dual design

Giving a presentation last week - faculty asks, "Mike, when you say design, what do you mean?" Good question.

When discussing online course design, I'm tend to confuse instructional design with information design (and to complicate it even more -- information architecture). Lately, I've been trying to talk about design in two ways.

First, I address the basic concepts of instructional design. This is important because we want faculty thinking about their instructional strategies early on in the course design process. How are we going to instruct? What are the engagement opportunities? How are we going to assess?

Second, I address issues of organization and emphasize the concept of heuristic for the course space. How are we going to sequence the instructional blocks? What metaphor are we going to use to organize the content? What structures are imposed by the LMS?

I have to make an effort to keep these two aspects of course design separate and clear. I think faculty will be better able to work through our design/development model if we clearly differentiate between the types of design activities.

working class

Faculty can be funny. When working with them on online course projects, they like to dance around the workload issue. More precisely, they want to know how much time they'll have to put into teaching online without directly asking the question.

Yesterday one of our program directors called to ask about contact hours in an online class. Apparently a faculty member she's working with needed to know "how many contact hours will be required" before he would commit to designing, developing, and teaching an online course. I hadn't seen that fancy step before, but it shows how lithe faculty can be on their feet.

Rather provide a description of how contact hours work in an online courses, I sent up a general description of faculty workload for an online course, which I found in a new and incredibly useful book titled The Online Teaching Survival Guide by Judith Boettcher and Rita-Marie Conrad. The authors claim that because a 3 credit F2F course typically represents 20-25% a full- time faculty workload (assuming a 4-5 course load), faculty are working 8-10 hrs. per week on that course (representing 32-50 hours per week just on course-related activities). For an online course, after an initial investment of time (tools training, resource collection, course building, etc.) faculty should therefore be spending no more than 8-10 hrs. per week on course-related activities.

While I like the generalization about time commitments, I see some problems with using this model as a standard reply to the question about workload. My principle hesitancy is that the model assumes faculty put in 8-10 hrs. per week on each class they're teaching. This is more likely and average time commitment over the course of a semester, rather than an actual time-on-task commitment each week per each course taught. I see faculty recoiling from the idea that for their online course, they'll be actively working 8-10 per week for the duration of the course. My opinion here has little to do with faculty work ethics. I'm more worried about complicating the dance with the misconception by many faculty that online teaching is easier than F2F instruction. This isn't about the politics of dancing with faculty, it's about first getting them out on the floor. The invitation has to be appealing, nonthreatening, and genuine.

That's why we have our work cut out for us.

learner-centered

I was having a discussion the other day with some folks about best practices for teaching online. Someone in the group piped up and said, "Oh, that's just a learner-centered teaching strategy." I thought about that for a nanosecond and said, "Well, if our primary objective in the online course space is to allow students to shape the learning outcomes, then yes, I guess I'm describing a learner-centered pedagogy."

I could tell my response didn't sit well with the person who made the observation, and I think I know why. The "learner-centered" phenomenon has been around for a long time. In the late 1990s we were applying it to corporate initiatives where we moved from knowledge-centered training to a focus on learning/training outcomes. The idea was to expand the training (F2F, computer-based, web-based, etc.) to include "shop floor" activities that lead the learner to their own desirable learning outcome, such as being able to perform a new task or to perform an old task better. The key to this approach is to provide the learner with opportunities to demonstrate their success in achieving their learning outcomes and aligning those outcomes with the overall training requirements.

In an online undergrad college course, we are not so much applying a learner-centered strategy as we are a sort of knowledge/learner hybrid pedagogy. Encouraging students (through design and prompts) to interact with the course content and with each other is one thing (and one aspect of learner-centered instruction). However, I don't know of any faculty who would openly adopt their students' goals for their course. A more realistic outcome is to have faculty identify and address the disconnect that almost always exists between their goals and those of their students. It's similar to the challenge of aligning corporate training outcomes and requirements, just more tedious.

There's a lot of value in learner-centered pedagogy. We just have to be cautious and deliberate in applying that pedagogy to online learning environments.

ringraziamento felice

thicker threads

I've long proposed that the relationship between technical communication and instructional design needs to be explored more deeply than it has been. In fact, it's an area of my yet-to-be-taken qualifying exams. As an extension of that relationship, I've recently started pulling on the thread that runs through online course design (as a generic practice) and technical communication.

We covered some of this ground in Krista's class last year -- specifically the relationships among information architecture, information design, and technical communication. In a current online course design project, I'm finding that understanding these relationships helps me better describe and illustrate to faculty what they have to do when creating an online course.

For example, technical communication is all about content. Online courses are all about the content. Structuring that content in a logical, meaningful, and usable way is sometimes difficult for faculty new to online course design. Technical communicators, on the other hand, intuitively understand how to do this. By introducing basic concepts of information architecture to faculty -- even rudimentary folder/item metaphors -- I've been able to show them the connection between instructional content and instructional sequence.

Similarly, technical communicators have long struggled with presenting content in usable, useful, and effective designs. On the successes and failures of these struggles, it's easy to introduce faculty to basic concepts of information design -- working with the options (and limitations) of the interfaces through which their course content will be served. After faculty understand the role of heuristics in the online course space, they are always less intimidated by multi-layered content and web-based instructional technologies.

About twelve years ago my little technical writing department was making a case to be positioned as the information hub within a software development company. It seemed a bit of a stretch at the time, but now I think we may have been on to something. The (rapidly changing) nature of technical communication places the TCer in a unique position to weave together threads of a wide range of disciplines, practices, and theories. Maybe this is what makes it so hard to define technical communication. Maybe it's what makes practicing technical communication so much fun.

you can't make me

I'm just finishing up a recent study about various approaches to managing instructional, operational, and technical aspects of online education programs. Granted, the study focuses on full online programs, but there's a lot SU can take away -- particularly in regard to faculty preparation and quality assurance.

In this and similar studies, it becomes clear that the schools/colleges with the most successful online initiatives are those that mandate training for their faculty. It only makes sense, but can you imagine the blow-back from faculty who see themselves as working "with" the university rather than "for" the university?

The same resistance would/is felt when you attempt to position quality assurance in front of faculty. Quality is of critical importance to the success of any online education initiative. Yet how do you get faculty to understand that if they want to teach online, they will be required (mandated?) to actively engage in coordinated and systematic examinations of their course designs and pedagogical strategies?

There are advantages to working for a private university. One advantage is that you can make up your own rules. It only gets dicey when you have to navigate the politics of dancing; mandating faculty to do things in the best interest of the institution.

water water everywhere

The Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department is engaged in a multi-institution smart-grid computing project. The member sites are looking at the best way to collaborate. In a short five minute teleconference today, I was reminded about the difficulty most engineers have with needs analysis. Rather than spending the time necessary to determine their requirements (the type and degree of required collaboration), there was a sudden jump to the most accessible or user-friendly collaboration tool.

