quite hogging my scene

Scenario-based instruction -- I love it. And I love this presentation from Cathy Moore.

We spent a lot of time some years ago developing scenario-based instructional models. Our designers didn't seem to care much for it. I think they found it too practical -- really. They typically preferred more theory-based strategies that emphasized complex assessment activities. When we moved instruction (problem solving) to shop-floor activities, most of the designers backed away.

I like linking learning activities to work activities. It's an approach I've seen work exceedingly well in many of Dana's courses and programs. I need to keep scenario-based instruction in the toolkit as we begin to work with more faculty on undergraduate online courses. Having faculty consider real-world scenarios in which to embed their instruction could make the design and development processes more interesting and rewarding -- for them and their students.

i am stuck on band aids

I've been working on a loooong-term online course for a corporate HR group. We did the whole analysis and design thing. We prototyped an instructional model with pre- and post-tests, and even got into designing a course evaluation tool. At the outset, when everyone at the site wanted a say in the product, I tried to impress on them the need to focus on the content. When some hack with a VP title started blathering on about adherence to the corporate color schemes, I implored them to worry about all that later -- that we could address the colors, buttons, and spinning burning skulls when we got to a point of development. At that point in time, I really needed them to focus on the content.

Two years into the project, I get an email from a kid in their marcom group requesting a copy of the course so she can "brand" it correctly. I emailed her and the project coordinator stating that I'd be happy to deliver the course (and all associated source files), if the coordinator was ready to sign off on the project. That would mean I'm done with my stuff, I submit my final invoice. Within minutes of my reply -- literally minutes -- I received an email from the coordinator stating that he still had content to provide and that he was, by no means, ready to conclude the project.

Why? Why is it so hard to get through to people? I've tried a range of tactics -- from hard-liner to soft-shoe -- to get people working on learning products to understand the value of content. I've concluded that they resist, squirm, and avoid content because it's the hard part. Any monkey's ass can sit around and talk about color schemes and button choices. The content takes time. It takes focus. It takes thought.

So I'll spend the next two days making interfaces changes around barely enough content for a three-page comic book. I'll submit the revision and an iterative invoice, and patiently wait for the content.

ode to tradition

When I started working here, my boss (mentor, friend, conversationalist extraordinaire) had a tradition of wearing a Christmas-themed neck tie every working day between Thanksgiving and Christmas. When he retired, he gave some (likely most) of the ties to me -- about fifty or so.

Today I started my fourth year of carrying on the tradition. It doesn't get old. It's a fun way of getting into the holiday spirit because the ties are so eclectic -- just like my old friend. My wife, however, is a different story. About the second week, she gets really tired of me asking every morning, "Does this tie go with this shirt?"

tank you veddy much

During my course work, I was taking a class with an associate faculty member who had a habit of having us consider every topic through a lens of Native American persecution. The uniqueness wore off quickly as his personal agenda began to trump individual exploration and discussion. Nice guy. Good writer. Crappy professor.

Just thought I'd share that, as every Thanksgiving since that class (which is going on four years now) gives me a moment of pause to consider what I really should be thankful for. For that moment of pause, I'm thankful to my crappy professor -- each and every year.

We all need to pause today. If for any reason, let's all be thankful we live in a country that gives us the opportunity to change the world. Tomorrow we can debate if that change is good or bad. There may even be time to entertain a diatribe or two about the inhumane means by which we've been given this opportunity. For now, just be thankful. Thankful that we are free to express, create, incite, inspire, and shape.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

touch too much

The next time a Luddite faculty member tells me there are some things you just can't teach on line:

be cool or be cast out

The academhack had the following comment in a post about the launching of a new major in emerging media:

"There is a new type of literacy developing, one between those who will understand the digital network media landscape, and who use it to produce, to organize, to take ownership over their lives, responsiblity for their community, to be critical of it, to engage with it . . . and with those who merely consume it. A divide between those who will be passive consumers at best, victims at worst, and those who will be active participants."

There are implications embedded here for higher education -- particularly in regard to online teaching and learning.

On which side of the divide will we find "older" faculty who are facing increasing presure to move lower-division / high-volume courses online to accomodate increasing student demand for flexibility and access?

On which side will we find adult learners returning to school with limited information and technology literacy skills?

And perhaps most importantly, how will those of us supporting these populations be asked to bridge the divide?

two old guys

Another funny conversation recently overheard at the YMCA. Context note: Jake is 83 years old and Will is 76.

Will: "Hey Jake, Dorothy had a great big smile on her face this morning."

Jake: "Was it because she saw you walking into the pool with no trunks on?"

Will: "No, the water was warm as a bathtub. But come to think of it, she did say she liked my new trunks."

Jake: "We'll there you go. Try the speedo tomorrow and let me know if you get a bigger smile."

google me this

Funny conversations overheard recently:

Nephew’s Girlfriend: “I really like your Grandmother. She’s nice. What’s her name?”

Nephew: “Grandma.”

Nephew’s Girlfriend: “You don’t know your Grandmother’s first name?”

Nephew: "Yeah, it's 'Grandma'."

Nephew's Girlfriend: "Her parents didn't name her 'Grandma'."

Nephew: “OK, so let's Google her.”

Nephew’s Girlfriend: “And what are you going to Google? Grandma?"

Nephew: “Of course, isn't that her name?”

here's to hoping

There's something prescient in Roxanne's post here. I've found a similar theme through much of Derek's public writing a few years ago. There's been plenty of it in my own anguish over qualifying exams that I never seem to get closer to. I'm like that guy in Kafka's The Castle -- you know, the idiot who can't seem to gain entrance to the castle? The sad (and most frustrating) part of the story is that all he had to do was walk in. So you're left wondering, did he really want to get in or was he happy enough just sitting around bitching about how everyone was making it so hard for him?

