Reshaping Technical Communication - IEEE Xplore

70

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. 46, NO. 1, MARCH 2003

Barbara Mirel and Rachel Spilka, Editors

Reshaping Technical Communication: New Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century Book Review

Index Terms—Pedagogy, technical communication, technical communication as a discipline.

—Reviewed by RUSSELL WILLERTON

A

Manuscript received November 15, 2002; revised November 25, 2002. The reviewer is with the Department of English, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-3091 USA (email: [email protected]). IEEE DOI 10.1109/TPC.2002.808343 Book Publisher: Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002, 216 pp. with index.

lthough the field of technical communication certainly came into its own in the 20th century, “the field cannot afford to rest on its laurels” in the 21st, according to Barbara Mirel and Rachel Spilka (p. 1). Because technical communicators work in an ever-changing business environment in which resources are scarce and lines of responsibility are often blurred, technical communicators must reassert and redefine themselves to remain viable and productive in the 21st century. This collection developed from the “Milwaukee Symposium” in June 2000, at which 18 academics and professionals in technical communication met to discuss the state of the profession (if indeed it has reached professional status, a point discussed by one of the essays) and its future. The book’s 11 chapters are grouped into two main parts. The first part considers ways to increase interaction between the academic and workplace worlds of technical communication; the second examines ways in which technical communicators can move beyond traditional service-oriented roles in industry to positions of greater influence. This collection should succeed in getting technical communicators to think about where the field is heading and about how industry and academia can work together to ensure that the field will grow.

0361-1434/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE

In Chapter 1, Stanley Dicks writes, “Collaboration between academics and practitioners in technical communication is essential to both groups” (p. 13). Yet, many collaborative efforts are short in duration and limited in scope. In his insightful chapter, Dicks shows that practitioners in industry and academics work in distinctly different cultures. The two groups “often talk right past each other when they collaborate” (p. 16). The five main differences Dicks identifies relate to perceptions of information (its value and dissemination), language and discourse styles, views of collaboration and individual work, and assumptions about employment and reward structures. It’s not quite that Practitioners Are From Mars, Academics Are From Venus, but the differences that Dicks articulates are profound: “Operating in these two different worlds can be like traveling between countries. One must change languages, customs, philosophy, thought patterns and motivations” (p. 23). Dicks argues for longer, more extensive collaborations between industry and academia; one step toward this is to negotiate outcomes (especially what is publishable and what is not) in the beginning.

Deborah Bosley’s chapter focuses on changing the academic perspective on technical communication from within


the university. She writes that academics often separate themselves from practitioners in unproductive ways; in fact, industry and academia share more common ground than some might imagine. She advises academics to define themselves as practitioners in their universities and local communities; this will increase their credibility on all fronts. Universities provide many opportunities for practicing technical communication, in the forms of large reports, websites, and so on. While Bosley advises academics to make a point of sharing their research with practitioners who don’t always have access to academic journals, she acknowledges that tenure committees do not always value such work (p. 38). Ann M. Blakeslee calls for more research on the common ground or overlapping spaces shared by industry and academia to show how “these two cultures and their respective genres differ” (p. 41). Blakeslee’s literature review shows many examples of how academic documents differ from those produced on the job. Workplace writing is highly situated (p. 44), and this is hard to replicate in an academic setting. Blakeslee provides examples showing how some of her students have found that a workplace has political and competitive factors that are not present in traditional classrooms. Blakeslee hopes that continued research in the overlapping spaces of industry and academia will bring the two sides together and help each side better understand the other. Anthony Paré’s interesting chapter shows how participatory–action research can help improve workplace literacy when traditional academic approaches fail. Paré’s experiences working with Inuit social workers show that the “literary quick fix” often imposed by academics has little chance of succeeding (p. 64); interpersonal and political realities in the