The list and types of cloud-based (and otherwise) collaboration tools grows every day. It's not realistic nor necessary to know every possible platform or tool option. It is, however, necessary to know that the tool you select is going to meet all or most of your requirements. But we first have to identify those requirements. Most of the technical writers I've worked with understand this necessity. Maybe it's because you only need to get burned once by scope-creep and ill-defined project requirements. Maybe it's because most technical writers need well-developed contexts, frameworks, and purpose statements to begin developing effective information products.

The smart-grid computing project sounds extremely interesting. I'm a little geeked up on the opportunities to work with some of these other regional colleges and universities. It fits in nicely with the chancellor's call to action.

new money

I'm hearing this -- new money -- a lot lately in all sorts of meetings and contexts around here. It bothers me.

The simple definition of new money is revenue to the university that has not already been allocated/extracted from a full- or part-time student.

The definition itself doesn't bother me as much as the way in which the phrase is bandied around in relation to online course and program initiatives. For example, "We may not need to determine how to allocate resources to that project based on the amount of new money it will generate."

There's two problems here. First, how do you estimate the amount of new money -- the potential for revenue -- when you have no idea about the market opportunities? Who on this campus, other than University College, understands the potential to attract new matrics and non-matrics to this university? The second problem is that the university is starting to cover ground that University College has already been over. We've created and participated in dozens of studies and research the last 10 years that show it takes an average of 3 years to begin to see a return on investments in online courses and programs. New money or not, if the university is not prepared to eat some costs out of the gate on any of the initiatives already in the pipeline, then they're going to lose out peer institutions (which we're doing anyway).

The rub is that much of the bulk of the costs that everyone keeps talking about -- the infrastructure, technology and support resources -- are already committed, they're just not being exploited. Redirecting and focusing existing investments (overhead) is readily and easily done. Building quality online courses and programs is readily and easily done. Do that, and the new money will come. It's not complicated.

The hardest part for these people is to get off the stick and act. The audience, market, and need is there. It's time we start to do something in a formalized, organized, and qualified manner.

getting traction

I had an interesting conversation with a research associate from the Education Advisory Board. They're preparing a report about online program initiatives for a regional university. The focus of the study is on cultural issues in regard to online teaching and learning.

It struck me that during our conversation I found myself defending SU's commitment to resident-based instruction. Working through the range of arguments for or against online, I came to a position that I'm actually comfortable with. In order to move SU forward in the online space, we have to accept the fact that the resident undergraduate experience is (and will likely be for a very a long time) the principle reason why students choose to come to SU. And while we may be able to accommodate those students with flexible format courses, including full-online, we should not expect that they would rather be completing their undergraduate degrees from off campus and at a distance.

Interest here at SU is growing around online graduate programs and certificates. We're getting the most traction with the schools and colleges that don't already have grad programs online, which is everyone with the exception of the Whitman School of Management and the School of Information Studies. That leaves a lot of programs and departments who need help.

Online grad is a much easier (and logical) sell to faculty and executives because it's a target population that isn't necessarily interested in the resident experience. They've had that. Now it's about efficiency and flexibility. So in regard to cultural resistance, maybe we're actually coming at this in the right way. It still feels awfully organic, but I'm confident that we'll see rapid growth after we get a toe hold with a few high-profile/high-dollar graduate programs.

thank a veteran today

precautions

In thinking more about the ECAR study noted below, I'm wondering if we (anyone who vets, selects, or implements instructional technologies) should be weary of the ways in which the study could likely be taken up. In particular, the study could imply that because students are increasingly tech-savvy, we should rush to incorporate a bevy of new communication and networking technologies into our instructional spaces.

I think it's important that we not get caught up in the "technology is ubiquitous" line of thinking. I understand how the prevalence of "personal" technologies can remove certain constraints to adopting new instructional technologies. However, I worry about blurring the lines among different types of technologies in the interest of making broad claims about student preparedness to use instructional technologies -- or to co-opt communication and social networking technologies for instructional purposes.

Students are growing increasingly comfortable with technology-mediated interaction. I get that. But it doesn't mean that they're prepared to use those technologies in instructional spaces. Manipulating technology to learn is a different activity (and requires different skill sets) than manipulating technology to socialize and communicate.

I realize I'm making broad generalizations here, but I've seen how these studies have led to knee-jerk reactions in the past.

meeting demand early

The latest Educause ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology is making the rounds -- lots of data, statistics, and assumptions about the spaces in which students and faculty are using technology.

These studies always excite me because I find little nuggets of validation (what does a validation nugget look like?) that indicate we’re still moving in the best direction; best for the students, the faculty, and the university. The most telling trend is that faculty and decision-makers appear to finally be getting it. There is a measurable degree of momentum building behind expanding instructional technology across the curriculum.

If I can use this latest study in any way to help shape our online strategies moving forward, I’m going to presume that student demand for alternate format instruction (hybrid to full-online) will increase at a rate similar to technology adoption in the resident classroom. That doesn’t mean Syracuse University is prepared to meet or respond to the demand, but it’s important that we recognize it.

common threads

I had my classroom observation conducted a few days ago. We’re required to have an observation prior to our contract renewals. I’ve always seen it as an opportunity to get a fresh perspective from real composition instructors.

This year’s observation was extremely enlightening in that it helped me better understand the threads that run through the lower- and upper-division writing curriculum. I’ve never taught WRT 105 or 205, so I’m always basing my instruction in WRT 407 on assumptions about what the students should already know or should be capable of doing.

In discussing this with my observer (a seasoned and extremely talented writing instructor), we determined that because WRT 407 is content-rich and highly contextualized, I have ample opportunity to address rhetorical aspects of technical communication. By coming back to rhetoric (as a discipline and practice), I can draw on what the students have already experienced in their lower-division writing courses.

Of course, I’m feeling a little sheepish for not identifying this opportunity myself. For all of my emphasis on the distinctiveness of technical communication, I lost the forest among the trees.

geeked up

No, this engineering student didn't eat all of those Snickers by himself, but he probably should have. Why? Well, if I had to sit through my lecture yesterday, I'd have been looking for just about anything legal that would keep me awake.

Is there an elegant way to move from a "dude, are you on crack" lecture about functional and technical specifications to a face-numbing "what the f**k are you talking about" discussion of prepositional phrases and helping verbs? If there is, I need to know about it.

