Preface for Instructors

Printed Page v-viii

Preface for Instructors

TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION has always involved collaboration. A writer who needed to produce a user manual for a new software package would likely have interviewed the engineer who wrote the code. The company might also have convened a focus group to find out what users liked and didn’t like about the prototype of the software. Now, however, there is more interaction than ever before between the people who produce technical documents and those who consume them. Often, that interaction goes in both directions. Using social media and new technologies, technical communicators can collaborate with their audiences at every step of the communication process. And thanks to online publishing, audience members contribute to the development of technical documents even after they have been published, by asking and answering questions, revising existing information, and contributing new information.

The types of documents that technical communicators routinely produce have changed as well. Microblog posts, contributions to discussion boards and wikis, and status updates to one’s LinkedIn profile—once the raw materials of longer and more formal documents—are now routinely used to communicate important messages.

Despite these changes, the fundamentals of technical communication are at least as important as they always have been. An inaccuracy in a microblog post communicating a project update is every bit as big a problem as an inaccuracy in a traditional progress report. And even though we live and work in an era that values brevity and quick turnaround, some information can be properly communicated only through the longer, detailed documents that have always been at the center of technical communication.

I have revised this new edition of Technical Communication to help students learn how to communicate effectively in the fast-paced, highly collaborative world in which they will work. Employers have never valued communication skills as much as they value them today, and for good reason. Today’s professionals need to communicate more frequently, more rapidly, more accurately, and with more individuals than ever before. This book will help prepare students to do so—in their courses and in their careers.

New to This Edition

The Eleventh Edition recasts the text’s most enduring features in the context of today’s professional environment. Chapter 1, thoroughly revised in light of the input of fellow technical-communication instructors, sets the stage for the text’s new focus. Throughout, I’ve updated and expanded coverage of the topics and technologies most relevant to the technical communication process; in fact, I’ve eliminated Chapter 22, “Connecting with the Public,” altogether, as its topics are now integrated into many chapters throughout the text.

The chapter about audience includes an expanded introduction that prepares students who are, for the first time, considering audiences other than their instructors. In addition, this chapter presents techniques for analyzing social-media data to better understand those audiences. The correspondence chapter now includes guidelines on how to represent one’s organization on a microblog. The chapter on definitions, descriptions, and instructions covers the new role of discussion boards, wikis, and videos in disseminating information. Updated sample documents, both in the print text and online, provide opportunities for students to analyze the types of documents they’ll need to produce or contribute to, such as a municipal government app that enables residents to report infrastructure problems directly from their phones, as well as an interactive map of global forest changes that allows different audiences to customize their viewing experience to obtain the precise information they need.

In keeping with its promise of serving as a model of the principles it teaches, the new edition communicates in new ways. Online resources, labeled in the text with an image icon, are located in the LaunchPad, a customizable online course space including a full e-book that can be packaged with new copies of the text for free. Cases are now presented in the LaunchPad so that students can easily download and work with related documents. Tutorials introduce tools for multimodal composition, teach helpful technology tips, and offer another means of learning documentation. LearningCurve adaptive quizzing activities, covering the first ten chapters, help students master and apply concepts in a new, personalized way. LearningCurve activities for multilingual writers are also available here, as are video-based team writing modules that help students learn collaborative writing skills. Also available in the LaunchPad are two full-length e-books: Document-Based Cases for Technical Communication, Second Edition, by Roger Munger, and Team Writing, by Joanna Wolfe. Finally, instructors can access a variety of instructor resources here, including a new test bank featuring multiple-choice, true/false, and short-answer questions for each chapter.

The following table describes the updates made to each chapter in the Eleventh Edition.