I think it's accurate to say that hope is the fuel that fires the part-time student's (and, arguably, all adult students') motivation to succeed. Life-long learning is about taking action -- and hoping we never lose the desire to continually improve ourselves and the lives of those around us.

catfish are jumpin'

I can't blame this gap on the way things tend to slow down in the summer. Things don't slow down for us in the summer. WE ARE SUMMER! Yeah, baby -- we are summer damit! Beyond the administration's hysteria about making that point clear to all staff, there is a marked excitement around here from late May to early August. It's the excitment of purpose. Despite our organizational issues, we continue to be extremely good at providing programs, support, and services to part-time SU students. Between the spring and fall, that excellence extends to all SU students enrolled in courses and non-credit programs during the summer semesters. We can call our support and service excellent because students tell us so. And that's why we do what we do everyday. I don't think it's naive. I think it's about purpose -- about doing something of value.

da da da

"Teaching presence is referred to as the design facilitation and direction of cognitive and social processes for the realization of personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes."

This is exactly why faculty are coming to our Introduction to Online Learning workshops with that pleading look on their faces. They don't want this blather. They can read this crap five different ways in five different academic journals. This isn't what they want. This isn't what they need. Faculty want plain language help. They want models and examples. They want someone to hand them the tools, template and prescription. They're smart enough to figure out the rest.

Yes, faculty certainly are smart enough to realize their own personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes.

timeless

In 1905, Sir T. Clifford Allbutt penned the following sentence in his still relevant text, Notes on the Composition of Scientific Papers:

"At present few people have time to wade through pages and pages of discursive and ill explained writings on the off chance that they may ultimately light on an interesting result."

There's a couple of reasons why I like this sentence. Nothing has changed in the 104 years since Allbutt made the claim. He was writing within an argument for concision, clarity, and simplicity from scientists and authors of scientific (specifically, medical) articles. Today, scientific journals are still just as laden with "pages of discursive and ill explained writings."

Similarly unchanged is the time factor. As both author and reader find themselves with less time today, we find ourselves bleeting, blogging, twittering, and tweeting - micro-babbling about nothing of any real import. If he were around today, Allbutt would shudder at his odds for ultimately lighting on an interesting result within most scholarly journals, discussions, forums, and outlets - print or otherwise.

Round and round.

the lowly engineer

OK, last one and I'll leave it alone:

"Indeed the engineer does bungle language deplorably. He makes a fetish of efficiency, yet he shows no regard for the effective use of one of his most important tools -- the pen; he believes devoutly in accuracy, yet he employs a weapon of precision as carelessly as a small boy handles a gun." ~ T.A. Rickard

This is how all technical writing texts need to be written. Analogy, metaphor, whit, and humor. Can you imagine Markel or Lannon trying to pull this off?

I'm going to drop this line on my WRT 407 engineers next fall -- all 50 of them.

it's not that weird

I love this guy:

"Our first aim is to be understood. The art of writing is based on scientific method. Science is organized common sense. A blunder -- made not infrequently even by scientific men -- is to assume that good writing is extrinsic to its subject." ~ T.A. Rickard

more old smart old guys

Continuing with my reading of the Rickard classic... I came across this quote of Huxley: "Science and literature are not two things, but two sides of the same thing."

This is the essence of what we've attempted to do with WRT 407. We've "attached" (although I still like the term embedded) the writing -- the literate activities -- to the engineering activities -- the science of the practicing engineer.

One hundred plus years later, and we're still arguing the same case. Something to be said in that, I think.

said that

In a lecture to mining engineers at the University of California, T.A. Rickard said, among many other things, "Technical writing is the precise expression of special knowledge."

Rickard made that claim in 1916. Last weekend I started re-reading his classic, Technical Writing. The SU SciTech library has a first edition and a third edition on the shelves.

There's been plenty written about Rickard's little book and it's influence on the field of technical communication. When you remove all of the positivist, constructivist, crapolavist debate, it really is just a finely written little story by a guy who was passionate about concise, clear, and meaningful technical prose. It's the book I want to write someday.

I'll leave you with Rickard's ditty on user-centered techncial writing, or as he puts it, "Remember the reader."

"Somebody must put hard work into every technical article that is written for publication; if not the author, then the editor; if both the author and the editor shirk their duty, the reader will have a headache."

back to basics

It's my own fault. For the past 10 or so years, I've been working on a series of software user guides for a small, creative, and extremely cool company in Ithaca. Here's a hint to the product line lineage: the first app was running on Windows NT.

Over the years, the apps have expanded and contracted in various forms and stages. At one point, two different enterprise apps were being developed using completely different technologies and methodologies. One based on Java and something akin to an agile development methodology; the other based on C+ and VisualStudio tools following a traditional waterfall development methodology.

As the enterprise and ancillary apps have matured, there's been a conscious move on the part of the developers to reuse and share objects across the apps. This is all very good from a project management perspective. However, it's created a basic documentation dilemma for me: Trying to find a way cast entire sections of the guides in a generic style without compromising the product brand.

For a long while I've been using FrameMaker conditional text as a band aid. That approach is quickly becoming unwieldy as the amount of shared functionality across apps increases. What I need to do before it gets any worse is to back out, take a functional/object view of the information across the guides, and start building DITA-esque libraries of information. I think this approach will move me as close to an integrated set of information types as I can get without a full-blow DITA implementation.

Oh, this is the fun stuff. It really is.

relative ratings

Interesting exercise today in our Enrollment Strategies meeting. We've been moving through a process of identifying short term (6 month) goals for increasing enrollment. Today's task was to rate and rank a set of goals using a system provided by our over-paid consultant.

I'm not convinced we used the rating tool correctly. There was some need to subtract points from a pre-established value of 16. I'm not sure what that value represents.

Regardless, we now have a rank ordered list of short term goals. Of the five we identified and ranked, I'm thinking only one will fall out.

Was the exercise useful? Yes, if only in that it forced us to talk through the relative importance of our short terms. The criteria were also interesting in that our discussions stretched beyond our typical gut reactions based on narrow perspectives.

Progress is relative.

meet me in st. louis

I've already mentioned a meeting earlier this week in which we discussed options and possibilities for measuring/rating instructional technologies in such a way as to provide decision makers with a means to prioritize projects and resources.