Here's the problem: I'm teaching an advanced technical communication course in a room that is not conducive to writing instruction. So I'm struggling to find ways to get the students engaged with tech comm activities that don't require software, keyboards, cyborg interfaces, etc.

I had planned an individual writing/editing activity that I was all geeked-up about, but the photocopies sat cooling in my office while I was busily purchasing a few bags of sugary goodness before class. Knucklehead.

This year is going to be challenging, I knew it when they told me the section had 43 students. I need to keep them engaged, interested, and excited early so they don't fade out before project development begins in January.

on questions of relevance

As is typical for his blog, Tom Johnson has a great post that is asking us to consider a number of tech comm issues within a single question. It's one of the things that makes Tom's stuff interesting.

I want to respond to what I perceive as an anti-academic tone in Don Bush’s statements. In many of his early articles (raise your hand if you loved reading the “Friendly Editor” articles in Technical Communication), and particularly in his co-authored text, Bush takes an extremely pragmatic approach to the practice of technical communication. That’s what makes his writing so accessible. So why have I been so bothered since I (re)read Bush’s quotes on Tom’s site?

I’m not an academic. I tell myself that every time I step in front of pre-professional engineers and intend to impart some bit of practical knowledge about technical communication – some iota of skill that they can carry forward into their practice; making them exceptional designers, developers and communicators. I have, however, developed a deep appreciation for the way quality academic work serves and shapes the practice of technical communication. Tom’s simple question (Is rhetoric relevant?) exposes how so much of this work gets lost somewhere between the scholarly journals and field-level implementation.

I realize my perspective is skewed. I’ve had the advantage of continuing to practice tech comm while studying with some truly amazing scholars in Composition, Rhetoric and Technical Communication (Lipson, Phelps, Brooke, and Kennedy to name a select few). My intellectual development within these three incestuously related academic disciplines has nurtured my growth as a practicing technical communicator and editor. Through the hundreds (thousands?) of readings and my (notably weak) research projects, I couldn't help but recognize how much of my previous practice lacked the theoretical rationale that frames the problems technical communicators face and the methods we use to solve those problems. I've since realized the importance of including scholarly attention to a variety of theoretical and practical issues in my professional work, as well as using a broad range of methods and concepts. This understanding helps me bridge the gap between theory and practice; to simultaneously grow as a scholar and as a practitioner. And what’s wrong with that?

Scholarship is not a four-letter word, and the ivory tower is not as impenetrable as many practitioners would have us believe.

i wanna easter egg

Problem statements are not easy to develop. I know this, which is why I try to instill in engineering students the importance of writing an effective and meaningful problem statement. And yet, there I was yesterday, in an initial project meeting, buying into a “client’s” list of wants, not needs. I walked out of the meeting convincing myself that we had to retrofit an existing workflow and series of business processes – and migrate 11 web sites to a new platform – to accommodate the client.

As TCers know, it’s needs on which we build our functional requirements; it’s needs that we vet, organize and rank to determine how we’re going to solve a client’s problem with an information product. It’s needs from which we create alignment (stasis) throughout the product.

By this morning I’d diffused the wants (and other extraneous commentary) down to a single, actual need. It’s a need that does not warrant anything close to what the client imagined, proposed, or expects. In fact, it’s a need – a real life business requirement – that is being met with existing workflows and information products. It’s just that the client is too clueless to understand this.

I’ll likely spend more time than I should documenting the actual problem and detailing the existing solution to politely convince the client he's missing the point. But that’s part of what we do, right?

the greatness of anology

This has to be the funniest thing I've read in a long time.

"... mobile manufacturers who go the Android route are doing no better than Finnish boys who pee in their pants for warmth in the winter."

For context, see engadget.

Stuff like this makes me miss freelance work. Oh the fun you could have with a quote like that.

do what now?

I think I'll start collecting these to use in WRT 407 and WRT 307. I'll call the collection, Guess What They Really Mean To Say. Kind of catchy, right?

Egregious statement: "... support cross-campus generation of knowledge, enhancing the value of local research by exploring its trans-local ramifications."

Holy academic blather Batman! It's not really important to note who made the statement. It is, however, important to note that the statement is part of a call to action document. I'm still trying to decipher what that call is, but I'm getting closer.

Long live Bill Lutz.

ee humor (barely)

I just ran across this at xkcd. I thought the EEs in WRT 407 would get a kick out of it. I barely get the joke, which is only a little pathetic on a few levels.

spoon full of sugar

I do this every year. I tell students that I’m not going to spend an inordinate amount of time on grammar because, goddammit, it’s an upper-division writing course and they should know this stuff by now. I then find myself including blather like this in my comments to a student’s submission:

... My only comment is in regard to the use of "and/or" in the last sentence. "And/or" means that either both circumstances are possible or only one of two circumstances is possible; however, it tends to be clumsy and awkward because it makes the reader stop and puzzle over your distinction. The more of these “stop signs” we have in our documents, the less effective the documents become as the reader’s frustration with the content increases. Another problem is that too many writers use "and/or" inexactly, so you may have a reader looking at your usage and thinking, “Well, that’s incorrect because I use and/or differently.” Again, this is a pause that pulls the reader out of the text to reconsider not what you’ve written, but how you’ve written it. The best thing to do is recast the sentence to be more precise and avoid confusing your reader with the awkward “and/or” construction.

I couldn’t leave it alone. It’s like a pin in my neck. The funny thing is, it’s completely naïve of me to tell students they should know this stuff by now. The fact is, the majority of people hacking out technical and business documents don’t know this stuff by now, so why should college seniors? Hell, I barely know this stuff and I'm pretending to teach it.

What I should be helping these students do is recognize when something is amiss in their writing and then rely on the handbook or style guide to confirm the hunch. I don’t want to teach grammar and I don’t want pre-professional engineers to hate writing because they hate grammar. The trick is sliding it in without them knowing it – like when you have to mash up your dog’s pill and sprinkle it into his bowl of Chick-O-Beef parts.

The nasty little grammar pill. Bad medicine that, once taken, tastes oh so good.

coming back: what's new

There's always plenty to say, just never enough time to say it. That's not entirely true, but it's an easy colloquial excuse.

WRT 407 started last week. I love teaching this course. This year, the College of Engineering is up for ABET re-accreditation. The last time we went through the process, the ABET reviewers were thoroughly impressed with the embedded nature of the writing instruction in WRT 407. Yet as I review the list of materials I need to provide to the reviewers this time, I'm struck by the request for an assessment summary. I don't recall how I handled this the last go around -- or if it was even requested.