CHAPTER WHAT’S NEW
Chapter 1 Introduction to Technical Communication
  • New focus on continuous collaboration between technical communicators and stakeholders
  • A discussion of the challenges related to producing technical communication and how to meet them
  • A discussion of the skills and qualities shared by successful workplace communicators
  • New annotated sample documents that set the stage for those that will follow throughout the text, such as a company blog post and comment thread
  • LearningCurve: Understanding the Technical Communication Environment, covering Chapters 1–4 image
Chapter 2 Understanding Ethical and Legal Considerations
  • A discussion of ethical and legal issues related to social media, including guidelines for using social media ethically in the workplace
  • Document Analysis Activity: Presenting Guidelines for Using Social Media
  • LearningCurve: Understanding the Technical Communication Environment, covering Chapters 1–4 image
Chapter 3 Writing Technical Documents
  • Advice on choosing the best digital writing tool for a project
  • Document Analysis Activity: Identifying the Strengths and Weaknesses of a Commercial Template
  • Tutorials on cross-platform word processing and on creating outlines, styles, and templates image
  • LearningCurve: Understanding the Technical Communication Environment, covering Chapters 1–4 image
Chapter 4 Writing Collaboratively
  • Tutorials on scheduling and conducting meetings online, reviewing collaborative documents, incorporating tracked changes, using wikis for collaborative work, and using collaborative software image
  • LearningCurve: Understanding the Technical Communication Environment, covering Chapters 1-4 image
Chapter 5 Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose
  • A new, more-detailed introduction to the role of audience and purpose
  • Advice on using social-media data in audience analysis
  • Case: Focusing on an Audience’s Needs and Interests image
  • LearningCurve: Analyzing Your Audience and Purpose image
Chapter 6 Researching Your Subject
  • Advice on using social-media data in research
  • A tutorial on tracking sources using online research tools image
  • LearningCurve: Researching Your Subject image
Chapter 7 Organizing Your Information
  • Document Analysis Activity: Using Multiple Organizational Patterns in an Infographic
  • LearningCurve: Organizing and Emphasizing Information, covering Chapters 7 and 9 image
Chapter 8 Communicating Persuasively
  • Case: Analyzing the Persuasiveness of a Website image
  • LearningCurve: Communicating Persuasively image
Chapter 9 Emphasizing Important Information
  • New focus on emphasizing important information at various document levels
  • Case: Emphasizing Important Information in a Technical Description image
  • LearningCurve: Organizing and Emphasizing Information, covering Chapters 7 and 9 image
Chapter 10 Writing Correct and Effective Sentences
  • Instruction on writing grammatically correct sentences relocated from Appendix C
  • LearningCurve: Writing Correct and Effective Sentences image
Chapter 11 Designing Print and Online Documents
  • Advice on designing documents for mobile screens
  • A tutorial on proofreading for format consistency image
Chapter 12 Creating Graphics
  • A discussion of infographics
  • Document Analysis Activity: Interactive Graphic image
  • Tutorial on editing photos image
Chapter 14 Writing Correspondence
  • Guidelines for representing your organization on a microblog
  • Case: Setting Up and Maintaining a Professional Microblog Account image
Chapter 15 Writing Job-Application Materials
  • Advice on establishing your professional brand
  • Guidelines on creating and using a LinkedIn profile
  • Tutorial on building a professional brand online image
  • Document Analysis Activity: Blane C. Holden’s Online Portfolio image
  • Case: Identifying the Best-of-the-Best Job-Search Sites image
Chapter 16 Writing Proposals
  • Sample internal proposal: Tablet Study at Rawlings Regional Medical Center
  • Document Analysis Activity: Marketing Proposal Presentation image
Chapter 17 Writing Informational Reports
  • Sample progress report: Tablet Study at Rawlings Regional Medical Center
  • Document Analysis Activity: High Plains Water-Level Monitoring Study image
  • Document Analysis Activity: “Global Forest Change” Interactive Map image
Chapter 18 Writing Recommendation Reports
  • Sample recommendation report: Tablet Study at Rawlings Regional Medical Center
  • Document Analysis Activity: Influenza 2010–2011: ACIP Vaccination Recommendations image
Chapter 19 Writing Lab Reports
  • Relocated from Chapter 18 to enable the three chapters using the sample report suite (Tablet Study at Rawlings Regional Medical Center) to appear consecutively
Chapter 20 Writing Definitions, Descriptions, and Instructions
  • Discussion on the role of social media in the dissemination of instructional information
  • Guidelines for designing instructional videos
  • Document Analysis Activity: Presenting Clear Instructions
  • Document Analysis Activity: Mechanism Description Using Interactive Graphics image
  • Document Analysis Activity: Process Description Using Video Animation image
  • Document Analysis Activity: Instructions Using Video Demonstration image
  • Document Analysis Activity: Instructions Using Video Screen Capture image
  • Document Analysis Activity: Instructions Using a Combination of Video Demonstration and Screen Capture image
  • Document Analysis Activity: Definition Using Video Animation image
  • Case: Choosing a Medium for Presenting Instructions image
Chapter 21 Making Oral Presentations
  • A discussion on creating presentation materials using Prezi
  • Tutorials on creating presentation slides and on recording and editing audio for recorded presentations and other projects