Yesterday I had reason to consider what a student representative put on the table. When asked about the students' perspectives and use of a tool like Blackboard, she said that students get pissed when they can't find course materials or support resources online. She described Blackboard as a space as something of large course reference tool. Students don't print the syllabus, they refer to the version posted in their Bb course space. They don't make copious notes about assignment due dates, they refer to the course calendar in Bb. They don't print and submit assignments by hand, the use the Bb assignment manager.

There's this tension that all campuses deal with when considering technology: are students driving the direction or are we out in front enough to meet future demands as they develop? I think the exponential increase we've seen in the opening of course spaces in Bb illustrates that faculty are responding to student expectations for accessibility and flexibility. At the very least, I think Bb is allowing us to meet the students in the space where they're at -- providing a minimum set of core requirements that they are brining to campus. Our challenge (and the fun part) is to improve on those requirements in ways that encourage learning, exploration, and creativity.

de-zine-r

A few years ago, a provost here took the lead on a "spires" project. The idea was that brilliant people from across disciplines would gather in the spirit of collaboration beneath or within one of many spires -- each spire with an emphasis on a particular aspect of the business of higher education.

One of the more interesting spires (or so it seemed at the time) was the Design Spire. I recall a conversation with a part-time instructor at SOE about how exciting it would be to work with faculty from other disciplines on every and all possible treatments of design. I don't know that the design spire ever materialized. I do know that entire spire project went the way of the provost who owned the effort.

The point: I attended a workshop today to prepare first-time online writing instructors to teach online. The sessions are always interesting me for two reasons. First, I really enjoy working with the person who conducts the workshops -- a kindred spirit. Second, it's fascinating to observe writing instructors navigate the concept of design in the context of online teaching and learning. The many different definitions and disciplinary practices of design come tumbling together into a gooey mass on the table. And you can actually watch these really smart people struggle to build a usable framework from the mess.

In teaching writing, we always talk about complicating the subject to force critical consideration. I don't know that we should, could, or necessarily need to do that when working through the concept of design with first-time online instructors. Design is complicated enough. Starting from an overly generic definition might be more useful (and beneficial).

Note to self.

fine lines

I was invited to an interesting meeting on Monday morning. We were gathered to discuss options and possibilities for measuring/rating instructional technologies in such a way as to provide decision makers with a means to prioritize projects and resources.

It's an interesting question and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to develop or locate a usable model. What is more interesting is how the conversation teetered on discussions of teaching with technology and who (organizationally) on campus is responsible for supporting these efforts. It's a series of posts yet to come.

What came out of one particular thread were comments implying that instructional design is somehow tied to or dependent on technology-mediated instruction. I find this opinion troubling because it complicates discussions intended to identify the discrete, yet inter-related, activities involved in creating courses - all modes of courses. In fairness, the blurring of the line between instructional design and instructional technology makes it difficult to separate design and development activities into nice clean buckets.

Which is all to say that I am encouraged that our approach to online course design and development is valid.

in the name of love

wasted space

A quote from here:

"Teachers and tech directors need to concentrate on the learning environment, not the myriad of potential technical issues. Technology should be an extension of the teacher.... It's one thing to have the tools, but they won't do much good if they're not connected and easy to integrate and use in the classroom."

This is the conversation we need to be having on campus. Faculty are coming to tools like Blackboard with fear in their eyes. We're not asking the right questions or positioning teaching and learning technologies as simple tools. We're not doing enough to coordinate the efforts of faculty in ways that allow them to exploit existing technologies and services -- to dismiss the enamoring fads and trends, and to focus on doing the basics extremely well.

talk amongst yourselves

I'm working with a professor from the College of Human Ecology on a new online course. She has an extremely content rich course. Our Instructor's Toolkit is proving to be useful and extensive, which is encouraging.

In a recent design meeting, she mentioned that she wasn't planning on using a discussion board. My suggestion was to create one or two forums in which the students could create a dialog around select topics. Participation should not be optional -- students should be prompted to work through a question, problem, or topic with some general guidelines. I tried to reinforce this suggestion by emphasizing the need to provide socialization opportunities for students in the course space.

This post and the accompanying comments come at the issue from a humanistic perspective. Which, I guess, is essentially how I've always considered use of discussion forums in online courses.

u, mii, and wii

So I find myself wondering how this might work in a college-level technical communication course. I particularly like the technical writing exercise. Makes the old peanut butter and jelly exercise seem... old.

Faculty across disciplines are continually looking for ways to use technology to mediate instruction in simulated environments. It seems like something as simple as the Wii could be an introduction to simulation-based instruction, without the overhead and learning curve associated with virtual spaces such as SecondLife and There.

at your service

This afternoon we will deliver the first of four workshops regarding teaching online at SU. These are extremely introductory sessions -- more of a gradual easing into something new than a hands-on design and development engagement.

We're excited about these workshops because they seem to be filling a need on campus that is only recently being exposed. For a very very long time, SU has not had much of a desire (or concern) to fully explore opportunities for more robust and extensive online course offerings. However, with budgets being what they are, deans and decisions makers here are finally starting to realize what thousands of colleges and universities understood 10 years ago: online courses do not take students out of classrooms. Rather, online courses (especially lower-division / high-demand courses) simply give you more students in those additional sections each semester.

Our service -- UC's Online Program service -- is now open to all faculty interested in putting an existing F2F course or a new course online. That's where our little intro workshops come in. We want to facilitate a complex endeavor to improve the chances of success -- for faculty and students.

Much more to come.

technically professional

In pre-preparing to re-prepare to prepare for my qualifying exams, I came across an interesting comment made by Patrick Moore in an essay titled Instrumental discourse is as humanistic as rhetoric (JBTC, v10 n1 p100-18 Jan 1996):

"... when the purpose of technical communication is rigorously instrumental -- to govern, guide, control and help people execute physical actions -- technical writers work hard to make their language unambiguous, unemotional and strictly denotative ... But when the purpose of technical communication is rhetorical (as in a proposal or technical sales document), writers can use language with more connotations, emotional associations, and potential ambiguity."