Writing assessment, and the range of emotional responses it generates, continues to be an interesting topic. To meet the ABET requirement, I'm considering focusing specifically on the prevalence of genre in WRT 407 instruction. When I peel away the onion skin, assessment in WRT 407 is conducted exclusively through a review of each student’s work with a range of engineering and technical genres. Students work with different genres in highly contextualized instructional spaces to expose the differences among document types, while reinforcing the many types of associated writing requirements and activities they will encounter as practicing professionals.

I've blathered about this before, but I'm coming back to it now as another means of validating the design and pedagogical strategy we've adopted for WRT 407.

There will certainly be more on this later. It's preoccupying too much of my time for it not to be a series of boring blog posts. But not that there's anything wrong with that.

ccr 760: on kennedy

OK, so now I want to read the whole thing. The historical aspects of Kennedy’s work (I’m assuming the rest of the dis follows the same methodology) makes for interesting reading.

As with all of our readings these past weeks, I’ve made a conscious effort to keep what I understand to be technical communication practices on the fringe while I’m working through a text. I note this readerly move to explain why I found the descriptions of textual curation familiar and creative.

Like the textual curators Kennedy describes (Chambers and the Wikipedians), the technical communicator also wrestles with two rhetorical elements: “[1] the exigence of information overload and [2] the unique agency demonstrated by the [tech writer] who labors to evaluate and re-compose huge amounts of information into a coherent and easily-accessible format for a broad audience" (113). This is, arguably, a more appropriate and concise description (than those offered by Slattery and Jones) of the modern technical communicator’s activities.

Specific to the activities of textual curation, Kennedy comfortably introduces the concept of craft ,and for me creates a clear progression from the readings we did in Spilka a few weeks ago. Like the craft of textual curation, the craft of technical communication (of the symbolic-analytic work) regularly involves "filtering prior texts and re-composing that information into a new text that fits the goals of the project at hand" (120, and “knowing where to collect information; developing ways to manage it; filtering … for relevance and quality; composing concise, clear articles; and attending to or outsourcing the myriad small tasks of publishing” (123).

Like the Cyclopædia and Wikipedia, modern tech comm information products are aggregated “synthetic compositions”. The individual who builds (authors?) these products is, quite literally, a “textual harvester” performing a continuous technology-mediated act of re-composition. And I’m thinking Textual Harvester would look pretty cool on a business card.

As a complete aside, everyone who has engaged in “perverse performances of agency in the form of vandalism” (160) please raise your hand.

ccr 760: on jones

The way Jones uses the term “information coordinator” seems more appropriate than Slattery’s “textual coordinator” (see below). Maybe it’s because Jones addresses the importance of “writing” in his broader description of how shifts in technology “create new types of writing and writer” (455). “I found that the writing process had changed and that the writers focused less on producing text and more on developing, coordinating, and structuring the newly adopted corporate intranet” (456). I realize this is essentially the same claim Slattery made, but within Jones ethnographic study, the claim seems more valid because Jones comes back to the writing: “Rather than transferring past information, the writers I studied created items as needed, often in response to a change. When something changed, a writer would be tasked with writing an announcement of the change that would appear on the corporate intranet welcoming screen with a link to a document—usually created by the division making the change but sometimes by the writers—detailing the change” (459).

Ahhhhhh… technical writing as I know it.

The following comment from the corporate communications supervisor synthesizes our earlier readings regarding information design: “She noted that this process “’requires a lot more up-front analysis. You have to know your audiences … and the differences between them’” (458). Similarly, Jones states “because the corporate intranet was still new, the writers needed to create an overall intranet structure that worked for all users" (462). The importance of information design and similar activities illustrate the more telling ways writers’ activities are shaped by certain technologies.

Incidentially, I found in the essay the primary reason why there are so many essays extolling the value of and need for technical writers who do more than write… “The writers at times needed to create content for other divisions of the company. But that was seen as a transitory situation: The goal was for each division to create its own reference content” (460). Going back to Slattery for a moment, the “problem” with technology is that it empowers anyone with access to be a writer. This means there is more crappily written content, which professional technical communicators are left to collect, aggregate, edit, mend, and mash-up. Which is the point Slattery and Jones are both attempting to make.

Oh so cyclical is my thinking.

ccr 760: on slattery

Yes, it’s about the technology. Even way back in the dark ages of 2005, that wasn’t a risky statement to make about technical communication. Slattery states that “information technologies appear to be the primary medium through which [the technical communicator’s] competencies are enacted” (355), but I’m thinking the statement applies to all knowledge workers. When we consider the list of technology-mediated activities – most importantly “the ability to coordinate, to structure workable ecologies of texts and then layer them into the target document" (355), I'm reminded that anyone with a hammer, some wood, and a box of nails can attempt to build a house.

I guess I’m responding to Slattery’s description of “writing” as an act concerned more with “deciding what to put where as it was deciding what to say and how to say it” (357). Rather than making a case for higher-level literacies, we’re reducing textual coordination to an act of content aggregation. That’s something we hire high school kids to do for us in the summer. And, interestingly enough, those high school kids typically have a larger “"technological repertoire" than the knowledge workers they’re assisting.

Slattery’s most important point, I think, is that a technical writer’s skills are experienced through and enacted with technologies. What gets lost are the skills necessary to do good writing in the first place. Slattery states that skill in writing is the “uber IT” (358), but diminishes that uberness by quickly tacking on the process of textual coordination as a necessary or equally important skill “necessary for building the genre ecologies that enable [higher order] thinking” (359).

For me, the activities identified as IT-mediated textual coordination are part of the job – and yes, a very important part of the job. But technical communication is and must continue to be about the writing; the place at which we must start when we teach aspiring TCers.

ccr 760: on tapscott & williams

Is there a way we can make the university executive leadership read this chapter? I'm actually less interested in the author's arguments about the merits of wikis than I am in the way they position a particular social software-based solution within a broader call for bottom-up innovation.

The Best Buy case study is a fine example of how to meet people (students, employees, end-users) in the spaces in which they work and play. The key element to these meetings is communicating in a peer-to-peer fashion -- communicating to collaborate, to "drill holes through the hierarchy to produce great results" (251). The generational differences are too obvious to ignore or to apologize for. The NetGen is defining the dichotomy that Spinuzzi exposes in his introduction (see below): The changing nature of the networked work place and the intrusion of social network technologies on non-work time -- the demand for non-NetGen workers to be more adept in socially networked environments as tech (not technical) communicators and users of technologies. Within this dichotomy, you have someone like Best Buy's Stephens making money from the fact that non-NetGeners are typically unprepared to deal with even the most basic of technologies today -- the personal computer.