workplace are powerful. Paré shows that academics might need to reinvent themselves as students and listeners in order to facilitate change. The greatest lessons the Inuit social workers learned about workplace writing were those that they taught each other. To close the first section of the book, Stephen Bernhardt proposes a new model of interaction between academia and industry. His model, “active-practice,” involves practitioners working with academics on frequent, active projects that are meaningful to each group: “By working together on shared problems, practitioners and academics can reshape practice in both spheres” (p. 85). Students will enter the workplace more informed, and practitioners will view the academy as an important resource. Spilka’s chapter begins the second part of the book. In it, she argues for a new consortium that will help technical communication thrive in the future. A profession has universal recognition, a well-defined community and culture, systematic means of doing and evaluating work, and strong professional organizations (pp. 98–99); technical communication still lacks these elements. Spilka shows that the Society for Technical Communication tends to focus inwardly and that it has not produced a vision for the future of technical communication. Spilka’s proposed group would be composed of academics and practitioners, and would focus specifically on helping the field develop into a profession. Karen Schriver sees opportunities to advance technical communicators’ influence through continued research on information design. She identifies six key groups who are stakeholders for information design research: researchers, teachers, practitioners, people who communicate on the job, consumers, and citizens. Schriver

71

then examines each group in terms of expectations, biases, assumptions, and strategies for gathering information. She laments that the information design’s “unwitting insularity has prevented the field from fully realizing itself” (p. 116). Schriver closes with rhetorical strategies for reaching the stakeholders, and the chapter’s appendices show how material can be adapted to reach new audiences. Brenton Faber and Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s chapter addresses some of the opportunities and challenges facing technical communicators in a global economy. As the value of production of goods decreases, the ability of “new knowledge to create and add value” becomes more important (p. 141). The authors propose that academics and professionals should “migrate” between each other’s worlds more frequently in order to share knowledge and apply each others’ ideas. “Without this transformation,” they argue, “technical communication will remain fragmented” and “incapable of leading change, or of responding in rich new ways to new technological, social and political situations and other people will claim the value for our work” (p. 144). Lori Anschuetz and Stephanie Rosenbaum work in industry, and their chapter presents six short “case histories” of technical communicators who have moved into new spheres of influence beyond creating information products. These areas include e-commerce consulting, usability testing, business strategy, and product marketing and management. Rather than viewing people who move to new positions as “lost to our profession” (p. 163), the authors argue for defining technical communication more expansively and for learning from those who move beyond traditional roles. The chapter closes with recommendations on addressing

72

professional challenges for those in industry and for academic programs. Barbara Mirel’s chapter focuses on usability and on how technical communicators can exert leadership and serve as agents of change. Using the design of software for complex tasks as a starting point (specifically, software for nurses to track patient medications; given that medicating patients rarely occurs the same way twice), Mirel distinguishes between “usefulness” and “use-in-context” (p. 167). Leaders in usability “need to overcome piecemeal notions of usability and show that partial usability is no more favorable to users than partial system performance” (p. 169). Mirel discusses approaches to task analysis, to supporting and representing tasks, and to development processes. She writes


that usability specialists will grow in status as they become more central to design processes. This thorough chapter could be used in discussions of usability testing and software development as well as in discussions of technical communicators’ roles.

interaction design and skills in the technologies commonly used to create and present documentation, “technical communicators are likely to devolve into obsolete appendages to high technology, consumer devices and software” (p. 194).

The final chapter—short and eclectic—is by Russell Borland, retired from Microsoft. Borland combines modern fables from Thomas King and principles of interaction design from Alan Cooper to show that technical communicators must continue to reevaluate and reinvent what they do. He argues that we must move from documenting the basics of how something works to a new documentation “that communicates domain information and strategies for complex problems” (p. 193). Without strong domain knowledge, principles of

The book concludes with the proposed research agenda developed at the Milwaukee Symposium. Some questions are broad, while others are more specific. The editors note that they hope this agenda will serve as the starting point for new research and for new conversations about technical communication. Overall, I think this book effectively considers new ways in which the academic community can interact with industry and provides some interesting examples of how academics and professionals can expand the field’s influence.