The Videodisc Interpersonal Skills Training and Assessment (VISTA) project was conceived as a means to use computer-assisted leadership training to reduce high personnel costs associated with assessment center training and simulation. Originated by the Army Research Institute's Ft. Benning Field Unit, the research effort included topic analysis,…

As a preliminary version of the rationale and content for the English-language arts portion of the "Survey of Academic Skills: Grade 12," this booklet describes elements of the new reading and editing tests to be used to complement a direct writing assessment in this part of the 1987-88 California Assessment Program (CAP). After a brief…

Local newspaper coverage of the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear power plant accident was examined in a study to determine what changes, if any, were made by local media and what lessons they had learned from it. Data were collected through interviews with 21 media representatives. TMI coverage in the six newspapers was examined using each…

Questionnaires were completed by 96 editorial cartoonists and by 67 of their newspaper editors in a study of the journalistic autonomy and decision making participation of the cartoonist. It was hypothesized that (1) editors and cartoonists would agree on the cartoonist's role, and (2) cartoonists and their editors would differ significantly in…

Three general features of scholarly journals--internal processing, format, and form--are examined with regard to journals published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP). Reasons for the minor impact of electronic processing on output forms and display formats in physics journals are discussed, including the dependence of such journals on the…

This paper discusses and demonstrates the use of Vygotskyan psycholinguistic theory in creating lexical translations and exemplifying sentences for a bilingual dictionary. The dictionary is a Japanese-English scientific and technical reference. The use of one Vygotskyan concept, definition of situation, relies on the users' expectations, given…

Three discussion papers about the Open University's correspondence texts consider (1) the role of a transformer, i.e., any person working in communication media who is responsible for the effectiveness of his/her decisions; (2) factors involved in the design of Open University texts, including their use as a resource for a range of different…

Guidelines for developing the internal communications of colleges and universities, researching internal communication needs, and increasing information flow through traditional and nontraditional media are provided in 11 articles. Titles and authors include the following: "Work for an Open Internal Communication Policy" (Thaddeus Bonus); "Five…

Consumers and producers of educational software must make decisions about what kind of software to buy and create. Both groups must base these decisions on criteria that consider what it is important to learn in our technological era, what is workable, and what is currently practical and cost-effective. Five criteria that are central to these…

Supporting performance objective 16 of the V-TECS (Vocational-Technical Education Consortium of States) Secretarial Catalog, both a set of student materials and an instructor's manual on editing and reviewing correspondence and reports are included in this packet. (The packet is the second in a set of three on inspecting and evaluating--CE 016…

The 12 articles in this publication provide indepth treatment of important aspects of in-house training programs for technical writing and editing. The articles deal with the following topics: the value of an in-house writing course, teaching in industry, developing an in-house writing course for engineers and scientists, a new approach to…

A useful device in revising technical reports is the metaphor of entropy, which refers to the amount of disorder that is present in a system. Applied to communication theory, high entropy would correspond to increased amounts of unfamiliar or useless information in a text. Since entropy in rhetorical systems increases with the unfamiliarity of…

The machine translation system SYSTRAN was assessed for translation quality and system productivity. The test was carried out on translations from English to French dealing with food science and technology. Machine translations were compared to manual translations of the same texts. SYSTRAN was found to be a useful system of information…

This guide contains practical suggestions for and theoretical discussions on preparing oral history transcripts for publications or public view. Although intended as a guide for nonprofessionals, it can be used by those who are conducting more serious research and are not familiar with the techniques of oral history. Because the guide deals only…

This paper provides guidelines and exercises designed for a three-day seminar to encourage effective journalistic writing. Among the topics discussed are communication theory, general rules in writing, the news story, editing, the feature story, interviews, and headlines. Appendixes include an Associated Press style-guide exercise, news and…