In reading about successful implementations of a wiki and the development of wiki cultures, I kept coming back to all of the failed wiki efforts I've been privy to over the years. The chapter suggests that a principle cause for failure is the point at which the initiative begins. In every failed wiki project I've been part of, the project began as a top-down mandate. There was nothing organic or natural about it. Tapscott and Williams claim that "wikis are supposed to conform naturally to the way people think" (256). I'm supposing that wikis fail when they don't provide that space for natural conformity.

I was only half-kidding above. I do think that an organization as large as Syracuse University could learn a lot from the underlying successes and benefits associated with social-software. Where better than a university to find people who believe they can contribute to innovation and progress? Reminder to self: Mention the SU IT Answers wiki project.

ccr 760: on spinuzzi

In an introduction to a special issue of TCQ, Spinuzzi lays out a framework in which to consider the challenges facing technical communicators in an age of distributed work.

Much of the introduction brought me back to our earlier reading of Spinuzzi; as author of a text which made him an obvious choice to edit this special issue. In that text, as in his introduction here, Spinuzzi balances these broader discussions about the changing nature of work on a squishy definition of networks -- the networked worker, the socio-economics of networked activities, internetworked communications. This phenomenon of networks changes everything in the workplace -- from work activities to the organizational structures in which that work is performed.

While I think I understand the point being made, I'm still having trouble reconciling why this changes anything for technical communicators. It seems that there are broader implications for workers who are not prepared or "skilled-up" to be effective symbolic analytic workers.

I do see a complication in Spinuzzi's framework for the special issue -- worker activity is not the same as worker connectivity. When I read about the modern worker being segregated by education and segmented by technology (271), I wonder, has that ever not been the case in industrial societies? It just seems like we're stretching things when we introduce all of these socio-economic arguments in discussions about the changing nature of technical communication. I understand it's necessary to understand what's happening on a broader scale, but the challenges, problems, issues facing the technical communicator of 2010 are (I believe) the same as those faced in 1970.

When I strip away what feels like the necessary baggage of a scholarly essay (or introduction in this case), I find what I think is the essential issue facing teachers of writing, writing curriculum designers, technical communication programs, writing programs, Composition, and practicing technical communicators. In the age of distributed work, Spinuzzi says, "Rhetoric becomes an essential area of expertise ... when we are all potentially in contact with each other, across organizational and disciplinary lines, we must persuade more people coming from different domains—not just our superiors and coworkers..." (272).

ccr 760: on o’reilly

I intentionally read O’Reilly last this week. It was required reading a few years ago when we were attempting to commercialize instructional design and development with the goal of spinning off into a for-profit venture. Before we could deconstruct, embrace, and apply the principles of Web 2.0, our over-capitalized experiment imploded.

I like this article because it provides a survey of where and what the web was, is, and can be. By intentionally not describing the web as a collection of HTML-based resources, the article allows us to see the web as a space in which things happen. Terms like platform, service, and architecture make more sense when used amid discussions of specific efforts over the years. If one thing is clear, it’s that the web (arguably the Internet as a whole) continues to be about choice and openness – about participation. From a business perspective, Web 2.0 tools, technologies, and initiatives have simply elevated that participation in ways that allow for commercialization outside of traditional product/revenue models. From a more holistic perspective, participation is now expected if not demanded by users. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

O’Reilly mentions in the article that as early as 2005 the term Web 2.0 had been high-jacked and improperly applied. Indeed, I’d noted my own personal disgust with rampant and disingenuous references to Web 2.0, which is why I continue to thoroughly enjoy this:

ccr 760: on diehl, et al

I'm struck by the continuity through our readings the last week -- in particular the emergence (for me) of the importance of the visual in technical communication. I think I've always understood this, but in a narrow sort of way; the visual layout of a document or web space, the structure of tabular data, the use of graphics, etc. I'm seeing now that this particular view limits the visual to a declarative role secondary to the more procedural or narrative textual elements of an information product. The "malleable functionality" (428) of the Grassroots app illustrates the fundamental benefit of the mashup: an ability to compile and combine visual and aural information in a way that makes the most sense to the user. The relative importance of that information is completely up to the user, thereby negating an author's conception of the information as primarily procedural or declarative. Perhaps this is why it was necessary for Diehl, et al. to describe maps as arguments. If we are to accept that description, it is absolutely necessary to address how public participation in the design of an information product will shape the community ethos and eventual uptake of the product (419).



I'm also seeing a connection here with claims in earlier readings for broader and more tools-based competencies for technical communicators. In this case, the authors are first trying to expose and place value on the writing activities of people involved in civic participation. This was a similar move made by Carliner, Mazur, Spinuzzi, etc. in their efforts to identify the fundamentally rhetorical and "writerly" activities of technical communicators. They (like Diehl, et all) then claim that to be effective at these activities, the communicator/author needs to be able to construct compelling arguments using a range of tools, techniques, devices, and technologies beyond those traditionally understood to be necessary for successful communication.

The call to action is ultimately the same: to expand the teaching of writing (not just technical writing) to allow for a more inclusive or expanded definition of what it means to write in technology-mediated and technology-enhanced professional, personal, and public contexts. I guess this means I need to reconsider my statement about Stolley's claim that technical writers need to know how to sling code. I likely missed the point he was trying to make.

ccr 760: on stolley

I don't propose to be well-versed in activity theory, but I'm not seeing how the use of a social media application (SMA), such as Delicious, is anything other than an individual activity occurring during the course of a collaborative project. Stolley notes (356) that the object (output – my term) of the team's activity is the document, project, system, etc. To therefore describe SMAs as “tool-mediated activities” because they do not appear in output is to describe just about every tool used by the technical communicator. Stolley's use of activity theory to frame his discussion just seems a little retrofit or unnecessary in the context of his case studies and discussion.

Beyond my inability to see through the essay’s framework, I think I understand the point Stolley is making by describing the use of Delicious (as an example of an SMA) in personal, academic, and professional contexts. Delicious, like many other second-generation web tools, was designed to be manageable, accessible, interoperable, and scalable. These are the principle aspects of tools and technologies that technical communicators (nay, all types of information workers) look to exploit in their daily activities. In some ways this move (both conscious and unconscious) on the part of the user further complicates the already complex work environment and the SMA. On the other hand, the move could have a mitigating affect. As Stolley notes (363-4), the SMA will shape the user's work (environment, processes, activities, etc.) as well as the output of that work. The ideal result then is a reshaping that improves inputs and outputs.