This is why I try to differentiate between technical and professional communication when teaching WRT 307. This also the reason why I think instructional designers need to be exposed to theories in Composition, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication. As the principal authors of texts that "govern, guide, control and help people execute physical action," IDers control the nature, purpose, mechanics, and structure of the instructional communication.

Said it before. Will continue to find reasons to say it again.

learning components

While reading for a course we're building to prepare instructors to teach online, I came across a reference to a four-component instructional design system. While there might be a tad too much theory infused in the system, the component approach to design is intriguing.

I'm particularly interested in the Learning Task and the Supportive Information components. At first blush, it seems that both components would require the instructional designer to have a good understanding of the compositional requirements for writing useful and effective task-oriented information and supportive information. Essentially, it's the procedural/declarative discussion that Tech Com has been involved in for quite some time. The most popular (relevant?) research to consider procedural/declarative information has looked at software user manuals and instructional texts. In some ways, I see this research as a top-level look at the form and purpose of procedural and declarative information.

A second-level look would have us consider the compositional requirements of the procedural information (learning tasks) and declarative information (supportive information). I'm not quite sure what these requirements would expose. I do think that instructional designers would be well served by better understanding how procedural information relates to declarative information. Rather than approaching these information types as discrete chunks of information, the designer could imagine, through a writer's lens, the many interactions and reader/user support processes that reside between the two information types.

projection management

Another four hours in a strategic planning session for enrollment management at UC. Yes, the consultant is being paid. The exercises today: moderately engaging. What I'm seeing, however, is that regardless of the goals/activities we propose, our hands are tied by the university's policies/politics relating to tuition and program development. Back out to 30,000 feet and you see there's almost nothing we can do beyond what we're already doing. Simply put, we need to increase part-time student enrollment in programs that will take part-time students. They schools and colleges who "own" the programs wont pay to offset the cost of marketing and recruiting, but we need to do it anyway.

It's an awkward space. It's entirely likely I'm not seeing everything. I hope I'm not.

cardinal rule

No, not this Cardinal. They cost me my two top five brackets. Well, them and Pitt. I'm happy to see two Big East teams in the FF. I do like MSU. Have always enjoyed Izzo's style. And there's something about their colors and perpetual underdog status.

So back to the Cardinal: This guy is friggin' unconscious. Is he the greatest athlete of our time? How does he do it time and again? The Cardinal thing? He's a Stanford grad, of course.

That's all cool, but it's not what inspired me today. This weekend I glimpsed two cardinals, as well as a backyard full of robins. Not fat momma robins -- not yet. It is Spring though, and they're all back. The air smells green. The snow is gone (crossing fingers). April showers will bring mud season. Opening day for trout is two short days away.

Yes, even with my brackets in a smoking heap, it is still the most wonderful time of the year.

brevity

Many of us have understood this for a very long time. One time at band camp... during a tech writing gig at a software company, I became the owner/editor of a 2,500+ page user guide. The problem with the guide was not the word count. It was a mix-mosh guide of feature-centered writing and task-centered writing. It rambled like a silly blog posting, moving the reader (if she cared to follow) along an unorganized path of inconsistency and failed heuristics.

When the revision was done, we had three information products: one user guide, one tech/fact sheet, and one compiled help file. All three brief, concise, and stylistic (if I don't say so myself).

The point: Brevity does not necessarily mean discarding information simply to reduce word counts. Nor does brevity mean a picture contains a thousand words. Brevity, for the technical communicator, means the most efficient and effective way to transfer knowledge or skills to user of the information product. If brevity improves retention and learning, that's icing on the cake.

duck you

I've been called many things in my career, but this is by far the funniest. I think I'll be picking up two dozen rubber duckies for the CE and EE students in my WRT 407 class. I think they'll get a kick out of it.

if it smells like...

This is hilarious. I have to admit, I was wincing with pain as I read the post. The comments validated the feeling of a pin stuck in my neck and revealed the hidden humor.

I have to stop taking this stuff so seriously.

music to my ears

Here’s one reason why I love my job…

I got a call from a professor of music education at the College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA). Seems she got my name from a person with the Kauffman Enitiative project (a project UC supports with web site design and content management). The VPA professor is writing a grant to design and develop an online music education course.

After meeting with the professor, I’ve agreed to assist with the grant in any way that I can. Specifically, I think I can help with costing out the course design and development activities. That’s fun, but it’s not why I’m excited. What’s really got me geeked up is the possibility that the grant will get accepted. I’m already imagining the possibilities of teaching a tactile skill, such as instrumentation, in an online environment. I’m seeing three different levels of courses, each engaging the instructor and learner with varying modes of interactivity. It’s also a fantastic opportunity to exploit a virtual space (such as SecondLife) for something other than pedantic navel gazing, porn, or gaming.

This is an extremely exciting project – a chance to work through challenging design requirements with some wonderfully bright and progressive people.

stupidly google

I've lamented before about Carr's ability to garner headlines simply by making stupid claims wrapped in academic rhetorical structures. He sounds convincing, but he's not doing anything that Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, and Jim Rome don't already do.

So I'm not going to review, attack, or dismiss the recently renewed interest in an old Carr article in which he pisses and moans about how old he's getting and wondering if, Is Google Making Us Stupid?

OK, maybe just a little attacking. Short answer: No Nicholas. Dumbass headline grabbers like you are making us stupid -- stupid for wasting time writing about your dumbassness.

What I do want to note is an absolutely wonderful quote I found in a refutation of Carr's idiot claim. In his well-crafted (and seemingly Composition-loving) rebuttal, Trent Batson states:

"It is easy to criticize a new technology; it is much harder to understand how the new technology can help create new abilities in humans. And even much harder to understand how technology can actually recapture and re-enable human abilities."

