Technical communication in the global context : a heuristic approach to disciplinary identity and pedagogical practices

There is nothing new or original in stating that the global economy directly impacts the profession of technical communicators. The globalization of the workplace requires that technical communicators be prepared to work in increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse contexts. These new exigencies have natural repercussions on the research and educational practices of the field In this work, I draw on rhetoric, linguistics, and literacy theory to explore the definition, role and meaning of the global context for the disciplinary construction of professional and technical communication. By adopting an interdisciplinary and diachronic perspective, I assert that the global context is a heuristic means for sophisticating the disciplinary identity of the field and for reinforcing its place within the humanities. Consequently, I contend that the globalization of the workplace is a kairotic moment for underscoring the rhetorical dimension of professional and technical communication.

How do we teach usability? An Investigation of Usability Instruction in Technical Communication

This dissertation investigates the curricular implementation of usability instruction in technical communication. Though there are a plethora of publications and studies on usability in technical communication, little discussion focuses on usability instruction in the classroom or its implementation in the curriculum. Thus, this exploratory qualitative research seeks to contribute to a better understanding about technical communication students' and instructors' knowledge of and experiences with usability practices in the classroom, the challenges that impacted their usability efforts, and their recommendations on how their efforts could be improved. The study results demonstrate the need for more productive discussion on this issue and for developing more effective strategies for implementing usability in the classroom.

Add a Dash of Rhetoric, a Pinch of Technical Communication, a Handful of Pedagogy, and Mix Well: Cookbooks and Recipes as Instructional Texts, and What Domestic Texts from 1870 to 1935 Can Teach Us About Technical Communication

Through the use of rhetoric centered on authority and risk avoidance, scientific method has co-opted knowledge, especially women's everyday and experiential knowledge in the domestic sphere. This, in turn, has produced a profound affect on technical communication in the present day. I am drawing on rhetorical theory to study cookbooks and recipes for their contributions to changes in instructional texts. Using the rhetorical lenses of metis (cunning intelligence), kairos (timing and fitness) and mneme (memory), I examine the way in which recipes and cookbooks are constructed, used and perceived. This helps me uncover lost voices in history, the voices of women who used recipes, produced cookbooks and changed the way instructions read. Beginning with the earliest cookbooks and recipes, but focusing on the pivotal temporal interval of 1870-1935, I investigate the writing and rhetorical forces shaping instruction sets and domestic discourse. By the time of scientific cooking and domestic science, everyday and experiential knowledge were being excluded to make room for scientific method and the industrial values of the public sphere. In this study, I also assess how the public sphere, via Cooperative Extension Services and other government agencies, impacted the domestic sphere, further devaluing everyday knowledge in favor of the public scientific model. I will show how the changes in the production of food, cookbooks and recipes were related to changes in technical communication. These changes had wide rippling effects on the field of technical communication. By returning to some of the tenets and traditions of everyday and experiential knowledge, technical communication scholars, practitioners and instructors today can find new ways to encounter technical communication, specifically regarding the creation of instructional texts. Bringing cookbooks, recipes and everyday knowledge into the classroom and the field engenders a new realm of epistemological possibilities.

HEALTH AND SAFETY ISSUES IN THE WORKPLACE: THE CASE OF CAMEROON TEA ESTATE (CTE), A RISK COMMUNICATION APPROACH

In 2002, motivated largely by the uncontested belief that the private sector would operate more efficiently than the government, the government of Cameroon initiated a major effort to privatize some of Cameroon’s largest, state-run industries. One of the economic sectors affected by this privatization was tea production. In October 2002, the Cameroon Tea Estate (CTE), a privately owned, tea-cultivating organization, bought the Tole Tea Estate from the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), a government-owned entity. This led to an increase in the quantity of tea production; however, the government and CTE management appear not to have fully considered the risks of privatization. Using classical rhetorical theory, Richard Weaver’s conception of “god terms” (or “uncontested terms”), and John Ikerd’s ethical approach to risk communication, this study examines risks to which Tole Tea Estate workers were exposed and explores rhetorical strategies that workers employed in expressing their discontent. Sources for this study include online newspapers, which were selected on the basis of their reputation and popularity in Cameroon. Analysis of the data shows that, as a consequence of privatization, Tole Tea Estate workers were exposed to three basic risks: marginalization, unfulfilled promises, and poor working conditions. Workers’ reactions to these risks tended to grow more emotional as management appeared to ignore their demands. The study recommends that respect for labor law, constructive dialogue among stakeholders, and transparency might serve as guiding principles in responding to the politics of privatization in developing countries.