On a slightly divergent note, I don't agree with Stolley's imagining of the modern technical communicator. The ability to write code does not move the technical communicator “beyond a user-only attitude toward technology” (365). The ability to write code (or do anything) simply makes the technical communicator more valuable to the organization and self-sufficient on projects that require code slinging. One's attitude toward technology is based on more than skills and competencies. An appreciation for and understanding of the broader social and rhetorical aspects of technology arguably has more to do with "a new kind of digital literacy" than knowing how to use a particular tool.

ccr 760: a philosophy of usability

Another useful and informative seminar session today. Jason and Missy led us through a great exercise to illustrate and apply certain aspects of usability (the product) with a particular focus on Quesenbery's 5 dimensions.

In the closing activity, we were posed a couple of questions to consider. One question had us imagine what a philosophy of usability might look like. Based on the week's readings, I imagined a philosophy akin to heuristics. I've always found heuristics interesting in a context of Composition and Technical Communication, and usability seems a logical space in which talk about heuristics. In regard to our imagined philosophy, where heuristics allows for users to learn things themselves, a philosophy of usability would extend that individual aspect to allow users to design and build in addition to learn.

One aspect of this philosophy might be a belief that users to are capable of and require the ability to obtain and explore information AND set their own rules (as opposed to simply following pre-determined set of rules -- heuristics). Another aspect of this philosophy might be an understanding that users are problem solvers, and as such they require a range of non-standardized tools and varying competencies.

As applied to the broader issues we've been considering in 760, a philosophy of usability could be a point at which Composition and Technical Writing can intersect -- perhaps in an expanded space of writer analysis. Unlike Composition’s emphasis on the personal, the technical writer’s understanding of audience analysis is typically organizational. And because technical writers generally do not have direct contact with the audiences for which they write, it is difficult, at best, for them to negotiate their texts with their primary audiences. This is where a philosophy of usability could inform technical writing instruction. Traditional Composition pedagogies can be applied to move technical writing students out of the basic writer-audience paradigm to a richer understanding of the function of language within organizational communications. Such an emphasis on usability could expose for the workplace writer the ways in which language is used to maintain corporate power relations and to form a writer’s identity.

Quick thought during a really great discussion amid some very very smart young scholars.

ccr 760: on wolf, et al

This essay starts with an interesting statement: "... designing a Web page was a rhetorical act fraught with real-world implications." I like that statement because it applies to just about any design activity that involves communicating information.

I read the essay on the heels of a meeting with a project team designing and developing a course to prepare faculty to teach online. Usability implications oozed from every statement that was made about sequencing instruction, focusing on specific tools, varying the presentation techniques, etc. In terms of a continuity of design (not to mention nomenclature), the course as it is currently imagined will be a hodgepodge of chunks of information and activities. If there is a consideration toward usability, it stops at the point at which users/students will access the course content.

I mention this project because the principal designers would benefit greatly from an "Access First" design approach. Interestingly enough, the topic of universal design will be introduced in the third week of the course to familiarize students with accessibility issues -- focusing on the user's needs and ranges of (dis)abilities.

In many ways, the Access First design approach sounds a lot like descriptions of Information Design, which we reviewed a few weeks ago. I therefore wasn't surprised to see that quote from Redish, arguing for a more holistic consideration of usability studies. This broader view of users and possible uses of the system (information product) is what she claims is essential for effective and practical information design.

I agree with the authors' conclusions that current approaches to usability (analysis and studies) can be limiting in that they do not make space for the freedom, flexibility, and high-degree of personalization realized by Web 2.0 technologies. However, you have to start somewhere -- and think existing approaches to usability can provide at least a baseline for analysis. From there, we can start to look for more creative and interactive ways to assess usability in ways that mirror the technologies and spaces we're analyzing.

760: on salvo and rosinski

Random Family Member: “Mitch, tell me again what it is you do.”

Mitch the Technical Communicator: “I’m a rhetorically trained, human-centered communication specialist.”

Family Member: “Oh, you work with Greek robots. That’s cool man!”

Mitch: “What? No, I contribute to the development of usable, human-scaled virtual information spaces and advocate for user needs in emerging digital spaces.”

Family Member: “So you’re like the dude in Avatar? I thought that was fake.”

Mitch: “Avatar is fake. Um, let’s see… OK, what I do most of the time is pay attention to context by transcending sentence- and paragraph-level content and the design of written communication intended to be placed on paper. But recently I’m being asked to understand how search engines and databases work within specific contexts to organize access to information, and how I can also consider context as I assign keywords, create summaries, and otherwise prepare documents for a searchable future.”

Family Member: “Dude, why didn’t you just tell me you’re an information designer? You ashamed or something?”

Mitch: “An information designer? What the hell is that? I’m a technical writer. Maybe I’m a very confused technical writer, but that’s what I am -- at least that's what I think I am. Is it still an open bar?”

Aside from the unnecessarily complicated descriptions of information design (ID) and technical communication (as disciplines and practices), the essay provides an excellent survey of the development of ID and its relationship to tech comm and the technical communicator. Most useful, I think, is the lexicon that Salvo & Rosinski (S&R) present because it gives us a way to discuss the outcomes or products of ID. Carliner earlier referred to blueprints; Albers and Mazur made reference to guidelines. S&R’s lexicon allows us to label and identify specific aspects of ID so we can place certain ID activities within the work (current or future) of the technical communicator.

Most interesting of the lexicon is ambience. “Effective ambient design helps users understand the purpose and content … with a quick glance” (120). This is a brutally difficult challenge; at least it is for me, which is why I rely so heavily on exceptionally talented graphic designers. Here's the funny thing about ambient design and the example of the quick guide for the office chair: Getting the user to use the guide isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s often more about getting the user to remember that the quick guide is right there in the arm of the chair.

As part of our body of knowledge, S&R make two principle claims that allow us to continue on with the historical and professionalization narratives we’ve been working through: 1) That technical communicators have a role (actually a stake) in shaping the field/practice of information design in the present and immediate future, and 2) Technical communicators are in an ideal position to continue doing what they’ve been doing for a long time – implementing good designs in their information products, but now the emphasis is on digital media.

Here are two asides from the essay:

1. I found it interesting that in defining what they mean by critical literacy, S&R are also describing some of the competencies required to be an effective information designer. Full participation in a community, which they call critical literacy, “requires that one comprehend not merely the words, but also the purposes or uses for the selection of those words in a given context” (103). Then again, that's probably why the essay is included in Spilka's text.
   
2. At what point did we start referring to the “early years of the World Wide Web” (106) as if they were halcyon days?

760: on mazur

If I'd read Mazur first this week, I probably wouldn't be left with this feeling that she's casting around in a shallow pool of definitions, trying desperately to latch information design (ID) onto anything that floats by.

As a bibliographical history, the essay is insightful, primarily because it strings together the historical narratives that appear in Carliner and Albers (below).