The challenge that Batson notes is what gets technologists geeked up. It is the essence of human achievement. There is a comfort that comes with most technologies. It's a comfort that hinders exploitation and extension. It is a comfort that allows the likes of Carr (and a number of unnamed tech-dismissive university executives) to bemoan how technology is chaning the way we do things -- as if change of any sort is bad.

Carr will have ample opportunity to bitch and cry as long as there is technological advancement for the rest of us to get excited about. It's a fair enough trade.

jimmy the who?

25-7 after round one. Not a particularly neck-breaking start, but a good one nonetheless. I loved Wisconsin and Cleveland State. West Virginia hurt everyone. I didn't have them surviving Sunday.

So much fun.

duplicity

A while back I was a member of the Senate Curriculum committee. Interesting dynamic, as I was the only non-faculty member sitting around a table of extremely self-important blow-hards.

Today I was reminded of one particularly entertaining proposal review. Mechanical engineering had submitted a proposal to drop WRT 307 (the professional writing course) as a required course from their curriculum. When a professor from the program showed up to defend the proposal, I asked if they planned to replace the course with another perhaps more discipline-specific writing course. He looked at me rather miffed and muttered, "We DO know how to write." He then turned his attention to his peers and continued on with his inane defense.

Of course I was not implying that mechanical engineers do not know how to write. They do. We all do. Which is exactly why WRT 307 or a more discipline-specific course must be part of the mechanical engineering curriculum.

What got me thinking about that episode in the curriculum committee was something I stumbled across in an IST brochure about summer courses. Tucked away on the last page in a small box labeled "Online Courses" was IST 600, 900 Technical Documentation.

Interesting you say? Why yes, it is interesting. Let me explain.

You see, under RCM (the university's vastly under-appreciated accounting and budgeting methodology) schools and colleges are expected to locate and use existing courses to meet curriculum requirements -- regardless of where the existing courses reside. This, of course, never happens. It's all about the money you know (and it is ALL ABOUT THE MONEY). Schools and colleges create duplicate versions of existing courses so they can keep 100% of the revenue. The math is quite simple.

So where is the process broken? Well, when course proposals pass through the Senate Curriculum Committee, the committee takes the submitting program at its word that due diligence was performed to locate an existing or similar course that could meet curricular requirements. The committee itself does not check the catalog. However, in cases of obvious duplication (such as a writing course), the submitting program will include some smack about how the unique nature of their curriculum requires a "different" course.

And so it must have been with IST 600, 900 Technical Documentation. There are at least five 600-level technical writing/communication WRT courses on the books. I know this because I worked on the framework designs of four of them. And so I can say with the utmost certainty that any one of the existing 600-level WRT courses would meet any curricular requirement IST places in front of their 600, 900 course.

Bigger issue: Did IST research the catalog to locate the WRT courses? Not a chance. Did anyone on the curriculum committee ask if the Writing Program was consulted? Not likely.

More to come on this. Much more to come.

braggarts beware

Smack talkin' fool? Yes, I am. I tied for the top spot in the conference brackets pool. We picked the Big East, ACC, SEC, Big 10, Pac 10, and Big 12. Split the winnings in half with my old friend the Eggman. My smack? Well, Eggs didn't pick a single conference champ. I, on the other hand, had two: Lousville and Missouri. Says something about luck, doesn't it. Yes, luck, skill, and cold hard CAAAASSSHHHHH!

It is the most wonderful time of the year.

we are siamese

Remember the SIAM model? It's still relatively popular among white paper writers (read: those lame attempts at product positioning papers that litter the floors of hotel rooms after trade shows). BTW, what ever happened to the white paper as a legitimate genre? We still teach it in professional communications courses, but industry has bastardized it to a point of inconsequential presence within the range of professional and business communication genres. Toll the bell for the white paper.

Back to the SIAM model. The systems criteria of serviceability, interoperability, accessability and manageability are as relevant today as they were with the first three-tiered client server systems. In fact, you could argue that the criteria have been applied, in varying degrees of maturity and necessity, to all modern technologies. That claim aside, I've found the model useful as a baseline set of criteria for an evaluative tool we're developing to identify and rate duplicate technologies and services on campus.

The first pass of the tool was cumbersome and dense, mostly due to my inability to explain the basic principle and use of the tool to our small group of extremely smart technologists. I think with some additional tweaking and the appropriate amount of contextualization, we're going to find that good ol' SIAM is a solid place to start our evaluation and an excellent foundation from which we can depart for a more refined analysis.

(re)focusing

For reasons completely (and maybe only slightly disappointing), I've recommitted to my commitment to complete my qualifying exams this year. I do have a large project coming up that requires my absolute attention, but other than that it is immersion all over again. It's needed. It's time. Bandying around other options proved to be both a waste of time and fruitless. I do think that the exercise was beneficial in that it allowed me to reassess where I've come from, what I know, what I do, and how well I do it. Yeah, that's a load of assessing. But sometimes it takes a gut check to keep you honest with that jump-shot. No leaning. No cheating. No short-cuts. You either shoot with good form or you doink it.

criteria

Struggling with a rubric for evaluating duplicate technologies and services on campus. Relative scoring is just that -- relative to the context, environment, policies, etc. At one level it seems like a simple effort to document an argument for or against consolidation or centralization. At another level it looks like a quantitative measurement required to make an informed and meaningful decision. More tweaking is needed, but the basic framework of the rubric looks usable.

demarcations two

Technical writing has nothing to do with technology. In almost all modern scenarios, we use technology-based tools to ply our craft, but our craft is not technical (put the "writer" back into "technical writer").

Similarly, online teaching and learning is not about technology. Yes, online teaching and learning is technology-enabled, but it should not be confused with "teaching with technology."

Instructional technologists are not (in most cases) instructional designers. Technical writers are not (and in most cases, should not be) technologists.

Lot's of loaded claims.

negative waves

Yes, OK, we get it... DITA isn't new. This is the same old diatribe we hear each time a new standard, methodology, technology, etc. is introduced to the field.

