The data gathered for my dissertation will, eventually, have to be codified (organized in a meaningful way). Rich Rice suggested I use communications theory as a way of understanding what I find, whereas Fred Kemp (my dissertation chair) suggested systems theory. I’ve only looked preliminarily into those, but so far there’s nothing that suggests to me I could use them productively; however, there is one thing I’d like to comment upon.
Most theories I’ve encountered seem to try to account for static and dynamic, sameness and change, in some way. The communications theory I’ve read so far (and that’s not much) offers various metaphors for understanding communications between and among organizations: circle, star, etc., each figure accounting for power relationships and the supposed flow of information within that network. But there’s also an attempt to account for a change in state—what happens when the information is received, or how we can determine whether that information has been received and that therefore some sort of communication has taken place—that leads to speculation on the difference between organizations and individuals who stay the same and those that change, and what forms that change takes.
Systems theory (wherein I’ve read a bit more) is often an extended discourse on little but change itself: how the parts shape the whole, or the actions of the whole, or how understanding a system can change the system itself. . .on and on about static and dynamic systems. So, at the very least we can speculate that sameness and change are important to theorists in more than one area.
I’ve just read over Andrew P. McAfee’s “Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration” (http://bit.ly/ddzslZ) in which he defines Enterprise 2.0 along with six characteristics he’s identified as belonging to any technology that works as Enterprise 2.0. So, to begin, Enterprise 2.0 is "those platforms that companies can buy or build in order to make visible the practices and outputs of their knowledge workers" (McAfee 23). Earlier in the piece, he defines “platform” as a source of information in which “content is generated, or at least approved, by a small group, but then is widely visible” (22). So, to combine these two ideas, we might conclude that an Enterprise 2.0 platform is a method of communicating whereby a smaller group of people could distribute information to a larger group in such a way that the knowledge workers involved—whether the distributers or recipients—could see what others were doing and how they were doing it.
Into the mix goes McAfee’s SLATES acronym, which stands for the six components of such a system:
Search – “page layouts and navigation aids can help, but users are increasingly bypassing these in favor of keyword searches”
Links – “works best when there’s a dense link structure that changes over time and reflects the opinions of many people”
Authoring – “most people have something to contribute, whether it’s knowledge, insight, experience, a comment, a fact, an edit, a link, and so on. . .”
Tags – “don’t try to impose an up-categorization scheme; they instead let one emerge over time as a result of users’ actions.”
Extensions – computers using algorithms to suggest other content based on user behaviors. “Amazon’s recommendations were an early example of the use of extensions on the Web.”
Signals – pushed content
Each of these six components is based upon the idea of change: “bypassing,” “changes over time,” “something to contribute,” “emerge,” and then my own words “suggest” and “push.”
So, as a baseline, we can confidently claim that Enterprise 2.0 technologies are those which enable workers to (a) create, and (b) make visible not only what they’ve created but how they created it.
This model can be seen in how engineers communicate in the workplace: design reports, in particular, or even construction bids and statements of qualifications, almost never get their beginnings as a blank document. Engineers are always building (figuratively as well as literally) upon past documents and knowledge that others have created. Even beyond the rather simplistic view that engineering is based upon well-known characteristics of physics and chemistry, we can point to more subtle building blocks such as design projects done in the past which are similar to the one currently in the development stage. Building standards, such as LEED certification, ADA compliance, and EPA compliance exist prior to the design project, and thus the project itself is only part knowledge creation: it is in even larger part an effort at knowledge sharing and knowledge application.
In the technical writing class we use to prepare engineers for their future as knowledge workers who need to communicate with others, however, the knowledge is largely created (a) for that class as assigned by the instructor, and (b) by individual students. Thus, the knowledge management paradigm we see in writing in the workplace does not exist, or does not exist to the same extent, in the classroom.
Showing posts with label workplace writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label workplace writing. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
Service Courses at the Center of the Universe
Service courses exist at the center of the academic universe, pulled by the event horizons of a dozen different institutional singularities without ever fully succumbing to the influence of one or the other. Their orbits are unstable, and yet for decades they have managed to balance on the pin head of academic gravitas.
Service courses exist because legislatures tell public institutions they have to have them; they exist because academic institutions feel that students need to “just know” some things; they exist because legions of students have taken them in past generations, thus making them a tradition; and, they exist because they are part of an honest effort at helping students become citizens.
