This collection of essays focuses on both how and why assessment serves as a key element in the teaching and practice of technical and professional communication. The collection is organized to form a dual approach: on the one hand, it offers a landscape view of the activities involved in assessment - examining how it works at institutional, program, and classroom levels; on the other, it surveys the implications of using assessment for formulating, maintaining, and extending the teaching and practice of technical communication. The book offers teachers, students, scholars, and practitioners alike evidence of the increasingly valuable role of assessment in the field, as it supports and enriches our thinking and practice. No other volume has addressed the demands of and the expectations for assessment in technical communication. Consequently, the book has two key goals. The first is to be as inclusive as is feasible for its size, demonstrating the global operation of assessment in the field. For this reason, descriptions of assessment practice lead to examinations of some key feature of the landscape captured by the term 'technical communication'. The second goal is to retain the public and cooperative approach that has characterized technical communication from the beginning. To achieve this, the book represents a 'conversation', with contributors chosen from among practicing, highly active technical communication teachers and scholars; and the chapters set up pairs of opening statement and following response. The overriding purpose of the volume, therefore, is to invite the whole community into the conversation about assessment in technical communication.
Table of Contents:
KNOWING WHERE WE ARE
CHAPTER 1
Assessment in Action: A Möbius Tale Chris M. Anson
CHAPTER 2
Assessing Technical Communication: A Conceptual History Norbert Elliot
ASSESSMENT IN THE WIDEST VIEW
CHAPTER 3
v Mapping Institutional Values and the Technical Communication Curriculum: A Strategy for Grounding Assessment Jo Allen
CHAPTER 4
The Benefits and Challenges of Adopting a New Standpoint While Assessing Technical Communication Programs: A Response to Jo Allen Paul V. Anderson
A ROLE FOR PORTFOLIOS IN ASSESSMENT
CHAPTER 5
Politics, Programmatic Self-Assessment, and the Challenge of Cultural Change Kelli Cargile Cook and Mark Zachry
CHAPTER 6
The Road to Self-Assessment: Less-Traveled But Essential James M. Dubinsky
SITUATING ASSESSMENT IN DISCIPLINARY REQUIREMENTS
CHAPTER 7
Expanding the Role of Technical Communication Through Assessment: A Case Presentation of ABET Assessment Michael Carter
CHAPTER 8
Beyond Denial: Assessment and Expanded Communication Instruction in Engineering and Professional Programs Steven Youra
ASSESSING THE WORK OF GRADUATE STUDENTS
CHAPTER 9
Assessment of Graduate Programs in Technical Communication: A Relational Model Nancy W. Coppola and Norbert Elliot
CHAPTER 10
Program Assessment, Strategic Modernism, and Professionalization Politics: Complicating Coppola and Elliot’s “Relational Model” Gerald Savage
TECHNOLOGY IN ASSESSMENT
CHAPTER 11
Assessing Professional Writing Programs Using Technology as a Site of Praxis Jeffrey Jablonski and Ed Nagelhout
CHAPTER 12
Reconsidering the Idea of aWriting Program William Hart-Davidson
ASSESSMENT IN TECHNICAL AND PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION ASSESSING INTERCULTURAL/ INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS
CHAPTER 13
Assessment in an Intercultural Virtual Team Project: Building a Shared Learning Culture Doreen Starke-Meyerring, Deborah C. Andrews
CHAPTER 14
Do Fish Know They Are Swimming in Water? Deborah S. Bosley
Afterword
The Ethical Role of the Technical Communicator in Assessment, Dialogue, and the Centrality of Humanity Sam Dragga
Index
About the Author :
Margaret Hundleby teaches in the Engineering Communication Program at the University of Toronto, after working in programs in the United States and in other parts of Canada. She has also been an industry consultant in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. She approaches technical communication work through rhetoric and the social organization of knowledge, centering research on epistemic aspects of technical communication and the relations between written text and visuals. She has been part of several major assessment undertakings at the University of Guelph (Ontario), Michigan Tech, and Auburn University, and served as founding liaison for the first CPTSC/ATTW assessment initiative. She has also been a member of the Engineering Assessment Consortium, meeting at Rice University. Jo Allen is the Senior Vice President and Provost at Widener University in Chester, PA.
Review :
"The Hundleby and Allen collection does a couple of vital things. For the professional and technical communication discipline, it offers a set of starting points for critical dialogue on the role and meaningfulness of assessment that helps demonstrate the field's evolving maturity, as well as its usefulness as either a tool or a model in measuring the successes of other disciplines. For the work of assessment, it offers an exemplary range of assessment approaches for academic programs that are not monitored, or driven, by accreditation requirements. As such, this work represents the depth of conversations that faculty and their administrators can have about where their courses and programs are and where they need to be in the commitment to continuous improvement." - Marilee Bresciani, Author, Outcomes Based Academic and Co-Curricular Program Review (Stylus Publishing)"