I will, however, take a shot at Palimpsest: I've never read a single claim that DITA can be used to "convert your legacy content or make the output from the Open Toolkit match your formatting requirements."

Strawman bitching comes off simply as bitching.

demarcations

This has been written about before by really smart people, but I want to try to work something out here (albeit briefly).

Today we had a mini-seminar for instructors of WRT 307: Advanced Writing Studio in Professional Communication. SU requires 307 for a good number of the professional majors, such as management and engineering.

I've taught 307 many times in all formats and never gave much thought to the fact that I wasn't necessarily teaching a "professional communication" course. Admitedly, my courses tend to lean toward technical communication -- or at the very least, an introductory foray into the fundamentals of technical writing. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem (for me or the Writing Program) if the official course description didn't read like this:

"Professional communication through the study of audience, purpose, and ethics. Rhetorical problem-solving principles applied to diverse professional writing tasks and situations."

Let me state the obvious: the description does not make even the slightest mention of "technical" writing, communication, or practices. Which is fine, if the course defines professional communication narrowly as business communication.

My question and concern (which our mini-seminar group has taken up) has to do with the text books we're all using in our different sections of 307. The most popular, of course, are the Markel and Lannon texts. Others include titles by Gurak, Woolever, and named "tech com" scholars. So why, in a professional communication course, do most of us use technical communication texts?

I know the answers are obvious and in many ways bundled up with disciplinary identity and programmatic territorialism. With all that aside, I think it will be extremely useful for our little group to develop a clear statement about what "professional communication" means to the Writing Program and how that definition jives with the program's missions, goals, and plans.

foundational knowledge

Anne has got this correct. For a very long time, this is exactly how we've approached end-user support. In some ways, it goes back a couple of thousand years: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for life.

From the end-user support perspective, we like to reinforce foundational concepts (cut, paste, open, save, etc.). This has become easier over the years as the Windows menu structure and function bundling has become almost ubiquitous. I've seen students and staff move from the Office suite to the OpenOffice.org suite without a blip. Validation.

The concept strums up previous strands I've followed in search of a universal heuristic -- a set of core concepts or "knowledges" that all users, writers, developers, etc. share. Maybe it's as simple as computer literacy. In fact, why does it have to be a complicated theory laden concept? Teach people the basics really well and improve their chances to quickly develop higher level skills on that sound foundation.

I'm sure there's an education scholar out there laughing.

it's just time

Last night H read me an interesting statistic from a leadership development course she's taking: Each year, the average person will spend 912 hours in meetings. That's 38 days of your life you will never get back -- each year.

Case in point: I spent four hours this morning in a strategic planning meeting that could have been completed in one hour. I'm not joking or making this up. Quite literally, we waited 3 hours for any semblance of a call to action. And even when it came, it was more of a gimping sort of cackle than it was a call.

My eyes are open to the possibilities.

governance marbles

The University has asked central IT to look at duplicate and redundant services. This a good thing. A very good and important thing. I'll be scribbling about it quite a bit, I'm sure.

Right now I'm trying to come to some sense of how central IT defines governance. In my small shop, "governance" is a methodology -- a means by which we do our jobs as a reflection of (and in alignment with) the organization's philosophy. It gets tricky for us sometimes because "philosophy" gets easily confused with "mission" when the organization is in the midst of rapid change.

I'm not sure central IT shares this over-simplified definition of governance. In fact, I'm sure it can't. The complexity of a university as a collection of disparate and often competing entities makes it nearly impossible to imagine governance as a functional unifying activity. Framework is more like it. I'll need to keep this in mind as we move forward.

Yes, much more to come on this and the duplicate services initiative.

war skills

I'll waste a good portion of next Monday sitting in a small room with a hack consultant and my frustrated peers. To prepare for the meeting, I'm putting together a list of questions/answers to help get me in the correct state of mind.

The focus of our session? Long-term strategic enrollment management planning. Whew! I'll write that on a cheat-sheet and refer to it often.

My greatest fear? We'll spend a good portion of the morning trying to define "long-term" against an existing shabby definition of "short-term."

Why will the meeting be a bust? The wanna-be academics that lead my organization do not understand that strategy without a tactical framework and execution is just a bunch of text on a meaningless page. A good long stint in the USAF will teach you that.

Open mind. Keep an open mind.

elbow room

Why is Jay Bulbus(head) a pathetic, blow-hard, ACC zionist who, quite honestly, needs to go back to practicing law or riding the bench for some European league team?

Responding to a loose ball incident in the UNC/Aryan Youth game -- a game in which UNC broke 100 and embarrassed his beloved Blue Devils on their home wood -- this brilliant analyst of the game says, "There is no room for elbows in basketball."

Yes Jay, we know you played for Duke. Yes Jay, we know how much you adore the ACC. Yes Jay, we know how you want to marry Tyler Hanbrough and have Coach K as your bridesmaid.

For your own safety Jay, please don't ever bring that wussy smack north of Maryland.

catch up

Oh my. UConn spanking the Orange. No wonder. I could count on one hand the number of offensive sets Uncle Jim had them set up. I don't think it would have mattered. Thabett is the best defensive player we've seen in the Big East in decades.

Duke and UNC in a classic. All of my efforts to leave the ACC behind get thwarted by old-school, home cooking college hoops.

God I love this time of year.

the smell of flowers

I've been thinking about process a lot lately. My current attraction is, no doubt, due to our ongoing work (read: frustration) with part-time student enrollment management. I'm finding all sorts of analogies among our business process and the basic processes teachers of writing (technical and otherwise) have come to know, love, and loath.

Start with the traditional four-step writing process. I like to use this model as an introductory framework with groups new to process mapping and analysis.

• Step 1: Generating Ideas -- a universal activity found within all processes that have a "generative" opening activity.
• Step 2: Mapping the Argument -- essentially the same activity as structuring the iterative phases of the process (actions, decisions, terminal events, etc.).
• Step 3: Composing a Draft -- the build out phase and the fun/creative part where team members begin to "see" the relationships, bottle-necks, and outcomes among discrete activities.
  