Many academics take “service course” to mean any of the lower-level courses that all students at public colleges are required to take; thus, introductory classes in history, political science, and freshman composition are all service courses. However, service courses are actually any courses offered by one department to the students of other departments (non majors). Thus, there are far more service courses than one might think. Service courses that fall under this definition could be as varied as renaissance and reformation history, medieval philosophy, web design, or technical editing.
But whatever its most far-flung incarnations may be, for technical communication researchers the “service course” is most commonly the class taught to students from across the university who need initiation and practice in the workaday documents they will be required to produce upon graduating and securing a job. This course, designated ENGL 2311 by the Texas Common Course Numbering System (TCCNS), has a variety of definitions across the nation, but most fall pretty comfortably into the following description:
“Principles, techniques, and skills needed for college level scientific, technical, or business
writing.”
Texas A&M University refines that to the following:
"Processes of developing field-specific technical information related to the major, including researching, drafting, editing, revising, and designing technical reports, proposals, manuals, resumes and professional correspondence for specific audiences. Special topics, computer and distance sections available. Prerequisites: ENGL 104; junior classification."
A careful reader will note that while above I defined the goal of the service course as preparing students for workplace writing, the first definition—from the Texas Common Course Numbering System—mentions only “college level. . .writing” and that A&M refers to writing “related to the major.” The question that arises naturally from this juxtaposition is whether “college” writing is the same as “workplace” writing. My experience talking to people in business, politics (including members of the Texas State Board of Education), and education (elementary, secondary, and post-secondary) indicates that at least for many people, college writing is in fact the same as workplace writing. In other words, many college graduates who have gone on to shape our families, communities, businesses, and schools think that the way we write in the classroom is the same way we write in the office. Therefore, there is no dissonance caused by the above contrast in definitions.
Researchers conversant with college writing and business writing will, or should, note that there are in fact pretty significant differences between college and business writing. For instance, there is a distinct difference in genre. College writing is often in the form of essays, but essays practically don’t exist at all in business. Furthermore, a good college-level producer of essays will write using terms and citation styles that often don’t apply to business. MLA citation style, by way of example, is practically unheard of off campus, and essays frequently deal with students’ personal opinions on politics, literature, and history, which, though important, do not often come up in workplace writing.
There is, of course, a significant amount of college writing which is not in essay form. Students routinely produce proposals, lab reports, and technical reports. They also make posters, slides, and handouts for technical presentations, and some students produce educational materials as well as websites and business plans and case studies. These document do in fact share a great deal in common with workplace writing: they are modeled on actual workplace documents (such as business plans) and are required so that students gain experience in generating these documents, becoming more comfortable with the genre and purpose of such texts. So far, so good.
But perhaps one of the most important distinctions between workplace writing and college writing is the end, or goal, of the document. In school, everything a student does is (or is supposed to be) for the direct benefit of the student. Students work as individuals and are graded as individuals. Even in group work, students receive individual grades, and savvy instructors have policies in place for the student who does not contribute as much as is expected. Upon graduation, students receive a personalized diploma recognizing their efforts. Students own their writing, and thus their grades.
In workplace writing, documents frequently do not list an author but instead bear the name of the company or institution for which the student (now graduated) works. The end of the workplace document is to increase the value of the organization, not the individual, though individual benefits of course come through in the form of paychecks, raises, and promotions. But the primary purpose of that document is to increase the value of the organization: paychecks are a secondary benefit, a consequence, of the increase in organizational value.
Writing in the classroom means the student owns the document and produced all of the work within it. When a student cites information, it is for the purpose of acknowledging outside help, such as quoting a source of information. But in the workplace, documents are frequently used and re-used, and even kept as templates for later work. A single paragraph page may contain the words of five or six employees, but those words are not attributed directly to those authors; instead, the document is taken to be literally the work of the group. Ownership of that text goes to the organization, and plagiarism takes on an entirely different shape and meaning. Stealing words and ideas from other companies is bad; re-using text produced from a worker who may no longer work there is completely reasonable, even without attribution.
The lack of recognition of the difference between classroom writing and workplace writing is largely transparent, and often detrimental, to the service courses designed upon the assumption that classroom writing and business writing are the same thing.
