Describes ways in which college and university public relations professionals have addressed the challenge of information dissemination in an era of rapidly changing electronic communication. Others are encouraged to know their audiences, discover commonly used technologies, include television in the mix, make the most of a World Wide Web home…

Explores the feasibility of using focus groups to assess how scholastic publications can better meet high school students' readership requirements. Relates focus-group research and a research project dealing with communication and in-house publications to high school journalism. (PA)

Discusses the use of electronic portfolios by school library media specialists for professional development as a resume, an evaluation instrument, or other types of credential documentation. Includes guidelines for building a successful portfolio, including appropriate software selection; audience considerations; and technology skill…

Interviews Susan Miller, a teacher of composition studies and author of well-known articles about the field. Discusses what it means to be able to write, and the cultural forces that have shaped her as a writer and teacher of writing. Argues for a renewed focus on the act of writing and the production of texts. (PM)

Investigates how four bilingual writers from one culture attend to audience in persuasive writing in Malay and English, and the relationship between audience awareness, culture, and quality of their written products. Findings suggests individual differences between bilingual writer's use of audience strategies when composing were intertwined with…

Discusses the use of digital video projects for online courses in higher education and presents a list of 10 recommendations for helping faculty with the digital video project development process. Highlights include timelines; funding; planning; knowing the audience; hardware and software choices; evaluation; research; and publicizing the…

A journalist's master's thesis reports a survey of 300 campus periodical editors, 300 alumni professionals, and 300 journalism educators concerning types of periodicals, common characteristics, primary funding sources, content, coverage of controversy, publication viewpoint, relative publication quality, methods of quality improvement, and goals…

Discusses collaborative planning as a heuristic for dealing with the rhetorical elements often considered by experienced writers when they plan and prepare documents. Defines collaborative planning, identifies its benefits, discusses its implementation in upper-level business communication courses, and presents a series of examples of students…

Describes a course in which students were assigned to read magazine articles, label sections according to informative discourse types, mark cohesive ties and cue words, and pick out details. Reports that, by reviewing the articles, students gained an understanding of the "general audience" and of how to read their own writings more objectively.…

Two college-able learning-disabled writers' social and cognitive profiles and the sense of audience in their written texts are examined. The students' deficits (visual and organizational cognitive processing, and oral language comprehension/production) affected their writing, and the quality of their audience awareness was related to the nature of…

Talks to English teachers about the importance of knowing their audience--the students. Encourages teachers to continue to be humanitarians even though they can not always see the good they are doing for their audience. (MG)

Explores the influences of context upon the writing of 18-year-olds in 6 subject areas in a secondary school in London, England. Examines how students and teachers negotiate compromises between using writing to understand discipline-specific concepts and using writing to pass examinations. (KEH)

Considers the attempts of some rhetors, when accused publicly through news media, to shift blame onto the reporting media by questioning their coverage. Defines this strategy as a "role imbalance attack" that deflects criticism away from a rhetor. Discusses the factors influencing the success of this strategy. (HB)

Investigates Vygotsky's concept of the zone of proximal development using peer social dialogue integrated with teacher support to develop children's reading, writing, and abstract thinking in story reflection and sense of audience. Reports that students showed improvement in word recognition, in fluency, and in evaluating their own reading…

A survey of 174 policymakers, employers, and college faculty attempted to identify the writing skills college graduates need to be effective citizens and productive employees. Areas of consensus are identified for the following areas: audience awareness; purpose for writing; prewriting activities; organization; drafting; collaborating; and…