communications inherently hold is the purpose of this paper. It begins by presenting the organization of the working group of a computer project (a college that is going to…

This self-paced library workbook is a course requirement of all "technical writing" freshman English classes at the University of Arkansas. The technical writing course is required of all engineering students, and its major focus is on writing a term paper containing a bibliography produced through library research. The workbook…

Noting that the process of writing textbooks has seldom been studied, this paper offers a process-product model that relies on a systems analysis of the textbook universe (or megasystem) to provide insight into the textbook writing process. The model presented discloses the interaction of a number of boundaried but interdependent "peer systems,"…

Stressing the importance of teaching the writing skills students will need in the adult workplace, the conference papers in this booklet present some of the significant research in practical writing and show how this research applies to classroom instruction. Following the introduction, the five essays discuss the following topics: (1) youth,…

The accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant resulted from a communication failure. Following an incident at an Ohio plant a year and a half earlier, B. M. Dunn, manager of Emergency Core Cooling Systems Analysis at Babcock and Wilcox (engineers), wrote a memorandum making specific recommendations on written instructions for nuclear…

Contributors to this journal have long recognised that success in public examinations is at least partly achieved by carefully teaching in Key Stage 3. A critical component of A-Level is that students who wish to access the highest grades need to be able to handle the work of "real" historians--analysing it, and using it to modify their…

This document describes the requirements for the degree of Master of Military Art and Science (MMAS) at the United States Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC), Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Chapter one outlines program requirements for the MMAS, discusses the place of research at CGSC, describes research requirements for the MMAS, and…

This bibliography lists resources for the technical writing teacher, classified according to the following categories: professional organizations and periodicals concerned with technical writing and with such related areas as business communication and basic composition; conferences, meetings, and institutes on technical writing, held in 1975,…

Cognitive-field psychology is discussed as an alternative to the behavioral model in planning and structuring instructional programs. Applications are discussed in the general area of instruction of adult students in technical writing. Various types of formal and informal approaches to self-assessment at the beginning of such courses are…