• Step 4: Revising -- the point at which we revisit the entire process to refine, improve, tweak, and modify.

So maybe Flowers and Hayes had it right. Buried beneath all the blather about cognitive, expressivists, and social constructionist theory is a timeless, simple, and useful model. That's good design.

my ball isn't crystal

This isn't an "I told you so" moment. I'm not like that anyway. But I do have to smile.

About two years ago, one of our brilliant associate deans (there are only two, so you have a 50/50 chance), decided to hire a marketing communications consultant to come in and review, "how we're doing with the web stuff." That's an honest-to-goodness actual quote. Of course, at the time I wondered exactly what was meant by "web stuff." I'm still not certain that this particular associate dean even understands "the web" as a tool.

Moving quickly by the stupid money that was ponied up, it took the consultant (who is actually a nice, bright, forward-thinking person) all of three days to tell us, "You guys are doing all of the basics really really well." And thank you for that validation. Now maybe I can get on with what I get paid to do professionally.

One of the consultant's parting suggestions, possibly because he had to suggest something, was for us to create a blog. "Make it a student blog, that way prospective students will see what it's like to be a student here. Maybe pay the students to post. Maybe sell ad space. There are all types of models for making money with blogs."

At the time, I'd just finished my share of Anderson, Urban, Watts, and a few other scholarly-esque texts on the power and possibility of social networks. Nowhere in my reading or observations at the time did I see anything akin to a sound revenue model. In fact, other than the long shot of selling advertising or getting into porn (which to me seemed counter to the spirit of the forum), there was no -- is no -- way to make money with a blog.

I argued against the time and cost of creating, shaping, and maintaining a UC blog. The moment and fad passed. The topic still pops up occasionally, but there is less passion and fewer quips about how so and so university is making it work for them. The word is now part of the lexicon, but that doesn't mean that the blog -- as a tool -- is any better understood by our adminstrators and decision makers.

I don't feel smug, just confident in my ability to help the organization make sound decisions about its use of technology.

Higher Education

design perspectives

There's a lot of stuff out there relating to visual rhetoric. I don't do any visual rhet in WRT 407. I figure the engineers have plenty to deal with by this point in their course work. The basic concept of visual rhet is easy enough to get your head around. But beyond the basic, you start getting into things like metaphoric representation. Yeah, a fourth-year electrical engineer needs that. Then again, maybe they do.

One of the WRT 407 individual assignments asks the students to render a block diagram from a textual process description. This year's submissions have surprised me for their depth of visual representation, as well as a consistent use of narrative and declarative information to explain or describe the representation. This is a more mature move than I've seen in the past. It might be because I'm doing such an exceptional job this year. It's more likely due to the fact that this year's small group (15 in all) is highly creative and exceptionally attuned to the requirements I place before them. They really are making this a fun year for me.

Back on an instructional level: I do think there is space to introduce basic concepts of visual rhetoric and the role the visual plays (can play) in effective technical communication.

just keep on swinging

I presented this morning to faculty of the Social Work Program at the School of Human Ecology. The presentation was a pared down and much revised variant of the old dog-and-pony show Coach hustled to program directors a number of years ago.

Our revised effort is not necessarily to educate faculty about the nomenclature, technology, benefits, and value of online teaching and learning. Rather, we move directly into a "this is how easy it is" discussion. In every session I've done, the faculty will ultimately ask the questions about nomenclature and technology. Through our answers and along the way, we hammer home the benefits and value statements. I learned how to effectively position a value-add from watching Anita, my most influential mentor, do this time and again in the face of hostile audiences.

I'm having a lot of fun with this presentation lately. It might be because I finally feel like we've put a design and production process in place that faculty can get their heads around -- it's not intimidating. Of course, I might also be digging on it because there is rising interest across campus to move courses online. The pressures are financial. I offer no pretense to these people that the pressures are anything but bottom-line driven. Five years ago, we couldn't get an audience with a dean. Now deans are telling their program directors and faculty to do it. UC has been doing online really well for a long time. Now we're going to help the rest of campus do it well as they help us do it better.

This isn't necessarily what I wanted to scribble about tonight - per se. I found this article, which brought me back to this morning's presentation. During our discussion, the question came up about research into the effectiveness of online learning. I think this article is a great example of the type of empirical analysis that is being attempted. I've since shared the URL with the Social Work program director. I shared it not to forward a specific position, but merely to illustrate how some scholars and educators are attempting to explore the concerns and hesitancy faculty have toward online teaching and learning. There are a lot of loaded claims and specific questions to be asked about the student populations discussed in the article, but at a fundamental level, I think the faculty will find it interesting.

For all that's going on around campus during difficult and stressful times, there remains tremendous opportunities to do fun, creative, and rewarding work with some really smart and talented people.

stand in the place

I'm done with my diatribes about the organization. I've come to the conclusion that there are people in academia simply because they couldn't be anywhere else. These same poor bastards would starve if they worked in a "real" organization -- in a place where a lack of business acumen would leave them jobless in short order.

What is it about pompous people that leads them to believe they're not the problem? How can a head be so inflated -- an ego so bloated -- that the individual is blind to his own ignorance, inability, insensitivity, incompetence... oh the list goes on!

I've said this aloud. I say it again here simply to commit the statement to the ether: I didn't go to some seminar or workshop to learn how to respect my coworkers for what they bring as individuals to the organization. Some full-of-shit consultant didn't show me how to be a professional. I didn't have to listen to a blow-hard management professor to know how to avoid the petty personal interests that people bring into organizations.

There's a common sense to treating people with dignity and trusting that they are working toward the same goals you are. You can't teach that. And maybe that's the problem. All these shit-birds who haven't stepped off The Hill in 25+ years think they can find the answers in some faculty development seminar. Good luck with that. In the meantime, I have real work to do in moving the organization forward.

talk about the passion

WRT 407 is an advanced technical communication course for senior electrical and computer engineers at Syracuse University. By the time the students get to my 407 class, they've had WRT 105 (the freshman comp course), WRT 205 (academic research course), and WRT 307 (professional communications course of varying quality and focus).

