Audience Work in Technical Communication

Audience Work in Technical Communication

Academic Year:
2014 - 2015 (June 1, 2014 through May 31, 2015)
Funding Requested:
$500.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
Overview of the Project:
This project involved pedagogy in technical communication. Along with a researcher from another institution, we presented research-based pedagogical strategies and insights for teaching audience in a junior-level technical communication class at the March 2015 Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCCs) in Tampa, Florida. Audience is a particularly important subject in the technical communication discipline, and it is important for technical communication instructors to convey the significance of this concept so students are equipped to write effective technical documents, both at the university level and in their future careers. Therefore, it is important for instructors to think about how they will teach about audience. The conference panel at the CCCCs conference was based on our colleagues' research on audience, from which they authored a new pedagogical theory. We applied this pedagogical theory on audience in our classrooms. During the 2014 - 2015 school year, each of us used the new pedagogical theory on audience as a foundation in our classrooms to create a more student-centered experience. We greatly modified our existing curriculum, giving students an assignment in which they worked with an actual stakeholder, the Canton Public Library. We shared our teaching strategies at CCCCs 2015 in order to add to the existing conversation on audience in technical communication.
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:

The project objectives were to test new pedagogical theory for teaching technical communication students about working with and for audiences, and to share our teaching strategies with others in our field at a national conference.

Project Achievements:

We were able to test, and then refine, our teaching strategies using a new pedagogical theory for teaching technical communication students about working with and for audiences in junior-level sections of Technical Communication for Electrical & Computer Science (TC300). In the course, students worked with and for real audiences: They proposed, created, and facilitated STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workshops for middle school aged patrons of the Canton Public Library. Their audiences included their instructors (us), program librarians, the middle school workshop participants, and the participants’ parents. We were able to share our teaching strategies, and the ways we refined them from one semester to the next, at the 2015 Conference for College Composition & Communication in Tampa, FL on a panel with the researchers who authored the new pedagogical theory.

Continuation:
The project is continuing into the 2015 – 2016 school year. We plan to continue to use the project in the TC300 courses we teach, and to expand the program by inviting one other library to host student workshops. We also plan to apply for human subjects approval this summer to study the benefits of the new pedagogical theory for teaching technical communication students about working with and for audiences.
Dissemination:
The project’s activities have been disseminated to our colleagues in the Program in Technical Communication via our CTools site. We also plan to host a Technical Communication Talk in September for other TC300 instructors.