ENVISIONING QUEER THROUGH DIGITAL MEDIA: DEVELOPING A COMMUNITY-BASED WORKSHOP IN MEDIA ANALYSIS FOR LGBTQIA+ YOUTH

This project consists of a proposed curriculum for a semester-long, community-based workshop for LGBTQIA+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual or ally, "+" indicating other identifications that deviate from heterosexual) youth ages 16-18. The workshop focuses on an exploration of LGBTQIA+ identity and community through discussion and collaborative rhetorical analysis of visual and social media. Informed by queer theory and history, studies on youth work, and visual media studies and incorporating rhetorical criticism as well as liberatory pedagogy and community literacy practices, the participation-based design of the workshop seeks to involve participants in selection of media texts, active analytical viewership, and multimodal response. The workshop is designed to engage participants in reflection on questions of individual and collective responsibility and agency as members and allies of various communities. The goal of the workshop is to strengthen participants' abilities to analyze the complex ways in which television, film, and social media influence their own and others’ perceptions of issues surrounding queer identities. As part of the reflective process, participants are challenged to consider how they can in turn actively and collaboratively respond to and potentially help to shape these perceptions. My project report details the theoretical framework, pedagogical rationale, methods of text selection and critical analysis, and guidelines for conduct that inform and structure the workshop.

Living with Differences: From Everyday Fundamentalisms to Invitational Communication

This project examines fundamentalism understood as an everyday way of living poorly with difference. It demonstrates that the fundamentalist is not reducible to stereotypes of the terrorist, extremist, irrational madman, or religious zealot. All of these characterizations--common in mainstream media--depict the fundamentalist as them, and rarely, if ever, as us. Rather, this project understands fundamentalism in terms of fundamental interpretive constructs that constrain our ways of being-with others, skew our interpretive and responsive possibilities, distort our perceptions of difference, and affirm our poor treatment of others. Following Martin Heidegger's conception of the hermeneutic structure of existence, this dissertation calls attention to the ways in which such fundamentalisms filter our interpretation. Yet the hermeneutic character of existence also highlights the incompleteness of any particular frame of interpretation and indicates the possibility of alternative interpretive responses. The project turns to a feminist theological hermeneutic in order to indicate more hopeful and liberating ways of living with difference, ways that point beyond everyday fundamentalism toward invitational communication. Through new readings of familiar biblical narratives, this dissertation revisits the fundamentalisms that trigger these narratives in order to draw out an alternative feminist theological hermeneutic, or what is termed here an invitational hermeneutic. Each story offers unique ways of making sense of being-with and sharing the world with others of difference that redress the impoverished and fundamentalist forms of self-preserving care and understanding. By examining the well-loved stories of the Good Samaritan, Ruth and Naomi, Queen Esther, and the Apostle Paul and Lydia, the dissertation identifies interpretive and responsive possibilities that together issue an alternative hermeneutical invitation: to understand difference compassionately, to engage strangers and family members alike with rehabilitative care and concernful reticence, and to extend graceful hospitality to others. In these ways, the dissertation indicates possibilities beyond the horizon of fundamentalism, invitational possibilities of living and communicating with difference.

Intellectual Property and Traditional Cultural Expressions in a Digital Environment

In the face of increasing globalisation, and a collision between global communication systems and local traditions, this book offers innovative trans-disciplinary analyses of the value of traditional cultural expressions (TCE) and suggests appropriate protection mechanisms for them. It combines approaches from history, philosophy, anthropology, sociology and law, and charts previously untravelled paths for developing new policy tools and legal designs that go beyond conventional copyright models. Its authors extend their reflections to a consideration of the specific features of the digital environment, which, despite enhancing the risks of misappropriation of traditional knowledge and creativity, may equally offer new opportunities for revitalising indigenous peoples' values and provide for the sustainability of TCE.This book will appeal to scholars interested in multidisciplinary analyses of the fragmentation of international law in the field of intellectual property and traditional cultural expressions. It will also be valuable reading for those working on broader governance and human rights issues.

The New Concept of Universal Service in a Digital Networked Communications Environment

Digitization, sophisticated fiber-optic networks and the resultant convergence of the media, communications and information technology industries have completely transformed the communications ecosystem in the last couple of decades. New contingent business and social models were created that have been mirrored in the amended communications regimes. Yet, despite an overhaul of the communications regulation paradigm, the status of and the rules on universal service have remained surprisingly intact, both during and after the liberalization exercise. The present paper looks into this paradox and examines the sustainability of the existing concept of universal service. It suggests that there is a need for a novel concept of universal service in the digital networked communications environment, whose objectives go beyond the conventional internalizing and redistributional rationales and concentrate on communication and information networks as a public good, where not only access to infrastructure but also access to content may be essential.

