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.