One exceptionally useful nugget in the essay is the STC ID SIG's definition of information design: "ID applies traditional and evolving design principles to the process of translating complex, unorganized, or unstructured data into valuable, meaningful information"(23). Then, when you think you can't read any more "what is information design blah blah blah," there's this from Jef Raskin: "Information design is a misnomer. Information cannot be designed; what can be designed are the modes of transfer and the presentations of information" (23-4). Mazur goes on to quote Raskin's emphasis on drawing a distinction between information and meaning.

I'm going to try and keep that distinction in the foreground as we work through the final essay and move into our class discussion next week. I think it's going to be necessary to create that demarcation (between information and meaning) if we're to find ways to apply ID to our practices as teachers of composition and rhetoric.

760: on carliner

Not to belabor the inability to define information design (ID), but Carliner refers to ID first as a notion -- IDers "look at the bigger picture: What problem is the client trying to solve, what can I bring to address the problem, and how does this solution support the larger business situation" (43). A page later he defines ID as a discipline: "Design as problem solving ... designers focus on the solution ... design is a problem-solving discipline" (44).

Knowing that I need to move on and not make this definition-deficiency an issue, I really like Carliner's three-part goal-oriented framework for ID (the notion, practice, field, discipline, whatever).

• Physical - the ability to find information
• Cognitive - the ability to understand information
• Affective - the ability to feel comfortable with the presentation of the information

In many ways, the framework represents my understanding of heuristics and something I'm pretty sure that most composition scholars are/should be familiar with.

I also like what Carliner is attempting to do with the framework (as he qualifies it in his conclusion) because I can locate my own practices within it. I seem most comfortable with the physical and cognitive levels of the framework. The affective level seems like "point of failure" motivation to me, although I know that's incomplete and inconsistent with what Carliner is describing here. It’s just that things like behavioral change, change management, and performance improvement are always the moving targets of the project. It is, quite honestly, often easier and sometimes necessary to avoid the affective level just to get the project done.

As a complete aside: I could probably have gone without Carliner's clarification of what he meant by "pre-digested information" on page 51. Dude, really? A description of how LactAid works?

760: on albers

I will openly admit that I’m a little confused now. Albers claims that information design (ID) is not the same as information architecture (IA). But I’m struggling with how ID is nothing more than a sequence of activities that technical communicators have always performed prior to developing an information product.

Albers says that ID is not "the practice of web navigation, creating graphics, picking fonts, laying out the page, or using particular tools. Rather, it must be considered the practice of enabling a reader to obtain knowledge" (7). And yet back on page one he states that “Information design is about the proper position of content within an appropriate/meaningful context -- content that is effectively assembled and presented” (1). Am I the only one who gets the sense that Albers can’t clearly define ID either?

OK, so let’s assume that the “practice” of ID occurs first. Do we then move to IA (page layout, fonts, headings, etc.), and then to the central task of authoring, collecting, and synthesizing content? If that’s the case, therein is my confusion because I’ve never seen or understood these practices to be mutually exclusive or necessarily sequential.

When Albers talks about the "essence of being a good information designer" it sounds a lot like good audience analysis and project planning. "They start with understanding the information needs of the audience and what data is available, and then decide if paper, web-based, or a loudspeaker is the best method of communicating the information. The medium used to communicate the message should not be chosen until the information needs of the audience are defined" (8).That, to me, is the necessary up-front work of building usable and effective information products.

The need to specialize the technical communicator’s activities into granular chunks isn’t surprising – in fact it fits nicely with the themes of value-seeking, self-preservation, and disciplinary struggles we’ve strung together since week 1. When Carliner lists the activities of the IDer on page 3, he’s describing many of the symbolic-analytic activities that all knowledge workers perform. Similarly, when Odell and Goswanmi state that, “In creating the optimal user experience, the information designer must also consider the social context of the user” (6), are they not simply talking about the work of the rhetorician?

If I come to this discussion through those narratives (above), then I can buy the claim that ID has emerged from technical communication. Similarly, I can accept the better of the definitions of ID presented in the introduction -- "Information Design Journal: Information design is the art and the science of presenting information so that it is understandable and easy to use: effective, efficient and attractive" (3).

I like the IDJ definition because it lists three key metrics that we use in tech comm to evaluate our information products. Those metrics are embedded in our training (or at least they were). So maybe we were taught information design without it being called information design. It's an aspect of good technical communication. Nothing more.

760: on clark

I really don’t have much to say about this essay other than it does a tremendously good job of surveying the issues relating to content / structure separation.

I found two extremely meaningful comments. The first: “As a result, after implementing this type of separation, a significant part of the writing process becomes the negotiation of content across genres rather than simply within them, and writing is structured by the design and use of information models, rule sets, style sheets, and the technical infrastructure that maintains and enforces those models and rules and presents the content whenever it is requested” (50). As the other essays in the week’s readings argue (directly and indirectly), these are the principle activities of the modern technical communicator AS WELL AS anyone else building information products from content objects. I think Clark is correct in assuming that “trained” technical communicators have the advantage of adapting these activities to their workflows because they have a long history of performing the same activities in less controlled traditional workflows.

Clark’s second meaningful comment is an assurance that there will continue to be a space for the technical communicator in the CMS-based authoring environment: “Authors write and structure complete texts to which visual style is added as needed, allowing them to continue working flexibly within organizational genres and facilitating changes and the creation of new genres. But the implementation of a system that granularizes content and makes genre formation part of a multigenre, automatically generated presentation system means learning to write differently” (54). In many ways, this is what technical communicators have done as long as new tools and technologies have been introduced into their practices.

Both of these comments illustrate that Clark wants to keep the “writing” in “technical writing” and does not privilege the technology over the craft. This, I think, is something that needs to be foregrounded as we work through the issues and implications of content management and content/authoring systems.

ccr 760: on hart-davidson, et al

I like this paper because it’s based on practicality – on specific activities required in specific situations. Maybe it’s the case-study approach and the lens of phronesis that makes the conclusions usable and practical.

Content management as an activity (or “a type of conduct”) is understood, I think, by most practicing technical communicators. What the authors do well in this paper is present two situations in which the activity is shared by a range of workers who create knowledge, arrange information and make texts. It is this common decentralized activity that makes it extremely difficult to get a “culture of content management” to stick. It’s the problem of herding cats – cats that have their own thoughts (and competencies) regarding the ways information is created, published, and distributed.

In some ways, I think the authors’ conclusions have already been taken up by CMS developers – particularly by web content management system developers. Allowing users to “become more than just consumers, but also actual creators, editors, and manipulators of content" (26) is exactly what allows an organization to create and shape a culture of content (see Justin’s comments below for a great example). This is the empowering activity (phronesis) that allows CMS users to respond to highly contextualized real world situations that require specific work (world?) experiences.