Applying the fuzzy analytical hierarchy process in digital marketing

The fuzzy analytical network process (FANP) is introduced as a potential multi-criteria-decision-making (MCDM) method to improve digital marketing management endeavors. Today’s information overload makes digital marketing optimization, which is needed to continuously improve one’s business, increasingly difficult. The proposed FANP framework is a method for enhancing the interaction between customers and marketers (i.e., involved stakeholders) and thus for reducing the challenges of big data. The presented implementation takes realities’ fuzziness into account to manage the constant interaction and continuous development of communication between marketers and customers on the Web. Using this FANP framework, the marketers are able to increasingly meet the varying requirements of their customers. To improve the understanding of the implementation, advanced visualization methods (e.g., wireframes) are used.

Digital implant impressions with the "Individualized Scanbody Technique" for emergence profile support.

OBJECTIVE The Short Communication presents a clinical case in which a novel procedure--the "Individualized Scanbody Technique" (IST)--was applied, starting with an intraoral digital impression and using CAD/CAM process for fabrication of ceramic reconstructions in bone level implants. MATERIAL AND METHODS A standardized scanbody was individually modified in accordance with the created emergence profile of the provisional implant-supported restoration. Due to the specific adaptation of the scanbody, the conditioned supra-implant soft tissue complex was stabilized for the intraoral optical scan process. Then, the implant platform position and the supra-implant mucosa outline were transferred into the three-dimensional data set with a digital impression system. Within the technical workflow, the ZrO2 -implant-abutment substructure could be designed virtually with predictable margins of the supra-implant mucosa. RESULTS After finalization of the 1-piece screw-retained full ceramic implant crown, the restoration demonstrated an appealing treatment outcome with harmonious soft tissue architecture. CONCLUSIONS The IST facilitates a simple and fast approach for a supra-implant mucosal outline transfer in the digital workflow. Moreover, the IST closes the interfaces in the full digital pathway.

Digital Personal Assistant for Cognitive Cities: A Paper Prototype

This chapter presents an evaluation and initial testing of a meta-application (meta-app) for enhanced communication and improved interaction (e.g., appointment scheduling) between stakeholders (e.g., citizens) in cognitive cities. The underlying theoretical models as well as the paper prototype are presented to ensure the comprehensibility of the user interface. This paper prototype of the meta-app was evaluated through interviews with various experts in different fields (e.g., a strategic consultant, a small and medium-sized enterprises cofounder in the field of online marketing, an IT project leader, and an innovation manager). The results and implications of the evaluation show that the idea behind this meta-app has the potential to improve the living standards of citizens and to lead to a next step in the realization and maturity of the meta-app. The meta-app helps citizens more effectively manage their time and organize their personal schedules and thus allows them to have more leisure time and take full advantage of it to ensure a good work-life balance to enable them to be the most efficient and productive during their working time.

Time-dependent supraimplant mucosa changes: short communication

PURPOSE The aim of this short communication was to analyze time-dependent changes of the supraimplant mucosa architecture in the esthetic zone. MATERIALS AND METHODS Five patients underwent single-tooth replacement with implant crowns in the anterior maxilla. The supraimplant soft tissue was conditioned with fixed provisional crowns. Quadrantlike digital impressions were taken with an intraoral optical scanning device at three time points: t0, immediately after removal of the provisional (baseline); t1, after 5 minutes; and t2, after 10 minutes. To analyze time-dependent mucosal changes, the corresponding digital files were superimposed for each patient, and baseline (t0) scans were compared with t1 and t2 scans, respectively. Wilcoxon rank sum tests were used for statistical calculations with a strict level of significance at P < .01. RESULTS Mean values for supraimplant soft tissue changes were statistically significantly different after 5 minutes (5.5%; standard deviation ± 0.3%) in comparison to the results after 10 minutes (21.7%; standard deviation ± 1.8%). The direction of mucosa shrinkage showed a trend toward palatal sites. CONCLUSION Based on the findings of this analysis, changes in supraimplant mucosa architecture seem to be affected only slightly during the first 5 minutes after removal of soft tissue support.

High-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) of a thermokarst depression in Siberian ice-rich permafrost deposits

This data set provides a high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) of a thermokarst depression (~7 km²) on ice-complex deposits in the Arctic Lena Delta, Siberia. The DEM based on a geodetic field survey and was used for quantitative land surface analyses and detailed description of the thermokarst depression morphology. Detailed morphometrical analyses, volume calculations, and solar radiation modeling were performed and statistically analyzed by Ulrich et al. (2010) to investigate the asymmetrical thermokarst depression development and directed lake migration previously proposed by Morgenstern et al. (2008). Furthermore, the high-resolution DEM in combination with satellite data allowed detailed analyses of spatial and temporal landscape changes due to thermokarst development (Günther, 2009).