About three years ago I stopped assuming that my 407 students had a framework of basic compositional and rhetorical practices on which to perform their pre-professional writing activities. That's why I wasn't at all surprised when I started reviewing submissions of a recent assignment. The assignment asks the students to write a corporate position statement for monitoring email and Internet use. The submissions ranged from arbitrary diatribe to five paragraph essay. Most of the submissions fell somewhere in between -- sloppily constructed argument.

I took the entire session today to do an argument refresher. We looked at the basic elements of an argument, discussed how each element works together, and reviewed a few of the contexts in which they (as practicing engineers) would be asked to either write or respond to a well-structured argument. We also talked briefly about logic and logical fallacies. Then we did a fun little exercise in which they break up into two groups and develop arguments for the supremacy of a particular candy bar over another. Aside from the animated discussions within each group, the students get to munch on chocolate.

Why am I sharing this? I think it's because I thoroughly enjoyed today’s class. I got to see these young, talented, extremely smart pre-professionals stretch their thinking beyond their capstone projects. I think I got excited to see a writing exercise turn into a generative team-building activity. And maybe I'm sharing because I was reminded how rewarding teaching writing can be... sometimes.

something to say

Some years ago I realized that I would never be any good at golf. In that moment of understanding, I came to view the game from an entirely different perspective.

The same can be said for my continuity with blogging, journaling, and the other forms non-work related writing I thoroughly enjoy but find little time to do. There are those lucid moments in the car, barreling down the road with such a super heightened sense of awareness that you're consciously unaware of everything except the brilliant idea you're telling yourself you need to remember. And "Oh yeah, this will be a great topic to write about." By the time you arrive at the cave and finish the first cup of tar, your brilliance is a fading ember and that fantastic blog post is lost to the next day dreamer.

Commitments are funny things. They do tend to keep you honest though.

textual curation

I had the opportunity to listen to a very smart person talk about the nature of automated authoring. Specifically, she briefly discussed the concept of authorship as it relates to Wikipedia bots that collect, compile, and correct textual information.

I found most interesting the striking similarities between Wikipedia bots and technical communicators. The bots’ activities of surveying, filtering, compiling, and evaluating are the same activities performed by practicing technical communicators. Like the bots, the technical communicator (functioning as author) works with a range of content sources (human, digital, etc.) and decides what goes in, how it goes in, and what stays out – a textual curator.

Maybe this is just another fancy way of looking at TC’s long-standing identity crises. Like Information Architect and Content Wrangler (and any of the many different labels technical communicators wrap themselves in), Textual Curator attempts to neatly bundle the myriad of activities performed by the technical communicator. The problem, however, is that technical communication activities are not neat and clean. Like all communication processes and efforts of meaning making, technical communication is packed with murky processes, borrowed practices, cloudy theories, and wispy tethers to almost every other known discipline. The issues and problems of authorship, ownership, and value within TC will always exist, regardless of what we call the activities of the practicing technical communicator.

I can’t over-simplify the discussion I attended because the issue of authorship is complex and compelling – regardless of the context in which it is discussed. I will say that we can no more consider a bot an author of a text than we do the technical communicator who performs the same rote tasks of data collection, organization, compilation, formatting, and publication.

For me, this is an extremely interesting topic because it helps to frame discussions of identity, worth, and technology within TC. It’s also another lens through which practicing technical communicators can consider the future of their practice.

our man fish-eye rich

There was a time when I couldn't stand Louisville. Actually, it was Denny Crum who I couldn't stand. His style was too rigid and he relied too much on post play to make his teams exciting to watch. Yeah, he won, but he didn't win pretty.

I love watching Louisville now because Denny Crum is a bad memory in Kentucky. Fish-Eye Rich Pitino is a coach's coach. His teams play the lines like pool sharks. His back court is deep, fast, and smart. He coaches to his team's strengths while exploiting all of the weaknesses on the floor -- and the bench. His under-rated and exhausted Cardinals just beat an over-rated, over-performing Notre Dame team. Luke Goonygoogoo went into OT with four fouls like the stiff that he is. Fish-Eye went into OT with a whole different game plan and made Brey look like a CYO coach.

Remember back in the day when every team in the Big 10 had top-25 billing. This time of year they'd knock the snot out of each other in barn burners that rattled the rafters. In the last couple of years the action shifted a few states to the right. The Big East is now putting the absolutely best college basketball on the hardwoods that's been seen in a long time. The Big 10 and ACC need not apply. The PAC 10 -- don't even go there. No, the Big East is right where you want to be this year.

the englishes

This short post -- particularly the comments about translation -- had me recalling an article I read a few years ago (see).

We (technical communicators) have struggled with translation and localization issues for decades. What complicates the practice for many of us is the need to be aware of, or versed in, language/linguistics theory. It's not enough to fall back on our extensive skills in audience, context, and environment analysis. Too many technical communicators come to translation and localization projects with a presumption of cultural and linguistic homogeneity. We lack (generally speaking, of course) a proper exposure to the social and cultural aspects of language.

The spiraling dialectic leads us to the argument about the tech commer's tool kit -- about how much is too much. What does the fluent technical communicator need to know? Is it course work or practical experience? Or do we simply engage the experts when needed and resign ourselves to accept that we don't (nor do we have to) know everything there is to know about creating an effective and meaningful technical document.

(so)happy new year

It was another wonderful New Year's night. This year D went out at 11:15 for a bottle of sparkling grape juice. That was fun and thank goodness for WalMart. OK, let's not thank goodness for WalMart, but it was nice of them to be open on New Year's Eve. It was his idea to have us toast in the new year. I guess we're all growing up. Too soon it'll be a real magnum we're kicking back. Too soon.

My Falcons did not look impressive. It is always nice to watch the triple option. A good bowl season nonetheless.

Resolutions abound. Some more pragmatic than others. I like to keep mine to myself. The guilt is easier to deal with that way.