Focusing the Question

How do we, then, 1) measure and 2) bridge the inevitable gap between employer expectations and the knowledge, skills and dispositions taught in TC service courses such that schools can better keep up with changing needs and emerging trends in industry?


This question is the one that’s occupied me for the last couple of years. It’s a noble quest, to be sure, trying to keep a practical, service-oriented course on track with employers’ expectations. It’s the basic requirement of an education: teach me to do something, or to think something, that will better me (or, in this case, make me more employable). But over time, the base question (“How do we. . .?”) has become more rhetorical than anything else. How, in fact, do we keep classes current with industry, assuming that we should do so in the first place?

And is it possible to keep a course which serves an entire undergraduate university population, composed of 90-some-odd majors, relevant to the writing practices of each student’s intended career path such that those students will come out of the course actually writing and understanding the documents of a particular profession better and more effectively than when they went into the course? No, probably not. But it’s worth looking into.

William James might argue that the “cash value” of the larger question, the “How do we” question, is to serve as a touchstone or a frame, but not the actual endeavor itself. Rather, it lays philosophical ground for me in that it keeps the focus on the practicality of the TC service course.

So back to the question, I’ve been refining it in my head for some time now. If the question lends itself to broadness, to lack of specific focus such that it really does become more rhetorical than an actual request for information, then I can at least refine my approach to the question. The question of “How do we. . .” then becomes a guiding philosophy rather than something I have to answer directly. I’ve considered questions like:

1. If more authentic writing situations make for more effective learning, then how can a technographic study help capture workplace writing practices for inclusion into the classroom?

In order to answer this question, I’d need to make clear the value and validity of a technographic study (which, in all fairness, I’d need to do in any study that uses the word “technographic”).

The study design would have to take into account other study designs and their findings in order to make that final comparison, the “how can a” part of the question, make sense. And that’s a sticking point, seems to me, since another ethnographic study (not technographic in nature) would of course have examined different things in the first place; thus, comparing results wouldn’t work too well without some serious rhetorical gymnastics.

2. How can ethnographic observation methods, traditionally used in writing studies to record information on the production of texts as well as the interactions of writers, be shifted in order to take into account the participation of technological artifacts in the writing process?

I like this question a bit more than the first because it allows for a simple critique of past studies and an opportunity to justify a different approach (the technographic lens, if you will). That’s a valuable piece of real estate, but I think it would work better as an article rather than as a full-length dissertation project. Must make a note.

3. If, as a number of researchers assert, technology “participates” with us in the creation of both artifacts and activities, how can we measure the extent and influence of that participation?

This question works well, too, and in fact may be the winner of this group. First, I’d need to line up some theorists and researchers who assert that technology participates alongside us (Johnson-Eilola and Kien I already have, but I’m wondering if there aren’t some other techno-heavy hitters like Marcuse and Ellul who could be worked in?). So, assuming I’d gotten the theoretical basis squared away, next would come the study. And the study itself would be the primary benefit to this question over the previous: the previous question could be answered entirely using deductive reasoning, or at least an answer could be roughed out of the raw material. But with this third question, I’m allowing for the inclusion of a decent empirical study. My diss chair will argue that it’s going to be difficult to quantify the word “participation” empirically, but I’m not sure that’s the hard part. I think a good study design would adapt ethnographic methods such as direct observation and interviews, with focus groups where we focused on the technology itself and got the group to provide some feedback, some sense of how they fit the technology into their daily work.

But there’s a host of what I’ll call on-the-ground problems with that one, starting with who I’d be using as participants and why, and how to get them to talk about technology without leading them (technology is notoriously transparent—just think about the last time you really thought about how helpful shoes are) into saying what I think. So that’s just two good problems to deal with. I’m sure there are more.

But one of the more serious, I think, problems is that I might just uncover disciplinary differences in the group inclusion of technology that point to the dissolution of TC service courses, and I’m not sure that’s a good idea.

Let me back up: let’s say I use two participant pools, one from a human resources firm and one from a civil engineering firm. What if I find that the use of language, the production of written artifacts, and the inclusion (and subsequent participation) of technology into both spoken and written communication is so very specific to each firm (and really, to each field) that, in fact, there’s no way to include both approaches in a single class? Would that point to an overall condemnation of the idea that we can train future professionals to produce technical documents in a single, one-size-fits-all course?

Honestly, though, that potential conclusion doesn’t worry me. It’s getting there—the problems on the ground, as it were—that are the real obstacles. If those can be addressed such that a replicable, empirical study can be carried out and the results recorded in a usable fashion, then the results may fall where they may. I imagine chapter five will be full of all kinds of speculations about application anyhow.