In terms of actionable items based on lesson learned in both case studies, the authors give us a space in which to ask content-specific questions that do not necessarily shift the authority of meaning making solely to the technical communicator. Similarly, the authors ground their conclusions on an honest assessment of their own consulting activities: "But for many other organizations, writing practices are not so obvious and nowhere near the list of mission-critical activities. This means that our expertise, too, is off the radar screen. This is why it is true, we would argue, that while the moment of coming to content management may well give us an opportunity to prove ourselves valuable, we also need to be careful to develop sustainable ways of coming to content management that can make writing work visible and accountable as part of an organization’s thinking" (32). If you’ve had a chance to meet and listen to Bill Hart-Davidson, you’d recognize his voice and pragmatism in the preceding passage.

760: on pullman and gu

Of course I should have read the introduction to the special issue before diving into any of this week’s essays. I would at least have understood that the guest editors were creating an intentionally text-centric theme in which to consider CMSs and the common practices of technical communicators.

As with Whtimore, I find in the introduction a common hang up with CMSs: “Content management has a direct bearing on our field because a central issue in content management is the role (or a lack thereof) of technical communicators in the process of CMS design and implementation" (2). Maybe I’m just struck by the agency, relevance, and authority the authors are assigning to the technical communicator in the workplace. I realize my experiences are my own and limited to niche software development industries, but they aren't unique or exceptional experiences. I can honestly say that I’ve never worked with a technical writer, editor, or developer who saw themselves as THE SOLE content creators within their organizations.

The foundation of technical communication is cemented by collaboration, cooperation, and communication – synthesizing and shaping. As I understand tech comm, it has never been about the end product. I’ve always seen my efforts “as part of an endless flow of information” (2) – long before CMSs and similar systems began appearing. Have CMSs affected the way in which technical communicators think and practice? Absolutely. But involving technical communicators in the design and development of such systems will not make working in CMS-based environments any less problematic. The CMSs I’ve worked with and implemented were never intended to serve a single group of users –technical communicators. Rather, they were intended specifically to remove the reliance on "documentation specialists" and information gatekeepers – to allow other “symbolic-analytic” workers to perform the work traditionally assigned to technical communicators. If technical communicators are ill-served by CMSs, it is only because they are being de-valued by the machine.

The anger toward the CMS – the machine – is mis-directed and a little disingenuous. Is it necessary in the introduction to note that "CMS implementations have rarely been successful" and to provide financial statistics to support the claim? Trying to justify or argue certain positions using traditional ROI models has never worked for technical communicators. As our “value-add” historical narratives continually show, we have long wrestled with the difficulty of proving a return on investments in what we do and the information products we produce. Trying to make a similar move in a discussion about CMSs is just sloppy. What we need to do is move away from the tired old ROI arguments and explore more current fiduciary theories to IMPROVE our returns on investments in our practice and products. If we are going to treat what we do as business assets (as Pullman and Gu claim), we should find more creative and appropriate ways to consider how to reconcile our practices with all forms of asset capitalization, including the CMS.

wondering about whitmore's frustration

I just came across this sage advice from Hedley Finger. The reference to "pain" during a single-sourcing implementation brought Whitmore's essay into a little better focus. Finger's claim that a good single-sourcing implementation necessitates a "strict hierarchical structure for your documentation" makes Whitmore's visually-spatial CMS authoring environment sound down right tasty. Similarly, Finger's comments about a "strict folder tree structure and naming conventions for files and formats to facilitate batch processing via scripts" makes me want to run out and sign up for the next "Writing Like an Automaton" workshop offered by SkillPath.

But then there's this interesting tidbit from Finger: "This allows us to ramp up a new project quickly and gives the writers and artists a uniform environment in which to work." Ugh. There it is again -- pragmatism in the workplace. Just when you're feeling all scholarly and theoryish, you get slapped with the cold Mackrel that is the life of the practicing technical writer. It's been a while since I've been slapped as such, but I have scars dude. Yeah, I have the scars.

760: on whitmore's metadata and memory

I like Whitmore’s approach to this topic because his argument considers the relationship of classical, big “R” Rhetoric to technical communication. There are plenty of these arguments to be found, but Whitmore’s focus on the canon of memory is interesting in that it exposes another aspect of the non-fixed writing processes of technical communicators.

On the other hand, I find throughout the essay a sort of romantic narrative of the technical communicator – of the technical communicator has sole inventor, creator, manipulator, and producer of texts. While this may have been and continue to be the case in some organizations, by and large technical communicators have been reusing acontextual content and composing in “hypothetically egoless style so that their content could be seamlessly combined with other content” (91) for a long long time. This doesn’t diminish Whitmore’s argument, which I find compelling from a system design perspective.

Whitmore wants to make the CMS a tool that follows or adheres to "the ways in which memory can be enhanced to aid the tactical retrieval of stored knowledge during acts of composing" (95). As he admits in his footnote, some CMS vendors are using methodologies that encourage or allow users to generate custom or unique methods to retrieve and manipulate stored content (memories?) – “to better meet the cognitive needs of writers during composing so that the requirement for specialization [is] avoided” (92).

The “requirement for specialization” is something that stuck with me throughout the essay. Whitmore is coming at this issue from the perspective of the technical communicator – as if only technical communicators are users of these systems. In fact, CMSs are used regularly by a range of workers who actively locate and convert stored information into useful and actionable knowledge. To focus solely on the technical communicator – and to tie the argument into the changing role (economic, social and otherwise) of the technical communicator – fails to recognize the increasingly dynamic and important role CMSs play. They are not simple object brokers from which user guides and training manuals are created. Yes, CMSs do (admittedly) destabilize “traditional notions of authorship and ownership because writers operate at a further remove from their audiences and the information products..." (89-90). But on the shop floor, a machine operator calling a help screen of brokered objects from a CMS is likely not too concerned with “a sense of powerlessness and purposelessness” (90) as the creator of a knowledge product needed to complete a complex task.

Again, to back out to Whitmore’s broader argument, I like his concept of incorporating visual-spatial memory into content management and object brokering systems. We saw a tremendous advantage in data-driven software development with the introduction of 3-dimensional visual-spatial tools, such as OLAP. As Whitmore notes, “In fact, such visualizations would more closely match the three-dimensional metaphors such as that of the cube that other (often higher-status) knowledge workers like data miners and database engineers have employed for quite some time when attempting to visualize the structure of data in relational databases" (103).

There are lot of questions and threads we can follow with this essay: heuristics and metaphor in interface design; non-scientific taxonomies; the traditional tension between information scientists and technical communicators -- all interesting directions to go with this.