Service courses exist because legislatures tell public institutions they have to have them; they exist because academic institutions feel that students need to “just know” some things; they exist because legions of students have taken them in past generations, thus making them a tradition; and, they exist because they are part of an honest effort at helping students become citizens.
Many academics take “service course” to mean any of the lower-level courses that all students at public colleges are required to take; thus, introductory classes in history, political science, and freshman composition are all service courses. However, service courses are actually any courses offered by one department to the students of other departments (non majors). Thus, there are far more service courses than one might think. Service courses that fall under this definition could be as varied as renaissance and reformation history, medieval philosophy, web design, or technical editing.
But whatever its most far-flung incarnations may be, for technical communication researchers the “service course” is most commonly the class taught to students from across the university who need initiation and practice in the workaday documents they will be required to produce upon graduating and securing a job. This course, designated ENGL 2311 by the Texas Common Course Numbering System (TCCNS), has a variety of definitions across the nation, but most fall pretty comfortably into the following description:
“Principles, techniques, and skills needed for college level scientific, technical, or business
writing.”
Texas A&M University refines that to the following:
"Processes of developing field-specific technical information related to the major, including researching, drafting, editing, revising, and designing technical reports, proposals, manuals, resumes and professional correspondence for specific audiences. Special topics, computer and distance sections available. Prerequisites: ENGL 104; junior classification."
A careful reader will note that while above I defined the goal of the service course as preparing students for workplace writing, the first definition—from the Texas Common Course Numbering System—mentions only “college level. . .writing” and that A&M refers to writing “related to the major.” The question that arises naturally from this juxtaposition is whether “college” writing is the same as “workplace” writing. My experience talking to people in business, politics (including members of the Texas State Board of Education), and education (elementary, secondary, and post-secondary) indicates that at least for many people, college writing is in fact the same as workplace writing. In other words, many college graduates who have gone on to shape our families, communities, businesses, and schools think that the way we write in the classroom is the same way we write in the office. Therefore, there is no dissonance caused by the above contrast in definitions.
Researchers conversant with college writing and business writing will, or should, note that there are in fact pretty significant differences between college and business writing. For instance, there is a distinct difference in genre. College writing is often in the form of essays, but essays practically don’t exist at all in business. Furthermore, a good college-level producer of essays will write using terms and citation styles that often don’t apply to business. MLA citation style, by way of example, is practically unheard of off campus, and essays frequently deal with students’ personal opinions on politics, literature, and history, which, though important, do not often come up in workplace writing.
There is, of course, a significant amount of college writing which is not in essay form. Students routinely produce proposals, lab reports, and technical reports. They also make posters, slides, and handouts for technical presentations, and some students produce educational materials as well as websites and business plans and case studies. These document do in fact share a great deal in common with workplace writing: they are modeled on actual workplace documents (such as business plans) and are required so that students gain experience in generating these documents, becoming more comfortable with the genre and purpose of such texts. So far, so good.
But perhaps one of the most important distinctions between workplace writing and college writing is the end, or goal, of the document. In school, everything a student does is (or is supposed to be) for the direct benefit of the student. Students work as individuals and are graded as individuals. Even in group work, students receive individual grades, and savvy instructors have policies in place for the student who does not contribute as much as is expected. Upon graduation, students receive a personalized diploma recognizing their efforts. Students own their writing, and thus their grades.
In workplace writing, documents frequently do not list an author but instead bear the name of the company or institution for which the student (now graduated) works. The end of the workplace document is to increase the value of the organization, not the individual, though individual benefits of course come through in the form of paychecks, raises, and promotions. But the primary purpose of that document is to increase the value of the organization: paychecks are a secondary benefit, a consequence, of the increase in organizational value.
Writing in the classroom means the student owns the document and produced all of the work within it. When a student cites information, it is for the purpose of acknowledging outside help, such as quoting a source of information. But in the workplace, documents are frequently used and re-used, and even kept as templates for later work. A single paragraph page may contain the words of five or six employees, but those words are not attributed directly to those authors; instead, the document is taken to be literally the work of the group. Ownership of that text goes to the organization, and plagiarism takes on an entirely different shape and meaning. Stealing words and ideas from other companies is bad; re-using text produced from a worker who may no longer work there is completely reasonable, even without attribution.
The lack of recognition of the difference between classroom writing and workplace writing is largely transparent, and often detrimental, to the service courses designed upon the assumption that classroom writing and business writing are the same thing.
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