Defining technical communication success: Skills, contexts, and values in the workplace and the classroom

Date

2003-08

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Texas Tech University

Abstract

Technical communication literature theorizes on the vast potential of technical communication practitioners to make expansive and large-scale contributions to their individual workplaces. Practitioners influence complex and dynamic systems through their roles as boundary spanners, knowledge workers, change agents, and information designers. My research, which uses qualitative interview methods to produce narratives of successful practitioners, illustrates how practitioners are constructing these new and, until now, untested visions of the future. My research focuses on fairly recent graduates of technical communication programs and the connections between career success and academic preparation. I am interested especially about information that enables educators to inform students of qualities that will help them to succeed in the workplace long after initial employment.

My research focuses on four questions related to this matter: (1) "What do technical communicators do and need to know on the job?” ; (2) "What career paths do successful technical communicators take to reach a high level of success?"; (3) "What connections exist between academic preparation and workplace success?"; and (4) "Considering recent changes in technical communication (e.g., increasingly strong ties with the computer industry and movements toward expansive and knowledge-based definitions of the field), do past efforts at establishing a curriculum need rethinking?"

Determining what a successful technical communicator does and knows is particularly important for technical communication educators because of the perceived gap in knowledge between the academic world and the world of business. Are educational institutions providing both the knowledge and theories that practitioners will need in the field and that will lead to long-term and meaningful success? Providing a well-informed answer to this inquiry is particularly important considering recent changes in the technology industry and in sites of technical communication practice. As the computer industry has fueled the demand for technical communicators, new programs have emerged but without full knowledge of what prepares students for long-term success in the field. I am not interested in vocational training and careerism. 1 am looking holistically at the kind of work that technical communicators do, including knowledge work, and I assess the influence of higher education that offers humanities as well as technical education.

Description

Keywords

Education -- Moral and ethical aspects, Business communication, Communication of technical information

Citation