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Fake news—false stories that mimic real research or journalism and spread quickly online—and our awareness of it has proliferated in the months leading up to and following the 2016 presidential election. This workshop will help instructors of technical and professional writing define fake news for their students, identify the ways social media lends ethos to fake news, and give students a consistent...
Organizations increasingly resort to corporate stories in order to positively influence their stakeholders' perceptions. However, no substantive results are available that prove the effects of corporate stories. Apart from that, recommendations on which content elements should be included in corporate stories, nearly all rely on conceptual theories and not on empirical studies. The first goal of this...
A 10-year working partnership between engineering instructors and communication instructors for a course called “Computer-Aided Engineering: Applications to Biomedical Process” aims to enrich the professional skills of the engineering students overall. This paper provides a window to the ways the course aids students in improving their engineering/technical writing and presenting skills. This year,...
A new partnership between the Engineering Communications Program and the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department has created promising results in student engineering and communication self-efficacy. We highlight here the pedagogical underpinnings, current data-driven findings, and reflections and insights from two students involved in this promising inter-departmental cooperative effort.
This paper discusses the need for an integrative literature review on data visualizations, particularly in health and medical contexts. The paper analyzes 25 studies across disciplines. The findings suggest there is little agreement on the best way to visualize complex data for lay audiences, but some emerging effective practices are being develop. Pictographs, icon arrays, and bar charts seem to...
This study explores the rhetoric in and relevance of online health forums. The study argues that online health forums allow patients to alter their position in relation to each other and to their illness, creating opportunities for empathic relationships, better quality of life, and better disease management. The ability to respond with empathy requires a participant to seek a different position for...
Taking cognizance of the terminology and thought process more likely to be effective with a target audience of engineers, an effort was made to integrate the technique of work sampling with public speaking in order to ensure greater appreciation among engineers for concepts related to communication. In this study, the work sampling was employed to determine productive and unproductive percentages...
Cross-cultural communication in professional contexts can be difficult because of the different cultural expectations and values. This article presents an analysis of an electronic roadshow in a successful cross-cultural initial public offering. Grounded in a case study methodology, this study employs a social semiotic analysis of the electronic roadshow and identifies five semiotic resources and...
This brief article contributes a pedagogical discussion of project management in technical and professional communication. In the article, we argue for using a systems approach to scaffold project management curriculum. The article explains how we, as instructors, use a systems approach to teach students how project management activities constellate a range of workplace practices that technical and...
Practitioner research in technical communication differs from general or academic research. Technical communication students need to develop abilities to conduct research into subject matter, audience, and communication approaches within workplace contexts to meet situated needs. This article explores differences between the two realms of research and discusses implications for teaching practitioner...
Wednesday Nite @ The Lab, now in its 12th year, is a public science series offered every Wednesday night, 50 times a year, starting at 7pm at the Genetics Biotechnology Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Additional partners include the University of Wisconsin-Extension and the Wisconsin Alumni Association. The series is intended to be a regular, routine, and reliable program that welcomes...
How do different instructors approach the problem of information architecture consistent with their disciplinary and professional backgrounds, and what can these instructors learn from each other? In this article, two approaches to delivering an Information Architecture course are examined. This reflective activity demonstrates how curriculum outcomes can be achieved in different ways. Chickering...
In this pilot study, we tested the potential benefits of visual card sorting method for usability testing as an alternative to the text-based Product Reaction Card Deck. Findings suggest that participants provide summative feedback about their usability experiences during the visual card sort task. Directions for future research are discussed.
Our work proposes that the understanding of the relationship between communication and power structures is fundamental in teaching, learning and improving communication skills and, conversely, learning and improving communication skills enables people to become more aware of how power is operating in a given environment. Using situated observation in the workplace, our study investigates how pieces...
Despite continued sustainability as an academic field of study, researchers of technical communication have struggled with employing appropriate research methods in their studies. In this panel, the panelists will each discuss an aspect of this struggle framed within their own experiences and expertise. Topics will include the quality of evidence in research studies; quality of methodology in workplace...
A new curriculum integrates writing instruction within a sequence of engineering design courses taught in a multidisciplinary studio format. Most closely associated with the disciplines of industrial design and architecture, design studios immerse students in an authentic problem-solving environment. In engineering education, on the other hand, varying specializations and skills within the engineering...
Collaborations among digital humanities and social science disciplines are not new, but they are increasingly responding to recent, increased examination of how “discourse” looks in public spheres (particularly U.S. North American). Whether focused on the involvement of social media during the U.S. Presidential campaign, re/definitions of “civility,” credibility of source information, or presumed...
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