Essential Music For Reading this Blog Post In the 1990s the Odyssey was rebranded for the silver screen and titled Terminator 2: Judgement. Odysseus was named Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), and her long journey home is now aided by her tough guy teenaged son and a previously evil cybernetic organism from the future (played by Arnold Read More…
Category: Teaching Strategies
The Practical, the Theoretical
In “Regenerating Once Fallow Ground:Theorizing Process and Product in 21st-Century Technical Communication Ecologies,” Adrienne Lamberti and David M. Grant write, “We ultimately found ourselves needing to repeatedly return to this argument: pointedly theorizing both pedagogy and the purposes of technical communication does not have to squeeze out application in the classroom, but rather can enrich Read More…
Social Justice Advocacy in the Classroom
In her chapter for the book Citizenship & Advocacy in Technical Communication, Sarah Warren-Riley argues for the use of social media in the classroom as a way to teach students how to critique the messaging they see and how to advocate for themselves and others. While Warren-Riley is focused on the technical/professional communication classroom, her Read More…
Cathartic Realizations: Other TCP Teachers Struggle, Too!
As instructors of technical communication, I wonder if you’ve ever considered that our university doesn’t offer an undergraduate program specifically for technical communication. Our English department is growing and evolving and every year we gain new interest and new students, but like many collegiate institutions, we only offer undergraduates a taste of technical communication through Read More…
The Pedagogy of Plain Language
Plain language functions in two ways in the communications classroom: first, it is incumbent upon the instructor to use plain language while instructing students; second, that same instructor must teach their students the use of plain language.
Plain Language and How it Relates to Technical Writing
Something we always teach our technical writing students early on in the semester is the art of plain language, and why it’s a valuable skill when dealing with a broad audience. Kira Dreher, author of “Engaging Plain Language in the Technical Communication Classroom” does an incredible job at breaking down the benefits of plain language Read More…
What do we want? Microinternships!: Micro-internships as a possible solution to providing more students more opportunities.
Internships are an integral part of the undergraduate collegiate experience. Many programs require one, and students gain valuable skills from this hands-on learning. Students often seek multiple internship opportunities throughout their academic career, yet few are available for those in the first or second year of undergraduate studies. Micro-internships may be a solution., There is Read More…
Interstitial Design and Collaboration: Evolving our Pedagogy
By Cameron Sinclaire “Design, when considered as a core concept of making process-based decisions toward crafting a solution or deliverable, involves recursive critical thinking towards a goal,” Liz Lane (pg. 30) states, author of Interstitial Design Processes: How Design Thinking and Social Design Processes Bridge Theory and Practice in TPC pedagogy. So how might we, Read More…
Persuading the BizCom Student about Persuasion
The book Effective Teaching of Technical Communication: Theory, Practice, and Communication discusses the pedagogy of teaching technical communication at the university level; Chapter 16, “Hidden Arguments: Rhetoric and Persuasion in Diverse Forms of Technical Communication” by Jessica McCaughey and Brian Fitzpatrick, examines the persuasive arguments embedded within forms of “objective” technical writing. In this chapter, Read More…
Using Discourse Patterns to Stimulate Class Discussion and Participation.
-by Amanda Beres Image from https://dailyillini.com/opinions/2018/02/07/networking-skills-taught-class/ Participation has always been difficult to define within the classroom. There is a lack of participation theory, leading to confusion about what participation means. Are we grading participation for its importance, or out of convention? Should participation be graded at all? Not all students will understand what participation means Read More…